DEMO 11.30.04 5:14pm

I’ll begin this series with the very first idea I could find in my files, all the way back from 11.30.2004. I've decided to list these demos in order of when they were started, not completed, which at this point seems like the most logical way to approach this. Most ideas are started, then set aside for a while, then picked back up at another point, the set aside again, and so on until I either feel satisfied with a final outcome or stop working on it entirely.

Presenting things in order of creation, even if the initial idea is very unformed and raw, will provide insight into my creative inclinations over time. Unfortunately there is no way for you to follow my creativity every step of the way without placing a streaming camera in the studio for you to watch things unfold in real time. Maybe that's a good idea though. For these older ideas, I'll just have to supply what evidence I have on hand, which will certainly widen the window into what I've created more than if I didn't do so at all.

Anyway, this obviously wasn’t the first idea I’d ever created in my life, but the first I could find from what I’d saved on different hard drives over the years. If I had access to every idea I’d ever created, it would probably stretch at least fifteen years farther back to when I was around eleven or twelve (although I can't remember exactly when I started playing music). Since I wasn’t privy to the technology of capturing my creativity way back when, this will have to do as a starting point. If I find more ideas stashed away somewhere I’ll share those too.

At the beginning of November 2004, the band I had toured with for almost five years decided to go on hiatus, which turned into a fully fledged breakup about six months later. Even though being in a band and touring around the country was certainly a dream come true in many ways, I’d grown tired of life on the road and yearned for an opportunity to explore new things creatively.

So after purchasing my first version of ProTools recording software and a Roland DR-800 drum machine, I started to learn how all this new technology worked and experiment with different ways of writing. I’d been wanting to write a song in 5/4 for a while since odd time signatures were something I hadn’t used much in the past. The date of the file below is listed as 10.16.05, which means that it took me almost a full year to bring it to its current state. The folder is also labeled ‘test’, which must have meant I was just getting started in learning how to use the software.

Where applicable, I’m also going to provide the lyrics to any songs that actually include lyrics. This song does. It’s called Mooncurser. At this point I was still writing songs from the perspective of different characters – in this case, space pirates! That’s correct - I wrote a song in 5/4 about a space pirate. Here are the lyrics:

MANY YEARS IN OUTER SPACE
I’VE RUN THIS CONTRABAND
THERE IS NO ONE OUT HERE HALF AS SWIFT AS I
I’LL RUN CIRCLES AROUND YOU IN THE BLINKING OF AN EYE
AS I JOURNEY ON A ROCKET IN THE SKY

MOVEMENT FLOWS UNDER ME
IT’S ALL WHERE IT SHOULD BE

MOVEMENT FLOWS UNDER ME
NOTHING’S WHERE IT SHOULD BE

SO I ADMIT I NEVER CARED
THAT THE SPEED IS ALL FOR SHOW
EVEN AS I SNOOZED IN TREACHEROUS SECTOR PHI
SO I’LL STEER THIS SHIP
RELAX AND SIP THIS TASTY EAU DE VIE
AS I JOURNEY ON A ROCKET IN THE SKY

The first glaring mistake to me was my mispronunciation of ‘eau de vie.’ I’d never even tasted eau de vie, let alone used it in a sentence before. So that choice reflects poorly on me of course. There are undoubtedly several other choices that do the same, but I simply don’t feel like picking this thing apart any further right now. By the way, I doubt all posts will be this long unless it's necessary. There's simply a bit more explanation here at the beginning I guess. Anyway here’s the file. Thanks for listening.

MOONCURSER