Happy Holidays!

I just wanted to wish everyone out there a Happy Holiday Season! Safe travels and warm, cozy environs to all, and please, take care of each other. I'll be spending the next several days with family, but I'll be back storng in 2010.


Also, the conclusion of this song writing project is within sight, so a brief wrap up...okay, well, not so brief, but you should know by now, I'm not into the whole brevity thing, man...

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The holidays are firmly entrenched, and I've already posted a song for week 52. If time permits, I'd like to do one more track for next week to make up for the week I skipped when we were on vacation in San Francisco back in September, but we'll see how that works out. I do intend to keep updating this blog even though this current project is over - though likely on a less intense pace. As I develop some of these tunes to a greater degree and work on other material, both new and old, I hope to provide an auditory assault for a long time to come. So to sum up...

Overall, I believe writing a song a week for all of 2009 has been a useful project. Even through the ups and downs in my own motivation and writing ability, I feel like I'm ending in a good place. I learned quite a bit this year, and though most of what I produced is not worth listening to, there are possibly a few nuggets that will come out of this project and blossom into decent songs. Or at least I hope so.

First, there are a handful of songs that may end up on Legend of the Three Fists vol.3: Extronifuzz, my next album due out sometime in 2010 that should complete my trilogy of electronic experimentations.

And secondly, there are also a group of about 15 more rock oriented songs I'd like to continue work on and release as Year of the Fool-Headed Ox, possibly under a different artist name - like maybe "The Body Absorbant" or "Virile Flannel". What do you think? These songs actually lend themselves more toward putting a band together than anything I've done in a long time. Not sure I'll have the time for that what with starting grad school next year, but it's a nice idea. Anyway, I'd like to write lyrics and re-record them in 2010.

Speaking of lyrics, I'm glad I managed to get out of my wordless rut by the end of this project. Granted, I went into this project thinking instrumental, there are in the end only a handful of songs with lyrics, and the words I put together weren't mind-blowing or anything, but I suspect that beginning to read again (fiction, not techy music mags) over the summer for the first time in a long time had something to do with it, and I hope to get back to a place I was several years ago where I could crank out lyrics at the drop of a hat.

Perhaps I didn't get into as much new music theory as I'd hoped. I tended to rely on what I already know, occassionally just trying random things, and this was probably part of why I felt like I was in a rut at certain times throguhout the year. But I did pick up a few new things, and honestly, while my musical knowledge is by no means complete, I think the variety of songs put together over the last year proves just how far what little I know can go.

On the technical side, if nothing else, this past year gave me oppurtunities to really explore my aresenal. There are still a lot of things to work on as far as mixing techniques, but from a creative standpoint, I feel pretty good about my ability to manipulate sounds, and I definitely took strides in learning the software and plugins I have at my disposal. There's still a long road ahead, and I'm eager to get down it.

Also, I feel like my guitar skills have leveled up recently. One thing about instrumental skills is that it seems to be a series of steep increases in proficiency followed by long plateaus, perhaps more on guitar than other instruments for some reason. But I feel like all of this writing and having to record on sometimes tight schedules really made me have to focus and be more consistent. Granted, I rely on loops so a lot of my recording was done in short 4, 8, or 16 bar spurts, but I still think I'm coming up with genuine ideas and getting them down in a handful of takes better than ever before. And my soloing, while still generally improvised rather than written, is on a much higher level than it was a year ago. I may use blues scales too much, and the ability to easily comp together the best bits of multiple takes helps, but I really feel like my ideas, and my phrasing in particular have gotten much better. I'm not just noodling endlessly up an down a scale - I have definite ideas for riffs and phrases, where the solo is going, and what notes I want to land on at particular moments.

I'm definitely happy to have undertaken this project, despite those days where I just wanted ti to end or didn't feel like doing it anymore. I know I didn't attract a lot of readers/listeners, but i'm still happy to have completed the year of sognwriting if for no one else than myself.


Happy Holidays, and I'll see you next year!