Remember how I announced that thing that my brother and I were going to do? That was like, months ago, and I did it in a fairly convoluted way, so those of you who read this blog might not entirely remember it. I realize now that I essentially buried this climactic announcement amidst a massive wall of text that I bet the majority of you (understandably) glossed over.
To be honest, until recently it’s taken a back seat to other things, which makes all the hype I delivered it with initially seem pointless. But right now, it’s at the top of our priority lists. As of August 23rd, my brother and I are now involved in a new project. I present to you:
For years I’ve wanted a career as a solo bedroom musician. It’s always seemed like the ideal life for me. I’ve never really trusted my ability to reproduce songs live because I’m more of a writer than a performer. To be honest, I’d still love to be able to earn a living just from writing songs that people can simply click a “play” button to appreciate – like being a video game composer or something. Don’t get me wrong, I think that being in a full band or an ensemble would be great, especially if I get to play my own stuff as part of it, but right now just taking my keyboard out into the real world feels like a major move outside of my comfort zone. Working with other people has always felt a little uncomfortable to me, but when I start feeling a kind of synergy from our combined efforts, I really start to pick up steam.
My brother Ben is a better singer than I. That’s just fact. He’s had more tuition than me. He uses his voice more on a daily basis (even when it means shutting himself in his bedroom and talking to himself loudly for hours on end). So to me, it makes sense to have him sing on our tracks. He’s also contributing to the songwriting process, as far as lyrics are concerned, at least.
The tracks that I’ve written for this project follow a far more rigid structure than most of the ones I’ve written so far. Until I started writing with a more “pop music” angle in mind, my songs never really had a chorus to speak of, just repeated riffs, and certainly not lyrics. While the tracks for this project are definitely more pop-oriented, there are still “progressive” elements to it, such as sudden key changes, odd time signatures (one of them uses 13/4 time) and slightly more complex riffs. Many of them are uplifting, high-energy synth-driven tracks, with the occasional emulated acoustic guitar, with plenty of strings and piano added to boost the acoustic department, as well.
Now, the reason for this project suddenly becoming important again? A battle of the bands contest is taking place not far from where I live, and my brother and I are eligible to enter. It’s being advertised as “the big break your band has been looking for” and it looks like there’s some great prizes available.
Today we were notified that we’ve been selected to perform. There’ll be three other bands at the event, all mainly in the age range of 12-18 (so the majority of them will be younger than me, but by no means am I ruling out the possibility of getting upstaged). We have until October 28th to get our live rig, our stage presence and a 25-minute set sorted out. This’ll mean playing pretty much all the songs we have planned for our eventual EP, but we need to get them into a presentable state, not to mention rendering instrumental versions of the songs that we can use as backing tracks, and setting up my laptop so that my keyboard can play bits of the songs.
Looks like we’re gonna be pretty busy for the next two months. As such, I’d like to point out that I won’t be taking a great deal of new requests, if any, until further notice.
Anyway, the two tracks we submitted are here on SoundCloud. One is an original called “Control”, the other is a remix/cover of Pendulum’s “The Island”. We’ve worked as hard as we possibly could on them, and overall I think we actually did pretty well with the final vocal take.
(It’s nothing absolutely stellar, though. We still have a long way to go in the singing department.)
Eager to hear all of your thoughts. If any of you have any criticism, please take us to the cleaners. Please. 😛
We have a Facebook page, too. (Please “like” even if you hate us.)
Rainbow Season