knees-up at the Bierkeller

This is a jolly one. I particularly like the bassline, although the dodgy edits grate. All I need is a splendid chorus, and I could tick the box next to this. The lyrics, however, as with almost everything here, are distinctly unsavoury.

senseless

oldest one yet

I remember mangling a sampled drum machine part from a commercially-available CD for this, but little else about the recording apart from the fact that all guitar effects are courtesy of a Yamaha REX-100. A special prize to anyone who guesses the original track! I'm particularly interested in identification of other songs I'm inadvertently plagiarising, although I'm conscious here of marrying Goblin's "Profondo Rosso" and a quaaluded take on Killing Joke's "Change". I don't think anyone will notice.

histrionic churning

rickenbackers at dawn

A surfeit of overloaded guitars here, but there's the seed of a song worth developing, I think. The current vocal tune features some entirely gratuitous yodelling, although good taste may intervene. I'll need to get my bass fixed before I can attend to it, though; I tried re-recording it using effects to drop the guitar an octave, with hideous results.

jangly posturing

a first look at reason

I had read so many rave reviews of Propellerhead's Reason software that I thought I'd give it a go. This was the result of my initial playing about, armed only with a 2-octave keyboard, and it doubled up as a tune made up of several easy-to-play parts I could use to teach someone a little bit about harmony. I liked it enough to want to use it as an introduction to the CD, although it'll need mixing, beefing up and mastering.

orchestral interlude

eurosynth nonsense

I realise this doesn't have the most exciting structure in the world, but I liked it enough to experiment with different arrangements. It will definitely feature in some form, although a computer crash means it'll have to be completely re-recorded, which is unfortunate as the guitar parts in the fadeout are difficult!

heroic monotony

guitar fragment 1

I like the chord progression on this one, particularly the second to third chord transition. As you will hear, I don't take particular care with these demos, preferring each part to be a first take; I have so many fragments it seems inappropriate to lavish too much time on each until I'm sure I will develop it.

csi for savants

MOR extravaganza

This one resulted from my testing out a Yamaha keyboard bought as a present. It was a PSR-290, featuring a huge range of disturbingly bland auto-accompaniments, and clearly I needed to check that everything worked before wrapping it up! I wanted the fragment to sound as anodyne and Claydermanesque as possible, as it will segue into a particularly aggressive guitar piece - it will, however, be a shame to lose the cheesy outro.

muzak for narcoleptics