Hi LM's!
Nice to be back here after a busy summer and I'm still catching up with some of the great work posted here while I've been busy elsewhere.. I had some high ambitions to put out another so-called album this year but as our times and consumption of music have radically changed I don't really know if that is anything but a sure recipe for disappointment. As someone who also plays Live gigs I find that the post-Covid gig world (in my part of the world anyway) is not what it was, jobs are few and most establishments that used to have enthusiastic live music crowds for bands have downsized to single or Duo acoustic acts who largely compete (and lose) for the attention of patrons from their X and TikTok feeds..
Like many of you I assume, whatever the source and inspiration is that drives us to write songs doesn't seem to take notice of these other external factors so as I find myself extremely completely disillusioned by the 'business' I also have new songs coming to me almost weekly so I guess I'm gonna Demo them and put them out in the usual haunts and get them out of my head into Demos to possibly be further developed or collected in the future... or not...
The recent MIDI improvements to Ardour 8.0.0 have reconnected me to MIDI workflows all within the same program and the fact that I'm working mostly alone on these demos puts me in a position to drink my own Kool-Aid and use the AVL-Drumkits more than real drums. I'll be posting some of these songs as demos of the songs themselves and examples of producing with the AVL-Drumkits.
These first 2 songs are inspired by grief observed in people I love, my partner's sister was killed in a hit and run 2 years ago while getting her mail out of the mailbox and this past summer our closest friend lost her 21 year old son to addiction and suicide.. In both cases these were good families of upright people who have had incredibly painful tragedies interrupt their lives.. How many more are out there suffering especially in these times of senseless war, the unfairness, the helplessness and the 'empty chairs' that remind on a daily basis are very difficult to bear.
Both of these songs used the AVL-Drumkits Buskman's Holiday percussion kit and are done in FGDGBD tuning which I've become very fond of recently.
The first is an instrumental in the mindset of raising a drink and celebrating the lives of those passed:
A Drink to Those Passed
The second is more about the big question of where our loved ones have gone, no answers here... just questions about the "Other Side":
Other Side