WEEK 81: I Care About You (Demo)

 Hey everyone! 

I know it's been more like "MP3 of the Month" but bear with me, exciting stuff is going to be debuted here really soon!


In a somewhat related note, this week's MP3 is the ORIGINAL late night (ultra steamy) demo for I Care About You.

In recent years this song has become a fast rocking exuberant explosive song, but this demo is a completely different approach. Creepy, quiet, a little disturbing, and intimate. Sung in a lower register, played a lot slower (well I just wrote it), and filled with lots of empty spaces and (intentionally) awkward pauses.

I actually REALLY love this version of the song, it's closer to the true nature of the lyrics. But the rocking version is just so much fun, I just can't NOT play it in that way at this point.

Here are the lyrics!:

I can't say anything too complex, I get stares
I want to not seem so obsessed, but I care

I care about you

I'm dismayed, I've misplaced what you gave me that day
Is it gone? What have I done? Has it run away?

I care about you

If I face the wall
WILL YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME?
If I cover my ears
WILL YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME?

I can't hold you hard enough, cause you squeek
I can't carry you far enough, cause I'm weak

I care about you


Preview the song here!





Or download it by right-clicking/saving here!



-Jordan

WEEK 80: Gudsnuk

I bought 2 new instruments!


A melodica and a glockenspiel. Both very cheap but they sound great.


Here is a little MP3 I made in about 5 minutes, just to celebrate. Named after the great gal who informed me about the instruments being on sale at Amazon.


Download Gudsnuk here!




Preview it here:







Jordan

WEEK 79: Big Bonus

Hey everyone!  Sorry for the long delay!  But I'M BACK.

This week's MP3 is a dreamy spacey nice instrumental called "Big Bonus."  It was somewhat meant to sound like a bonus level in a videogame.  I was planning on using it for Crime Streets but then it didn't seem to fit with the rest of the tracks.


This is just a good example of a really nice riff that I can add melodies on top of endlessly. The only difficult part is keeping it from being TOO overstuffed with counter-melodies until it all sounds like a mess.  But I think this came out nice.  Enjoy!


Download it by right-clicking here!


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Thanks!

-Jordan

WEEK 78: Yous Guys

Hello yous guys!

This is one of my personal favorite instrumentals, from way back in 2003.

Not to be overly sentimental, and not to over-explain (being that it's an instrumental), but this was just meant as a happy ode to my friends. A very sweet and sincere "you guys are so great and funny!" exclamation, with each friend being represented by the different melody lines in the song.

This is one of the rare instrumentals that doesn't keep adding and adding elements, it's mainly just the main melody that just changes. Harder to do than simply building instruments (something that I could do on top of this chord progression for probably a million years.)

The ending, with the pretty acoustic guitar strum and some sort of suspended chord is the most glaringly obvious sentimental touch. Hope you like it!

Download it here!


Or preview it:




Jordan

WEEK 77: The Usual Way (live with drummer)

Hey everyone!

This week's MP3 is a live version of one of my favorite songs, The Usual Way.

Instead of going into the whole background of the song, I'll mainly talk about this live mp3. Took place on May 13th of this year, at Goodbye Blue Monday in Brooklyn.

That's Will Kastner on drums, from my band Sally. This is officially a Trouble's Afoot performance. Will was a superhuman drum man for this show, learning around 15 Trouble's Afoot songs in like 2 days. This was a new song for Trouble's Afoot, but will probably stick around. Also of note is that we had no bass player for this show.

Also of note is that yes, people are talking about french fries at the start of the MP3. That's the nature of a live recording, folks.

Briefly, the song is about feeling like a disappointment in a relationship, and thus in your relationship with yourself. Enjoy!

Lyrics:

So what if I write a message down?

Not like I can say it outloud

I express myself in the usual way

So what if I wait a day or two?

Not like I'm in charge of when I get to see you

I express myself in the usual way

I'm running out.

I'm running out.

So what if I'm feeling sorry?

Not like you can get it out of me.

I express myself in the usual way.

I distress myself in the usual way.

Download it here!

or:

Sample it!

-Jordan

WEEK 76: Trixaxis and Allies Score (AND SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!)

Hello!!!

I have not updated MP3 of the Week in a long while, because I've been extremely busy. I have been busy with music though, so that's OK! And many of the things I've been working on all month will be posted right here!

Starting with this. Last week I was honored and amazed to win Best Musical Score at the 48 Hour Film Festival "Best of NY" show, where me and my friend's short film, "Trixaxis and Allies," was screened.

And here is a piece from the score, the infamous "chase scene" music that invaded our brains for the next week. We could not stop singing this.

I made it using all midi Orchestral sounds. I'm really proud of it, it just about almost sounds like a real orchestra. More importantly, it FEELS like a big Hollywood action movie score.

For the entire score I wanted to be strict with myself - ONLY ORCHESTRAL SOUNDS. I wanted to pretend that I had a string section, and a brass section, and only a few percussion instruments (timpanis, crashes, scary sounding gongs.) No guitars, not even piano or any electronic sounding drums of any kind. Just a string and brass orchestra.

Here it is! I'll post more in future weeks to come!

DOWNLOAD IT HERE!!!

Preview it:

Hope you liked it! Check back soon for more! Lots of exciting new music coming up.

-Jordan

WEEK 75: Nice To Me

Hey guys!

This week's mp3 is an extremely sentimental instrumental that I made in 2002, called "Nice To Me."

It's basically about that feeling of "I can't believe how nice this person/these people are to me, I don't deserve it, I am so touched, I can't take it!"

That is literally the best way to describe what this instrumental is trying to evoke. I added applause at the end to push that feeling way over the top.

I really love this instrumental, and it gets me kind of choked up. The recording, being from 2002, is very old and not the tightest piece of work ever, but I love the arrangement. I could have kept piling melodies onto that chord progression forever.


Download it here!


Or preview it:




-Jordan

WEEK 74: April Fools (Was Yesterday) Live!

Well how can I NOT put this song up today?

This is a performance of my song "April Fools (Was Yesterday)" with my band Sally.

Featuring Meghan O'Neil on vocals, Will Kastner on drums, and me on guitar and harmony.

This was from our 2nd show, at Goodbye Blue Mondays on March 13th. The recording came out so nice, except for some digital audio blips.

For more info on this song, check out the older Mp3 of the Week entry here!


Download the song by saving it here!


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Jordan

WEEK 73: Party In the Gardens (demo)

Heeey!

This is a very solid demo from 2004 of a song called "Party in the Gardens." Solid in the sense that I can't imagine what else needs to be added. This is the song!

This is a Fall song. It isn't Fall right now, but Winter turning into spring has basically the same weather as Fall, so why not? This is also a Kew Gardens song, one of many many songs based around my hometown of Kew Gardens, Queens. See, the word "Gardens" is even in the title.

The recording: I EQ'd the vocals so they would sound like they were distant and thin, which for some reason makes me tolerate my own voice better. The drums are fake but sound surprisingly warm and real. The bass is a fake jazz upright bass. I very much enjoy the little keyboard sound in the last verse, as well as the hand claps in the middle of the song.

Here are the lyrics. The song is kind of about avoiding a house party in Kew Gardens ("take it with you") and wanting to run through the forest instead. It's also about a lot of other things, and some stream of consciousness stuff. Here you go:


Cool October air
Smells like Halloween
Sidewalk steps under feet

Branches gently comb
Through my hair
Walking to a Rainsuits beat

Party in the Gardens
Beg your pardon?
Take it with you, see you tomorrow
I'm walking through a forest,
running through a forest

Donut Dunkin's coffee
Muffins taste so good
Under the sun, under the shade

They taste exactly
The same
But with a different, different taste

Walking down a street
That's stayed the same
Looking at my feet
They've stayed the same

The sky changes every second
In the same way every day
Finding different things
A simple pleasure sings


Download the song here


Or preview it:






-Jordan

WEEK 72: Brown Paper Sign (demo)

Woh!

Where did I go all month? Sorry, music things got very very busy, which is a good thing.

This is one of my favorite demos, and it's a song that I have never (? I think) played live. I have no idea if anything will ever become of this song. I can never remember all the lyrics so performing it live stresses me out.

I really like it though...it's way fun. It just needs a real chorus. The demo production is pretty simple...acoustic guitar, fake electric guitars, a bouncy fake bass line (that basically makes the whole song) and obviously fake guitars. The drum beat messes up and loses time once in a while but hopefully that isn't too noticeable. The entire song was based on a little instrumental I made once, which may be interesting to put up some time to compare it to!

The song is based in part on the X-Files episode "Home."


Can't you read the brown paper sign?
No one is allowed inside
All these years and still they hide
Giving up but doing fine

You make money you do alright
But you must be very bored tonight
Walk away back to your life
Don't ignore the paper sign

Whenever will they go
People wanna know

Neighbors come and neighbors go
But these folk haven't left their home
If you go near they disappear
Ring the bell they run like Hell

From the window they peak at you
A cracked broken and dusty view
Wandering around their yard
Wondering what left them scarred

In your car you'll drive away
Maybe visit some other day
The radio blaring loud
As they watch you pulling out

Everyone dropping by all the time
No wonder they'd rather stay inside
That must be the reason why
They put up the brown paper sign.



Download the song here!


Or preview it:





-Jordan

WEEK 71: Grandaddy Eyepatch (Live 2002)

It's freak show month at MP3 Of The Week!

Here is another bizarre oddball relic from my musical past. A song called "Grandaddy Eyepatch," written by myself and Dave Fox.

One week in 2002 we went to visit our friend Matt in New Paltz, and he let us open for his band. I brought my giant keyboard, Dave brought his electric guitar, and we rehearsed 3 or 4 weird songs that we had never planned on playing live. This is what happened. Dave plays a pretty rocking guitar solo.

This MP3 is ripped from an old video camera recording, so it is TERRIBLE audio quality. Here is a transcription of what you are about to hear. This makes me laugh.

Dave: This is another one...about um...(mic goes dead)...Did I just turn this off?

Me: YOU DON'T NEED IT!

Dave: CHECK. Yeah I did. (mic goes dead again.) Oh god.

Matt: SQUEEZE IT FROM THE BOTTOM

Dave: SHUT UP.

Matt: Alright.

Dave: I'LL SQUEEZE YOU FROM THE BOTTOM.

Audience: OHHH WOOO

Song Starts

Dave: I ain't no basket of sunshine
I ain't no bucket of rain
I got a refrigerator full of body parts
And that includes...your brain!
Let's go!

I ain't no basket of sunshine
I ain't no bucket of rain
Refrigerator. With body parts.
That includes your brain.

Alright that's enough of that. That's just a dumb song we wrote.



Download this masterpiece here.


Or maybe you'd just like to preview?




-Jordan

WEEK 70: This is how a song is made

Doodles.

When I started MP3 of the Week, I wanted to show off the best things I've done, but also the worst. The final product of a song, whether it's a beautiful masterpiece recording, or a spirited live performance. But I also wanted to show the process, the clumsy demos, the cassette recordings, and the ideas thrown away and given a kind of afterlife on this blog.

So here we go. I have a massive folder titled "Song Ideas", that currently house over 300 MP3s that nobody has ever heard. Here is one of those MP3s. Some of them are dead ends, and some of them have led to a lot of my best songs. Some of them are even MP3s of full complete songs that I just totally forgot about.

This is highly embarrassing for me, but that's kind of why I made this blog in the first place. And no, this never turned into a song. But now that I'm exploring this folder I'm finding a ton of interesting and vastly different embryos for songs that became full grown.

Anyway, sigh, here's this. Enjoy.

Download here!


Or preview it (you should probably JUST preview it...)





See you next week, with a real song!


Jordan

WEEK 69: Sally: Have You Met Someone (live)

WELCOME TO WEEK 69!

This week's MP3 is ultra awesome super cool. I had a show last week at Hank's Saloon in Brooklyn, and my vocally gifted friend Meghan O'Neill joined me on stage for a mini-Sally set! (Sally is my band with all love songs and female lead vocals.)

My often-bass-player Dave Fox played drums along (after only hearing the song about 2 hours earlier before the show), and I played electric guitar, trying to do the best Johnny Marr impression I can possibly fake. I love how it all came out.

The quality of this recording isn't so great, mainly because there were a lot of people talking at the bar, and we were struggling to be louder than them. Still, I loved playing these songs live, and there will be more MP3s from this show and future Sally recordings soon!

Here are the lyrics. The song is pretty self explanatory:

I don’t regret the time we spent

In fact I think it’s splendid

The more I guess at your progress

The more it seems we’ve ended

I haven’t been with many people

Not after what happened with us

I don’t know why I feel like I must be faithful

But…have you met someone?

A guy at work is a big flirt

He asked me out for supper

My red cheeks glowed but I said no

It just doesn’t seem proper

Chorus

Is she pretty?

Is she happy?

How does she kiss

Does she exist?

My kitchens cold and all alone

I miss you at the table

I eat and go to sleep I don’t

Know if this mood is fatal

HAVE YOU MET SOMEONE?!?



Download the song by right clicking here and saving!


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Jordan