Meander

hope you had a good summer in spite of all the stuff

Don't become complacent.

Let's get better.

I've been doing a bit more movie-making than music-making these days. I made this a few weeks ago, and then, after putting my thing down, I flipped it and reversed it.

How are you doing? I think this episode is what it feels like to go through a Game Boy's mind when he's social distancing himself. 

So yeah! This is a scary time! (I'm fine, thank goodness) So let's be smart and careful and open-minded and thoughtful and creative. Yesterday, I did an open mic for the first time in years and it somehow wasn't a colossal disaster! Also, I'm going to combat any silly fears I have about not releasing new episodes/music because life is all about inventing stuff and falling and getting back up and so on until the end of time, right? 

I spent the last few days of the 2010s making a video all about what I'm bringing with me into this new decade, and it sounds good enough for me to release as the first Meander episode of the 2020s. 

This is how my brain would respond to the question "so how was your past month?"

I recorded this and instantly uploaded it without hearing any playback. Then I listened to it a few times. And I like it. I like it as an episode.

I made one chaotic piano track and then layered on a less chaotic one and then a less chaotic one over those two. The result is good enough for an episode. I think my favourite parts are blatant rip-offs of Wilco, John Cale, and David Bowie. Speaking of which, happy Father's day. My pop is maybe the biggest influence on my taste in music. Thanks for having great taste, Sr.

I figured Destiny's Child sped up "No No No No" and made it a hit, so why not take the better part of Episode 9 and do the same thing? People often say I'm my generation's Kelly Rowland of amateur abstract-synth-experimental-classical.

I have a brand new set-up (thanks Meghan for my new piano!) and the same old hang-ups with making and releasing episodes. Product versus production and all that. I love playing but I still feel weird about presenting it to you. I feel like a magician, being all "behold, the magic that is ME" and all that. Presentations are smug. Everything leading up to the presentation, though, that's so interesting to me. But then again, maybe I'm saying all this as a buffer so that when failure happens I can land on a fluffy mattress of feathers. This is the journey I'm on. Anyway, this episode starts as chaotic and gets less chaotic as it goes on. 

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! I love you, thank you for encouraging me and my sisters to explore our creative sides, and I made this piece this morning, and I hope you dig it.

Recorded on March 18th, back when I was wracking my brain for some verbal content to go with my wacky plinky plunky synth noises.

Okay, now I think I need to bring this Mininova into the shop for repairs. I can do without my middle G, but without my third D?? Or whatever it's called?? That's like... my go-to D! Anyways, I made this song 10 minutes ago, 20 minutes after making a Genius.com lyric page for a song I made about my broken keyboard which was made 10 minutes before that. It's been a whirlwind hour of music, let me tell ya. So as you can probably guess, this song is messy as hell. And I love it like it was Wilbur to my Charlotte. Some Pig, indeed.

Here's a one-taker I made on March 20th. This was during a stretch where all the songs I was making were recorded on my phone and not into an actual recording device. So you're hearing all sorts of hums and my loud nose breaths. In my opening spiel, I think the opposite of "inhale" is "outhale". I then make references to Angela Basset and Tony Hale. 

One take jam I made a few days ago. Mininova + RC202.

For the second time in this show's three episode history, it took me a month to come up with the next episode. It wasn't the music part that was tricky, because I've been making new jams constantly. It was the words part! I couldn't find anything to say other than I couldn't find anything to say, and that kind of sentiment stopped being profound a hundred years ago. So it hit me - the tuneskies are enough. Therefore I'm going to release a bunch of episodes that will be around 99% tunes and 1% words. But then again, another episode might be 64% music and 33% words and trace elements of silence / background hums. Point is - I'm gonna not put as much pressure on myself in regards to using words. Hence this episode's title.

Our self-narrating protagonist returns from a whole-ass month of not releasing episodes with an episode all about his fears of releasing a second episode! Also it's about what he's been up to, musically. He got a new dope gig. (8:59)

What happens when a camera guy from Toronto wants to get better at music but also has issues with laziness and self-doubt? Why, he starts a podcast to hold himself accountable!