Eponymous 4 Project News

A lot of site updates but no new works

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 14:42:00 -0600

Back in December 2007, I took some time off for the holidays to spend time in the studio. I laid down very rough vocal takes which I'm using as rehearsal guides for future recording sessions. In doing so, I had to transpose and remix a number of tracks, so I've uploaded new versions of many songs.

It's allergy season right now in Austin, so I don't anticipate doing anything else in the studio till May. (I rue the peak of oak season on April 1.) At some point, I will make some of those vocal performances available. After two years, I may have more substantial content to offer on this site!

I did take an initial stab with a limited Christmas release called Original Confidence, a compilation of what I consider the best of Eponymous 4. I sent it as my Christmas card to a select number of people, but bits and pieces of it can be found on Myspace and Facebook. I've also added that release to the projects section.

You may also want to check out my contributions to Metafilter Music. I've been reckless and posting some of these rough vocal takes there as well.

In C for soloist

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:13:28 -0600

Wow. Have I been on a tear ...

I've added a new single in the projects section. It's a solo performance of Terry Riley's In C, which actually requires many more than one player. And yes, I'm being clever by calling a 26-minute, one-track project a "single".

「学生」

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 23:14:56 -0600

I didn't realize I'd have another project up so quickly, but I spent this past weekend transcribing the rest of a string quartet I wrote before I started college. I supplemented it with the previously mentioned "Palomino" and Three Prayers in Irish Gaelic, a vocal work I wrote in my senior year of college.

This new EP is titled 「学生」 (Gakusei), which means "student" in Japanese.

「健忘症」

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 22:38:17 -0600

I've created a new album in the projects section for the most recent demos, and the title is 「健忘症」, or Kenboushou, which means "amnesia" in Japanese.

Up to and/or out of date

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 14:08:05 -0600

A long while back, I posted a new MP3 on Metafilter Music and MySpace. It's a "reimagining" of a Duran Duran song titled "Palomino". Fans seem to like this song, but I hate it. So I took the lyrics and wrote a choir piece out of it. Did it give me new insight into the original? No, I still think it's one of Duran Duran's worst songs.

A few weeks back, I carved out some time to write some lyrics, which I promised to do before I wrote the music for the next Eponymous 4 project. I have about 16 or so lyrics, and I've already written music for ~~six~~ 11 12 of them. ~~I don't have the new work listed in the projects section yet, so I'll list them here. My gimmick: use Japanese titles instead of English. Oddly enough, the music itself is leaning toward country.~~ They're now part of the project titled 「健忘症」.

MP3 links changed

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:34:11 -0600

I got tired of listening to the temp melody tracks, so I replaced all the files with karaoke mixes instead, i.e. the instrumental tracks. The melodies will return when I get around to recording vocals, which should take a very, very, very long time.

I also took down the lyrics. They're attracting search engine traffic unrelated to the content of this site. Why be misleading?

Introducing NaSoPiAlMo

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 23:10:05 -0600

It's official -- I've signed up for NaSoAlMo.

I'm working on a solo piano album, and I've added the tracks I've done so far in the projects section.

I have nine more minutes of music to write, and I've got two more weeks to do it. This is not the time to hit a block.

[UPDATE 11/20/2006, 8:40 a.m.] I've written those remaining nine minutes, and now I'm done!

Creative Commons license in place

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 22:30:58 -0600

I updated the projects section to include a Creative Commons license. I'm going to start putting select Eponymous 4 files on such sites as the Podsafe Network, where I've already uploaded a track from enigmatics and my novice string quartet. Perhaps some enterprising podcaster will feature my music? HawaiiUP is already pioneering in that regard.

You may also be interested to know "The One to Make You Whole" is being used as the theme song for Austin Technology Matters, a public access TV show produced by my good friend chip. The debut show will air sometime in early November.

日本語ですか?

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 23:11:08 -0600

I recorded vocals for a cover of Number Girl's "Destruction Baby" in one take and posted the result to the Eponymous 4 MySpace page. Very rough and kind of funny. We make fun when Japanese people with barely a grasp of English mangles the language. Here's a chance for Japanese people to make fun of a 外人 who can barely speak 日本語.

Also available on MySpace, as well as Metafilter Music, is a string quartet I attempted to write during that nether period after high school and before college.

Yeah, I suck at karaoke, what about it?

Fri, 07 Jul 2006 12:14:26 -0600

I've been posting the vocal demos I recorded at MetaFilter Music and MySpace. (Yeah, I didn't mention I have a MySpace page, huh? It's kind of a requirement for any musician to have one.)

Why put them there and not here? It boils down to "I don't feel like it right now". But if I were to come up with a reason, I'd want to be able to post all the vocal demos here than just a few. It would just seem jarring to hear vocals on one track, then a temp melody on another. So I'm going to wait for the time being.

If you want to put my contributions to MetaFilter Music in your news feed reader, there's an RSS feed available. The MySpace blog also has an RSS feed, but I only post to that when I change something in the MySpace profile.

Just can't leave well enough alone

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 02:50:36 -0600

After announcing new demos were posted, I continued to remix and repost them. I think I've got them to the point where I'm satisfied enough. If you've downloaded "Untitled (Heaven Hide Yourself)" or "Untitled (Senorita de Misteria)", you may want to overwrite -- let me put that in bold, overwrite those files with the latest ones posted.

I've also gone back and remixed "Offertorium (from Dead Man's Mass)", "No Exit" and "Beat of the Heart".

"Offertorium" now includes some guitar parts that I had always wanted to include in the first place. I adjust some panning for "No Exit", and for "Beat of the Heart", I found this great Reason patch called "OldPiano" which I thought went better with the ambient street noise. Also, that bass drum was mixed way too loudly, so I turned it down.

I might do some remix work on "Five (Ambiguous Friendships)", but I haven't decided.

Orare et Labore

Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:59:49 -0600

Since the track listing of A Ghost in My Shadow has been extensively reconfigured, a few tracks were evicted to make room for the new ones.

Namely, the two class songs written for Sacred Hearts Academy in Honolulu were taken off the track listing because they didn't really fit the new feel of the album. I'm moving those two songs to their own single, titled "Orare et Labore".

"Orare et Labore" (Latin for "work and pray") is the motto for the school, and since both of these songs were commissioned by graduating students, they ought to have their own spot.

Because thematically, the optimism of a class song doesn't mesh with my art fag navel-gazing.

New demos posted

Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:21:23 -0600

I should know better than to post a whole bunch of untitled tracks here, since I have such a bad track record of writing lyrics for them. But I'm eagar to share what I've been working on for the past two weeks.

A while back, I had a vague notion of augmenting A Ghost in My Shadow with songs I wrote back in high school. That vague notion took off when I sat down and revised the very first song I ever wrote. Now I've gone back and heavily edited a number of old pieces.

The working titles are their original titles, but since I've changed the melodies on a number of these songs, they've become obsolete. (Never mind the fact the old lyrics were just really juvenile.)

I also posted new mixes of "Faith in Religion" and "No Exit" -- they got a bit of the Reason treatment.

To listen to these new songs, check out the project page for A Ghost in My Shadow.

Remixed and reissued

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 10:42:22 -0600

Will you look at that? It's been six months since I've had anything to report.

I've been busy with night classes these past two semesters, so I didn't make much progress with anything in the last 10 months. But during the semester break in December 2005, I did remix a number of tracks on Restraint, and back in May 2006, I remixed some tracks on Imprint.

My original plan was to upload these remixes after I start laying down vocals, but after hearing how much work my vocals need, I decided to upload the remixed tracks now. After I've had all summer to improve my singing (bleah!), I might, just might upload demos with actual lyrics.

These remixed tracks sound much closer to what I have in mind, so if you have earlier versions of these songs, do me a favor and overwrite them with the new versions. (Thanks!)

]]>As for new projects, I'm sort of juggling a few ideas. I've been trying to write lyrics before I write music, just because I'm so terrible at sitting down to write lyrics. When I first started writing songs, I went with words first because I didn't know any better. Now I'm going back to that method because it feels easier for me to set music to text than the other way around.

Speaking of music set to text, I'm fishing out the Requiem I wrote in high school and revising it. There was some interesting and ambitious stuff I didn't know what I was doing, and I want to see if I can polish those ideas up now that I do know what I'm doing. I've already rewritten the Introit.

I'm not taking classes this summer, so I can focus on Eponymous 4.

And yet more words

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 17:20:03 -0600

In the interest of not seeing "Untitled" songs for months on end, I went on yet another marathon of writing. Working so fast makes me wonder whether I am finding the truly right words to go with each song. But over time, I'll forget.

Epiphany, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #1)"
Contrition, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #8)"
Disengaged, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #3)"
Relent, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #6)"
Dismissal, formerly "Untitled (Stylish Number Girl #4)"
Faith In Religion, rewritten from previously unpublished lyrics