I have not abandoned music

I'm in the middle of editing some stuff for a post that is now a week late. In trying to keep the blog alive, here are some clips of music to prove that I haven't completely failed at making music this summer. In the last few weeks, I've started playing piano more, and have the basis of possibly 2 songs written, plus the one I'm going to post here. Guitar has been a little more lacking, but I'm trying. I had a day where I really had no intention of leaving my room at all, and decided to just sit in the dark and try to get some of these recorded to A. prove that I haven't abandoned music, and B. have audio AND visual representations of these songs, so I won't forget them.

I have a week scheduled at the end of August to do some recording, so we'll see if anything takes shape, but I'm going in with a few ideas.

I wrote this at the beginning of the summer when I was playing around with a new tuning. It's the kind of tuning where just open strumming sounds wonderful, but it's hard to do anything with other than that. I'm clearly still figuring out parts, and this required some editing. I won't really know where this is going to go until I start recording stuff, but I like it so far, and it definitely falls into the category of "songs I wrote, loved, then nearly forgot and somehow saved." Unfortunately, there are far too many songs that are gone forever.

"Geetar song in the works" from Mike Alexander on Vimeo

This one was nearly gone forever. I wrote it in North Reading when I had my piano in my closet. I played more then, so I wrote harder stuff, and even tried to play a polyrhythm at the end. Over years of not touching my piano, it nearly disappeared. Last year I started messing around again and was determined to remember it. I couldn't even remember the first line. Somehow, through determination and endless playing around and trying every single possible note, I remembered it last week. It was a glorious moment, second only to when I remembered that an entire other part I couldn't get was gone because I had forgotten 3 bass notes entirely. 3 notes? Big deal right? Well, when they change the entire timing of the line, it quickly makes sense why I could never remember this song. I'm unbelievably happy that I remembered it. This required some editing, as I still can't play it perfectly, and would sound better if my stupid reverb pedal worked. And I still play it sloppy, but whatever, I WILL NOT FORGET IT AGAIN.

"Pianer song in the works" from Mike Alexander on Vimeo