People are always talking about legacy, and at this time of the year it gets especially bad, what with everybody graduating, and summer and whatnot. Why do I bring this up?
I make music, and that will be my legacy. I play guitar, saxophone, and mess around with my keyboard. I’ve made 7 albums (currently working on the eighth) and 1 EP. My influences are: Agent Orange (80’s surf punk), Alex Nauman (jazz, also my guitar teacher), Anthrax (east coast thrash metal [there is actually a difference between east and west coast thrash metal, although it's not as violent as the rap one]), The Beatles (it's The Beatles, do I need to explain it?), Billy Joel (rock), Black Flag (hardcore punk), Black Sabbath (invented heavy metal, British [also a difference]), David Bowie (king of glam rock, wasn’t afraid to be different), Def Leppard (king of bad spelling, 80’s excess in song form), The Doors (the 60’s in song form), Drill Queen (punk-esque, made three songs in ‘06 then disappeared forever), Frank Zappa (the man did everything), Girlschool (girls playing metal, really good, part of the NWOBHM[which stands for the “New Wave Of British Heavy Metal”, started around the end of the 70’s]), Iron Maiden (also part of the NWOBHM), Jim Croce (folk music), Jimi Hendrix (guitar god), Judas Priest (legends of metal, Rob Halford is the best singer in metal), Led Zeppelin (electric blues), Megadeth (west coast thrash metal, former rival to Metallica[long story]), Metallica (king of west coast thrash metal, and selling out), Misfits (horror punk), Ozzy Osbourne (Randy Rhoads was an amazing guitarist, died way too young, but while he was here he made two of the greatest albums of all time), Pink Floyd (psychedelic), Pixies (late 80’s alternative rock, main inspiration for Nirvana), Queen (everything about them is great), Rush (Neil Peart is [in my opinion] the greatest drummer ever), Spinal Tap (a mix of humor and metal. Watch the movie, it's hilarious).
Phew, that took forever! Okay, so now that's out of the way, I’ll talk about all the albums I’ve made and the story behind them.
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Guitar (April 8th, 2014): I don't want to spend too much time talking about this album because it's abysmal. A kid who can't solo, playing guitar solos for EIGHTY MINUTES. By himself, so no rhythm, and no production value, because I was in eighth grade. I found out I could record from my amp directly to a computer, got Audacity, messed around, tried to sell it, and then wondered why only 2 kids bought it.
- Redeeming Qualities: None, don’t listen to this crap unless you like crap.
- Lessons Learned: Metronomes exist, Even with music the way it is today there is some standard for quality.
- Cost to make: 0$
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Halfway Human (June 10th, 2014): This one technically doesn’t exist anymore. Let me explain, since nobody cared about it, for the next album and others I remixed/remastered/redid the album. I called it Halfway Human because half of the album is me on guitar (like the last album, but better) and half is with software called Musescore, which is all done with writing sheet music and synthesizers. So since I spread this album out among the next few albums, I'll skip talking about it here.
- Redeeming Qualities: Will mention when covering the songs on future albums.
- Lessons Learned: I can do a lot with Musescore, Maybe not too much guitar, put the main focus on the synthesizer.
- Cost to make: 0$ (Musescore is free).
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For All (October 14th, 2015): The first real album I’ve made. I found the masters to Halfway Human and an old demo I never did anything with then chose which songs I liked and made the album, I don’t remember making it.
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Anything Will Do (November 16th, 2015): the first beginning to end “good album” I’ve made. This one is easy to review because there is only 5 songs on it. The first song is a cover of “Watermelon in Easter Hay” by Frank Zappa from the album Joe’s Garage (1979), and is 10:01. I solo on this for most of the ten minutes. I found a midi file of the backing track that you hear on the album, and this is the first ever time I made a song that was a combination of synthesizers, and human playing. All other songs before were either exclusively synthesizer only or guitar only. Overall I’m really proud of this song, but because I didn’t release it I can never really do anything else with it. The second song is “All Alone” and is 3:26. This is the saddest song I’ve written, it’s just a solo piano playing really slow for 3 and a half minutes. The third song is “Black Page 5”, and is the reason I don’t have any more “Black Page” songs. “Black Page 3” started as “I’ve got this machine that can play anything I want it to, so I’m going to write the most complicated thing I can think of,” “Black Page 4” was horrible, barely scratched a minute, and while complicated was just bad. “Black Page 5” wasn’t complicated at all. This time it’s exactly 16 minutes and it’s a combination of many songs that I wrote a few bars two and then either gave up, or that was the entire song. In songs everything should flow, it should rarely screech to a halt and just go to something drastically different,. Track four is 3:09 and a cover of The Misfits song “Die, Die My Darling” (told you it was horror punk). I did this for Halloween, and considering what I was working with it turned out pretty well. You see, punk rock has never been an example of extraordinary playing ability, and The Misfits are a prime example. The tempo varies from 80 BPM to 110 BPM on a dime, making it hard to play along (which is what I did) and stay on time, even if you know the song.
The finale of the album is my masterpiece. “The Trip” is 19:20 and is more sound collage than song. “The Trip” is the main reason I’m writing this paper, because there is a story behind the song, despite it being instrumental, and is so complex, that without me describing how I made it and what it represents, they just see it as “Peyton has gone insane and threw some sounds together and called it a song” instead of, what I see it as, which is the best thing I’ve written so far, might ever write, and in my mind, perfection. It accomplishes what I’ve always wanted to do with music, which is to do something nobody has thought of yet, or is crazy enough to do. So, the backstory. I was invited to a party, and while I was there I was essentially the “party mom” I didn’t drink or do drugs, I just took care of people when they ran into doors, or fell down a flight of stairs, into a wall, (both of which actually happened). This song is the six hours I spent there, in musical form. Now, the only way to translate 6 hours of a party into music without including any lyrics is impossible without going into the abstract. The song works the best when you listen to it with headphones, as it relies heavily on stereophonic sound, and to get the full experience and to be fully immersed in what I’m trying to represent you will need headphones. Also, for most of the song (it’s not really a song, it’s more of a sound collage) is because what I experience, on top of being tired and having a sensation overload, and what actually happened or what I thought actually happened, are usually two different things, still connected mostly, but there are key differences, and which part is right changes, so there is no “left headphone=my experience, right=everyone else” it flips constantly. The collage gets more complicated when more excitement was happening at the party, calms down when the party calmed down, and the weird digital noises are anybody doing drugs or drinking.
Redeeming Qualities: All of it really (except “Black Page 5”)
Lessons learned: no more “Black Page” songs.
Cost to make: $0
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I talked about this in a throwaway comment earlier, but I feel this needs to be fully addressed, not a lot of people listen to my music, and even less actually like it. A lot say they like it, or say that I’m talented but they’ll later go behind my back and bash me for doing something that none of them have the guts to do. As I sit here in the newspaper room I see 6 people who have previously all mentioned something of the sort and then later , when I left the room, or was listening to music with my headphones, went back on their word. Of those 6 people 4 of them play an instrument, have any of them made an album? No. They may have tried and then realized how hard it was and gave up, I can see a few of them doing that. Now two things. One, aren’t I just doing the same thing they are doing by bashing them behind there back? Nope. I will gladly give this paper to anybody in newspaper, to anybody in the school. I don’t care if any of the six read it, in fact I hope they do, and I hope they know I am talking about them, and maybe they will realize that (at least some of them) are going into the “real world” soon. They will no longer be nurtured by School District 2. They are on their own, and some, if they keep acting like this will crash, and burn, and it will be hard for me to feel bad for them. I’ll feel bad, but not THAT bad.
Secondly making an album is hard. You put yourself out there, even when it is instrumental music (I’d say even more so because then you can’t hide behind your words, you’re judged entirely by your talent, and playing ability) and while I’m not saying, “you can’t review something unless you’ve done it yourself,” I do feel like you can’t say you're better than me or I have no talent. You can give constructive criticism but making a blanket statement you can’t back up is where I draw the line.
I can think of 5 people who like my music, and luckily one of them is in newspaper with me, so that’s good.
You see, I’m not doing this to try to get girls, I’m not doing it to become rich and famous, and I am certainly not doing this for you. I make music for me, and if somebody else likes what I’m doing, great, if not then don’t listen to it, and don’t be a jerk about it. If you think I’m angry here wait until I get to the song “INDSIAYSF”!
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Simple Emotions (December 14th, 2015): I like to ignore the bad and focus on the good, so I’m skimming this album. I realized how great “The Trip” was and thought “what if I did this for a whole album?” BAD IDEA! In-between the massive sound collages were normal songs that come in and out of the rest of the albums madness. “Synth Punk” was what it says in the title, a punk rock song done with synthesizers. “We are Love” is a parody of those cheesy 80’s synth based ballads.
- Redeeming Qualities: “Synth Punk” might be a good as a song to come back to with real instruments, in the future.
- Lessons Learned: Too many long songs is a bad idea.
- Cost To Make: Luckily 0$.
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Rave EP (December 26th, 2015): I made this one in two days, and like most of the other times I’ve experimented with a new genre, nobody got what I was doing. It happened with “Act Six” where everybody took it way too seriously, and it happened here. I’m not a fan of “Rave Music,” it gives me a migraine; it can be done in a little amount of time (this took me 2 days to make), and it is often very repetitive. I thought it would be a great idea to parody that by going as far over the top as I could, turns out everyone thought it was great, and if you are going to think I’m great, think I’m great for the right reasons. I made it almost mind numbingly repetitive, I went to the moon and back on effects, and I gave the songs titles like “Glowsticks” and “LSD.” What else could I have done without putting a disclaimer before the album saying that this was a parody?
- Redeeming Qualities: It’s entertaining in a Tenacious D or Spinal Tap sort of way, where I can’t help but laugh at how stupid it all is.
- Lessons Learned: High schoolers don’t get subtlety
- Cost to make: The keyboard cost $80
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Warts And All (January 5th, 2016): This was pretty ambitious, and in that regard I respect it, but musically this has way too much filler. I wanted to make a double album (2 cds, this one was 150 minutes). I won’t go through every track on the album because I’d like to finish this before the end of the year, so I’ll just talk about the highlights. Track one is “Nine Bar Jazz.” I took a standard blues riff, transposed it from E minor down to D# minor (down one half step) and gave that to the lead instruments. I made a simple quarter note bass line and gave that to the bass instruments. I had 2 drum sets playing different rhythm parts, both very similar to each other, and working fills when the other was playing quarter notes. Why two drum sets? Because I could! I then had a muted trumpet lead with notes on the 2 and on the “and” of three. The main riff loops itself for a bit and then all the leads drop out for solos, with the bass instruments and the percussion covering for the solos. The solos went in this order; Alto Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone, 2nd Trumpet, Piano, and Guitar. Then I went back to the main riff again, then more solos, this time with only the percussion backing it. This time it was; Baritone Saxophone, Trombone, and Bass Guitar. Then all of the instruments dropped out and the two drumsets soloed. Then all of the instruments played the riff a few more times, little drum fill, and then big chord, the end. All in 15:10.
“Nine Bar Blues” is much of the same thing only slow like a blues song and with fewer instruments, really good song, and 19:54. That’s the end of Disc one, most of it is filler really.
The main focus of disc two is nothing to write home about really, the main focus is the rave songs, and the title track “Warts and All” which is about 15 minutes long and is based off of a riff I came up with where it sounds eastern, with trills.
- Lessons Learned: Filler songs should not be over 12 minutes.
- Redeeming Qualities: All the songs I mentioned.
- Cost To Make: $0
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Up Side Up (February 22nd, 2016): This was going to be the big one. My “Swan Song” (at least until I finished High School, and college). It started out with grandiose plans and managed to get even more ambitious as time went on. At first the focal point of the album was going to be the “Walking Song” which would’ve clocked in at about 15 minutes, and would’ve consisted of me walking home from school and the sounds from that replaced with musical instruments.For example a car passing by would be a loud guitar, the crunching of leaves would be a brush on a snare drum, a footstep would be a hi-hat, and people talking would be a flute. With headphones it would’ve been amazing, I wanted it to sound like you were the one walking home and you were experiencing all of the sounds. It became too technically complicated to do, so I scrapped it. The focus then shifted to a rap song with David Hull. Long story short he fell through, and I went to an old reliable source, and did a guitar solo on top of the rap beat I had written. While waiting on David, as I wanted the song to be the focus of the album, I wrote some little 1 minute songs messing with new effects, and uncommon chord progressions. Then “INDSIAYSF” happened. This is a really long story and I don’t have the time or the energy to write it here, but I had a teacher say to my face that I had Down's Syndrome. Of course the school did nothing about it (no shock there) so to vent my anger, and boy was I angry, I wrote “INDSIAYSF.” I was so mad I was practically incandescent. Just 2 months before this I got the Complete Judas Priest for Christmas and I listened to “Painkiller” which is thrash metal at its finest. I wanted to be faster than that. If “Painkiller” was 200 BPM I was going 220 (as a baseline Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” is 212 BPM). I wanted it to be faster, heavier, and angrier, I wanted blood. I kind of consider “INDSIAYSF” the polar opposite to “All Alone.” “All Alone” was slow and sad, “INDSIAYSF” was fast and angry. Obviously “INDSIAYSF” is an initialism, but I don’t want to reveal what it stands for. It’s my secret.
I originally wanted Up Side Up to come out on Valentine’s Day, but because of delays from David, and my amp being in the shop, it was delayed 8 days. The two main songs I promoted for the album (promotion in this instance was telling all of my friends about it) being “Up Side Up” (the rap song) and “INDSIAYSF.” Needing more casual songs to promote, I went back into the archives (it had to be from 2012) I found two old riffs I hadn’t touched in years. One was a standard blues lick that I turned into “She Don’t Love Me No More” (sic) and the other was an old time country riff that eventually became “Down by the Country Side.” Having six songs and 15 minutes filled, I took inspiration from a recent gig I did at the Brew Pub downtown and made an orchestral piece called “The Next Generation” after Parker Brown (the bass player I played with) said after the song that I was “The Next Generation” and I just kept it.
The hardest part of making this album was, oddly enough, a song I already made. Since the album was running at under 20 minutes, and since not a lot of people heard the original, I decided to put “The Trip” on the album, for both exposure of an underrated song and to fill some time. The one problem is that Bandcamp (the site I sell my music on) only accepts FLAC (Fully Lossless Audio Codec) or WAV (Waveform Audio Format) files (being that they are lossless, and therefore are uncompressed, but also take up more space) and doesn’t accept MP3s. so I had to go back to all of the master files, which luckily I had kept in their original, uncompressed, form, and using the finished MP3 version of “The Trip” as a comparison to remake it. While I was at it I also fixed some dynamics issues, and other very minute things that I had noticed in the original version. With the music finished I now needed album artwork. For most of my albums in the past I didn’t have artwork, but starting with Simple Emotions I started to make an effort.
The cover to Simple Emotions was what looked like a screaming face but was just a bunch of lines in MS Paint. Rave EP was a bunch of squares expanding on each other with a triangle on it. Warts and All was a close-up of a screenshot of me playing “Watermelon in Easter Hay” at the Jazz Jam. For Up Side Up I wanted something more complex. I took a bunch of images zoomed in to a random part, up the contrast, and one after another layered them with double exposure. Then I put a big hollow black equilateral triangle in the center.
I have plans to, over the summer, release a professionally made CD of Up Side Up and press only 25, a small number, but a good spot to take a break for 6 years as I need to focus on finishing high school, and going to college. I’m only going to charge $5 for it or something, but I just want to do it, I want to be able to hold something physically in my hand and say “I made this. This went from a kid in his bedroom, to something that is professionally released, and is a physical thing I can hold in my hand!”
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