Instrumental Quaalude

Week Thirty-eight

2011-10-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

Week Thirty-eight is a version of Riz Ortolani's Theme from Cannibal Holocaust. A regular live performance selection, a recent nod to this number by Swiftumz on Don't Trip necessitated a recorded entry. Performed on Wurlitzer 200a, voice, and sine-wave generator. (2 minutes, 33 seconds).

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Week Thirty-seven

2011-08-05T19:24:00.001-07:00

Week Thirty-seven is an arrangement of Badalamenti's "Laura Palmer's Theme" for the electric guitar. (3 minutes, 2 seconds).

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Week Thirty-six

2011-04-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

Week Thirty-six is completely unnecessary edit of random bits of jam. Features sufis, babies, reciters, and beat happenings (2 minutes, 14 seconds).

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Week Thirty-five

2011-02-21T21:53:00.000-08:00

Week Thirty-five is a hairy jam on 5 string red guitar with contact mic, loop, and small amplifier. (3 minutes, 42 seconds).

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Week Thirty-four

2011-01-29T14:35:00.000-08:00

Week Thirty-four is a collaboration with the Pacific Northwest instrumentalist Jon Sampson. Jon performs bass over a field of electric guitar pulses, decaying and providing harmonic changes. (2 minutes, 44 seconds).

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Week Thirty-three

2010-12-27T11:04:00.000-08:00

Week Thirty-three is an acoustic guitar lullaby-for-child degraded to various levels of fidelity by cassette recorders, resulting in the emergence of a hyper-compressed, unintentional melody. (2 minutes, 33 seconds).

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Week Thirty-two

2010-10-25T17:53:00.001-07:00

Week Thirty-two is an improvisation on a finger-picking melody that is often played for the daughter. (4 minutes, 44 seconds).

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Non-week item

2010-09-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

This video promotes the upcoming cassette and album release of "Great Melodies From Around," 44-minutes of great melodies performed by Ben Wildenhaus.

Week Thirty-one

2010-08-14T18:29:00.001-07:00

'Weeks' are now a constructed conception of time for this. In non-blog time, a baby is coming any week now.

Here, the red guitar is outfitted with a pickup made in Coos Bay, OR. It battles the usual SG minor chord improvisation. Sharp v. Round. (4 minutes, 10 seconds).

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Week Thirty

2010-06-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

Limited notes by accordion and electric guitar organized. (2 minutes, 40 seconds).

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Week Twenty-nine

2010-06-15T15:36:00.001-07:00

Tapes and bass guitar improvisation. Week Twenty-nine is in honor of the great Pacific Northwest. (3 minutes, 23 seconds).

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Week Twenty-eight

2010-05-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

Improvisation on red guitar (4 minutes, 44 seconds).

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Week Twenty-seven

2010-04-21T15:45:00.000-07:00

Piano plays a 4/4 chordal backing. Destructed sine waves ruin accordion melody. Bass enters to compliment the piano while the sine waves attempt to ruin everything. For Johanne Fück. (4 minutes, 12 seconds).

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Week Twenty-six

2010-03-14T15:52:00.000-07:00

Week Twenty-six is layered guitar improvisations. The exploited difference here is between wet and dry guitar strings. Ab is the name of the game. (5 minutes, 10 seconds).

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Week Twenty-five

2010-02-28T19:08:00.001-08:00

Week Twenty-five is an electric guitar improvisation over a rhythmic and tonal center established with a loop. F. F#. A melody emerges in minute 4. (5 minutes, 25 seconds).

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Week Twenty-four

2010-02-21T17:53:00.000-08:00

This is thirty-five seconds of the upcoming 43 minute LP "Great Melodies From Around", to be released sometime in 2010. I made this brief sampler to account for the lack of recordings the past two weeks. Been hard at work (35 seconds).

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Week Twenty-three

2010-02-21T17:21:00.000-08:00

Week Twenty-three is solo electric guitar. (2 minutes, 34 seconds).

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Week Twenty-two

2010-02-03T16:53:00.001-08:00

A version of "RE: I Person I Knew", by Bill Evans. The song moves over a pedal C. Performed on SG. (2 minutes, 53 seconds).

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Week Twenty-one

2010-01-24T15:01:00.000-08:00

Been thinking about what life is like in the Pacific Northwest. This is one rather claustrophobic envisioning of it. There are surely others. I suppose it might sound like Bill Orcutt and Dave Holland. (4 minutes, 40 seconds).

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Week Twenty

2010-01-09T17:45:00.000-08:00

"Gnossiennes I - Lent" by Erik Satie. This week is a live performance featuring two electric guitars, one of which has been captured by a phrase sampler. In order for this recording to be five minutes, the last portion of the composition has been excluded. (5 minutes, 2 seconds).

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Week Nineteen

2010-01-03T16:35:00.000-08:00

Week Nineteen first oscillates between Dbm/Ab and Abm/E. In the bridge the chords Ebm7/Db, Gm, Db/Gb repeat before returning to the previous two chords. There is also a melody. Performed by SG. (5 minutes, 10 seconds)

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Week Eighteen

2009-12-17T05:29:00.001-08:00

Week Eighteen is a melody fragment, performed on guitar and sine-square generator. Providing the context are two variations on alternating chords, performed by guitars made to sound like faux chimes. (4 minutes, 58 seconds).

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Week Seventeen

2009-12-08T19:45:00.000-08:00

Week Seventeen begins with slow Fender tremelo providing rhythm. Tonally, two guitars move through chords in syncopated opposition to the "one" of the 6/8 measures. A pedal steel melody follows the off kilter patterns supplied by the chordal movements. Throughout electric hum is manipulated. Performed on electric guitars and pedal steel. (2 minutes, 56 seconds).

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Week Sixteen

2009-11-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

Week Sixteen is a cover of "Mount Harissa" by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, although the portion I've excerpted is most likely the Duke's tune. The beautiful song which comprises the middle portion of the original composition sounds more like Strayhorn. This melody I've recorded serves as Mount Harissa's "oriental" bookends. The song is one part of their 1966 Far East Suite. Following the suite's motivic contour, this tune opens with an "oriental" sounding melody which then gives way to a typical American blues turnaround. Ellington and Strayhorn's success is that these two factions meld effortlessly into Ellingtonia throughout all of the suite's movements.

Here, I've given "Mount Harissa" the Ventures treatment - and I'd be surprised if the the Ventures hadn't already. Performed by SG, bass, Wurlitzer 200a, and dueling samples of the one and the only Leatherpants on drums (via live Party Favorites recordings). (2 minutes, 44 seconds).

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Week Fifteen

2009-11-19T19:30:00.000-08:00

Week Fifteen came quickly - a refreshing change from last week's frustration. This tune will probably end up reworked and re-recorded for the full-length LP I am concurrently working on. The song rides on a crooked but dignified stumble, like navigating on four martinis. The melody, played by SG and nylon, could be a tune whistled by an axeman with a limp who trolls empty alleys seeking murder. (5 minutes).

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Week Fourteen

2009-11-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

This week's entry is nothing like it was first imagined. After days of unsuccessful attempts to complete the recording last week, I considered it a fail and moved on. "Week Fourteen - take 2" and "Week Fourteen - take 3" were also fails. Perhaps this week's entry was never meant to be. Days later (and already late for the rigid weekly schedule I've assigned myself for Instrumental Quaalude) I listened again to the first fail. It lacked a melody I had intended to create and record, consisting instead of only random backing tracks of tremelo feedback against a single muffled tremelo guitar line punctuated by distant crappy bangs and plastic sizzle. I had ridden the tremelo on the Bronco attempting to put the pulses roughly in time (as 1/8th notes). A higher guitar makes a few appearances playing off the straight rhythm in 3s. Given a few days departure from the frustrating experience of recording this I realized that the pieces fit together in a form that works without a melody. The result sounds like disparate clouds over a very hot and terrible land. (3 minutes, 28 seconds).

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Week Thirteen

2009-11-01T11:52:00.000-08:00

Week Thirteen is an improvisation on the SG through the Fender Bronco in D minor. The tone is predictably desirable: tremelo on reverb. I performed this piece on Halloween afternoon this year under the willow tree at the Red Shed community garden, amp powered by a battery. (4 minutes, 26 seconds).

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Week Twelve

2009-10-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

Week Twelve is a classic 9/8 beat structure with a brief melody in hijaz. The final melody is taken from the tune, Yedikule. Interspersed are blasts of junk. Performed by guitars, drums, wurlitzer, and stuff (1 minute, 39 seconds).

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Week Eleven

2009-10-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

A three note melody is as fixed as the accompanying beat. The guitar's chords move to give the melody new context. The result, however, is a feeling of stasis. Nothing the chords do will affect the relentless and somber beat and melody.
Performed by SG and drum. (4 minutes, 6 seconds).

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Week Ten

2009-10-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

Week Ten is a composition of closely stacked chords on the wurlitzer 200a. As the sound fidelity deteriorates the individual tones become indistinguishable. Fidelity is then restored. The clustered tones can again be heard interacting with one another.
Performed by the wurlitzer 200a (2 minutes, 57 seconds).

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Week Nine

2009-10-04T19:52:00.000-07:00

A light three note melody floats above a jumbled mess of instruments interrupting one another, each instrument with its individual approach to providing the melody chords. The middle of the performance is marked by an abrupt shift in fidelity as a crappy walkman offers its recorded version of the melody and chords. Eventually the song disintegrates.
Melody performed by sine generator and voice, chords are performed by guitars, wurlitzer 200a, and tapes of guitars and voice.

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Week Eight

2009-09-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Ozan brought me a 2 dollar sipsi from Istanbul. Soft guitar loop provides rhythmless repetition for a rough and nasal sipsi melody. I am clearly not proficient on this instrument. Performed by sipsi and SG. (3 minutes, 51 seconds).

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Week Seven

2009-09-20T19:26:00.001-07:00

"Son of a Gun" by the Vaselines. The Vaseline's most well-known and oft-covered song (except perhaps "You Think You're a Man") gets a new reverb-laden Ventures melody before the song's familiar melody arrives midpoint. An arrangement I perform live - performed here by red guitar, SG, wurlitzer 200a. (4 minutes, 27 second).

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Week Six

2009-09-14T04:09:00.001-07:00

Guitar improvisation heard through the mechanics of a crappy sony walkman. As the tension building chord is strummed recordings begin of a small town Nicaraguan marketplace at dawn. Shops are closed. The gate is locked. Smoke rises from the market's kitchens as they prepare breakfast.
Performed by guitars and recordings. (3 minutes, 10 seconds).

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Week Five

2009-09-05T14:12:00.000-07:00

I am welcomed back from vacation. Nylon strings provides the plucked drone for a conversation between two very distinct voices - the lithe combination of pedal steel and chiming wurlitzer sing out one incidental melody, muted blacksploitation guitar and bass answer. The conversation does not repeat. Performed by Showbud, Wurlitzer 200a, SG, bass, nylon. (4 minutes, 10 seconds).

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Week Four

2009-07-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

A finger picked composition I often play at home is given the autotune treatment. The computer decides where certain chromatic notes should fit and pushes the whole thing down several whole steps. Distant slide work can just be discerned. Performed by red guitar. (3 minutes, 45 seconds).
(Leaving home for four weeks. Posts delayed.)

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Week Three

2009-07-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

"Very Early" by Bill Evans. Evans' perpetually floating melody is realized by the sine wave generator, which produces a perfect endless tone. Performed by Wurlitzer 200a, SG electric guitar, and Sine-Square Generator. (2 minutes, 19 seconds).

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Week Two

2009-07-11T05:10:00.000-07:00

The dry sound of the SG gives warmth to this partially improvised composition.
Performed by SG electric guitar. (2 minutes, 18 seconds).

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Week One

2009-07-02T17:31:00.001-07:00

The decaying tones of the SG provide the repetition for slipping pedal steel notes.
Performed by showbud pedal steel and SG electric guitar.
Jim Palenscar of Ocean Beach, San Diego helped me out this week with this George L's pickup, installed here in the showbud. (5 minutes, 13 seconds).

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