Category: Music

Here is the rough mix for my new song Green Glove. I think I’ve achieved a pretty funky groove, and the piano solos ain’t too bad if I say so myself. Thanks to Jeannie for singing the backing vocals in the outro.

Here is alternate version with a different lyric. Jeannie said it was too silly even for this song, so I changed it.

This is now song number seven of nine or maybe ten for my album. I’ve started another song who’s working title is either “Black Swan” or “The Singularity”, but I’ll probably put that aside for a little while to concentrate on origami.

Here is a rough mix of my new song Earthbound. This is a bit more of a standard rock song for me. It doesn’t use any out time signatures or strange jazz chords, and it doesn’t even have a solo section. Instead it relies on an insistent riff and building repetitions of the chorus, contrasted with a more introspective and narrative verse.

The track is basically done except for a few things. One is I want to layer in a track of Lizzy singing on the chorus. The second is I’m considering whether I should change the bass line in the verse. The idea for the current part was inspired by the kind of pseudo-ska figures Sting used to use with the Police. I’m concerned however, that it comes off as too percussive, and maybe I should so something more legato. The third thing is the 2nd synthesizer part, which does a couple of low notes and a big upward portmento swoop in the middle of the song. I used a preset patch on my built-in software synth, but I think it sounds a bit cheesy. So I’m gonna fire up some of my outboard gear and do this one over with a custom-tailored patch.

My friend John Neumann has been giving me some arranging and producing feedback on this one. I thought I was almost done, but he has some good ideas so now I’m thinking again.

My new song is called Earthbound, and it’s coming along nicely. I just laid down a take of the lead vocals last night, so now we turn the corner from writing to fleshing out the arrangement. It’s a winter-themed song, sort of an impression of my morning commute, coming out of Grand Central Station into the winter weather, becoming part of a crush of people, and arriving at Times Square in all it’s neon monstrosity. It’s always dark this time of year and cold, and the city is sort of an alternative virtual reality devoid of nature. A Kafkaesque metaphor of rebirth and metamorphosis. The sound I have in mind is sort of an 80’s post-prog pop. So there’ll be a good deal of synthesizers but little to no saxophones.

The chorus is based on a riff Lizzy made up, and it turned out to be a great hook for the theme I was developing, a sort of hopeful transcendent mantra. So I incorporated into the song in the same as I did with It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Day. I’m gonna have her sing on it too.

Not to be outdone, Michelle has been wanting to get in on this too, and has been pitching a song idea called “Ouch My Toe.” I told her I wasn’t too sure about that one, so now she has a new on “You Can’t See Me”.

So here are the lyrics now. Look for a rough mix coming in the next few weeks.

…

Earthbound

I wanna fly up in the sky
Like a butterfly or a swan
I wanna fly away up high
Rising closer to the sun

Concrete canyons
Rooftop roadways
When the rain appears
Slush melts into Gotham gullies
And washes out to salty seas
Like tears

Subterranean
Stone stairways
Under watchful gargoyles
Navigate a cryptic maze
Vaulted like the heavens only Earthbound
Long slow climb out of the underground
Alight and dream of flying

I wanna fly up to the sky
Like a butterfly or a swan
I wanna fly way up high
Rising closer to the sun

Glassy cages
Steely windows
A tyranny or rectangles
Sometimes the sun still shines
Silver splinters strike the street
Forming angles
That kindle hopes of warming

No moon in our sky
No stars in our night
We’re in the dark side of the year
Helicopters hang in hazy red light
Plasma prisms dance down on Broadway
Sweet young vampires come out to play
And drink of dreams of dying

I wanna fly up to the sky
Like a butterfly or a loon
I wanna fly way up high
Waxing closer to the moon
I wanna fly up to the sky
Like a butterfly or a swan
I wanna fly way up high
To the perihelion

It wants you
It’s never thru
Colossal tempting
Troubling teeming
Pulsing flashing
Glowing gleaming
Pale of darkness
Dearth of dreaming

I wanna fly up to the sky
Like a butterfly or a swan
I wanna fly way up high
Rising closer to the sun
I wanna fly up to the sky
Like a butterfly or a swan
I wanna fly way up high
To the perihelion

I wanna fly up to the sky
Like a butterfly or a swan
I wanna fly way up high
Rising closer to the sun

— John Szinger, 2009

The other night I finally put the finishing touches on my new song Who Can Fool Me. It’s been mostly done for a while, but I ended up doing a number of takes of the synth horn solo. In the end I think song turned out great. So enjoy!

While I was at it went back and made some newer mixes of a couple of my other songs, Fine Red Wine and The Nine. So enjoy some more!

And also I update some pages in my music site with new project notes, audio files, and lyrics.

Who is the greater fool, the fool or the fool who follows?

I’ve been working on a new song called “Who Can Fool Me?” It’s a defiant and bitter song, a reaction to the constant lies and manipulation coming from the media and the forces of power in our society, and how everyone seems to go along with it rather than maintaining the sovereignty of one’s own mind and judgment. Or something like that. I came up with the basic idea for the song a few years back, and refined it this fall.

The arrangement and feel of the song is tense end edgy, and takes a cue from old-time cartoon jazz, but sort of warped and twisted and blended with modern electronica. Structurally, it’s basically a C minor blues, played in a stride style, but in 7/4 time. The basic blues chords are embellished with upward chromatic harmonic movement.

The recording came together pretty quickly. It looks I’ll be done with it in less than two months, which is much better than the 3 or 4 months some of my other songs took. Admittedly those were longer songs and this one is only three minutes but still, I may be getting better at this! At this point I’m pretty much done except for two things. One is editing and mixing the vocals; I have an effects treatment in mind.

The other a synthesizer solo. I have a virtual orchestra consisting of a synth mellotron, a synth string section, and two real saxophones – a tenor and a soprano. The lead synth, combines with the 2 saxes is designed to evoke the classic horn section of a trumpet, clarinet and tenor sax, as used by for example Raymond Scott. So I want the synth to sound something like a cross between a gutbucket trumpet played with a plunger mute and wah-wah guitar on overdrive.

This gave me occasion to plug in my venerable Yamaha VL-70 wind synthesizer. It is a very cool piece of technology that produces sounds thru physical modeling. The sounds are responsive to multiple realtime continuous controls, and the unit is designed to work with a wind controller such as Yamaha’s WX-11. The combo of the WX-11 and VL-70 is very playable, and feels alot like playing a real saxophone. It’s been years since I’ve played this thing, I spent most of my last session simply getting used to the instrument, and paging thru the presets (256 of them) to see what I liked. I found several patches that fall either into the “brass” or “guitar” category, but no suitable morph of the two.

I finally settled on a muted jazz trumpet patch just to lay down a rough take to have something to listen back to on the train. Amazingly, that patch sounds almost too real. I just ran the audio out of the VL straight into protools, but next time I think I’ll capture the MIDI instead and pass it back out to render the audio like an overdub. This will enable me to do multiple passes with two different patches. Over time I’ve found it’s usually quicker to get a particular sound by blending two patches than by going nuts twiddling the knobs and programming your custom sounds. (Believe me I’m not lazy, I’ve spent plenty of time twiddling knobs!) And although the solo is fine, the part as a whole is unusable because I was seriously overplaying. I need to be much sparser, take more space and interact more with the other instruments. Usually I don’t worry too much about planning out my solos in advance, as I kind of work it out subconsciously as I’m writing and arranging. But this one needs a bit more work. Still all in all it was a successful experiment, and I feel set up to nail it the next session.

…

Who Can Fool Me?
John Szinger, 2004 – 2008

You can’t fool me
This time won’t be same
I see you play your game
I’ve heard it all before
This time I’m keeping score and
You can give me the runaround but

You can’t fool me
You’re pretty good at lying
I’ll give you points for trying
This time my mind’s made up
It’s rain in a paper cup and
You can try to steal my sound but

You can’t fool me
Although you make rules
But still I know what’s true
Yeah I’ve been there and back
This time I’m keeping track
You can try to lead me on but

You can’t fool me
Although you’re so much stronger
You’ve been around much longer
You want to push me ’round
I’m gonna stand my ground and
You can try to knock me down but

You can’t fool me
And now you’re playing cupid
You know I’m not that stupid
Yeah I can see right thru
I know what I have to do and
You can try to make me dance but

You can’t fool me
I don’t buy your fantasy
Leave me alone already
You fooled me once before
I’m hungry for some more and
I might even take that chance but

You can’t fool me
No, you can’t fool me
Only I can fool myself
Said I can fool myself
You can’t fool and honest man and
You can’t fool me