Improvised Songs

One of the things I do is improvise songs. Sometimes I call them freestyle songs, or freestyle jams, whatever. I was going to have a page dedicated to recent freestyles on the new website but fuck that. My html skills are about as basic as it gets and I can see that shit getting sloppy, quick.

SO: FREESTYLE SONGS ARE GOING HERE.

Oh, I'm sorry. You don't know what a freestyle song is? Let me explain. What I do when I record a freestyle song is this:

1) Set up recording gear. (microphone(s), mixer, computer, etc. check the levels and whatnot, engineering stuff, dig?)

2) Press "Record"

3) Pick up the guitar

4) Come up with a song completely off the top of my head: words, melodies, guitar parts, chords, rhythms, shouts, silences, stops, starts, everything.

90% of the time the result is no more than an audible turd, but sometimes I get lucky and cipher something that I like to listen to.

I used to make a lot of freestyle songs. "Freestyling at the Red House" is an entire album of free style tracks with bass and drums overdubbed to make it sound like a band. Going to music school, I kind of stopped playing guitar and got out of practice, so I suck a little bit now. Also, I learned a lot of stuff about theory and harmony so its really easy to get distracted by those kind of thoughts. The best freestyles usually happen when you aren't thinking about anything at all.

So anyway, they're gonna be here on this blog.