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MAXEL TOFT32 (Roosevelt)
2012-2013 This continuation of banjo led tunes is very similar in style and approach to 33. I did write some guitar led pieces during this time but I just put those aside for later since I had a better theme going with the banjo again. There are songs in open G and double C and an instrumental in D. There are clawhammer and three finger style songs. I also added a new style that is a backwards version of the folk or Pete Seeger style. The same minimalist "trio" (bass, drums, banjo) theme goes with this one as well but it is my hope that all of these songs could stand alone with no accompaniment. Lyrically these still have some religious ideas mixed with everyday life. It was mixed down by Jacob Ross. He was originally supposed to do 33 but was busy so he recommended Jamie Carter. It worked out because now I kind of like the idea of using someone different each time. It also worked out because he was the perfect fit for getting the Dress/Longdistance pieces to come to life. Jacob recommended Jonathan Schenke for mastering so even more people touched this record than any previous. Fifty Righteous uses the backwards Pete Seeger style. It is kind of a ridiculous song with odd pieces put together but it ended up being really nice and very different from when I play it alone. I would be surprised if someone hasn't already written a song based on this Genesis 18:24 passage since it is already poetic. I left out the ending where everyone dies. Greater Than was originally written on guitar. It made sense to translate it to banjo since all the other songs were on banjo for this record. I wasn't getting anything with the traditional styles so I ended up with another hybrid. I like that this one sounds completely different when I play alone or play on guitar. I put the original guitar part in there at the end and this is the only song with acoustic guitar. It is blatantly Christian but also purposely ambiguous. VIP is a match-up of a separate tune with separate lyrics. I go through unused tunes and unused lyrics every once and a while to see if anything fits. And this time these fit nicely or at least make a unique song. And this was another chance for me to come up with bass and drums for a song that possibly wouldn't normally be arranged like this. Polite To Stare is an idea that I had for a while from riding public transportation. For a long time I didn't have all the pieces or a tune but it finally came together and made sense. I like work songs and folk songs and always wanted to have a more a cappella type song just like Layers on 33. But I am not a good singer so I hit the banjo to have something to hold on to. The Loop is another idea that I got from riding public transportation. I had various pieces but then it somehow came together. And then I finally had the banjo style to fit it and the tune came naturally. Usually I play every instrument separately for these recordings but here I felt like I should sing and play at the same time to really capture it. You have to take an outbound blue line train if you want to hear the rhyme I stole from the conductor at the Logan Square station. src is a piece I made up to practice three finger style. Maybe it could be an etude. It might be nice to embellish with drums and bass etc in the future. I don't know where I got this lyric idea for Dress but I didn't feel like there was any reason to develop further it so it became a short tune. The music followed naturally. Then I thought that it would be interesting to add some complete opposite hardcore influence to go with another idea of "black" than just absence of color. Later I had a tough time trying to figure out what to do in the digital age where songs need to be split into mp3s even though I wanted this ending to fade into the beginning of the next song. Should it be one whole combined song to force you to hear my vision or is it okay to hear a tiny break when your player switches to the next song? This is the third time that I have recorded Longdistance. This banjo part was created in case I ever wanted to play it live with my current setup. And then I really wanted to make something musical out of HAM radio sounds. I recorded a bunch of samples over a couple of weeks. There was a lot of dead air so I cut and pasted the parts that I liked. I am amazed that people are still using HAM radio when now we've got cellular phones and the internet. Harvestmen is another instrumental in D tuning just like Watering on 33. I maybe could have saved this and figured out lyrics but I decided I'd rather focus on developing it as an instrumental in the "trio" style (although there is a short electric guitar part). It is always impossible to name instrumentals. I don't know how the jazz guys do it. 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1968-D, 1969, 1969-D, 1970, 1970-D, 1971, 1971-D, 1972, 1972-D, 1973, 1973-D, 1974, 1974-D, 1975, 1975-D, 1976, 1976-D, 1977, 1977-D, 1978, 1978-D, 1979, 1979-D, 1980-P, 1980-D, 1981-P, 1981-D, 1982-P, 1982-D, 1983-P, 1983-D, 1984-P, 1984-D, 1985-P, 1985-D, 1986-P, 1986-D, 1987-P, 1987-D, 1988-P, 1988-D, 1989-P, 1989-D, 1990-P, 1990-D, 1991-P, 1991-D, 1992-P, 1992-D, 1993-P, 1993-D, 1994-P, 1994-D, 1995-P, 1995-D, 1996-P, 1996-D, 1997-P, 1997-D, 1998-P, 1998-D, 1999-P, 1999-D, 2000-P, 2000-D, 2001-P, 2001-D, 2002-P, 2002-D, 2003-P, 2003-D, 2004-P, 2004-D, 2005-P, 2005-D, 2006-P, 2006-D, 2007-P, 2007-D, 2008-P, 2008-D, 2009-P, 2009-D, 2010-P, 2010-D, 2011-P, 2011-D, 2012-P, 2012-D, 2013-P, 2013-D, (2014-P, 2014-D, 2015-P, 2015-D) |