Shad Young's Page

1 - Chasing Emerson - A solo Synth piece using my Z3ta synthesizer and the Akai Professional MPK49 Keyboard. It is a bit of a "improv" to get some ideas for the next part of the Rhapsody series. It is not really a complete song, more like just an extract.

2- Industrial Noise - Another song from The Old Man's Machine, this has the drum track that Dragonfly made use of in the error state, but is the way it is supposed to be. This is all played, there are no loops. Even the "modem" noise was played by hand. This song is the fasted I have ever played. Sadly, the project for this song became corrupt (I guess sonar was having issues which is why the drum track became odd as well), so there is nothing much I can do to fix some of the mistakes in the mix at this point (like the ride cymbals being far to loud).

3 - Dragonfly - This song started life as a DAW error on the drum track. For some reason, the DAW decided to play a drum track I was working on at about half speed, and half pitch. It was interesting, if odd. Some Rappers who were in my studio recording a demo track liked it, and I decided to see if it was at all possible to make a song from the strange drum track. It was done in the space of one evening. I like this track a lot (I am rather proud of the walking bassline). I may be the only one who does :-).

4 - Six Inches from The Mic (Tribes of a Different Nation) - A spontaneous combustion. I was playing around with a basic reggae beat pattern and over the course of a couple of hours layered this together. This is an updated version with some spoken word and an outtake from a rap session here in my studio with a rap trio who were recording a demo that I am producing.

5 - A Gentle Smile - Tired of using patterns, I decided to pound out my own "Rocksteady" type Caribbean beat. The piano part is actually a place holder for some vocals that will eventually be recorded. I am still not entirely used to my own voice yet, so the mic intimidates me a bit.

6 - Rhapsody - The Language of Music - This spoken word part was written with the assistance of Sophie. She collects and records a lot of the things I talk about for reasons I can only guess at. She had recorded some of her own thoughts about an idea I had expressed that music was a common language. In her journal she then wrote a short critique of Wittgenstein based on that idea, and this song I wrote based on her critique.

7 - Rhapsody 2 - Realizing that I had introduced 4 themes within the first song that had not been explored or developed, I decided to take each and develop them into a stand alone work. This is a work in progress. I stalled mostly due to my lack of performance skills and I am using a physical piano and an analog recording, not midi.

8 - God Made Me Do It - This is a song that started life as lyrics. It is also my first attempt to sing (I am the low and mid background singer, Sophie is also background and Alan the lead). It is still a bit rough around the edges and like so many others, needs more work.

9 - Prologue - I am writing a novel about a young boy and a mysterious machine. Each chapter will have a song for it, and this is the first (All songs from the album "The Old Man's Machine are part of this series - the chapters can be downloaded from my site).

10 - The Old Man - The second song in the series was actually the song that triggered the idea for the story. For some reason after I finished the song, I decided to write a very short story about a young boy and an old many with a cool piano like machine. It became far more than a short story.

11 - The Young Boy - This is actually one of my favorite pieces. Its stupidly simple, mostly scales played in an arpeggio, but I find the transitions to be quite beautiful. This was done in about 1/2 hour. It probably shows hehe.

12 - Bzaxdao'et is a character from the story, like the old man and young boy above. He is a devil, who is also an administrative clerk in the new arrivals processing center on the first level of Hell. Yes, Hell is a bureaucracy.

13 - Requiem For a Whale - (It is part of The Old Man's Machine, however there is no whale in the story.) I think I was feeling sad when I wrote this.

14 - The Machine - also part of TOMM, this song tries to describe the multiple rhythms of the machine. It started as an exercise in Poly Rhythms, became this.

15 - Overdrive - This is a more traditional take on The Machine above. From the basic rhythm I added pads and guitar, and chopped two minutes from it.

16 - Discovery - This was actually my first attempt at laying sound fonts. It is a singular performance, one take. All sounds were created on the fly during the performance. The sound is rather poor and a bit midi.

17 - Tall Ships - is the final song in a series of songs that are part of Sailing In Sinbad's Wake... sea and adventure type songs.

18 - Sinbad's theme was my attempt at something slow and beautiful, but its bit of a mess timing wise.

19 - Surfing In Sinbad's Wake - Adventure - This is the song that started the series. I was just farting around with my new Z3ta and made this over the course of the evening.

20 - Dreaming Of Flight - This was again, just noodling around with Dimension LE, a synthesizer that came with Sonar.

21 - Groove Thang - my first full on attempt to mix and arrange a song. It turned out OK I think.