Disquiet Junto 125 Yellow Dog Blues



At a conference a couple of weeks ago I was introduced to an app by the National Library of Australia that offers their sheet music, arranged chronologically. I suggested they develop a competition to record a rendition of a piece from the app and started thinking it could be something for the Junto.

Coincidentally this week the Junto are proposing covering a 100-year old tune called The Yellow Dog Blues. The recording above helped me get a feel for the lyric delivery. I also liked this Yellow Dog Blues.

My version is a slinky rock track that sounds kinda karaoke.

The sheet music was kinda impenetrable for me. After googling a few renditions, I started jamming on a blues riff and eventually settled on a rock feel via disco.

My vocal performance needs more practise, especially the second verse. I was tempted to edit that out. Meant to use an English accent but ended up with that bad twang after too much Singstar this morning.


From musician to goat farmer



Following the logical step doesn't always lead you deeper into an activity. What I find amusing about the text shown here, aside from the slide from making music to raising goats, is that I had a similar series of thoughts but decided to find sounds elsewhere. For me it started with becoming frustrated with loops and samples but ended with finding music everywhere and sampling the environment.

Disquiet Junto 122 8bit Undead ET



The Junto this week was to "create music for a fake movie whose plot is 'Poltergeist meets Wreck-It Ralph.'"

A quick google and I soon realised I liked the music to the former more than the latter. The Poltergeist theme is lovely and not what you'd expect from a horror movie.



The more I played my guitar and experimented with ideas the more I wanted to record a mellower track. I settled on a few chords and worked to try and make them more interesting.

Once the notes were settled I entered them as MIDI into Ableton Live with a view to playing it through my cheap synths but this didn't really work. A lot of notes were missed and there were a few other technical issues. So I used the instruments in Ableton Live and then tried to make them sound nicer with reverb and equalisers.

The title ET Cemetary is a play on Stephen King's Pet Semetary and acknowledges the Atari video game burial that inspired the Junto this week.

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