the vase

My wife accidentally broke a vase. This song resulted. It was recorded in a couple of days inbetween other projects. I used no clicktrack, metronome or drum beat, so the timing is nice and loose (in a good way, I hope). It's short, so listen twice!

(Get Flash to see the track player.)
posted by edlundart (11 comments total)

Brilliant. I wouldn't have expected a song with such "seriousness" to be humorous, but it is, and it's also a good song.

So, edlundart. Do you do this stuff for yourself (and us) and record it at home and post it online, or do you also play it live? do you have a band?
posted by micayetoca at 11:58 AM on April 4, 2007

Thanks, micayetoca! I do enjoy how the lyrics are kind of lighter compared to most of my stuff. I don't have a band (though I sometimes collaborate with others over the net - if any female singers are reading this, umm, say hello), and I mostly just record for myself and whoever wants to listen. I've been asked on a couple of occations to play a gig, but so far I haven't found the inclination or guts. I'm an introspective person, so recording suits me really well.
posted by edlundart at 12:15 PM on April 4, 2007

Sorry about your vase, that's very sad. Great song!
posted by snsranch at 12:30 PM on April 4, 2007

I hear you. One thing about home recording is that it's nice to have the time to do and redo things until you leave them as you want them to be (which I never do, unfortunately, I've been opting to leave them at the "I'm not gonna do another damn take of the bloody shakers" stage), but lately I find myself missing playing with other musicians, and performing.

I asked because I realized that, being from Latin America, I've never seen a band with your kind of sound playing live. I guess up north is more common, but around here you don't get that type of music from young guys starting their own bands.

And yeah, good female singers are hard to find, aren't they? Some time ago I did some songs with a DJ friend of mine, the first electronic stuff I ever did. He wanted one of the tracks to be in Brazilian Portuguese, and it had some bits 'recited' by a girl. We couldn't find any girl to do it, so I recorded it and we altered the pitch of my voice. The results were surprisingly good. Sexy even. Very, very disturbing.

Anyways. Sorry for kidnapping the space. Kudoz for the song!
posted by micayetoca at 12:35 PM on April 4, 2007

Thanks snsranch! micayetoca, I love all that tweaking in the recording process. I'm really mostly a visual artist, so I think I carry over the love for that meticulous stuff. This particular song though, is practically a live recording, albeit with a couple of overdubs.

I would love to have a female backup singer on a lot of my songs. I got one part done for me on "say good night," but I think almost 50% of my songs could benefit from a female voice harmonizing with my own. I've tried pitch-shifting my own voice, but it rarely works that well for me. But a lot of my songs have high falsetto parts, at least.
posted by edlundart at 12:47 PM on April 4, 2007

Gorgeous and bittersweet. Thanks for posting it. One of the few things I love about the NY music scene (I love NY, just not the scene) is the glut of talented female vocalists. Our radio stations may suck, and every club has their band space in a basement or back-room so that anyone just wandering in won't hear any of it, but we've got the women, and they can sing. Good luck to you finding someone, I think it'd sound great with your stuff.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:01 PM on April 4, 2007

Thank you Navelgazer. I don't mean to pop in here every other comment, but I wanted to just put in a disclaimer: My wife kicks all kinds of ass, and I don't care about the vase. The bittersweet tone is in service to the song. It just made me think about my grandmother for the first time in a while, which is a nice thing.
posted by edlundart at 1:52 PM on April 4, 2007

Nice singing.
I wish I could do that thing where you switch mid-word into falsetto. Whenever I try it, it's so forced and I sound like I'm yodeling or in puberty.
Very nice.
posted by chococat at 6:40 PM on April 5, 2007

This is incredible. Please post more. You're very talented. So humbling.
posted by inoculatedcities at 7:48 PM on April 7, 2007

Thanks! Click my username to find more of my songs -- and I'll post more in the future.
posted by edlundart at 2:03 PM on April 9, 2007

The voice is really good on this one. I echo chococat's sentiment.
posted by Corduroy at 12:39 PM on January 24, 2008