483 posts tagged with indie.
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Little black bird
Just a little song from my weird little indie folk heart. Actually reworking something old and the first thing I've recorded in a while, since I was pretty tired from the whole process of putting out my first EP in January. Also...stuff?...has been happening to my voice because I am trans and recently started testosterone therapy, I really notice the change in how my voice feels and I certainly hope others can hear it too!
Big Indie - Project Stem
A more completed version of the song I posted a couple of weeks ago
Big Indie
A work in progress, think drop nineteens mixed with modern indie pop
warm for december (christmas cheese mix)
Song written with my old band, Big Ghost, about unseasonable New England weather. Bit of an oldy but goody, I threw together this recording to send to my old bandmates on the east coast as I live in sin in California. Hope you enjoy. If you can, please help me with toning down the harshness while keeping the excited sound. [more inside]
Georgia
Another weird, haunting indie folk song from yours truly! There is also a weird, haunting music video located here.
This is all part of my first official release, which I am super excited about, under my stage name MK Ellison.
Scheme
Nothing but the Rain
So I feel like I owe a thank you to MeFi Music--this is the first place I started putting all my works in progress, even when it was just iPhone voice memos. Getting a few thoughtful comments was really encouraging and lovely. Then I graduated to better home recordings on SoundCloud and here, and today I put out this "official" first single everywhere. Yet another intense, moody alternative folk song with a real guitarist this time. [more inside]
Smoke
Pretty proud of the vocals. This is a weird one, but my most haunting song yet. I had an image of a supernatural, quiet kind of nightmare where the narrator has a horrible premonition that something is coming for her, tries to run away, but cannot get far enough.
Big red sky
It's been a while since I posted any of my new songs here. What do you think of my kind of new direction (and quality of the recording)?
Alternative folk-ish, acoustic song with clean vocals, guitar, mandolin, harmonies. Sounds happy but the lyrics are not. [more inside]
Bluebird Wine plugs in
That is, I just got an electric guitar for the first time and it features heavily in my new song, "Georgia." Catchy, moody indie folk/folk rock tune.
wake up song (in D: for Dog, did he begin to pray?)
This is one of two plus songs written by mistake/default around iphone wake-up tones. Y'know, you wake up at some godawful hour with that godwaffle loop in your ear and eventually you're going to make something of it. I mean...you'd hope, Godwaffles. You'd hope. [more inside]
Destination
I wrote the lyric melody 25 years ago and placed it to new music tonight [more inside]
to the wolves
This is the only advice I have for new parents these days.
Had to salvage this song from a lost-when-near completed track, so the mixing is what I could work with, but I'm pretty happy with it. Enjoy! [more inside]
Curriculum Vibe
Almost ten years old: Came across one of my favorite songs from my band Big Ghost. One of our first attempts at home recording with drums. It's about backyard baseball, magic tricks, social anxiety and flirting. [more inside]
To be alone with you (Sufjan Stevens cover)
Not sure if I can do it justice, but I have loved this song every since I first heard Seven Swans in my college days. Light, soulful cover of a modern classic.
I've messed with the harmonies a little, so some of the chords are more dissonant (but in a watery, calm way, not a harsh way, if that makes any sense).
Get out get out get out
Post of the week...intense acoustic folk song. Guitar, vocals, piano.
Alight
Content Warning (inside the fold) [more inside]
Deeper Well (Emmylou Harris cover)
I love this song. Cover with guitar, piano. From her 1995 album Wrecking Ball, which Wikipedia calls "career redefining."
All day
Post of the week! This is a new (and improved?) version of a song I posted quite a while ago (as "Drinking all day"). Light, airy, one-chord country song with moody lyrics. Added second guitar part, violin, harmony vocal.
I think I'm getting somewhere with my recording capabilities--what do you think? Any thoughts on the mix?
Received Wisdom
Another fuzzy, rather lo-fi outing for Sredni Vashtar... [more inside]
Want Trouble
Moody, jazzy little tune that explodes towards the end. About the delicious dread of falling in love when both people have baggage.
This is my second big attempt at faking swing drums, so pointers would be helpful. As per usual, I started out wanting a sparse mix but it got away from me a bit. [more inside]
Rose
I like it again. This is the piano track I posted before (now without the synth, and with vocals and backing vocal harmony) but I think I've mostly solved the problem that to me the whole thing felt kind of lifeless. (At least I felt confident enough to replace the old track with this on SoundCloud, hope that was wise.) What do you think?
I belong to you
Wrote a new song that I still like, unlike the last one I posted!
Textured, mellow, summery indie/country with guitar, percussion, strings, vocals.
Emergency Contact
One of the few times when the melody and the lyrics arrived simultanesouly. I was adding my wife as an emergency contact to my phone and it came to me that this was a new kind of relationship ritual. [more inside]
Stay
Flowing, dark piano and atmospheric synth. TBH I've been tinkering with this for so long that I'm not sure if I like it anymore. (It's like the "if you a repeat a word enough times it doesn't even sound like a word" effect--I don't hear what I once heard in it.) But I really liked the piano part when I first came up with it. What do you think?
Streets of New York
Here is the much improved, finished version of a song I posted before in "help me describe this." Expansive, trance-like, sort of indie folk song.
Does this belong in a movie?
There's a song with words and stuff that this was originally based on, but I like the instrumental version better.
Mellow, textured, haunting, builds slowly. What do you think?
An Echo Of You Remained In The Transporter Buffer
An elegy for my stepmother, who passed away from ALS, based on a recurring dream I'd have of seeing her brought back to life in an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation via a transporter glitch. [more inside]
Fuxxed Rx
About 10 years ago I had a pretty terrible year. A lot of people thought they knew what was wrong with me & also thought they knew how to "fix" me, but they all turned out to be wrong.
Adrenaline Hangover (band version)
So a few months I uploaded the original demo of this song, lamenting that we'd never get close to its character. [more inside]
Seen you
A spur-of-the moment recording. Mostly just a simple theme, but it was my first time playing electric in months.
Tuscaloosa
All your big dreams, you can't go wrong. Get fit with the AC on... [more inside]
Nightshade
She's a spy, a good one too. Speciality — sneaking up on you... [more inside]
Get Real Girl
Chin up.
Keep acting like you've got it made.
We both know you ain't.
You're laughing but it's true. [more inside]
Scarlet Johansson's Human Suit
All this time, dipping your fingers in my bowl... [more inside]
Meet Here If We Get Separated
Happy Valentine's Day! I wanted to make a romantic song built from decidedly un-romantic sounds and images. I mined a lot of half-finished darker, sadder songs that hadn't gone anywhere and assembled a mini-library of static, buzzes, and odd percussion. I did the same with old sad, political or angry poems for the lyrics. [more inside]
Lazy Rock
I miss the lazy rock of the 90's. Lean into the derivative. [more inside]
Come here and see me
My first time wrangling Ableton to do what I want, and the first song I've posted to MeFi since moving to SF. [more inside]
Give It to Me
A rough demo mix of a new tune I’ve been working on for a loose band project called The Wishing Well Divers. This particular recording is an experiment in recording and producing only on an iPhone and was recorded, mixed, and mastered in a day or so using only my phone, my voice, and an acoustic guitar and bass. [more inside]
Be a light
It's been a while since I posted anything, so here goes with a slightly off-kilter, folksy, moody vocal and guitar piece.
Adrenaline Hangover
This is a funny one - a collective demo that I suspect will always sound far, far better than any band recording we manage to cobble together. As the band's guitarist it burns a little bit to not have played or written a single note of this, but I can't argue with the end result.
The Ballad of Highway Boy
All this awful flood action has inspired me to dig up the sad old tail of Highway Boy, raised by his trucker brother, because his father was a hurricane and his mother was a cellar door. [more inside]
Every second of the time
As long as I am posting moody, folksy songs with voice and guitar...here's another one!
Tough Love Black Eye
Punk, metal, jazz, slack, folk and noise. This pretty much typifies the grab bag that was my band, Big Ghost. Like trying to get Pavement and RHCP to agree on California rock. It's a mess, but it was our kinda mess. [more inside]
Down in the Well
Vocal and guitar, one rough take, one track, melodic and intense two minutes and thirty seconds
Fisherian Runaway (poison frog song)
First song written and recorded since I moved to Napa. Spooky grungy punk that maybe doesn't reflect my sunny new locale. Written about my drummer's frustration with dating, online and otherwise. Lyrics in fold. [more inside]
17
This piano part and vocal melody have been rattling around in my brain for a while--finally wrote some lyrics and fleshed it out a bit.
Sredni Vashtar - Epic
Not a cover of the Faith No More song. Oh no. [more inside]
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
A quick and scarcely rehearsed lofi recording of my take on the classic folk standard/gospel/African American spiritual, with an overdubbed chorus and acoustic guitar.
The Killing Floor
This is a really rough early home studio demo of a song in development for my new recording project, The Wishing Well Divers' "Tragicomic Americana." Ironically, just as I've been working on this song, which thematically concerns stigmitization and marginalization, and well, being face down on the floor, I had a health scare last night that left me literally face down on the bathroom floor for a half hour.
I've got no job, health insurance, family support, or cash cushion right now, so this song has taken on new personal meanings for me just since I started recording it a couple of days ago, with new worries about health problems and their potential to make it harder to find work and insurance. [more inside]