For the first time in four years, I’ve finally written and debuted a new song! “1001 Arabian Nights” comes from some recorded ideas I’ve been sitting on for years, but I finally worked everything out and added some new verses.
Tag: songwriting
Open Mic Adventures XL: “Parada”
I’ve just got a couple of more open mic nights before I get into my school year schedule and become a slave to the grind, but I’m going to do my best to keep pumping out the goods. This time in two weeks, I hope to have a new song uploaded for your delectation; stay tuned.
In the meantime, I’m continuing my deep dive into my obscure deep cuts, songs that I’ve never managed to get recorded in a studio. Some of these songs are very good; some need some polish. Whatever the case, I’m realizing that I have enough material for another EP, and I might need to get back into the studio.
This week’s feature is “Parada.” I wrote “Parada” in 2015 during a particularly fertile period of open mic attendance. The Spanish word “parada” roughly translates to “stop” or “bus stop/station” in English. I wanted to capture the notion of lingering in a moment—stopping a poignant moment in time, trying to freeze it in place as long as possible.
Phone it in Friday XL: YouTube Roundup II
June is nearly over, and July starts tomorrow. I’ll be hitting the road for a week in Indianapolis to visit my older brother, which means I’ll probably get another poorly-selling travel book out of the deal—maybe something like Midwestern Musings, Washingtonian Woes. Of course, I need to finish my series on the wild, stressful trip to Washington, D.C., from this March. For whatever reason, I just haven’t had it in me to continue writing that saga, even though the best (and, at the time they occurred, the worst) parts are yet to come.
But I digress. In the spirit of shameless self-promotion, here’s another edition if YouTube Roundup, in which I showcase some of my recent YouTube uploads. Feel free to follow my YouTube page. Watch a video, like it, leave a comment—whatever you’d like. I upload approximately once a week, sometimes more.
Open Mic Adventures XXXVIII: “Quasi-Date”
It’s been refreshing to get back out to open mic nights and to do some live performances again. In the spirit of getting back out and playing again, I’m digging deep into my back catalog and playing some really obscure originals.
My mind is also percolating for the first time in years with ideas for new songs. Here’s hoping I have some time to sit down at the keyboard and do some actual writing and composing. Sure, I’ve been composing a great deal of instrumental music lately, mostly for the piano, but I haven’t written a proper song since about 2019.
That said, at last week’s open mic I decided to pull out a really old piece, one I wrote way back in 2010, called “Quasi-Date.”
Open Mic Adventures XXXV: “The Rings of Saturn”
Last week I wrote a short post about Saturn’s (extremely slowly) disappearing rings. In that post, I referenced one of my songs, “The Rings of Saturn,” which I wrote way back on 7 August 2015.
Naturally, that got me thinking: I should record that for Open Mic Adventures! “The Rings of Saturn” is one of my personal favorites of my original tunes, but I wrote it after the release of Contest Winner EP, and I’ve never made it back into the studio. It didn’t help that my life and work grew exponentially more demanding in those years, but I also went through a long spell of creative dryness that never fully relented.
That said, it was time for “The Rings of Saturn” to make its official Internet debut (and its YouTube debut).
TBT^4: O Little Town of Bethlehem and the Pressures of Songwriting
It’s another Exam Week, a welcome respite after two weeks of madness. Proctoring exams is a pain, but it’s the kind of tedious pain that we’re all used to enduring from time to time. Fortunately, it’s basically two hours of boredom at a time, followed by frantic grading. The sooner that’s done, the sooner Christmas Break can truly begin.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about how pressure creates diamonds. I was incredibly, almost superhumanly productive in the two weeks after Thanksgiving because I had to be. I was putting in twelve-to-sixteen-hour days to get everything done, and while I was exhausted, I felt like a champion.
Then this last Saturday I had an endless day before me, and accomplished almost nothing. Part of that was recovering from the craziness of the week before; part of it was woman problems (the greatest drain on energy and resources); part of it was the lack of anything to do. I understand why retirees die within six months if they don’t find something productive to do—I was starting to think that all my endeavors meant nothing (maybe they do mean nothing, but as a Christian I know they do; if they didn’t mean anything, it’s all the more reason to keep myself moving so I don’t have time to dwell on The Darkness).
Anyway, that pressure can create Beauty. All this pressure has had me thinking about Neo’s comment on my post “You’ll Get Everything and Not Like It“: “I always remember that our soldiers in France in 1944 had a saying, ‘The road home goes through Berlin’. Berlin is on all of our ways home.” That’s the end of a very long and poignant comment, but those two sentences say it all.
With that, here is “TBT^2: O Little Town of Bethlehem and the Pressures of Songwriting“:
Open Mic Adventures XII: “Ghostly”
On last week’s Open Mic Adventures post, Ponty noted that there aren’t many Halloween songs, while Christmas enjoys an embarrassment of riches in that regard.
That got me thinking: I should showcase my Halloween song here on the blog! Fortunately, I played it—“Ghostly“—back on Tuesday, 18 October 2022.
Lazy Sunday CXLV: Friends, Part VIII
The cavalcade of friendship continues this Sunday with three more posts. Apparently, I’ve given musician, actor, and international playboy Frederick Ingram a lot of screen time in Supporting Friends Friday, but all of this weekend’s friends have enjoyed two or more Friday shout-outs:
- “Supporting Friends Friday: Frederick Ingram’s ‘Yesterday’s Weather’” – This post was a bit of gushing about one of Frederick’s older tunes, “Yesterday’s Weather” from his excellent Elements EP.
- “Supporting Friends Friday: The Birds of Mariella Hunt” – Mariella Hunt is making waves now with her popular mermaid-based historical fiction (talk about a subgenre!) on Kindle Vella, but I first got to know her through her beautiful bird paintings.
- “Supporting Friends Friday: Liptak’s Latest Story” – Former colleague, regular reader, and talented writer H.L. Liptak published a heartfelt fairy tale, “That Rains May Come,“ at Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine. It’s worth a read!
Happy Sunday!
—TPP
Other Lazy Sunday Installments:
- Lazy Sunday – APR Pieces
- Lazy Sunday II – Lincoln Posts
- Lazy Sunday III – Historical Moments
- Lazy Sunday IV – Christianity
- Lazy Sunday V – Progressivism, Part I
- Lazy Sunday VI – Progressivism, Part II
- Lazy Sunday VII – Deep State
- Lazy Sunday VIII – Conservatism
- Lazy Sunday IX – Economics, Part I
- Lazy Sunday X – Economics, Part II
- Lazy Sunday XI – Walls
- Lazy Sunday XII – Space
- Lazy Sunday XIII – Immigration
- Lazy Sunday XIV – Gay Stuff
- Lazy Sunday XV – Work
- Lazy Sunday XVI – #MAGAWeek2018
- Lazy Sunday XVII – #MAGAWeek2019
- Lazy Sunday XVIII – SubscribeStar Posts
- Lazy Sunday XIX – Music
- Lazy Sunday XX – The Laziest Sunday
- Lazy Sunday XXI – Travel
- Lazy Sunday XXII – Reading
- Lazy Sunday XXIII – Richard Weaver
- Lazy Sunday XXIV – Education
- Lazy Sunday XXV – Techno-Weirdos
- Lazy Sunday XXVI – Small Town Living
- Lazy Sunday XXVII – Bric-a-Brac
- Lazy Sunday XXVIII – World History
- Lazy Sunday XXIX – The New Criterion
- Lazy Sunday XXX – Trump, Part I
- Lazy Sunday XXXI – Trump, Part II
- Lazy Sunday XXXII – Festivals
- Lazy Sunday XXXIII – Virtue Signalling
- Lazy Sunday XXXIV – The Desperate Search for Meaning Series
- Lazy Sunday XXXV – Corporate Grind
- Lazy Sunday XXXVI – Best of the Reblogs, Part I
- Lazy Sunday XXXVII – Best of the Reblogs, Part II
- Lazy Sunday XXXVIII – Best of the Reblogs, Part III
- Lazy Sunday XXXIX – A Very Dokken Christmas Series
- Lazy Sunday XL – Christmas Carols
- Lazy Sunday XLI – Food
- Lazy Sunday XLII – 2019’s Top Five Posts
- Lazy Sunday XLIII – Music, Part II: More Music
- Lazy Sunday XLIV – SubscribeStar Saturday Posts, Part II: The Search for More Money
- Lazy Sunday XLV – Techno-Weirdos II
- Lazy Sunday XLVI – Man Time
- Lazy Sunday XLVII – Winning
- Lazy Sunday XLVIII – Culture
- Lazy Sunday XLIX – Family
- Lazy Sunday L – The Best of Lazy Sunday
- Lazy Sunday LI – Just for Fun
- Lazy Sunday LII – Democratic Candidates, Part I
- Lazy Sunday LIII – Democratic Candidates, Part II
- Lazy Sunday LIV – Coronavirus
- Lazy Sunday LV – Animals
- Lazy Sunday LVI – Movies
- Lazy Sunday LVII – Christianity, Part II
- Lazy Sunday LVIII – Spring Break Short Story Recommendations Recap
- Lazy Sunday LIX – The God Pill Series
- Lazy Sunday LX – Music, Part II: Gigging
- Lazy Sunday LXI – The Tuck
- Lazy Sunday LXII – The South
- Lazy Sunday LXIII – Holidays
- Lazy Sunday LXIV – Grab Bag
- Lazy Sunday LXV – Rioting
- Lazy Sunday LXVI – Video Games
- Lazy Sunday LXVII – Phone it in Fridays, Part I
- Lazy Sunday LXVIII – Phone it in Fridays, Part II
- Lazy Sunday LXIX – Phone it in Fridays, Part III
- Lazy Sunday LXX – Phone it in Friday, Part IV
- Lazy Sunday LXXI – Road Trips
- Lazy Sunday LXXII – Forgotten Posts, Volume I
- Lazy Sunday LXXIII – Forgotten Posts, Volume II
- Lazy Sunday LXXIV – Forgotten Posts, Volume III
- Lazy Sunday LXXV – Forgotten Posts, Volume IV
- Lazy Sunday LXXVI – Forgotten Posts, Volume V
- Lazy Sunday LXXVII – Rural America
- Lazy Sunday LXXVIII – Space, Part II
- Lazy Sunday LXXXIX – SCOTUS
- Lazy Sunday LXXX – Big Ideas
- Lazy Sunday LXXXI – Education, Part II
- Lazy Sunday LXXXII – Universal Studios
- Lazy Sunday LXXXIII – The Mountains
- Lazy Sunday LXXXIV – Halloween Hijinks
- Lazy Sunday LXXXV – Elections
- Lazy Sunday LXXXVI – Questions, Part I
- Lazy Sunday LXXXVII – Questions, Part II
- Lazy Sunday LXXXVIII – Questions, Part III
- Lazy Sunday LXXXIX – 100 Week Review
- Lazy Sunday XC – Questions, Part IV
- Lazy Sunday XCI – Questions, Part V
- Lazy Sunday XCII – Christmas
- Lazy Sunday XCIII – 2020’s Top Five Posts
- Lazy Sunday XCIV – My Favorite Things
- Lazy Sunday XCV – The Best of Lazy Sunday
- Lazy Sunday XCVI – More Movies: Movie Reviews, Part I
- Lazy Sunday XCVII – More Movies II: Movie Reviews, Part II
- Lazy Sunday XCVIII – More Movies III: Movie Reviews, Part III
- Lazy Sunday XCIX – Romantic Music
- Lazy Sunday C – Valentine’s Day
- Lazy Sunday CI – Obituaries, Part I
- Lazy Sunday CII – Obituaries, Part II
- Lazy Sunday CIII – Begging
- Lazy Sunday CIV – Time
- Lazy Sunday CV – Grab Bag II
- Lazy Sunday CVI – Adventures
- Lazy Sunday CVII – Easter
- Lazy Sunday CVIII – Spring Break Short Story Recommendations 2021 Recap
- Lazy Sunday CIX – Pillow Talk
- Lazy Sunday CX – Inspector Gerard Reviews
- Lazy Sunday CXI – Bric-a-Brac II
- Lazy Sunday CXII – Responsibility
- Lazy Sunday CXIII – Short Stories
- Lazy Sunday CXIV – More Movies IV: Movie Reviews, Part IV
- Lazy Sunday CXV – Memorable Mondays
- Lazy Sunday CXVI – Delays
- Lazy Sunday CXVII – More Movies V – Movie Reviews, Part V
- Lazy Sunday CXVIII – More Movies VI – Movie Reviews, Part VI
- Lazy Sunday CXIX – Summer Camps
- Lazy Sunday CXX – Animals, Part II
- Lazy Sunday CXXI – MAGAWeek2021 Posts
- Lazy Sunday CXXII – MAGAWeek2020 Posts
- Lazy Sunday CXXIII – Murphy
- Lazy Sunday CXXIV – Bible Posts
- Lazy Sunday CXXV – More Movies VII – Movie Reviews, Part VII
- Lazy Sunday CXXVI – Joy, Part I
- Lazy Sunday CXXVII – Joy, Part II – Music
- Lazy Sunday CXXVIII – Civilization
- Lazy Sunday CXXIX – Friends, Part I
- Lazy Sunday CXXX – Friends, Part II
- Lazy Sunday CXXXI – Friends, Part III
- Lazy Sunday CXXXII – Milestones
- Lazy Sunday CXXXIII – Inspector Gerard
- Lazy Sunday CXXXIV – Friends, Part IV
- Lazy Sunday CXXXV – More Movies VIII – Movie Reviews, Part VIII
- Lazy Sunday CXXXVI – More Movies IX – Movie Reviews, Part IX
- Lazy Sunday CXXXVII – More Halloween Hijinks
- Lazy Sunday CXXXVIII – Friends, Part V
- Lazy Sunday CXXXIX – More Movies, Part X – Movie Reviews, Part X
- Lazy Sunday CXL – More Movies, Part XI – Movie Reviews, Part XI
- Lazy Sunday CXLI – Thanksgiving Stuff(ing)
- Lazy Sunday CXLII – More Movies, Part XII – Movie Reviews, Part XII
- Lazy Sunday CXLIII – More Movies, Part XIII – Movie Reviews, Part XIII
- Lazy Sunday CXLIV – More Christmas Carols
- Lazy Sunday CXLV – Christmas Cheer
- Lazy Sunday CXLVI – 2021’s Top Five Posts
- Lazy Sunday CXLVII – More Movies, Part XIV – Movie Reviews, Part XIV
- Lazy Sunday CXLVIII – The Gemini Sonnets #1 and #2
- Lazy Sunday CXLIX – The Gemini Sonnets #3 and #4
- Lazy Sunday CL – The Gemini Sonnets #5 and #6
- Lazy Sunday CLI – More Movies, Part XV – Movies Reviews, Part XV
- Lazy Sunday CLII – Romance
- Lazy Sunday CLIII – Behind the Songs, Part I
- Lazy Sunday CLIV – Behind the Songs, Part II
- Lazy Sunday CLV – Péchés d’âge moyen Posts
- Lazy Sunday CLVI – More Son of Sonnet
- Lazy Sunday CLVII – Ponty’s Posts, Part I
- Lazy Sunday CLVIII – Ponty’s Posts, Part II
- Lazy Sunday CLIX – Scrambie Eggs
- Lazy Sunday CLX: Fine Arts Festival
- Lazy Sunday CLXI: Easter II
- Lazy Sunday CLXII: Spring Break Short Story Recommendations Recap 2022
- Lazy Sunday CLXIII: Friends, Part VI
- Lazy Sunday CLXIV: Friends, Part VII
SubscribeStar Saturday: Contest Winner
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
Well, here we are—the final installment of Behind the Songs. I’m wrapping up this extended, self-indulgent walk through my debut EP, Contest Winner EP with the final and title track, “Contest Winner.”
“Contest Winner” is probably the first track I wrote for the EP, long before I ever conceived of releasing an album or EP of my own. If I’m not mistaken, it dates back to 2012, so it’s ten-years old this year.
I wrote the song for my very first songwriting contest, figuring that I might as well as be confident.
It did not win the contest, but it did win the People’s Choice Award. And it spawned an era of artistic inspiration—and a lot of songs.
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SubscribeStar Saturday: Behind the Songs: Funeral Pyre
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
Apologies to readers for the slight delay with today’s post. It was a grueling but productive week, and after teaching eighteen lessons in five days to seventeen students (and it would have been twenty lessons and nineteen students, were it not for The Virus), I fell asleep a little before 8 PM last night, and slept until around 7 AM this morning.
Today’s post is the penultimate in my Behind the Songs miniseries. I’ve been going through the stories behind each of the six songs on my debut EP, Contest Winner EP. With “Funeral Pyre,” the fifth track, we’re nearly through the entire release!
I often conceive of “Funeral Pyre” as a companion piece to “Ghostly,” which I covered in detail last week. Both are unusual songs, and it’s pretty easy to link ghosts and funerals thematically.
I thought I’d written “Funeral Pyre” last among all the songs on the EP, but it appears that I wrote it roughly three weeks before “Ghostly.” Both tunes date to January 2014—6 January 2014 for “Funeral Pyre,” and 30 January 2014 for “Ghostly,” according to the original lead sheets.
Regardless, the two songs share some similarities. Besides the thematic similarity, both are fairly dark in tone compared to the other songs on the EP. They also were late additions: originally, I think I was just going to record “Hipster Girl Next Door,” “Greek Fair,” “By the Light of the Laptop Screen,” and “Contest Winner,” and release a single.
But a gnarly ice storm meant that my recording session was delayed, and I wrote “Funeral Pyre” while sitting at home in my tiny apartment in Florence, South Carolina, while the world was covered in ice. I was supposed to go that night to start recording the record, but the foul weather meant a postponement, which allowed time to write the song and, it seems, “Ghostly.”
One other similarity: “Funeral Pyre” and “Ghostly” are the songs from the record I play live the least. “Ghostly” does enjoy a lot of playtime during the spooky season, but for many years, I neglected “Funeral Pyre” in my live sets.
As we’ll see, I now think that was a mistake.
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