Ed Makes Things

Here is what happens when you throw a serious curveball or two into what is otherwise a fairly simple pop-type song. This song was written in July 2007 for the album “Dancing For Patriotism” (the entire album except for the hidden track was written at that time). I arranged this to fit in the disc’s overall musical picture a la the song “Unretrofied” on Dillinger Escape Plan’s “Miss Machine” record. I was on a big Dillinger Escape Plam kick throughout the writing process for “Dancing For Patriotism”, which lent itself to creating some “where’s the calculator?” parts like the one found in the bridge to this song.

Drums recorded by Rich Wattie at Montage Music Hall in Rochester, NY. Everything else recorded by me at home. All instruments and mixing by me.

Ow! My Dignity!

Happy Friday! Today, we celebrate with a quick tune from my power pop band Smock’s back catalog. This tune is a quick little number written in February of 2003 by guitarist Dan and myself. If memory serves me correctly, we finished and demoed it in his dormitory the day after we staged a gig in its common area (Dan was an RA at the time, so the gig was legit). The version heard here is the most recent recording of the song, made in July 2007. Easiest recording ever – two microphones placed overhead in a stereo pair and that’s it. This is as natural as it gets.

Credits: Written by Dan Bell and Ed Klingenberger. Dan Bell – Lead vocal, guitar. Pete Johnson – guitar. Adam Donnelly – vocals. Ed Klingenberger – percussion, vocals, recording engineer

Tonight

What better way to follow up a quick uptempo ditty than with a track longer than the entirety of “Christmas In 5 Minutes (And 16 Seconds)”? The following is the title cut – and by far my favorite song – from the lone album credited to Ith. Recorded in 2005, this was an album that made fun of nü-metal* but still contained an inordinate number of prog-type flourishes (you’ll hear that through all the time changes in this track). But, on a larger scale, the project set the stage for a lot of material I’ve written since then and, ultimately, the foundation of …Of Doom!. Production, mixing, all instruments: Me.

Ackib Bittik Gadib part III: This Time It’s Personal

*Here’s how the lyric writing process worked for this album: If I wrote a line and laughed at it, I kept it.

Happy New Year! For the first post of 2010, here’s a fun little uptempo number which will be played live by my new band, …Of Doom! (in fact, we’ve already learned the song and drummer Jared and I bashed our way through it at a recent open mic). This is a song slated for the upcoming album, “Dancing For Communism” (sort of a sequel to “Dancing For Patriotism”). This particular track hearkens back to the Cold War days – when in doubt, you can always blame the commies. Blah blah blah production and instruments by me.

Red Squares (Fallout Sheltered) [Demo]

Sometimes I like to write really simple little songs. Not much to them – maybe a verse or two and that’s it. This is one of those songs. Written (in about ten minutes) and recorded in 2007, this track is highlighted by a cheap joke and a quick batch of vocal harmony. Enjoy!

Production, mixing, all instruments by me.

What’s Her Name Again?

Because I seem to have lost my voice over the weekend: How about an instrumental? I’ve seriously dug into the ol’ archives for this one. Recorded in 2003 for the first Football Project, this shows what a person can do with a 4-track recorder (quite a jump – I went from using a 4-track to Pro Tools the following year). All the percussion instruments were recorded on the same track – if you listen closely, you can hear me put down the tambourine at the end of the bridge.

Production, mixing, all instruments by me. Recorded in an on-campus apartment in Purchase, NY.

Asleep on the Couch

It’s Boxing Day (even if I’m American), so what better way to worm out of Christmas than speed metal? This track was recorded in early 2005 as the very end to The Football Project 2 (the same project that produced “O Christmas Fight”). I liked the result so much that I made a file separating it from the rest of the original track and called it “Death To Football”. Production, mixing, and all instruments by me.

Death To Football

aka “Evolution of an Instrumental, part 1”

While I was in college, I concocted an idea for a fake metal band called “Ith”. The idea was to have an album with 13 tracks of parody nü-metal that we can all laugh at and rock out to at the same time. However, to break up the monotony, Track 12 was an acoustic instrumental called “Fjorc”… a tune I liked so much that I decided to record a second time outside of its original album context. “Fjorc” was originally written in 2003, this recording – which I dubbed “ReFjorc” – was made three years later in 2006.

Production, mixing, guitars by me. Guitar freaks: Drop-C tuning (C G C F A D), rhythm part is double tracked

ReFjorc