The gimmick this time: So I was chatting on the phone with my good friend Neal and for some strange
reason, I had this idea. I said, "I'm gonna get off the phone and record an album", to which he replied
"....OK....?". "In one night." He was more or less like, "good luck." I got off the phone around 12:00 AM,
December 23, 2005. I immediately set to work, but by about 2:00 AM, three songs into my rather silly
undertaking, I was beginning to fall asleep at the wheel. That's when the limitation became 24 hours.
On 12/23/2005 I was determined to complete an album, from the conception of the material to
mastering. So that's exactly what I did. If you factor in the 10 hours that I slept, I really only spent about
13 hours on the project. At 11:00 PM, I had the final master in my hand. Below are details of my
adventure, trackwise.


1. My Restaurant.
Instruments used: Synthesizers.com, Fender Rhodes, Electric Guitar, Roland TR-505, Voice.
A goofy, silly, fun song about some kind of scenario involving pork and restaurant entertainment.

2. The Back Room.
Instruments Used: Synthesizers.com, Rhodes, TR-505.
I turned on the old TR-505 (a watered-down version of the 707) and played a very simple synthesizer
bass line while randomly changing patterns. Then I improvised on top of that with unison Rhodes and
synth. Big deal. It almost sounds like a segue from the first song, although they were recorded
completely out of context.

3. Half Asleep.
Instruments used: Synthesizers.com, Acoustic Guitar, Voice.
This was the third tune I did, and yes, I was half asleep, as I stated earlier.  This is one of those
one-chord songs that tries to fool you into thinking that it's going to change chords, but never does. A
more accurate description might be a quasi-country/rockabilly 12-bar blues without a chord
progression.  And actually not that bluesy.

4. A Pause.
Instrument used: Rhodes.
My 1979 Mark I Suitcase Rhodes, in all its stereo panning splendor.

5. Incandescent.
Instruments used: Synthesizers.com, TR-505.
Just a nice slow 7/8 synthesized progressive rock instrumental outing. Nothing of monumental
importance, to be sure.

6. Lacking Contact.
Instruments used: Roland RE-101 Space Echo, whistling.
I mic'ed the tape take-up box on the Space Echo, along with turning it on and off and changing
speeds, and recorded it twice. These tracks are dry. Then I sat in the corner of the studio opposite the
microphone and whistled lonely, rambling, disjointed tunes. Then I drowned that in reverb. Sounds like
being lost in a parking garage.

7. Goes Both Ways.
Instruments used: Piano, Soprano Recorders, Voice, Mellotron.
A nice little improvised song about longing to be back in the country, but it being of little consequence
because one tires of that life as well.

8. A Minor Snag.
Instruments used: Electric guitar, Roland RE-101 Space Echo.
Just some guitar noodling in harmony, with this as the signal path: guitar (DeArmond S73)->MXR
Dyna Comp->RE-101->Danelectro Daddy-O ->Roland JC-120 amp (with vibrato full on for lead parts).

9. Styrofoam Rocketship / I Think That It's Working.
Instruments used: Electric guitar, RE-101, Bass guitar, TR-505, Voice.
The end of the world as we now know it. Brace yourselves. Ok. Anyway, this is an incredibly stupid
two-part rock song. I think I ended up sounding somewhere between Captain Beefheart and AC/DC.
Or something. It's really dumb, but fun. I can't even express in words the incredible stupidity of this
song. And that's why it's good. On a musical/sonic front, I was originally going for an extremely tight,
overcompressed, up-in-your-face early punk type of sound, but I missed it sound-wise by about ten
years. This sounds more late-1980's, except for the extremely dry vocals.

10. ...More The Sounds Of Life.
The original advertisements read: "The Mighty Mellotron: Not so much an organ, more the sounds of
life". No more need be said.

11.  Square Wheels.
Instruments Used: Soprano Recorder, Casio SK-1, coins on a snare drum.
Why explain this? The SK-1 is making the little clicks that sound a bit like horses' hooves. I am of the
opinion that everyone should have a Casio SK series keyboard. There are so many good uses for
8-bit, 9.38kHz sampling. Mine has the MIDI IN retrofit! And there are two tracks of me playing with
money on a snare drum. And an avant garde recorder solo which is swimming in a pool of reverb.

12. The Intonation Police.
Instruments used: Yamaha PSS-470, Bass guitar, Alto Saxophone, Voice.
It is incredibly hard for me to sing out of tune, and I don't even have perfect pitch! But I tried. And what
instrument is more capable of bad intonation than the saxophone? (Ok, an oboe, but I don't have one,
and can't really play one.) Everything is out of tune here. And this song is protesting this fact. In effect,
it's an autonomic protest.

13.  A Child At Play.
Instruments used: Yamaha PSS-470.
I recorded this in the style in which I used to play as a young boy, and recorded it in the same manner
as well, by miking the speaker. This is also the same keyboard that I used to play a lot when I was 10
or 11 years old. Of course, I play better now, and I used a semi-expensive microphone with some nice
computer gear, but the idea is the same.

14. Opening A Window (To Let The Sun In).
Instruments used: Rhodes, Synthesizers.com, Melodica, random ambient noises.
Everything is backwards except for the synthesizer parts. The melodica is processed through a
pseudo-Leslie. The random backwards noise is me stomping around and kicking things and turning
water valves on and off, etc.
I think this is a nice sound that may end up in another piece eventually, even though the chord
progression has been used in countless other tunes by countless other people. I still like it. Otherwise I
would have picked another, less used-up one.

Then there's other stuff, but it's not worth mentioning.

All in all, I think that for one day's work, it all worked out rather well.

Email me.