little eddie

Cubase Trickery

Posted on July 17, 2015July 19, 2015 by little eddie

I usually stick to playing mostly real instruments, but on occasion find experimentation adds to the creativity. On I’ve Got to See, I started the song by laying the chords out on Cubase’s Chord Track. Synths played the background string sounds and in the end the bass track, all reading the Chord Track. (I did record a real bass track but went with the simple chord track playing the root notes.)

Click on the picture to see more clearly.

Here is a stripped down version of the song where you can hear what’s going on:

Here’s the song with everything:

Storytelling: A Brief Reflection on Time

Posted on July 8, 2015July 8, 2015 by little eddie

Maybe there is some irony that at this stage in life I teach writing in college, yet John is the lyricist in our songwriting duo. First off, John is a great writer who has long fascinated me with his ability to freeze time and see things that many of us miss as we ride this big, round sphere through the universe. Additionally, writing, recording, and producing our music takes tremendous amounts of time, so having a friend makes the work so much more fun.

For a while, I created music videos on YouTube, but that took huge amounts of additional time after the song was written. SoundCloud is a good fit for me.

Notice, time has come up a few times already, and I would like to discuss one element of time, which is a very complex subject. Stephen Hawking is an acknowledged genius and has written oodles on the subject.

So, while teaching a class last night, I was discussing the hundreds of possibilities available when we tell stories. Certainly past, present, and future are a good starting point.

Let’s say I met Sally two years ago and fell in love, she cheated on me, and the rest of my life look bleak and joyless. Well, I just told the event in chronological order: past, present, future.

I could also start by saying: Sally, I know you’re a cheating on me. When we met, you said you would be true, but you have doomed for the rest of my life. Ah, present, past, future.

Or we could say: We were gonna get married and raise goats in the country, but I sit here in pain. Whatever happened to the vow you made. Future, present, past.

Listen to how John handles time in this song about a famous picture of Winston Churchill.

The John and Ed Story – Chapter 1

Posted on July 6, 2015July 7, 2015 by little eddie

John lives outside of New Orleans, and I live in Ohio. We are edro and John Eagle on SoundCloud.

We met on a now defunct Web site that offered interaction between writers, visual artists, and musicians. John was a writer, and I contributed both writing and music. At one point I was the music editor for the site. Eventually the creators tried to commercialize the site by selling art.

The good news for us, John and I started to work together some. We wrote a few songs like Nevermore and Split Pea Soup in that era.

I discovered SoundCloud, knew nothing about how it worked, few people listened. I knew one person, Continuity Drift from the old site. One day Riny Raijmakers, KodiakTom, Robyn Youlten, and a few others discovered one of my songs. Wow! People did listen.

Eventually, I coerced John into contributing lyrics to some music by the Kona Brothers, which I sang. He started getting into SoundCloud and went out on his own to explore and meet folks.

Now, I don’t see this blog site developing into a Fast Eddie and The Eagle history lesson since John and I are both writers. This will be a great place to add to the stories we’ve begun with music and spoken word.

Until next time,

Author: little eddie