We’re on the cover!

After completing the most recent season of Duck House, Blonski and I decided that we’d tackle a shorter project before delving into something long-term again.  Season 4 took about a year and a half to complete, and we were eager to turn some music around more quickly.

This time, we found our challenge in a new way of writing and recording.  Each of us would write and record live demos of two new originals using only acoustics and vocals.  Then, we’d learn each other’s songs and record them for the final EP.  Each song would be devoid of overdubs or layering – they’d be tracks we could theoretically play live just as they sound on the album.

And so, the Ear Buds project was born.  With Volume 1, we’ve got four tracks of singer/songwritery goodness for your collective ear holes.

Maybe we’ll do this once a year or something.  Maybe we’ll revisit these songs and record them as “full band” tracks one day.  Maybe we’ll take more photos of us awkwardly holding instruments and then put them on top of Hubble Telescope photographs of deep space.  Who knows!

Download the mp3s here, visit the discography page, watch a static image of the cover art over at YouTube, or visit Bandcamp for some FLACs!

-Mike

The House that Duck Built

After weeks of very slow mixing progress, Season 4 is complete.  It is, without a doubt, the fourthiest of seasons for Duck House.  Thanks again go to collaborators Kate Bojanek and Jim Hernovich for their work on the album.  Enjoy!

You can download mp3s here, check out the catalog page, or get some sweet lossless goodness over at Bandcamp.

We’ve got a few ideas for what might be next.  Possibly an acoustic EP where we write songs for each other to perform.  Maybe a soul record with a focus on historical presidents.  Even a video for one of the Duck Houses could be on the docket.  We’ll have to wait and see!

-Mike

Music Club: Summer 2017

Based on the irregularity of the output, I’m thinking the Music Semi-Monthly (aka Music Not-Monthly) feature needed a new name.  By going with Music Club, we won’t feel the intense pressure of listening to and critiquing an album a month.  We’ve all seen how we respond to pressure…

This time, Jefim put Chris Cornell’s Higher Truth up for discussion.  Steve, Jefim, and I were all taken aback last year with Cornell’s passing, and this was a good chance to revisit his musical legacy.  We all love Superunknown and Down on the Upside, but Cornell’s 2015 release was something a bit different.  Our impressions are below.

Continue reading Music Club: Summer 2017

Fun with Game Maker

While Blonski and I continued to work towards the release of Duck House‘s Season 4, I stumbled upon a Humble Bundle for Game Maker Studio and thought, as I often do with these bundles, “It’s a buck, why not?”

Since then, I’ve been going through some tutorials and Googling things like “== vs = game maker” and “game maker collision detection”.  One particularly neat series involved someone coding a version of the NES’s Legend of Zelda from scratch.

I started by trying to create a Smash Bros. or Samurai Gun – like, since I figured I wouldn’t have to worry about enemy AI or screen scrolling.  As I go, I’ll chronicle my progress here and on our YouTube channel.  Check out the latest playtest below.

-Mike

Rock Music Advertisements of Days Past

As Blonski and I continue to “wrap up” the fourth season of Duck House, I spent a minute or two looking at the cover art for the upcoming album.  For some reason, this jogged my memory of a few of the Black Velvet show posters I made years ago and figured sifting through them a bit to revisit old times might be a fun exercise.  It’s probably not the worst idea to get them up on the SGP blog for posterity’s sake too.  So, without further ado, behold!  The Black Velvet show posters in reverse chronological order.  As a bonus, I’ve included the letter from our apartment complex that cancelled Willi-Oaks fest II.  Typical The Man.

 

My favorites are the Ketchup vs. Mustards and the Marilyn Monroe picture signed to Don, the manager at the Hungry Tiger in Manchester.  I don’t think he ever framed it and hung it up, unfortunately.  Thanks to Carmen Zambrano for contributing a sweet sketch to the Jim Beam Me Up Tour.  Finally, that All-Stars poster is a total ripoff of Witch Season and Dead Diamond River.

New music soon!
-Mike

Music Not-Monthly: Summer 2016

*UPDATE on 5/29/2017: Added Jefim’s notes

A quote from the first round of “Music Monthly” posted one year ago, after which no subsequent rounds have been completed: “The plan is that one person will send a recommendation near the beginning of a month, and then all three of us will listen to it and send along our thoughts.  We’ll see where this ends up, but it certainly was fun thinking critically about music and talking about it again!”

Well, life happens, I suppose.  To Steve’s credit, he offered up the album up for discussion this time promptly after we posted the one for Hop Along.  Then Jefim moved to Europe and we made a Duck House.  Less time to talk music, I suppose.  Still, we’d like to get back at it!

The album up for discussion is Picture You Staring by TOPS (listen here or purchase here).  Emails are below:

Continue reading Music Not-Monthly: Summer 2016

Something Foul is Afoot

A few days ago we released Duck House Season 3, oddly enough before we released Seasons 1 and 2.  Well, today we make right what was once wrong.  Behold, Seasons 1 and 2!

Each album includes a handful of One, Two, Three and Unspecified Hour Challenges.  There were some clear breaks in writing philosophy and time that aided in making the cutoffs for each Season.  Nothing on here is new, except for the mix of Resistance, which reduces the reverb and brings the vocals out a bit to hopefully allow Steve’s melodies to shine a little more.  Enjoy!

duck-house-cover-season-1

01 – Free Max-B [download]

02 – Bones are Radioactive [download]

03 – (Fun is) What We’re Made of [download]

04 – Tibet [download]

05 – Parcel Octopus [download]

 

duck-house-cover-season-2

01 – Blizzard [download]

02 – Universe 25 [download]

03 – Resistance [download]

04 – Silke Kruger [download]

 

Until next time…
-Mike

A House Filled with Ducks

In a move that would appeal to maniacs like George Lucas, Duck House makes their label debut by release their first album which is their third album.  Also, they call them seasons.

A couple years (2012, holy cow!) ago Steve and I embarked on a journey of challenge songwriting.  Each song would be written and recorded in one hour, we proclaimed.  We failed on our very first attempt.  Not ones to shy away from a challenge, but also not ones to succeed at them, we decided to move the goalposts.  We released a few two hour challenge songs, most of which we also failed at.  To three hours we went, failing all the while.  At some point, we realized we shouldn’t call them challenges any more, and that a new name was in order.  This would be our Desert Sessions.  This would be our Duck House.

That leads us to today.  For the past eight months or so we’ve been recording what would become the third “season” of Duck House.  We’ve even documented some of the process.  Now you can listen to the final tracks all at once on this very blog update!  Enjoy!

cover

01 – Customer Support [download]

02 – Everynight City [download]

03 – Kindness [download] (bonus link on the event that inspired this song)

04 – Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head / I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For / Help! (Medley) [download]

05 – Itsdeeep [download]

Maybe we go back and release seasons one and two at some point…

-Mike

Theme music fit for idiots

For the past few months, I’ve been working on some new theme music for theidiotcast.com‘s podcasts and video content.  They have three different categories for their content: the IdiotCast Says, the IdiotCast Plays, and the IdiotCast Reads.  I figured each could have the same melody and construction, but be recording using different instrumentation.

First, I used LoopStation on my phone to record a chord sequence and melody idea.  It’s a pretty neat multitracking program that Blonski turned me onto.  Works surprisingly well for how simple it is.  Here’s the raw result:

I figured an acoustic arrangement would work well for Reads, the book club podcast, but that the Plays and Says intros should be different.  For Plays, I went with a pretty standard rock sound.

For Plays, the obvious choice was to make it sound like an 8 bit NES chip.  I used the peach and toad VST plugins from Tweakbench to recreate the feel being six and sitting on the floor, cursing at Megaman 3.

Finally, I revisited the original acoustic version for the Reads podcast.  The video below chronicles the recording adventures!

And here’s the mixed version of the track:

To hear the Plays intro in use, check out the IdiotCast Plays the Witness.

Until next time!
-Mike