Bits and Pieces [from my original demos, 1988]

Written and Recorded in 1988

This video features bits and pieces from three of my original compositions, written and recorded in late 1988. These tunes have resulted from my struggling to create new materials out of scratch, which was new experience for me at that time.

The first bit - from the beginning to 1:25 - was an attempt to write a tune reflecting the time - the emergence and prevalence of new genres such as Rap or HipHop music - in my own way. I don't think this attempt was successful in terms of its original intention, but at least it went well for presenting my interpretation of so-called Funky music at that time. If you ask me if I have made any progress on the interpretation above, I would say 'no at all.'

The second bit - from 1:25 to 2:12 - was more about my personal recording experiment. It was originally written as a song heavily inspired by Syd Barrett, the founder of the Pink Floyd, and I simply tried out the same recording procedure as Barrett, or his recording engineered and support musicians, did. While I was recording additional instruments over the basic track, consists of the acoustic guitar and a voice, I thought it would be interesting to add the trumpet that I had but could not play. For capturing the sound of the trumpet, I connected the microphone to the multi-track recorder via a digital delay pedal designed for the guitar. Overall, it was not about writing a composition but was more about how it would sound if I made this and that... and here's the result.

The final bit - from 2:12 to the end of the video - was also an experimental thing. At first, I made a repetition of rhythm programme on the rhythm machine and recorded it with playing the lead guitar part. At this stage, it was more like improvised blues stuff except for the occasional guitar riff obviously taken from Marc Bolan's Hot Love. Then I added other instruments to make it sounds like the said T. Tex thing and it ended up in this way. Though I did own a wah pedal since sometime in 1985, I could never be good at handling it and one of the reasons why I started this recording from the lead guitar part first was that I wanted to try the pedal without caring about chord progressions or structure of a song being accompanied by other instruments but just for experimental purpose.