I Can Still…

Written in 1989 / Recorded in 1990 and 1996

This tune was originally written for an unfinished Rock Opera, under a title of One Misty Night in the summer of 1989. Due to the abandoning of the Rock Opera scheme, it was converted an individual pop tune with a newly written lyric called I Can Still… In terms of music, probably I made no modification in these two demo recordings from the early days.

In 1996, the song was picked up through my personal recording scheme; I dubbed as The Soft Core Project and was converted to an instrumental tune. For masking this video, I combined best bits from the early recording of I Can Still… and the one by The Soft Core Project.

If I could go back to the past, I would have taken this tune more seriously and would have tried to play it more often, rather than leaving it untouched for six long years, for it is not only a well-written tune but also it has a nice musical trait that must have suited to me back then.   

Book of Philosophy (Literary Works – part i)

Written in 1991 / Recorded in 1991 and 1994

The original idea for writing this conceptual work divided into three parts came from my personal experience of a day in early November, 1990. In the initial stage, the work was supposed to be divided into four parts and this Part i was assigned to describe some philosophical thoughts I had been dealing with at the time of the creation of this work. Despite all four parts were composed and demo recorded in the first few months of 1991, I soon recognised some failures within the conceptual work as a whole.
When I gave another try for re-organising the entire work three years later, I decided to change the theme and to make it divided into three parts. Though this second attempt didn't go quite well, the new concept coined at that stage contributed to making a series of videos that could showcase the work finally titled Literary Works.

Under the new concept, ‘some philosophical thoughts’ has been simply compiled to a Book of Philosophy, for technically representing this sort of literature, which is not written to be understood easily or for providing fun reading but is written focusing on its contents’ coherency. 

Death Song

Written in 1990 / Recorded in 1990, 1991 and 1998

Death Song was a thing I wrote expressing the outburst of my anger and frustration I held at the time of writing - December 1990. Before the song was recorded in any form, it was played live for filling the stage time as a solo act of me playing the guitar and singing. What surprised me at the most was that the audience’s response was unexpectedly good towards the song, to which I rather had a negative impression and estimation.

A demo recording of the song at home soon followed and in it, I added the sound effect of my voice, modified by the digital delay pedal, and rhythm sections for enhancing its weird atmosphere and (Hard) Rock aspect. The strings part was also added for dramatising the climax sequence.

In the following year, the song was played by my new band called Elegance on some occasions and one of them was recorded. 

Nearly a decade later, I picked up this song to be played again by my personal recording scheme called The Soft Core Project. On this occasion, I invited my friend drummer to a studio for recording his part accompanied with me on the guitar.

The audio track of this video consists of all three recording materials mentioned above.

Guitar Intro

Written in 1992 / Recorded in 1995 and 2011

This short piece of music for solo guitar was actually written as the intro for a song called Give Me a Cat in the early summer of 1992. Before I completed writing the main body of the song, this intro piece was once played live in front of the audience during a show by my band called Elegance. It was the first show for the new line-up of the band and was the last one for the band’s history.

A few years later, while I was organising my past materials, I came across with this tune and re-recorded the entire song with adding a newly programmed digital synthesizer part, which is still audible at the end of this video.

For making this video, I chose to single out the intro piece because the main body of the song is not well written. Alternatively, I played the intro of White Rabbit, one of my favourite Jefferson Airplane songs, in the end of this video because my intro piece is written for a song written in the key of F sharp.

Operetta: The Grand Meeting (from ‘Music for a Story-Telling’)

Written in 1991, 1994 and 1998 / Recorded in 1996 and 1998

Basically, as far as the music concerns, my conceptual work titled Music for a Story-Telling is a collection of re-workings of my past compositions written in 1991; either works I wrote for a band called Elegance, which couldn't exist long enough to perform it, and/or works for a students’ theatrical project called Zone. This long tune is based on various works I wrote for both occasions.

The very idea to write and play a kind of mini Rock Opera like thing captured my mind in the initial stage of the Zone project. By the time I made demo recording of my original tracks for the prospective performance, I knew that the director already gathered enough amount of musician-students to form several bands and one of his key concepts was that the performance was not going to be played in a conventional manner but to be played in plural stages or areas, each of them was provisionally called ‘zone’. The condition given enabled me to set up a scheme of performing a mini Rock Opera – or a Rock Operetta – and at the stage of making demo recordings, I stopped at only writing the main theme for the scheme and called it Operetta Theme, so that I could leave other performers to write their original materials to form the entire structure. Nonetheless, the director simply rejected my idea for the Operetta scheme and the theme was neither used nor performed in the project.

About a year later, when I began to convert some of my lost ideas for the project into my own musical work, I decided to place the very idea of the Rock Operetta at the climax sequence of the entire structure. The original Operetta Theme was made to be used as the same role in the operetta to provide its intro and outro, which is this time designed to contain several other tunes I wrote for the conceptual work in a form of medley. The demo version of The Grand Meeting was initially made to be only provided to my band Culotte, sometime in 1994, which didn’t feature any rhythm part, in order to leave a creative room for the drummer. Nevertheless, the drummer left the band in the following year before we could even rehearse the Operetta, and it was soon followed by breaking up of the band by the end of 1995.

After I was fired from the next band I formed called School in 1997 or 98, I finally gave up forming another band of mine. Instead, I decided to develop a recording scheme I have launched before the forming of School and began to make demo recording under the scheme, I personally called it The Soft Core Project. The audio materials gathered here are all recorded at this stage; either in Phase 1 (pre-School period) and Phase 2 (post-School period). For making this video, I tried to reconstruct the Operetta by putting together several tracks that were made separately.

In the storyline, The Grand Meeting is designed to depict the controversial meeting held by Kelp, the intruder, and his admirers in defiance of the authority. Wella, the convict, condemns the authority regarding the Brainwash punishment and Mikhi, the village girl, performs her initiation of Love (this may lead the whole audience to a grand orgy). The Peasant warns the audience that the soldiers are coming to arrest them all and encourages them to resist and fight. This followed by Imayya, the General Stuff, who confesses his soldiers’ defeat due to the moral corruption caused by the so-called performance of Love (or simply being involved in the massive orgy)... Oh, what a nasty story it is!