Easy Solutions

Written and Recorded in 1991

This tune was written in the autumn of 1991, being inspired by some incidents took place during a night-out with some of my mates at that time. It was coincided with the revival movement of guitar-band music in the club scene and a girl, who introduced me to the music of Stone Roses, played a certain role at the incidents of the night.
Within a week or two, after the night-out, I thought it would be appropliate to make a reaction to the incidents and it resulted in writing and recording of this piece of music.
My intention was to combine a couple of elements of music from what they take as 'new' and what I embrace as 'genuine', and as for the latter, I picked up the elements of music from Syd Barrett and The Pink Floyd in their early days.

The song later became a repertoire of my band called Culotte from 1993 onward and was played live for countless times. In the band version, the mechanic guitar intro became more aggressive and the jam section in the end was usually extended for five to ten minutes.

For making this video, I combined the original mix I made in 1991 and instrumental remix made from the same master tape. For enhancing the visual aspect, I used a private video that captured a dancing figure of a girl called Nancy, with whom I went to a night-out shortly before the editing of this work.

Baby, Baby

Written in 1992 / Recorded in 1992 - 93

The tune was briefly written on one morning in the early summer of 1992. It was frustration caused by a girl that made me write this thing with non-thought-out lyrics to go with. It was coincided with a restart of my band called Elegance, with a new personnel that eventually renamed itself as Culotte within a few months. In the given circumstance, this tune was a handy stuff for the band to play because it consists of only two chords with plain time signature.
The song was first played live by the band on August 1992, followed by its official studio recording on October same year. Before we went into the recording studio, I have already prepared the piano and the strings' parts being programmed in digital sequencer, which hugely contributed for reducing the cost of recording studio. While Culotte continuously changed its personnel by the end of 1993, the song remained as handy stuff for rehearsing with new comers.

For making this video, I picked up the following four recorded materials of the song in order to remove stupid lyrics and make the instrumental re-mix presented here; (1) live recording and footage of Culotte from late 1992 or early 1993, which features the second guitarist and I play the electric piano, (2) official studio recording by Culotte on October 1992, which features me playing the guitars and programming of the keyboard parts, (3) live recording from a studio rehearsal by Culotte from late 1993, features a keyboard player on the electric piano and me on the lead guitar, and (4) my personal demo recording prior to the (2) official recording, which features me playing the all instruments and programming of the rhythm machine.

Thank You, Sir

Written and Recorded in 1990

An instrumental tune I wrote in the spring of 1990. I don't remember how this tune was written but perhaps the inspiration for building up this thing came from Buried Alive in the Blues, an instrumental stuff featured in Janis Joplin's unfinished album Pearl, performed by her band called the Full Tilt Boogie, and another lovely instrumental track called Breathless by Todd Rundgren.

When the demo recording was finished, I thought it would be appropriate to dedicate the tune to a fictional character from a story I had written for an abandoned Rock Opera scheme in the previous year - at least in my personal recognition.

The character, in the abandoned story, was regarded as a guitar guru, who loves Led Zeppelin at the most and in that sense, the tune might have been adequate to be dedicated to the character's taste in music.
Nonetheless, the name of the character has nothing to do with possible public viewers at all so that when I uploaded the video, I just simply replaced the meaningless noun to the word 'Sir' at the end of the title.

Goodbye Honey

Written in 1984 / 1988,  Recorded in 1988 / 2013

I first wrote and recorded my original musical works in 1983, when I was fifteen years old, and by the time I finished studying at a local high school on March 1985, the amount of such recordings piled up enough to fill three or four 46-minute-cassette tapes. The quality of these early recordings was so bad that later I destroyed all of them. Goodbye Honey was among one of them.

In its initial demo recording, which was done in the late 1984, I tried to insert a long keyboard solo in the middle, being inspired by I'm Not in Love by 10cc. Though this attempt didn't go quite well, the main part of the destroyed demo remained within my mind.

When I restarted writing and recording my original materials with far better equipment in 1988, the remaining memory of the destroyed demo of this tune came back to me and I decided to re-record the tune in a different fashion. A newly written piece was added to furnish the tune in its intro and outro, nevertheless, the entire running time of the tune reduced from over fourteen minutes to less than three minutes. To avoid being monotonous, I also added a famous bass line, quoting from Have You Ever Seen the Rain by Creedence Clearwater Revival, in the chorus section. The guitar part was another addition for this re-work and its backing style was inspired by Every Breath You Take by The Police, especially the use of 9th notes in its guitar part played by Andy Summers.

For making this video, I re-recorded the entire tune just for fun. Despite I aimed at capture myself playing the guitar part while recording the audio, so that the resulted film should synchronise with the audio track, I forgot to press Record button of the video recorder before starting the audio recording. That's the reason why I'm merely minming in the motion picture featured in this video... silly me! Also, I left the guitar solo section and ending section from the 1988 re-worked version in this video, simply because these sections sound quite better than what I attempted for making the video in 2013.

The Cosmic Eye

Written in 1991 and 1993 / Recorded in 1994 - Part One

This tune was first written in spring 1991, soon after I have finished my life as a student. The initial idea was to write a song that could accommodate a kind of pessimistic feeling I had had on a rainy night but the composition soon overgrew the initial idea during the recording process and it ended up as kinda quasi Prog stuff. Overall, it was OK as a personal demo recording, but I could not satisfy with it because of a technical mistake I have made during the recording and the lack of coherence due to the over-expansion of the initial motif. In those days, I rather accused of the change occurred to my social status that made me work at a full-time position, which inevitably reduced the time I could focus on making music.

A few years later, I tried to re-write the tune and made a basic demo for Culotte, a band I was playing with at that time. In this revised version, I focused on establishing a better coherence throughout the entire composition and in order to do this, the pessimistic song part that initiated the composition in the first place was totally removed. which was replaced by some newly added variations of pre-existing themes.

Written in 1991 and 1993 / Recorded in 1991 and 1994 - Part Two

The video above features the second half of the composition which mainly consists of  my personal overindulgence on soloing by various instruments and mixing of them. Both my initial demo version and Culotte's studio version failed to provide a perfect performance so that I had to mix their best bits for making this video.

The title of this tune was conceived during the expansion of the ideas that took place in the initial demo recording. There must have been some certain philosophical sources that inspired me at that time, but now I can't recall what they were.

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.

Anthem of the Sovereign Governor (from 'Music for a Story-Telling')

Written in 1991 and 1993 / Recorded in 1994

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 that couldn't exist long enough to perform it, and works for a students’ theatrical project that failed to feature the whole works I wrote for it at its actual performance. This tune consists of a couple of re-workings from both occasions. The verse part, which is assigned to General Staff Imayya, is taken from the latter, whilst the chorus part, which is assigned to the Sovereign Governor, is from the former. Since both parts were originally written for different purposes - especially the former was written as the piano intro - I reckon the conversion of these parts into arrangement like this didn't go effectively. There were a couple of sources of inspiration for the arrangement; a song written by the director of the said students' theatrical project, in which I played the lead guitar during the performance, and the Grunge movement that flourished when the demo version of this tune was made in 1993.

In the story of the conceptual work, this tune has a role to conclude the Part One, which is mainly dedicated to presnet the framework of a fictional state governed by the Sovereign Governor, where the story is set. This partidular tune is designed to depict the stability and glory of the dictatorship, after some incidents took place, which are already described in the preceding tunes.