Your Umbrella

Written in 1992 / Recorded in 1992 and 1995

This tune was written in early 1992, reflecting a petty thing happened between me and one of my female colleagues just outside of an office, where we were working at. As soon as the initial demo version was made, it became a key repertoire of my band called Elegance, which gave a basis for a new band called Culotte within a few months since then. Culotte also played this tune for countless times and left several recordings as well, from live performances on stage to an official recording conducted in a professional studio. The live footage featured in this video was captured in June or July, 1995. Despite the band survived for few more months, this was the last time we played this thing as a band. So what? Not much. Simply, I have spent some of my life time being strongly associated with this tune for a bit too long and that fact sometimes makes me a bit sentimental, that’s it.

Untitled #2

Written and Recorded in 1996

After the break-up of my band called Culotte, in early 1996, I reluctantly decided to go back to make recording materials by using the rhythm machine. Whilst I continued to write new materials from scratch, I also reviewed some of my past works to be renewed for this new recording scheme. As for newly written materials, I decided not to write any lyrics and leave them in the state of instrumental backing track. For this reason, these things were only called New Thing with numberings added. This tune was originally numbered as  #1, the very first attempt of this series of things. By that time, I recognised that I am not capable to sing quite well so that I thought it would be better to leave my new things without adding my voice parts and hand them to someone capable to finish it, hopefully, someone who can also write lyrics and melody lines. Despite it didn't go quite well, with hindsight, I later took to call the entire scheme as The Soft Core Project.

In publishing these things in the form of videos, I changed the title from New Thing to Untitled, with a different numbering system. This thing, Untitled #2, is a candidate to be treated as one of my masterpieces.   

Joy

Written and Recorded in 1989

In the beginning of 1989, I took a time out from writing and recording my own music for about a couple of months. I don’t remember exactly why but probably I was occupied with some other things to do, especially as a student so that I could not afford taking time for making music at that period. Then, I went back to sitting at my piano in March and experienced something unusual – to witness new ideas emerging spontaneously one after another through random playing on the piano. When these ideas were organised to form a composition, writing of this tune was simultaneously completed.  Believe it or not, it took less than two weeks in total, to write this complicated composition from scratch. I called it simply Joy, to express my feeling of joy when I play music in general.

   

As Long As I Have to Live

Written in 1993 / Recorded in 1993 and 1994

A simple thing I wrote in mid-1993. This was more about an experiment in arrangement of three instruments; guitar, piano and synthesizer, to exchange each motif in turn. The title came from the associated lyrics I wrote, which had little meaning and removed from this video edition, as usual. The tune became one of flagship songs for my band called Culotte, at that time, because playing it was quite easy and I could cover a missing keyboardist’s part when we played it live (as you can see in this video). Moreover, in my perspective, it was genuine fun to play things like this with the band.

MIXOYOXIM

Written and Recorded in 1989

The main ideas for this piece of music spontaneously popped up while I was trying out the effect of a digital delay pedal plugged to my guitar in spring of 1989. When I decided to use the sampled echo sounds to fill the upbeats, I thought it would be more effective to separate the original guitar sound to one channel, and echo sound generated from the effect pedal to the other channel completely, to form a virtual symmetry consists of sounds mixed in stereo. Once this rule has been established, it didn’t take long before I completed writing the entire material including the guitar solo section, which was written on the sheet to carefully make sure each note including echoed ones are placed correctly harmonious to the flow of chord progression assigned to the bass and organ.

The title of this track was inspired by the album cover and title of AOXOMOXOA by The Grateful Dead. I wanted the tune’s title to represent its content – musical expression of symmetry – so I picked up five alphabetical letters that have symmetry forms and arranged them in this fashion, with slightly implying to a musical term; Mixolydian as well.

A Night in Persia

Written and Recorded in c. 1998

I don’t think I have suffered from any sort of dementia or any other associated mental disorder, at least through my own self-diagnosis, however, at the same time I know I have to admit that I have very little or limited memories on things I wrote or recorded in between 1997 and 1999. To be honest with you, I have no recollection on the audio track of this video until I have recently ‘discovered’ it among other audio sources I had left in the said period of time. All I can remember is, yes I tried to create something ‘oriental’ in those days and I have also discovered seemingly some blue-print versions of this work too. I don’t know why it features my own voice in the beginning, which never reappears in the rest of the recording, or how I made this recording in what manner, where and when…

The title of the track was obviously a reference to the famous jazz classic. The choice of 'Persia', rather than 'Tunisia' owes to my personal tribute to a line from Jim Morrison's When the Music's Over - 'Persian night.'

Yes It Is

Written and Recorded in 1989

As I have gained some experiences in writing pieces of music, a certain notion became clearer to me that to create a well organised Prog Rock tune with its length from six to eight minute long would be one of the most challenging things to do for me. In that sense, I admired a British Prog Rock band called Yes as one of the most successful examples in this particular form of composing style, from some of their landmark achievements such as Roundabout and Siberian Khatru. When I finished demo recording of this tune, I thought I have managed to create one of the successful examples in this sense and decided to call it in this fashion to express my homage to the main source of inspiration and influence. Also, I would like to point out that the idea to use delay effects on the electric piano part was inspired from Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow album, one of my favourites at that time, though every keyboard part was actually played by a portable mini-key in this recording.

Finally, I would like to apologise for the bad quality of the audio track, caused by damages to the original cassette tape.