Is there a better place for a lake house than the sun? Yes. But would Lake House on the Lake be a better title? No. Sometimes art doesn't have to make sense, it just needs to be pretentious.

10/19/2022: Update! I was never fully satisfied with the chorus. For some reason, it always felt a little…I don’t know empty? Maybe just listless and unsatisfying. Like all the best relationships! You know, the ones that start out great but by the end of it you just want to try sleeping in a lake?

So I added a guitar. In my experience, that solves everything.

This one started as a reprise for a song called Sapphire, which my band Baby Luna may or may not record some day before we die. I was just playing my riff quietly during rehearsal one afternoon, with the delay pedal on and the strings palm-muted, and it created the echoing effect you can hear in this recording.

I liked it so much, I built a new version of the song out of it, writing entirely new guitar sequences to place over the top of the first riff. The rest of the band liked it so much we decided to put it on the album; you know, in twenty-thousand years when it’s finally done.

But while working on it, it occurred to me that it would fit perfectly for a mysterious, supernatural song that some of the characters hear in eponymous short story, contained within the Battle-Hymn of Forgiveness collection. Available here, on this very website! …Kind of.

Anyway, now I plan to use this song in that audiobook, to be released just days before the album I mentioned.

What does the title mean, you might be asking yourself? Fine, I'll tell you; though I really think you should find better things to do with your time than ask yourself things like that.

It's a line from a short story I'm working on but have not yet published. It's meant to express the sort of regret that comes from living a lifetime filled with old mistakes, and looking back with a sort of melancholy satisfaction at the days when the consequences of our mistakes were less severe.

So: what does all that nonsense have to do with the song itself? (Shrug) I don't know. You're so smart, you figure it out.

I initially meant for this one to be darker, maybe even terrifying. So I wrote the big, sonic blasts that open the song...and then built a bunch of other stuff around it that didn’t fit at all, and actually changed the tone of the song completely. But by then I looked it too much to throw it out.

So just I had to come with a better name for it. Or it least a more fitting name. I mean, the original name was going to be Blood Gurgles. So...I mean, compared to that, anything sounds pretty good, right?

Anyway, I initially just recorded it with a lot of horns in the chorus, but for some reason it wasn't working the way I wanted to. And since in the past my answer to that was to just add some guitar, I did it again! And once more, to some indeterminate effect. Now, you can barely even hear the three separate trumpet parts I wrote for it. It’s just guitar. Is it better?…

…I mean, it's different. That's something, right?

This is a different kind of song for me, structurally. My previous songs have all been structured much more like standard rock or pop songs, with a verse and a chorus, and maybe a bridge or something for variety. This one, though, is essentially the same basic progression repeated three times at three different levels of intensity. It starts slow with the strings, then builds to the piano segment, and then ends with some guitar; suites, I guess you could call them. I mean, it's your life; do what you want with it, you know?

The title is based off the opening suite: I wanted to write something that would sort of convey the wonder and the mystery of stumbling upon the long-lost, forgotten ruins of some dead civilization.

Also, you may notice a trend with these most recent songs: there's more guitar than there used to be. And the drums are much more like a standard drum set, rather than, say, an orchestra battery of percussion. That's because I felt like it. And I have nothing to say on the matter.

Where are the Andul mountains, you ask? Why, nowhere! They are a range of mountains that I mention occasionally in passing in a few of the stories that I have already published. But I have pretty big plans for them hills. And in a hundred or so years, I might actually get around to writing the novels about them.

Until then, you’ll have to be content with this song.

It is the rare composition where I already had the tile before I wrote the music. I liked how the name sounded, and was interested in the idea of writing something that was deliberately intended to convey a specific mood, rather than try and find words to fit what I had already recorded - as I have normally done it.

Whether or not that was successful is now a private matter of public record. Either way, I really like some of the melodies that dance around in this one.

If you don't, then I pity you...while also acknowledging that everyone has - and is entitled to - their own opinions and tastes when it comes to music, and all other forms of art…

…except for sandwich art. That’s just clever marketing for sub-par fast food.

As for your opinions on art, again: they are your own.

And I respect that; but I still disagree with you.

Most of the time I enter into a new song with a specific goal. But I didn't start with anything in mind for this one. I just had the strings with which it opens bouncing around in my head, so I mapped them out in the software. Then I built the rest of the song around it throughout the next day or two.

When I was done, I found that the song, despite the fact that the chorus gets a little darker in overall tone, had many upbeat, almost cheerful little sections. It kind of reminded me of a little ship, bobbing along with the waves of the ocean. So I just needed a title that would convey that, but also allow for the darker parts of the song as well. Hence Swallowed By the Insatiable Sea.

Personally I think I nailed it; but feel free to keep your own opinions on the matter to yourself.

No, please: I insist.

This the scratch track for the song that inspired “The Hymn of Forgiveness”. One of the guitars was recorded with 5 microphones, the other was just DI’d into an audio interface. And the drums were written into a recording software; they aren’t actual drums. But I like how it sounds, and can’t wait to hear the final version. Can you? Yeah. Yeah, you probably can.

This one is technically not done; I still need to finish EQing and mixing the drums. But I got excited about it and put it here. It will eventually have vocals as well. They have been written, I just haven’t gotten around to recording them yet. B

No know what you’re thinking: “does this guy ever finish anything before moving on to something else?”

Well, you could look at like that, if you’re a pessimist. That’s why I prefer to think of it like you always have something new to look forward to…

…And it’s because of me!

This is a remixed version of the very first song I ever recorded and engineered myself.

While listening to that song - included here and titled Baby Luna - I thought it was kind of a shame that there wasn’t more of the climax. It just kind of felt like you spent the entire song waiting for the music to explode, to release all of that tension it had been holding in; but when it finally does, it’s over in like ten seconds. So I wanted to lengthen that climax.

And then as I was doing that, the thought occurred to me that it might sound kind of cool to add some strings in the background of the guitars; well, the string part kept growing, and now the final climax is actually the orchestration in the front of the mix with the guitars in the background. So, in what you will find to be a theme with these songs, it did not turn out the way that I had intended; and it is maybe the better for it.

Still good, though.

It is named after the final, climactic confrontation in the The Sword of Vathir , in the background of which I imagined it playing. Some people get in a fight in a forest with fireflies. Mystery solved.

I got so excited after doing the orchestrations that went underneath the original version of the song, that I decided I wanted to try and do an entire song of them. Initially my thought was to try and recreate the original guitar parts with a symphony, but as I started working on it I realized that that is boring. Why not just build something reminiscent of the original, but still new?

I don't know if I succeeded at that, but I like it anyway. So there.

This is the original version of what became Blood, Oaths and Fireflies. There’s no orchestration. Just guitar, drums, and bass. I like it anyway.

The tile is sort of an accident. It’s named for one of my friend’s daughters, who had just been born and to whom he referred frequently as “the baby, Luna.” I thought it would be a good name for the band we were in, and so when I was working on this song I put that in the title. The sub-title, “I Swear I’ll Get it Right This Time”, was an annotation I added to a specific version of the mix because I kept doing it wrong. But it turns out to match the song’s melancholy and longing, so I kept it.

This one kind of got away from me…

I wanted to do a song that was mellow and peaceful, that would work for the background of someone walking through a forest or something. Instead it turned into a huge pile of bombast. But…

I learned a lot about the software and plugins and engineering orchestration while doing it, so while it did not turn out as I intended, it was still what I consider to be a success. If nothing else it was certainly a moral victory.

And just for clarification, yes: most of my victories are moral, and all of my successes look like failures to everybody else.

Then again, how many websites full of books and musics do you have? Maybe don’t be so critical.

Completing my "songs named after celestial bodies" trilogy, this was my second attempt to do an upbeat, peaceful song. Once again, it did not turn out as intended; and once again, it is better off for it.

This was also my first use of those conga drums that you hear in the Verse portion. I liked them so much that when I started Lake House on the Sun, I went into knowing only two things: the main chord progression upon which it is built, and that I was going to use the congas again. All in all, I consider this to be a better version of what Birth of a Sun turned into.

I’ve had a problem in the last couple of mixes with the kick drum on the chorus creating a lot of ambient noise. I think I’ve solved it, or it has made me deaf. If you hear it, let me know; I’ll keep working on it.

I'll be honest: this song probably doesn't belong here. Along with Will-Call, it is the least appropriate for background music in an audiobook; a thing that might, itself, be a gigantic mistake anyway. But I like it, so here it is.

This is also another song for which I have written lyrics and vocals, but have not yet recorded them. Why, you might ask?

Because you keep asking me that. Maybe shut up and leave me alone once in a while, and I’ll have time to finally do all of these things I keep promising to do.

See? I knew I could make it your fault if I just applied myself…

I used to think that synth music was lame. “Use real instruments, if you’re so great,” I thought. Then I started playing that new Saints Row game, and the only station I would listen to in the car was their Synth Wave radio station. Because it turns out that I loved it!

So much so that I decided to try my hand at it. This is my first attempt. What does the title mean? Nothing! I just thought it sounded cool. Isn’t that great?