My name is Manuel and I am a regular dude who plays music and wants to better himself one day at a time. I've spent many years on the Blogosphere, but have never bothered to have one myself.
I've decided to change that and keep track of my own changes of mind, body, and soul along with my progress in writing/recording music and a book. Hopefully I finally finish something I've started.
“Murder!” cried the Queen is the silly name we randomly said while recording the reference track for this song. We actually have enough rough tracks now to provide another two previews. I’m gonna try to put them up each week.
This song is one of our most technical, but in my opinion, the one that flows like buttah. I appreciate ya lending it an ear. :)
So here is a quick preview to show that I am indeed still working on music and we are definitely going to do a demo. This is an extremely rough track (it’s really just for our own reference as we tweak and perfect the song), but we managed to get a decent sound with a bit of a ghetto setup. I figured it was decent enough to share. I hope you guys dig it!
I’m actually just quoting The Miracle Worker…nothing we have has a name, especially our band! Ok, well we named a few songs. Servomechanism, Vanquish, and Transitions so far. Two songs (one still in the writing process) remain unnamed, but that’s alright. It’s funny to think we’ve actually been a band for almost a year, though on and off, and still don’t have a name. We have got to be the most indecisive group of Puerto Ricans that have ever graced the land.
Nevertheless, music is going well! Today is another practice and I am of course excited. Our drummer Jason has written a sweet melodic death metal epic of Opeth proportions, so that’s probably what we will end up focusing on. The other songs are getting tighter, but there is the occasional part we need to work on. Nothing beyond our abilities or control.
My writing has not been as productive, however. Maybe it’s work, maybe it’s something else, or maybe…just maybe - I’m lazy. The latter is the most likely. I will get back to work on it, though. I am sure of this. It’s just a bit intimidating to imagine writing something of any length when there is such a vast amount of literature out there that is beyond anything I could even come close to understanding. Being “another person writing a story” makes it seem so insignificant, but maybe I need to focus on writing this for myself. It isn’t about who will read it (no one) nor about what anyone else thinks; I should write to express myself in an art form.
Celebrate productivity, folks! Do what you have been meaning to!
It’s kinda funny how things work.
Something interesting happened this past Thursday. My previous band actually got together and had our first practice in months. It turns out we will be sticking together and continuing our music writing. Needless to say, I am pretty damn stoked for this. Music is my heart and soul and the jams we’ve been working on are coming together nicely.
So, next step is to continue our songwriting (we do have 4 songs, a couple of which are aren’t short by any means) and record a demo. I won’t bother giving a timeframe, but I don’t see it taking too long from here.
To anyone reading, I will definitely utilize this page to keep track of how we are doing from clips of our songs to snippets of lyrics and art :)
Much like myself, I dare say.
Here I am again writing a small bit about how one thing fell through and I suppose I’ll just “start another”. I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve decided to go back to square one and see if it works out this time. Maybe there’s a pattern? Maybe square 2, 3, and 4 just so happen to be the same in each occurrence? Yeah, probably.
Fuck it, though - we’re doing it again. And we’re going to make sure we do it right this time. What are you talking about Manny? Lotsa shit. But specifically, this:
Ever since I was a young dork, I have always wanted to write a book. Something absolutely weird, abstract, futuristic, and preferably emotionally disturbing. I’m going to go ahead and start planning that.
The other thing kind of tags along that idea. When I first started this blog, I was in the beginning of writing music around a story concept. The idea was to write some sweet songs, record them, etc and end up with a small DIY concept album. It is much easier said that done, but some stuff slowed me down so it never got “done” anyway. I’m going to do that, too. And it’s going to go along with the book.
So let’s recap or here’s a tl;dr for those who are as impatient as myself: I am going to be turn up the knob on my ambition and put good use to my spare time. I am starting to plan/write a book that I will also be writing music about. Kinda like how Coheed & Cambria works, but I won’t be doing a graphic novel.
I will use this site to post updates on both and even talk about life and shit. I know there are people around me that care about and love me, but they may not be interested enough in all this. That’s fine, really - I will do it for myself. Hopefully to prove a point to myself; I can finish what I start.
Thanks for reading :]
So I’ve got news to share:
My music writing has slowed down to what I can only describe as a halt…but in good reason. I decided to contact a friend of mine that has been there in small windows throughout these past few years that I’ve always wanted to work with. Believe it or not, our first meeting when we were teens ended up is us playing a cover of Cicatriz ESP by The Mars Volta.
We met up again very recently and our musical tastes, though varied and eclectic, clicked. It came to be decided that we’d try some things out and attempt to get a project going. I presented my concept and it seemed to provide a decent basis for which to begin upon.
TLDR - I’m trying to not to be a bedroom-project playing nerd and actually work with some artists.
I’m not writing on here as often as I’d like (it’s a nice output for my mind-garbage) and it’s pretty nice to have something to post about. I will hopefully have another reason to do so soon.
Asked by dasboles
That sounds good to me, bud. I will hook you up with the details :]
Asked by dasboles
That’s not a bad call, but I in turn have a question for you. I have the concept of this album mostly laid out. Do you think I should share the overall story and make it known or should I leave it to listener-ambiguity? I’ve had that question in mind for quite a while and have yet to come to much of a decision.
I did already post this on my Facebook, but I figured it makes a lot of sense to upload it here. This is a small preview of one of the songs I’ve been working on for the record. The tracks you’re hearing (guitar, bass, piano) will all be reperformed and rerecorded and are really only meant for reference, but I figured it sounded okay enough to share and make this whole concept for tangible for me and those interested.
On September 1st of 2009, my good friend Abe and I released an album titled “Welcome The Hunter” as the band Isildur. It’s available online if you are interested. To be honest, it was pretty mediocre, but it was my first venture into real songwriting and audio engineering. Since then (I just realized how long ago that was) I want to say I’ve matured as both a musician and an engineer, so I’m hoping my new musical influences and skills will result in a much more impressive work. In this preview alone, some of my newfound jazz influence comes through. I’m looking forward to infusing that into some of these jams to make some dark, but oddly funky stuff.
The song you’re hearing here is 100% written and all reference tracks have been recorded (I’m not including vocals…that’s another story). Other than that, a second song is being written and I’ve already started tracking drums. Therefore, I’d say this album is about 20% written, which is a good thought to keep in the back of my extremely impatient mind.
On another note, I’m down to 271lbs which makes me a whole 7 pounds lighter. I’ve been really working on self-control and “keeping my eye on the prize.”
PS: You may see some posts or answers from “Breathless By Fire”. I’m still kinda new to this tumblr thing and made one called that a long time ago. This will probably be the name I release this CD under, but I’m still on the fence about that.
