Lots of older pieces from the Youtube stream on Tuesday April 18, 2023. Sometimes I’m not feeling as creative and so it’s nice to just jam out some of my older pieces. Sometimes I’ll think I’m writing something new, but it’ll just be an iteration of an older piece. That’s kind of what happened at about 10 minutes in when I realized I was just playing Fight to Make it Up. After that is a piece originally conceived in a stream a while ago that I’ve been working on over time called “Kicking Rocks” which is yet to be released. Then some Light the Flame, followed by a little creative burst, and then Nobody Said and to finish things off Reversing.

This episode comes from the live twitch stream on Thursday, April 13 2023. Once again things got a bit ambient about halfway through, turning a bit dark even at about the 30 minute mark. I’d just been joking with the live viewers about how Spotify wouldn’t allow my all music podcast on their platform, as they require any music in a podcast to be channeled through their music tool so they can extract all its monetary value, and more efficiently crush independent artistic spirit. I suppose that some of my misgivings about the ever-presence of algorithms and the control they exert in our daily lives can be felt around this moment. About 39 minutes in after some meandering I played Exposition from the album of the same name. This is followed by the piece that the episode get its name from, which viewers commented had a “rainy day tango” kind of feel to it. I finished things up with Toki Doki from the album Conclusion. Thank you to all who have listened and subscribed thus far, I truly appreciate your 5 star ratings!!

This instrumental jam comes from the Twitch stream on Thursday April 6, 2023. I was feeling in a bit of a funk to start things off, but I found my groove at around the 50 minute mark with a fun harmonic progression that allowed for a nice build. Listening back I think there were some other nice improvs in here too, with a dark and mysterious one at 43 minutes in. I also threw in some older songs of mine, including Bamboo 2 at 26:30, an instrumental version of Traveling Light at 34:30 and to finish everything off Voyage Home from Momotaro at 57 minutes.

It’s funny how at the time of doing these I sometimes feel like I’ve missed the mark, but when I listen back I’m able to hear more things that I like than I expected to. It’s kind of a nice musical journal in that way for me, since I can reflect on things in a new light and find something more positive about it all than at the time of the compositional experience. It reinforces something I’ve long felt about the whole artistic process too, which is that it’s most important to just consistently show up rather than sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike. In other words if you’re already in place chipping away at something, you’ll be perfectly poised to take advantage when inspiration does strike, as opposed to only then picking up the tools to begin the process.

Live composed on Twitch April 4, 2023

The music from this episode was all composed and performed live during a Twitch stream on March 30, 2023. Twitch username Takenobumusic.

Background music taken from episode 1 For Relaxing Times