Musician Diaries

Maple Dye · Scooter Boy  The name of this song comes from the time when I was composing it. I was taking a walk while playing with it in my head, when I saw this scene: a kid was running around with his scooter in a parking lot, when suddenly his father came and started scolding him. I can always be wrong, but the parking lot was vacant, it was an odd hour with zero activity, the kid wasn't doing anything crazy, and the way it all happened gave me instantly the impression that there wasn't any real risk there, that the father was just crushing the kid's happiness in order to give himself a power trip (and the kid noticed that too). Since that day, the melancholy of the song has always been associated for me to the condition of children, great in so many ways, but also bonded to the horrible servitude of being all the time at the mercy of an adult; if there's a truth we can all agree upon, is that nobody chooses their parents... The sonority of the background guitar ri...

Maple Dye · Unloved In the peak of the pandemic, when everything was uncertain and scary, two ideas for songs came to me. Or better said, two powerful ideas that lived in me asked at some point for expression in a musical way. One idea was "we'll get out of this shit, we always do. Hopefully the humans will learn something out of this. It will be worthwhile then, even if I don't get to see it". This idea, through the proper alchemies, turned into "When We Make It Through The Storm". The other idea was "we all have to die. If I win this nutty virus lottery, then so be it. The sad part is not that I have to die, but that, if I did, right now nobody would really give a fuck..." This idea was the kernel for "Unloved". I reflected upon my life and found a lot of love had been given by me, but not so much received. My family is not the most mentally healthy and, from year zero, everything under the "love" label was generally just hid...

Maple Dye · Puppy Linux Podcast Theme Song The theme song for a podcast I conceived in the times when Puppy Linux was my main OS, but never got around to doing; at some point I reached the conclusion that I wasn't geek enough to appeal to the typical Puppy Linux user (I'm just a "power user" after all, and not that powerful most of the time to be honest... Also, if I have to go through technical drudgery, I prefer that at least it is music related). My initial premise was doing something that sounded slightly "mechanic", showing, blatant and proudly, that it was created with a computer (a bit like Hacker Public Radio's tune), and also with an influence from 80's TV magazine shows. Sadly, a short time later I was evicted from Puppy, when I discovered that my brand new computer made an ominous, non-stop chirping whenever I used any of its versions. I guess it didn't get on well with the distro's RAM-only philosophy, which is one of its most a...

  Maple Dye · When We Make It Through The Storm Maple Dye · Potato Swing I rarely write songs about "current reality" issues, mostly because I'm a poetic being, and I know that kind of subjects are condemned not to last. However, sometimes that kind of songs happen to me. "When We Make It Through The Storm" is one of them. It was written in march/april 2020, when the frickin damn virus thing was starting and nobody knew what things were going to be like... My fear and my hope (and my fatigue of being a human, which was already at huge levels... It was like "and now, on top of it, vampires!") came through with this song, which I like a lot although I don't have the necessary distance to judge it impartially, if I ever can. Let's just hope everything works out for the best. Good luck to everyone.

  Pale Reflections by Maple Dye Here's an album so diverse that it's almost a mixtape. Some of the tracks were recorded in 2013 (and the composition of some of the song reaches back all the way to 1993!). They span through 2 countries, 5 houses, 3 audio interfaces... no wonder they are so varied. After trying different approaches for the playlist order, what I finally found was creating a bit of an "EP within an EP". The first series of songs starts with "As My Mood Goes Down" and closes with "Teaser Of Hell". From that point on, I looked at it as sort of an "after party", as if saying "OK, if you feel like it there's still more music ahead, but be warned that things are getting a bit weirder from this point on..." All in all, I listen to the collection with joy (although it will also be a "joy" to stop listening for a while after these repetitive final steps...) My favorite this round is perhaps "Oh Dirty Hap...

  Maple Dye · River Of Steps Maple Dye · Heading Out A new and flamboyant song, I guess it is folk rock, although the premise wasn't ever "I want to write a folk rock" song, I just pulled the string of the melody and it came out that way... If that's what happened, because the song was composed, incredible how time flies, almost 10 years ago, and memory has its traps. In any case, a lighter composition than the previous one (meaning both less complex and more on the happy side), in this one I'm very happy of the "embroidery" of little guitar phrases that accompany the vocals. As for "Heading Out", it was the first installment of an exercise where I challenge myself to finish something, whatever it is, in only one sitting. This one took about 3 hours, if I recall correctly. As the name of the game in this case is spontaneity, I'm publishing these songs without corrections, just like they appeared, to keep the freshness.

C Maple Dye · Oh Dirty Happiness Maple Dye · The Tides Will Change I'm trying a little experiment with my launch schedule; for the following months, I'm going to publish songs in batches of two, composed of one "full fledged, hard sweat" song, plus some other thing lighter and simpler, preferrably from my most recent inventory. The idea came simply because I noticed a lack of balance between the amount of music I have in my vaults and the amount I'm showing "in public". As a listener, I enjoy a lot of that less polished stuff, and I think other people might too; and keeping those pieces to myself in a way "poisons my blood", blocks the circuit. I need to make them at least available, potentially possible to be listened to. It also turns out that those pieces, given the long time it takes me to produce a song, are going to be more recent, closer to the year 2020, and therefore closer to my current sensitivity and the world's. Only later ...

  Maple Dye · Walk Away This power pop song was composed in the pre-Internet times. The composition has stayed steady from those arcane days, but it's interesting how, on the contrary, the production has changed a lot, and to high degree been defined by circumstances, in an example of adaptation, of resiliency. Particularly I'm thinking of the part with the keyboard melody; at first, my idea was playing a very elaborate keyboard solo, starting from the initial theme and then building up in a "psychedelic" way, a la Ray Manzarek. However, when the moment came I didn't have access to a proper keyboard, only the computer's, so I decided to do a very straightforward arrangement instead, and then filling up that section with other instruments. Time goes by, a lot of life happens, and, alas, when I'm finally going to weave a few electric guitars for that section, I found that this time it is my guitar what betrays me. Enter vocal harmonies. Maple Dye featuring ...

Maple Dye · The Prisoner Hope everybody is doing fine in these crazy, deserted times. This song might, perhaps, make someone think about the coronavirus lockdowns. But in fact, it was written almost a decade ago, and it's about a different prison -lack of communication, solitude... other "jails with no visible key"-. Who might have known that their lyrics would, with the passing of time, fit so well this other so different situation... The most optimistic previsions foresee a vaccine for March to September 2021. Let's hope that things take the optimistic turn, and, that in the meantime nobody does anything irreparably stupid... (The Muse has been generous lately, and more recent songs of mine discuss our troubled days more directly... Stay tuned. And stay safe.)

This song was inspired by a couple I knew in my twenties, part of my group of "drinking buddies". Both him and her were beautiful like Greek gods, and not only that, but also very nice people, and could outdrink you and outsmoke you (because such were our pleasures then) and leave you behind the table any day of the week. They were a bit our private deity, and while writing my song I kinda did the "role playing" of being him singing his love to her in a poetic way; the consolation of love that compensates the toil of living, the many cruel things that happen in this world. The song is full of references that are like a sentimental map for me. We shared a love for The Doors ("My Wild Love"), the "heartbeat style" of the drumming has a lot to do with Neil Young's "Harvest" for sure, there is a tip of the hat to Lenny Kravitz too ("Welcome to the Real World")... Those days, those laughters no longer exist, but this ...

Waiting for Dumber by Black Sheep Riot Three tumultuous years have gone into the creation of this album, which dabbles in styles like melodic hardcore punk, garage, stoner... All the good stuff. Hope you enjoy it.

This song was written as an entry for the Nexus Challenge contest, whose premise this year was to submit a composition "in the way of..." some known artist. (In this case, I think it's self evident, I chose Bob Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan). The proximity of the deadline (plus my atrocious work in process queue) imposed minimalism: voice and guitar, recorded in quite hellish circumstances. In fact, there was a moment the day before the deadline, where I told myself "Do I really want to try? What for?". But I forced myself to finish, even with all the stains and imperfections and mud, because 1) the alternative was increasing my pile of half-finished stuff, and 2) I wanted to launch something quick as a way to get an overview of all my processes, by running something through them from beginning to end. The result is this song of which I'm mostly proud of the lyrics (ah, where would I be by now without sense of humor...)

The I Ching book is my favorite fortune-telling resource, I come to it every now and then for guidance, and there is a figure that appears very often, and with a particular intensity: the wanderer. "He who has few friends is the wanderer". "The wanderer has no home, the road is his home". "The wanderer must be careful to only stop around good people"... I'm afraid my destiny has a lot to do with this description, and I wrote this song around that concept, together with Edgar Allan Poe's "All I loved I loved alone": the "roads" I'm speaking of are not noisy crowded highways, but the roads for those who like to walk at their own pace and sightsee. Many of the things I love are not popular anymore, and it saddens me to think that the moment I'm not there to love them, no one else will do. A ternary tempo plus a medieval scale is always an unbeatable combination for an intimate ballad of this kind, as you can see i...

This song was born totally by accident; I was trying to find some kind of online buddy to help me with the mixing and mastering drudgery, so I thought it would be a good idea to put together the simplest of songs, maybe guitar and a couple of voices, so we could start with something simple and my collaborator didn't get scared. Lo and behold, I wrote this song but then I "listened" to that oscillating sound that comes from the bottom in the middle section (I think inspired by an arrangement in Bob Dylan's "Forever young"). And once you "listen" to something, if you're a musician worth your salt, you cannot "unlisten" it. That effect was very difficult to pull off and the process (together with other mistakes and inexperiences of mine), ended the patience of my mixer collaborator. Aw dang... Of course it's hard to establish binds via internet, speaking of music is like dancing architecture, etc... As for the song, I'm...

As I deepen the knowledge of my processes, I stumble upon revelations that the usual "speaking brochures" of YouTube and the like rarely discuss. One has been the different uses you can get out of EQ, depending on the context or intention in which you're using it (I guess this works the same way with all of the tools of the trade). The usual, conventional explanation of EQ would say something like this: it's selective volume. Each knob allows you to turn the volume up or down for a simple "section" of the sound (the most intuitive way to understand it is thinking of those CD players where you can pump up "bass", middle or "treble" independently -simply slice the sound in thinner slices, and that's it-. What the explanation leaves out is the things you can do with this sound sculpting tool. So far I've found 3 different ways to use EQ, which belong in different parts of my process: Shaping EQ : this one is used in the "FX...

More and more lately, I'm in a mood where I enjoy very convoluted music. Music that does not come easy, that feels almost like noise in the first listening (and, therefore, does not demand much of your attention), and you have to "work your way" through it listening after listening until you get to recognize something familiar. Some of the albums I've been listening to, and which satisfy this criteria by very different means, are: *Phil H. Anselmo and The Illegals, "Walk through exits only" *Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, "Trout Mask Replica" *Incantation, "Onward to Golgotha" *The Shaggs, "Philosophy of the World" With more to come. I don't know, it's like, the disjointed and creepy state the world is in (at least the world I live in), needs, asks for a soundtrack equaly disjointed and, yes, often creepy. Anything less than that feels false and a waste of time...

There is a running joke among the continuous improvement community about the sentence "be more careful". A common advice among people who "just do" (as opposed to plan-do-check-act), it's quite a waste of breath and saliva; people is already as "careful" as they can, unless they don't give a rat's ass about the task, in which case, your admonition is not going to have much impact. The problem is that there are a lot of things to be-more-careful about, so why need a system and some kind of learning repository. Repeating "Be more careful" like a parrot, happens after the fact, and doesn't cut it. That's why we need processes to do things. A process usually is composed of those aha moments where you go "here's where I could be careful here". You record it, you try it, and that's how you improve. I've discovered, however, an element that is even below be-more-careful in utility for improvement: cursing. For e...

A combination of cool features in my current DAW (Reaper) has allowed me to create something that looks a lot like the road signs you see while you're driving. It makes for a great experience, and also reduces mistakes and the time it takes to rehearse things. I'm loving it and I hope it lasts and I can build upon it. The features required are: 1) enabling the option that makes the playhead stay at the center of the screen (therefore the waveforms scroll when you play the song). 2) Creating a track for empty items with text. (I've customized this one so I only need a keypress, and each annotation comes with a different, random color). Once I've done that, I play the song and start to rehearse on top the track I want to record (in this first experience, it was a bass track). When I stumble at some point, I stop the playing (I "pull the andon"), and make a note of warning. Just as with traffic signs, to be effective, the note must be put a bit earlier, where I c...

It has saddened me in these days knowing of the passing of Keith Flint, singer of the band Prodigy. He was more or less my age. And he has died by his own hand. Although rock and metal are my go-to styles of preference, I also frequent other genres, and also in my times I even had a brief (but intense) dive into the world of clubbing. I had sympathy for Prodigy in the distance. I got to know them one day when I randomly switched on the TV to find the obscure, creepy video of "Breathe". "What the hell is this?" In any genre, you can do it well or choose the wimpy way. Prodigy have always sounded authentic and edgy to me, a bit of a "punk" faction inside dance music. I don't know (I haven't wanted to know) the particular circumstances of Flint's death. But it always saddens me when these unique musicians pass away (I thought the same with Dolores O'Riordan, although in her case I never really "got" the Cranberries). When people in t...

I wrote this song a long time ago, at a friend's house, the day after surviving a serious attempt of suicide with pills. Besides the song itself, it testifies the state I was in the fact that I recorded it on a tape, and the tape ran out, and I didn't bother to re-record or complete the missing part and just left it at that, until many years later. It's horrible when you're in your 20s, and your inner circle is mostly composed of cretins, and "the outside world" is what you see in the news, and you suffer every day and simply don't think you have the resources to deal with it. Why publishing a song like this? Am I a sadist? Well, as any human being, and perhaps more as an artist, I try to "tune-in", to attend to the needs of the present moment. Suicide is one of the rampant, outrageous epidemics we're suffering right now, and, in addition, it is also kind of a taboo. And I think, by making this anguish manifest, instead of leaving it i...