Sayonara (A Haiku)

Here's another song collaboration between my ex-friend Javier Contreras and I. The lyrics and melody were written by my friend, and I did the production and the arrangement.  This is a simple song following the rules of a Haiku; a 5-7-5 syllable poem.  The cool thing about this song is that the music also follows the rules of the Haiku in measures.  For the most part the music is all electronic.  The main guitar part was played for one measure then sampled and repeated throughout the rest of the song.  There are three main vocal tracks, two playing at the same time, each with different EQ settings, one concentrating on the mid frequencies, and one on the high frequencies.  The third vocal track was put though an auto-tuner set to auto tune everything to one note.  This made the track sound computerized.  Then with automation, I set the auto tune note to different notes at different parts of the song to create a melody while mantaining the computerized sound.  The background vocals were reversed.

The main idea was to have fun with the song, experiment with it, and keep it simple.  Speaking about experimentation and fun, the clashing sound at the end of the song came by sampling an electric drill while engaging the locking mechanism, then it was pitched down by about 200%.  There are more things in there that I won't go into, after all, I don't want to give my producing secrets away.  Just kidding about that last part.  Why is this song called Sayonara?  Well, the idea was that the Hauku originated in Japan, so sayonara was the first thing that popped into my mind.  Well, it's 2:10 am and I need to go to sleep.  Hope you enjoy the song.  I really enjoyed working on it. 

Here are the lyrics:

Sayonara

© 2009 Javier Contreras/Jesse Acosta

The sun came today

Before and after the rain

To dry up my face

My Motto

I think I've finally put my life in three short sentences.

Life

by Jesse Acosta 

Music keeps me alive.

Solitude keeps me company.

Dreaming keeps me young.

This is and will be my motto.

Cheers!

Human Logic

I've written a few songs, but I've never written one in Spanish, which is my first language, until now. I present to you Human Logic,  my first Spanish song.  I'm happy to say that I played all instruments and sang all parts.  Also, I produced and mixed the song.  Here are the lyrics:

He escrito unas cuantas canciones mas nunca he escrito una cancion en español hasta ahora.  Les presento "Human Logic", my primer cancion en español.  Me da gusto decir que toqué todos los intrumentos y canté todas la partes.  Tambien, produje y mezclé la cancion.  Aquí esta la letra:

Human Logic

(© Jesse Acosta 2009)

Ahora es tiempo de vivir tu vida como quieras tú

Lo bueno es malo y lo malo ya no existe más aun

El hombre "tonto" cree en cosas que no se pueden probar

El hombre "sabio" cree que un mono es su papá

El rico es pobre y el pobre es rey en casa de su Dios

El hombre vivo muere mas el muerto en Cristo vivirá
Ahora es tiempo de vivir tu vida como quieras tú

As always you can listen to the song on the music player on the left of your screen. If you like it and want the MP3, please write a comment and I'll post the link to the song where you can download it.

Puedes escuchar la cancion en el reproductor de MP3 a la izquiera de esta pagina. Si te gusta y quieres el MP3, escribe un commentario y pondre el "link" donde podras descargar la cancion.

Jesse
3:49 AM

Another Birthday

I don't know if it was just bad timing, but this birthday kind of sucked. And I'm talking about how I felt turning 33 and not about how other people celebrated my birthday.  Every one that celebrated my birthday did a great job, especially my co-workers; who spent extra time photoshopping pictures of me and taped them almost everywhere around the office.  I hope how I felt about my birthday this time around wasn't because of the extra number of years--I hope that the true cause was indeed bad timing.   To top things off, I got strep throat ON MY BIRTHDAY! And the bad thing is, I have to wait 361 days to see if it was bad timing, or if birthdays are not fun after 32.  This year 2009 is a very special one to me.  First, I turned 33, the age believed to have been Jesus' age when he was crucified (and resurrected.) Second, it is the 20 anniversary since I left my home country of Mexico and came to live in the U.S.  Uh..this is shaping to be a long topic and it's about 3:45 AM and I need to rest.  We shall continue this topic later. 

Happy Easter!

PS - Sorry for not updating this blog sooner, but I've been working on a lot of things.