Ukulele?

I found a new favorite instrument during my last deployment. Ukulele! Small, portable, and always makes you smile. How can you not like it? I have writen one song on it so far called "Hey Baby." It is kind of goofy but was a lot of fun.

Not sure how many more I will do with the uke but I will surely never stop playing. Now I am spending my time learning some good uke covers and will get back into writing original songs later.

I do have one other song coming out soon that features classical and steel string guitar but more on that later... for now, THE UKE!

Check it out on http://reverbnation.com/groutspage for a free download.

Cells

“Cells” is like “Boots” in that it is taken from a Rudyard Kipling poem of the same name. It tells the story of a sad soldier who had at least one too many drinks one night a fought with the “corporal of the guard.” This lands him in jail for a few weeks with his wife and kids left alone. I made it into a song because I liked the poem and it is just as true to soldier life today as it was back in the day it was written.

But really, I was quite happy with how “Boots” came out so I wanted to do another Kipling poem. After combing through dozens of them I came across “Cells” and knew that it was needed to be a song.

I had been listening to a lot of Primus around the time when I wrote the music for “Cells” and I think that came through. It was definitely the strongest influence on me at that time.

I have not offered it for free download yet but I could be talked into it. If you want it, let me know. Become a fan on my revebnation.com page and send me a message for the song you most want for free. The song that gets the most requests will be my latest free download.

Creating Music on an Aircraft Carrier

I am often asked, “how do you do it?”

There are a couple of things to overcome when creating and recording on a ship. First of all, it is a very loud environment. I went through multiple setups before finding one that works. Using a mic is very hard for anything like acoustic guitar or quiet vocals. There is just too much background noise to make a decent recording most of the time. To mitigate the noise for voice, I used either the internal mic built into my macbook. Not sure how but it does a pretty good job of recording the sounds (me) close to it and not so much the background clanging and banging. Other songs, I use a standard studio mic with my hands cupping it to minimize extra noise. That would often take multiple tries to record in between unexpected outside noises.

For instruments, you can forget classical guitar unless it has a good internal acoustic pickup. Electric guitar and bass are no problem. Also, I try to program as much music as I can get away with to keep the sound clean and background noise low.

The other issue is time. The work load on an aircraft carrier is immense. There is almost always something that needs to be done at all hours of the day. Therefore, I had to get used to writing and recording snippets of songs in 15-20 minute sessions most of the time. A bit here and there everyday and before I knew it I had completed 5 songs in one deployment. The number stands at six completed now but with over 30 more in progress but no where near complete.

Finally, the issue of room to work. Simple answer is that officers have more living space so that has worked out nicely.

So that is some of the challenges of recording in a hostile sound environment. I am considering using some of those noises in the music later but have not figured out how I want to do that yet.

R U Game?

This song was born from a bass line. I was plucking away at some ideas in the living room on my bass guitar when my wife said, "That sounds like it is from a video game." That got me thinking and the song title "R U Game" actually came before the lyrics.

The bass line is the same thing I wrote while playing a 'real' instrument but I programmed it into Garageband to capture the digital videogame quality that I was going for.

R U Game is not only the latest song available to listen to on Reverbnation.com, it is also the first song available for free download!

Boots

That is the first thing you notice when you here the song. Next thing is probably the lyrics. That is less of a mystery. The song is an adaptation of the poem "Boots" by Rudyard Kipling. He is best known for creating "The Jungle Book" but he also published hundreds of poems.

Boots has had a special place in my mind ever since Navy SERE school. If you have been through it you will know what I mean, if not then I can't tell you anyway. But let's just say it is one of those experiences you never forget and this poem played a role in it. I wanted to capture the stress and tension of the poem in music. It is not meant to relax. You can listen to the song on Reverbnation.com.