Goodbye, AYCJ

Well, it was fun while it lasted. I didn’t succeed at writing a song on every flight, but I was able to post a song after eight of the >20 flights I flew during the AYCJ pass.

Click here to listen to them, and feel free to keep up with my musical progress over at my Soundcloud account.

Thanks for following my challenge – see you at the next AYCJ!

Song 8: Buffalo (wrote in 20 minutes!)

Whew!! NYC->Buffalo was only a 45 minute flight… which means that after subtracting those infamous take-off and landing “no electronics” periods, I only had around 20 minutes to work with.

Here it is… it’s very short but I’m satisfied with the beat and the spacey intro sounds. As for the rest… well, it’s a 20 minute song.

Unmastered, unpolished, jetHobo at his rawest. Listen up!

Song 7: Houston

Click here to listen to the song I wrote yesterday on the flight from Houston->NYC

I finally found a net connection fast enough to upload this song! NYC turns out to be a desolate land of slow WIFI and slow 3G internet.

I wrote this yesterday on the flight from Houston->NYC… unfortunately I had to cancel my Puerto Rico trip this week due to spending a few extra days with family in Houston. While in Houston, I was able to record a few vocal tracks for a few of the existing songs, but I’m not really satisfied with the lyrics. I’ll be re-recording them once the trip is complete and I’m back at my studio in Houston, mid-October.

You may have noticed that I skipped “Song 6″ in my list… that’s because, well – I broke the rules. I didn’t write a song on the Long Beach->Houston flight, but hummed a few ideas into my iPhone voice recorder (Voxie! it’s amazing) at the airport. Since hums are approximately 52% more embarrassing than than software instruments, I decided to withhold it until I have time to score it out in Logic & upload. I’ll be limiting myself to the ~2.5hr flight time, so it should sound similar to the others (in a “I cobbled this together on an airplane” sort of way)

Let me know what you think about the song, and thanks for following my progress!

Song 5: Portland

I can’t believe I’m almost half way through the trip already!

I already feel myself being able to sketch out ideas much quicker in Logic Studio (the software I’m using on my laptop). I was able to whip this song out in 1:30, then spent 30 minutes tweaking the sounds.

I’m very happy with how it turned out – this is my favorite song so far, but I’m still hearing it quite a bit differently in my head than how it sounds currently. I’ve been using Native Instrument’s Komplete 5 for most of the orchestral sounds, I think they sound incredible and are much less snooty than real classical musicians.

This Thursday I will be in Houston, my home town where all of my studio gear is sitting around. I plan to record as many vocal tracks as possible, I can’t wait to work on the old songs more.

Song 4: Seattle

This was a five hour flight, so no excuses on this one! I focused again on getting the drums sounding decent and thinking up some interesting rhythms.

My laptop battery died at the 3hr point, and my secondary battery decided to not work at all – but I think the song turned out well.

As with the others, the higher pitched electric piano track is what I’m planning on being the vocal melody eventually.

Tell me what you think!

Song 3: Boston

I had ~2hrs to create this song while on the plane from Chicago->Boston. This time I was feeling a lot more creative, and there was minimal turbulence, so I think it turned out a lot better than Chicago’s sketch.

I just finished writing lyrics to New York’s song – expect a new version within the next few days! I’m going to try to record the vocals using the laptop’s built-in mic… which is torture for me because I’m incredibly picky about audio quality – but rules are rules: Laptop only!

I spent most of this sketch’s time working on the drum sound. The beginning is a bit too dark… I might change up the chord progression a bit or switch out some new instruments.

Thanks for keeping up with my progress – Tell me what you think, RTs are much appreciated!

Click here to listen to Boston’s Rough Mix

Second flight – Chicago

Ugh, this flight was short! I winced when the pilot announced that we’d arrive 15 minutes ahead of schedule. I had a very hard time thinking up ideas for this song. I suspect that the combination of it being a late flight, me forgetting dinner, and having ideas for New York’s song stuck in my head all played serious roles in squashing my creativity this go-round.

I was tempted not to release this song because it’s so underproduced… but I’ll be here in Chicago for four days, so that will give me a chance to improve it and re-post.

I find myself spending at least 50% of the flight auditioning different patches to see which sound acceptable, so I think I’m going to design some new synths to have ready ahead of time, and sample some organic noise from Chicago to use in this song’s final mix. (mic sounds of the streets)

I can’t believe how hard it was to come up with a song idea for this flight. This challenge is teaching me a lot about how to make due with the best ideas at hand, regardless of whether or not I feel a “writer’s block”. Tonight I couldn’t get New York’s song out of my head. I came up with several exciting melodies, only to realize that they were essentially the same song as last time.

So here it is… it’s not my finest and sounds very video-game-ish, but enough apologizing – I said I’d post something after each flight regardless of quality.

Expect a revised version in a few days, of both New York and Chicago. New York’s coming along very nicely… lyrics ~60% written, will be recording them on my puny laptop mic, then redoing on real mics at the end of the trip.

Thanks for following me!

First Flight: Tampa to New York City

Wooow it’s already begun! Today I began my much-anticipated thirty day trek around the country on jetBlue’s All You Can Jet (AYCJ) pass.

This was my first time flying jetBlue, and I must say it was a very comfortable experience! The seats have plenty of legroom (not that it matters to someone my height…), and there are several other notable perks… but I’ll end my jetBlue advertisement here. That’s what their website’s for, right?

I felt really inspired while staring outside at the beautiful sky, and decided that I needed to challenge myself creatively with all of these hours in the air.

I’ve been really wanting to start writing more music, but can never find the time. So, I’m challenging myself to write and record a simple song idea on every flight I fly this month. Naturally, all of these will be very “MIDI” sounding and poorly mixed due to the roaring jet engine next door, but I hope to re-record my favorites once I’m back at my home studio in October.

So, here goes… my first song idea of the trip:

Let me know what you think!

Here are the rules I’ve set for myself for this challenge:

• No sampled loops, ever! - I’ve never really been a fan of them, where’s the fun in using other artists’ rhythms/melodies?
• My laptop is my only instrument – all songwriting must be done on the laptop, and all keyboarding must be done on, well… the keyboard.
• I must post something after each flight – regardless of how rough of a cut it is, it must be posted. The pressure’s on! It can be improved at a later date and reposted, but the key objective is to capture the ideas, not to necessarily make them sound good.