Last night I wrote a very simple song, and made a pretty silly and quick recording of it using various synthesized sounds. A warning: this is not my best work, but I thought I’d share it anyways in case anyone might like it. It’s better to think of this recording as a rough sketch of some ideas that might be worthwhile developing more later. Someday I’ll re-record this with a different instrumentation, perhaps real drums and a church organ.

> Simple Life Mp3 – time 3:09 (Geoff Peters recording)

Last Tuesday I played a gig on piano with Mark White (bass) and Greg Murray (drums). I’ve posted the entire show on my web site. It was at the Happy Honda dealership in Burnaby for the unveiling of their 2008 models.

My favorite tunes from this batch are “Day in the Life of a Fool“, “Captain Marvel“, and “Footprints“. I like the tone of the electronic piano sound in Day in the Life, and this was actually the first time we had played Captain Marvel in like 3 years, so it was interesting to see what would happen. In Footprints I was experimenting with adding some major ascending/descending harmonies because I have been playing this tune for a long time and was getting tired of the basic minor-7 sound.

> Click here to view track listing and listen

According to a CBC radio program I heard this morning, a pathetic fallacy is when in writing you attribute human emotions or intentions to non-human things. I find this device is especially effective in the Linkin park song Valentines Day: “And the clouds above move closer / looking so dissatisfied”. Actually I have really enjoyed listening to their latest album, Minutes to Midnight. Great writing and well produced… the tracks are quite short (I guess to be radio friendly) but there’s a lot of variety in style here, ranging from the boisterous screaming metal rock style (No More Sorrow) to the indie-esque stripped down vocal-centric – almost “pretty” stuff (In Between), to a tune that opens with Kid-A Radio-head like electronic programming and melds into conventional rock (In Pieces). This is worth a listen (although it’s definitely “mainstream” having sold over 4 million copies since being released in May).

More info on this album: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minutes_to_Midnight_(album)

I’ve launched RobotPoetry.com, which features poems written with robots, read by robots. Click here to listen to the poems.

Found an article “Hacking Perl in Nightclubs” (click here to read) by programmer/musician Alex Mclean who states that he has been using his computer, and a language called Perl, as his exclusive musical instrument for the past few years. From the conclusion to his article:

This might all sound like a rather strange and tortured way of making music, but actually the opposite is true. It’s not strange, there is structure behind every piece of music, and it’s quite normal for composers to think of the composition of this structure in terms of a defined process. The classic example is of Mozart using dice to generate tunes. It’s not tortured either. Thanks to Perl, music generating code can be extremely fast to work with.

I had a two-keyboards jam with a coworker at lunch yesterday and we made a song in honor of our workplace. It’s a kind of electronic bluesy experimental track.

> Click here to listen to “Business Objects” by Greg Coppola and Geoff Peters (MP3, duration 2:10)

Tonight I sat down at the piano and wrote a pretty sad song. It’s called One Dance. It’s kind of nostalgic. I recorded it on my electric piano.

> Click here to listen to “One Dance”, 1 minute 47 second MP3

As always, comments are appreciated!! Email me at geoff@gpeters.com

“New Endings Old Beginnings” is a tune I wrote while jamming with the amazing drummer Colin Defreitas a few weeks ago. I perform it here, for its “world recording premiere”, as a solo piano rendition on a late 1950′s Steinway. It has an extended improvised intro and then a main melody that starts about half way through. I’m putting in a few Chick Corea influenced lines which I really like.

> Click here to listen: www.gpeters.com/tracks/solo-piano-originals/New%20Endings%20Old%20Beginnings%20(Geoff%20Peters%20Solo%20piano).mp3

MP3 Recording length 4:45
Recorded on March 4th 2007 using a Sony Minidisc MZ-NH700 and a Sony ECM-MS907 Stereo Condenser Microphone. (Also see my article: How to make your own recordings using Minidisc)

I had some fun playing around with my synthesizer and I created a quick ‘n dirty track which I call “Survive This”. Click below to listen!

> Survive This – MP3 Audio – 5 minutes – Geoff Peters solo on a Korg MS2000B

Last July I performed at a wedding at Cecil Green Park at UBC, with a great jazz quartet. I was listening back to some of the recordings from that gig, and really enjoyed them.

> Click here to listen to a live recording of “On Green Dolphin Street”.

Features:
Geoff Peters – piano
Mark White – bass
Greg Murray – drums
Kevin Shan – tenor saxophone

(Recorded July 2006 on a Sony Minidisc Recorder.)

> The rest of the recordings from that gig can be found by clicking here.