Riffs

So, here are some random riffs of mine, both for the guitar and ukulele, so far unconnected to any larger piece of music.

A Little Mischief

I've since added a little more to "Bleak," but I don't have a midi of that draft to post.

Bleak

Many of my riffs and songs began when I put my fingers over random frets and seeing what kind of chord it made. I thought this one had a nice East Asian flavor. I play this one as close to the bridge as possible to get that tinny sound.

Pagoda

The title of the next one is obviously a play on "Dust in the Wind," from which I got the picking pattern.

Lint in the Breeze

Here's another little riff that began as a random chord that I liked.

Pyramid

This last one is an ukulele riff. The title is a combination of Flea, the model of ukulele I play, and blue, since this is played in a blues scale.

Flue

That's it for now. Most of my subsequent updates will probably be single riffs like this, since they're easier to come up with than complete songs.

Loss, The March of Time

I'm not usually one to get my emotions out through creativity. Art and music are things I do for happiness and enjoyment, not to express my depression, anger, or neuroses (not that I necessarily have depression, anger, and neuroses). However, about a year ago, I had my heart broken, and I attempted to do just that. Here is the result. It didn't make me feel any better. The self-pity is palpable in these notes.
The main "dun-dun" melody of this song, and the one following, is highly influenced by this, a background song from Super Castlevania IV.

Loss

A few weeks later, I reworked the main theme into a new song. This one is much more trudging and ominous, and less mournful. It's a product of creativity, rather than sadness. It's also one that I really need to record, because it probably sounds fairly boring in midi. Too bad I don't have a microphone anymore.
I play this song a lot, and it's growing naturally. If I play it enough, the last part of the song will eventually let me know what needs to come next. It's a very active work in progress. This version is actually unfinished; there are subsequent riffs that I have not added to it yet.

The March of Time

I feel that both of these songs have their moments, but I'm more creatively involved with the second one.

Autumn

I have an odd little instrument from a thrift store. It looks kind of like an autoharp, but without the auto part. Its range is very limited and it's probably out of tune, but I like picking out little melodies on it. Here is one of those melodies adapted for the guitar, but set to different midi instruments.

Autumn

Dance with Darkness

If a melody comes too easily to you, beware. You might be subconsciously copying it from another song.
I came up with the main theme of this song one afternoon. I liked it, and created what I think are some nice riffs based on it, but it seemed...familiar. I mulled it over, and several days later, I realized why. The first two phrases of the melody are basically the Law and Order theme music. Crap. I liked this song, too. Oh well, maybe no one will notice.

Dance with Darkness

Unsure Dawn

Like "The Stars," this is another song in which I played with the chords and the string picking patten for quite a while before it solidified into a song.
Ever so slightly influenced by Tubular Bells, but it's not obvious. I'm not crazy about the title, so if I take this further that'll probably change.

Unsure Dawn

The Stars

Sometimes I play around with certain melodies, chords, and note patterns for quite a while before a song emerges out of it. This song is an example of that. I played the opening guitar riff, or riffs similar to it, for well over a year before a song solidified out of it.
As I wrote this song and listened to it, I got feelings and images of a man looking out of a spacecraft window out at the heavens. Wonder and unease at the vastness of the universe, profound isolation, weightlessness.
That's what I get out of this song, anyway.
The instrument that comes into the mix at 1:00 is supposed to have vibrato, but for whatever reason PowerTab (the program I use to make these songs) doesn't want it to.

The Stars

Shadow Over the Land

This is my attempt at a sort of spaghetti western soundtrack song. Very unfinished.

Shadow Over the Land

The Dark Child

This song is an experiment in harmonies and note pairings. The previous sentence might be redundant. A very dark, low song.

The Dark Child

Cage of Thought and Flesh

What a profound title, eh? Hah.
A bombastic brass intro followed by some metallic guitar riffage. Inspired somewhat by Pantera's Cowboys from Hell.
This is my favorite of my more heavy metalish songs. It's still one I'd like to finish.

Cage of Thought and Flesh

Ruins

This is the most blatantly videogamish song I've written. It's based on a background song from the Japanese Super Nintendo game Seiken Densetsu 3. I'd post a link to that song for comparison, but my web browser is being a bit cantankerous at the moment, so that'll have to wait.

This is a complete song, done almost in one sitting. I consider this song one of the most successful things I've ever made in any medium. It's one of the few songs of mine that I listen to on a regular basis.

Ruins

Crossroads

This was inspired by the music playing during the end credits of the movie "Spanglish." I have both a midi and an enhanced version, and I'd recommend listening to both of them, since there's a fairly marked difference between them.
At the tail end of the midi, you can hear the first line of another melody, which I never finished.

Crossroads midi

Crossroads remix

Richter

As in richter scale. A quick, low, rolling guitar riff.

Richter

Sludge

You'll forgive me if I say that I like this song a lot. Writing it was a very fun experiment in note relationships, atonality, and combining both major and minor harmonies. The only thing I don't like are the speed metal riffs I tacked onto the end. The first of those riffs is very generic, and the second is a ripoff of a riff from "Sinner" by Judas Priest.
I have both a midi and an enhanced version of this song, but I'm not even going to bother posting the midi, because the enhanced version is better.

Edit: This is in the wrong file type to be able to be played online, so I'll change it soon.

Sludge

Fade to Black, arranged for the ukulele

I learned much of what I know about music theory and playing the ukulele by adapting some very non-traditional (for the uke) songs to play on that instrument. Here, we have Metallica's wonderful Fade to Black arranged for the ukulele, up until the second solo, at least. I changed the key to make it more convenient to play on the ukulele. The very last riff you here is the guitar melody played in the same key, which I used as a guide.
I also adapted The Unforgiven, also by Metallica, and the famous main riff of Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne.

Fade to Black

Crunchy Classical

I wrote this somewhat silly song after getting into some Hendrix and Malmsteen for the first time.

Crunchy Classical

Dance of the Dawn

I went through a phase of being enthusiastic about exotic scales a few years ago. This odd little song is based on a Chinese scale, I believe. The melody of this song is five measures long, which I suppose is strange.
I recorded this on a thirteen dollar acoustic guitar that I got at a thrift store. It was a crappy little guitar, and if you have an ear for that sort of thing you'll be able to detect that it isn't tuned very well either.
This song was saved as a wave file, rather than an mp3, so it is disproportionately large and takes a while to load.

Dance of the Dawn

Forboding

I like playing around with chords on the ukulele. This is one result of that.

Forboding

Gee, That's Swell

This is my only foray into surf music, making the title an obvious pun. Obviously inspired by the famous Miserlou by Dick Dale.

Gee, That's Swell

Hunted

This song features a few strange chords and some bird sounds, a lead guitar melody that I somewhat like, and a couple of very generic heavy metal riffs.
I've tinkered somewhat with this song since creating this midi. This version can be considered a somewhat abortive first draft.

Hunted

Launch

Several years ago, I had a vague but ambitious plan of writing an album-length series of songs, called "The Crystal Moon" or something similar. Basically, a space-opera instrumental concept album. Of course, neither my songwriting skills nor my attention span were equal to the task, and all that was written was this piece of music, meant to be evocative of some sort of spacecraft being launched towards heaven at dawn. Quite a bit of tapping ensues.
This was one of my friend Steven Ambarian's favorite songs of mine, and he made an enhanced remix of it. Garage Band, the program used to make these remixes, does not recognize pitch bends, however, so there are a few false notes in the remix.

Launch midi

Launch remix

No One to Hear Its Secrets

Though I only started playing musical instruments when I was fifteen, I've always been a fairly musical person. Some of these songs I've posted are little melodies that I've been humming since I was a little kid.
This weird, mysterious little melody is one of these. I think it was inspired by some background music in a "Fraggle Rock" episode!

No One to Hear Its Secrets

Nuclear Midnight

Here's a heavy and pretentious postapocalyptic epic that I recon is about two thirds complete, which would make the theoretical complete version about nine minutes long. I'm ambivalent about this one. The speed metal riff at the end is extremely generic, and can probably be disregarded, as can the bass solo.
This was probably somewhat influenced by Revelation (Mother Earth) by Ozzy Osbourne.

Nuclear Midnight

Over the Horizon

Here's another simple little ukulele riff.

Over the Horizon

What Cannot Be Changed

Here's a somber little ukulele riff. This song alternated between 3/4 and 4/4 time with every measure. I suppose I could just as easily have written it in 7/4 time.

What Cannot Be Changed

Arabian

Of all the songs and riffs that I've made, this is definitely the one that I play the most often. My friend taught me an Arabian-sounding scale which I liked to goof around with, and on one sunny afternoon this song was born of it. The "chorus" riff (roughly :45 to 1:10) was devised by another friend of mine, who gave me permission to integrate it into the parts of the song I'd already written.
When I'm actually playing this song on an instrument, I typically do a bit of soloing in the middle section, but since I improvise that it wasn't included in any of these versions.
I have more versions of this song than any other song. The first draft of the midi is pleasanter to listen two than the second, I think, and includes strings and percussion, but the second is closer to how I actually play this song. The remix is an enhanced midi by Steven Ambarian, and the recording is me on my electric uke, not keeping very good time.

Arabian first draft

Arabian midi second draft

Arabian remix

Arabian recording

Honor

This is a very short and simple piece of music, inspired by the soundtrack for The Last Samurai.
Here's the original version and the enhanced version. The enhanced version is extremely quiet for some reason.

Honor midi

Honor remix

Crypt

Back to the guitar, here's kind of a creepy bit of song. I personally feel this is one of my most successful pieces of music, as well as one of the most creative in terms of the midi effects that I used.

Steven Ambarian made an enhanced remix of it for me. He was working on an earlier draft of the song, so his version doesn't include the last riff I put on the midi

Crypt midi

Crypt remix

Swaying Palms

Here's another ukulele song. In terms of composition, it's just a generic ukulele chord song. However, I recorded it on an electric uke using tremolo and distortion effects, which makes it even sillier. The title is the most generic ukulele song title I could think of.

Swaying Palms

Return to the Sea

Here's one of my ukulele songs for you. This emerged when I combined a few riffs and techniques I'd been playing into a single song. This is one of my favorite pieces of music that I've created. This is actually a complete song, but part of me thinks it might have more of an impact if it was a bit longer, so I'm kinda sorta working on an extended version.

Also, two remixed versions, courtesy of Steven Ambarian. The first is just an enhanced version of my original midi, but the second is kind of a joke dance remix.

Midi Version

Remix

Dance Remix

With a Vengeance

Not much to say about this one, except that I liked the distorted riffs at the end more when I first wrote them than I do now.

With a Vengeance

Songue

Another little song that I made up in my early days of guitar playing. I didn't have a name for it, so I just ended up calling it Songue, which is pronounced exactly the same as song.

I have a midi version, and a higher-quality version courtesy of Steven Ambarian. For some reason, though, in the higher-quality version the bass is so low pitched that it is almost inaudible.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/7083483301cdd6d8/

http://www.zshare.net/audio/70834880d4b96222/

Comet

Here's the first song I composed on Power Tab. This is actually the second version of the song. This version only goes the first chorus riff, while the original went on somewhat further, featuring a second verse and chorus, and the beginning of an interlude. I started work on a third "definitive" version, but both that and the original perished along with the hard drive on which they were saved. This version, along with many of my other songs, were on a flash drive, and escaped that fate.
I tried to use some fancier chords in the intro to this version, but the result is atonal.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/70834571df4970ac/

Introduction

Hi. I'm Cory Trego-Erdner, often known on the internet as Moai. I'm a creative guy. Mostly, I draw and paint, and I'm just beginning a career in freelance illustration. I also write stories, often to go along with the pictures I create. But this blog is going to focus on another of my creative pursuits: music.

I've played the guitar and the ukulele for several years. In this blog you'll find all the riffs, song fragments, and the few complete songs that I have written for them. Most of these songs will be in midi form, created using the PowerTab program. Several will be midis translated into more sophisticated midi and synth sounds using the Garage Band program. Those were made by my good friend, the extremely talented Steven Ambarian. I'll post a link to his own music on the side of this blog somewhere. A couple of these songs will be actual recordings. Every song is an instrumental; there are no vocals.

My music is kind of an eclectic mixed bag, reflecting my varied musical interests. You'll find heavy metal and classic rock style riffage, acoustic fingerpicking, ukulele chordfests, faux exotic music, and faux video game background music. Many of these songs, particularly my early guitar songs, are beyond my own abilities, and exist solely as exercises in songwriting.

Since music is very subjective, my music probably won't interest a lot of people. Many will probably actively dislike it. I fully expect this blog to recieve almost no attention. That's okay. I like to share the stuff I create, so I'm putting it out here, just in case someone out there in cyberspace will be interested.

You'll often hear me say that I like a song that I made, or think it's successful. Please don't mistake comments like these for vanity.

So, that's about it for this introduction. I'll start posting music very soon.