Amado Ohland

Today felt like an excavation. Still singing "exactly what I want to," reminding myself to be more in-tune with my deepest impulses than the things I've been taught—by myself as well as by others—about how I "ought" to do this kind of thing. Even so, I found I had to dig.

Not this guy specifically. When I grow, I want to be. That's all.

All these voices in my head. Not literal voices; I'm not hearing things. But I do hear echoes of the words of my various teachers, listeners, and my own critical judgment: "Make this kind of part, or that." "Solo this way, or that, or not at all." "Make your song this long, or shorter." "Use this many voices." "Enter this way; exit that way." Well, for a little while and with all due respect, scre...

A Blues feel (though not a Blues progression), slow, and need to be cut in half (or maybe 2/3?). Still working out the details of the three-voice thing. For this one, I really needed to ask the question "why am I singing this?" As in, what needed to be said with it? Because I don't think I got to it directly. Still, another fun entry. Much to learn.

I just couldn't do it today. I'm still keeping it to three voices, but... well, hang out until the end of the song. I think the verdict is: three's good to try for, and some songs will reveal to you that their arrangement and/or orchestration requires something else. So, this one goes down as an exciting idea that would need to be re-worked to turn it into a recording or performance that I'd be mo...

So, this one has a trim job on it. The untrimmed will be here: https://soundcloud.com/amadoohland/how-be-what-feel/s-elGPt OH! and, I was going to give myself permission to go SATB plus a solo voice, but I think I managed to keep it to 4-voices only (never sang over when it was 4 voices). So, a small expansion, moving back towards my "anything goes" habits of the past two years. Was going for thre...

What to say? This poem spoke to me today. But then, I sought a poem that said something like this. How it said it, though! Poem credit: http://www.americantanka.com/june-2012-issue-21/michele-l-harvey-2/

Phooo! I liked the parts today, but boy did I struggle with the performance! Not typically acceptable to get more than 40% of the way thru a song not once, not twice, but three times and decide {{crap, I just flubbed it}}. And that after a false start or two. But I knew I had an interesting enough thing here to try to get it right. So I powered thru the frustration and backed a bit away from my le...

Combining one of the most productive things I've done in this project—using haiku—with the recent power-of-three work I'm doing. Check out my song "I Planted A Tree" to see how I feel about trees. This song was something of a continuation.

I met a guy today who did a mid-life career change. Two, actually. 15 years ago he became a full-time Dad, and three years ago he became an accountant. It got me thinking about the word "career"; one website lists the word "course" as a synonym. Do you become your career, or does your career become you? Depends on the person, of course. It also got me looking up the idiom "mid-life crisis," a phen...

The challenge: improvise something that could be executed live by three voices, or by a three-voice choir. Use everything you've learned in the wide-open playground of Loopy HD, where you can layer and bounce-down to your heart's content... but WITHOUT the luxury of adding, like, a dozen layers going simultaneously. Remember that there's a guy in this world named Bobby McFerrin that can sing melod...

My collaborators in VoiceExchange sure like their melodies, Today's track, provided by Beth Lyons, called out for the three-part homophony treatment. I did hold yesterday's question—"how do I approach this creatively, and in a fresh way?"—in mind. But this loop asked to be finished in this way, and not tinkered with overmuch. And so. This is my musical reaction to it.

Pro tip: don't read an interview with Esperanza Spalding before you go in to record you stuff. ...it'll have you questioning whether you're being creative enough. ...which might push you to re-record everything you did earlier in the day. ...which might not be a bad thing after all. At the end of the day, I wish I had done the solo better, to do the seed loop (graciously sung by Paris Kern) better...

Our guest loop today is from Taunya Ferguson - http://www.dccabaretnetwork.org/taunyaferguson.html While visiting DC this weekend I was able to get loops from my partners in VoiceExchange. As my past few days of singing have been a little gloomy, it was time for something up!

I've long known that she has this kind of mojo. I was gifted a loop in 5/4 time with a swing feel, and challenged to use it as the start point for my sound today. Just the kind of challenge I like. And here we have it.

When we put these loops down last week, they were silly. They were going to be made into something fun. But then this week happened. Fun aint in my heart today. I know that, on some level, it's my responsibility (as a musician, as a human) to bring some light and hope into the world, when it needs it most. But these are dark days. And I'm in need of some evidence that Human Nature isn't the cesspo...

Today's guest loops come from Beth Ullman. She sent a beautiful multi-layered loop which, I suspect, was recorded in a big, reverberant space. I worked to make my recorded parts more reverberant than my usual, so you'll detect changes in the sound as it goes along. I got a strong sense of trying to "receive the message from afar angels" and copying some of what I was able to hear. Thanks for this,...

And we're off! To the races. My darling bride's second loop offering was also 1-measure long, and there was a note in there that I decided to call the sixth scale degree. Mostly though it was the articulation—"deee beee doh"—that set a mood for me. I know she likes the up-tempo stuff, but I just had to half-time the snare; I compensated by putting a pretty busy shaker in there. Soon, there was a f...

Tday's guest voice is Morgan! (Perhaps she'll be the guest voice for the whole month.) She and I, we go through changes together. All the dang time. So for this, her first loop offering to my little project, I changed things around a part that she kept pretty constant. Enjoy.

An experiment. Again. Because that's (part of) what this is for! At a composition workshop yesterday, someone mentioned "melody, harmony, and bass" in a sense that those were the parts that made up a piece. I'd been thinking in terms of motor-interlock (context), bass-percussion (reinforce context), motif (a short theme), melody line, and "solo." That's a lot more things than "melody, harmony, and...

It's the tempos. The more I work with a wide variety of tempos, instead of just falling back on "how do I feel today?" , the more I tap into some new groove or manner of expressing where I'm at in that moment.

An experiment. Again. Because that's (part of) what this is for! At a composition workshop yesterday, someone mentioned "melody, harmony, and bass" in a sense that those were the parts that made up a piece. Now, I'd been thinking in terms of motor-interlock (context), bass-percussion (reinforce context), motif (a short theme), melody line, and "solo." That's a lot more things than "melody, harmony...

i've trained my brain it's partially sane & i'm sayin' the same as i'm usually sayin' but i juiced it loose it went diffuse & i deduced a use for gettin' seduced by the delirium, the abandon, the absorption of: singing your heart out.

today, an experiment. 12 beats in the loop, 25 repetitions of the loop (not that I planned that, but it worked out...), and NO SINGING ON TOP OF THE PARTS for this version/arrangement of the song. A 4:21 sound event, hopefully with a contour and a climax. Do you like this, or https://soundcloud.com/amadoohland/fantasia-solista its sister song?

today, an experiment. 12 beats in the loop, 25 repetitions of the loop (not that I planned that, but it worked out...), and SINGING ON TOP OF THE PARTS for this version/arrangement of the song. A 4:21 sound event, hopefully with a contour and a climax. Do you like this, or https://soundcloud.com/amadoohland/fantasia-ripieni its sister song?