Amado Ohland

I did NOT want to do the same ol' melody. I felt a little painted into a corner. I'd filled so many of the frequency ranges already, most of the parts of my voice. So what did I come up with? An octave jump. Terrific. Now I have to deal with THAT for 4.5 minutes. Better turn down the mic volume... It turned out okay in the end. Dance!

Only you are blessed -- or cursed -- to occupy your consciousness for the duration of its existence. No-one else does, no-one else can. So what business is it of anybody, ANYBODY other than yourself to tell you how you're to be spending your conscious moments? None. None at all. This is the year that I move in that direction. Better late than never.

Not sorry if this sounds a little self-indulgent, but: y'all don't need me to sing for you. Not right now. At least, if you do, you're not aware that you do. But that doesn't matter. I'm going to sing for you anyways. For that day that you do find that you need it. I just hope, on that day, you find what I've sang for you helpful in some way.

Once upon a time, I got upset at myself for missing a week of singing daily. Imagine how I feel now. No need to iagine it; just listen. This is how I feel.

Today I learned that sometimes, getting one of yesterday's loops to work with today's idea is going to be a stretch; and, that that's okay. I'm also liking the discipline of making at least 1 of the parts have words. The loops are short enough that the phrases I come up with are not completely determinate. There's lots of leeway for you, the listener, to decide what they mean. I like that.

Alright, first big challenge of Daisy-Chain December. The more notes in a part, the fewer degrees of freedom you have to fit it into more than one context. Same goes for chromaticism. But somehow I jammed yesterday's Mixolydian (with a Blues note) into today's ...I guess we call it a Mixolydian flat-6. But it's a different key center... Navaermind. Check it out. Enjoy.

Thus starts a Daisy-Chain December, but I'm afraid I've painted myself in a corner. We'll see tomorrow. It occurs to me that words are nice. I might make an effort to include English language in at least one part in every song this month, too.

Go to your edge, yes yes. As often as you safely can. [del]But[/del] [ins]AND[/ins] when you go there, don't forget all the things you learned along the way. Putting together melodies (rather than launching into babble or practiced pyrotechnics). Recovering from stumbles. Keeping ideas compact so as not to lull your listener to sleep. Stuff like that. Do your best and be yourself, even as you disc...

This track is a reply to “SSS Prompt 44: Family.” More on the Society for Spontaneous Singing at http://singthis.org . I have to cop to not having read the Prompt very closely. This songs comes out of my experience being with immediate family this week, and from where I'm "at" at the moment. The OPTIONS sound appealing, maybe I'll do Option B on some other song. But in this one, I feel the constan...

Our teacher Rhiannon (http://rhiannonmusic.com) teaches us to strive (at least occasionally) to find our edge, the furthest and deepest we can go with our artistry. ...aaaaaand I didn't go there today. Not sure when the last time I went there was. My only aim today was to try to be economical with the material of my song, to only repeat things enough that they might have an impact. Thus, it should...

Shine shine shine. No matter the consequences.

Yesterday's loops were so interesting to me that I thought it a shame not to sing on them. At 7 minutes, it's still two minutes too long, but there you have it. It's a deeply, deeply creepy song. I didn't know I had it in me. I'm glad it's out.

What if it were under 4 minutes? What then?

This track is a reply to “Prompt 43: Story Tropes.” More on the Society for Spontaneous Singing at http://singthis.org. You can join the SSS at https://soundcloud.com/groups/society-for-spontaneous-singing Long one today. I was too attached to the idea of making what I said make sense, have a narrative for you to follow. So, long pauses, and too much story. For me. But a great stretch for me, to h...

What do you say to your very young son when he has just learned that there are really really bad people with guns in the world? How do you make him feel safe? With a reporter's microphone in your face. With the world watching. Can you even go so far as to tell him that only Love, applied as broadly and indiscriminately as possible--and backed up with compassionate, redeeming actions--can end the f...

So I go to plug my audio interface in, and "iOS does not support this device." I try again. And again. And again... Forces continuously contrive to marginalize this commitment to myself, my music, my daily practice, further and further. Damn right I'm frustrated.

Very early on in my daily practice of improvising with Loopy on an iPad, I asked my wife for an idea and she (because I'd just been enjoying watching some goldfinches at our window) said to think about goldfinches. Around the same time, I was taking strength from this quotation; I think it's a good thing for all of us creators to bear in mind, at all times. This week for the Society for Spontaneou...

This came out of an exercise we spontaneously came up with this past weekend, in rehearsal with VoiceExchange. I find that the ideas I come up with for this Project differ from the ones I come up with when singing with VoiceExchange, and on both occasions the making-up-of-stuff can sometimes come hard. But when I'm trying to tell somebody what Circlesinging is like, and illustrating by coming up w...

It's No-Rules November, I'll remind you. I took a suggestion from my wife: found objects in our house. I also kind of "threw out" my trend of working toward cohesive melody in the "solo." For this song, your lead melodist is stream-of consciousness, declaiming or pleading something, I know not what. Let me know whether it works.

This track is a reply to “Prompt 41: You Can Say That Again.” More on the Society for Spontaneous Singing at http://singthis.org. You can join the SSS at https://soundcloud.com/groups/society-for-spontaneous-singing Working with words, I find it's best if they make no sense at the time that they first floop out of my mouth. Of course, this song had an intention: create a recognizable, pick-up-able...

Wait, what? This is the shortest song I've done in a long while. Hmm, is it compact? Or just 113bpm, so, it just gets on with it? Well, I seem to be playing with gnarly sonorities these days, I think. There's a #9 in the BGVs. There fifths that are flat -- or at least partially deflated -- here and there. Because pitch-classes are for ninnies.

Addressing myself today to the question: "what makes people want to return to a piece of music that they've heard?" One answer is 'repetition,' which in turn raises another question: "what ABOUT repetition?" And one answer to THAT is, because you can anticipate what's going to happen, and (in your head at least) participate a bit. So, my goal was: every additional time you sang along, I hoped to a...

This track is a reply to “Prompt 40: Absurdity!” More on the Society for Spontaneous Singing at http://singthis.org. You can join the SSS at https://soundcloud.com/groups/society-for-spontaneous-singing I think this must have been Option 2.

what's with this somnolent Felidae?

This one was fun tonight. Pretty straight-ahead. Best part was feeling like I could relax during the solo. Not rush so much. Wait for the perfect moment to unleash the next phrase. Then near the end, to notice that there was a bit further I could go, but to hold off with it until one more go-round. Keep at this until you find that you can think a little bit while it's happening. Good things will h...