New Zak Claxton Demo Collection: 02.16.20

Surrounded by guitars and keyboards and recording gear. Me, this entire weekend.

This was an ICS weekend; that's when my friend Bunny and I each try to create as many brand new songs out of thin air as possible in a very limited time frame. We both wrote and worked on our new material beginning on Saturday and wrapped it up today (Sunday), and I'm super happy with the new batch of tunes. For a previous and more detailed explanation of our fun trying this idea from the The Immersion Composition Society, see my previous post on the matter.

I managed to come up with ten pieces of music, but ended up being able to write lyrics and and sing vocals to complete the seven songs I did in 24 hours... which you can check out below. Keep in mind, these are demos. There are literally mistakes in each song! The point was to get the songs out and captured quickly.



And here are a few notes on each tune.

"Your Promises Don't Keep"
I've long been an admirer of bands with a tight, stripped-down sound that still give off a spacious vibe. Those range from The Police to Talking Heads and many more. It's not a style that's easy to adopt or that comes naturally to me, but I love listening to stuff like this so much that I wanted to try one of my own. I also find it makes my butt wiggle.

"Heart of the Sky"
This was one of those rare times where I picked up the guitar and without any thinking, this entire song came out. Like, zero thought, zero effort. It came through me rather than from me. I don't know where it originated, but I just sat back and recorded it immediately and that's what you hear here. It's pretty obvious that my lifelong love of Neil Young is shining through on this one. It is some pretty straightforward rock that will likely end up on a Zak Claxton solo album.

"Stand Up"
It's the same general idea as the Bob Marley tune. Far too often these days, I run into people with a defeatist vibe, and while it's completely understandable given the current circumstances of the world, I am firmly convinced that when people fight for the things they believe in, good things happen. Most people are far stronger than they think they are.

"Our Love Fills the Earth"
Hmm. Probably not the best song on here. It's what I call a lazy song, where you don't think and just let your hands roam your fingerboard in familiar ways. The saving grace on this song is the fucked up synthesizer making little dissonant chimes at various places. The lyric is sorta hippie-dippy, but again, it's a lot of music to do in a day or so.

"I Could Have Done More"
So, this is a truly sad song, and while it didn't exist until yesterday, it's been kind of rattling around in my head after the death of a close friend in August of last year. Despite the mood of the song, I don't have any specific guilt over the loss of Rachael, but there's always that voice inside of yourself that asks if you could have been a better person to someone who's no longer with us. I did this one in one take, just piano and voice. I didn't write out the progression or the melody beforehand... just let my hands play on their own and sang what came out of me at the moment.

"My Little Jungle"
This is the only purposeful instrumental of the day (as opposed to having given up on trying to write lyrics). My son had given me a kalimba -- a kind of small African thumb piano -- for a Christmas present this year, and I'd been wanting to use it for a tune ever since. So, that's my kalimba, and those are my handclaps, and I just improvised through the whole thing, and I like it.

"The Special Place"
Why do I occasionally do dance music? How about, "Why don't I do dance music more often?" I've actually created a ton of various kinds of synth pop, disco, and EDM over the years, having gotten into keyboards and synthesizers (and drum machines and sequencers and arpeggiators and so on) while in my teens. I'm just more known as an acoustic and rock kinda guy, but I grew up in the '80s and '90s when the forerunners of synth-based dance music all spawned, and have a ton of love for bands like Depeche Mode, ABC, Thomas Dolby and many others. It was fun doing this, and yeah, the song is about sex, but plenty of great music is too.