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     http://chris.erway.org       cce3@cornell.edu        |___/

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my musical endeavors

• this list is quite old (8/18/03): i'll update it later. sorry!
• bands i'm in right now (10/30/00): okay, just listing off the top of my head for fall 2000:
  • agent 000 ska-punk band from cornell. fun stuff!
  • the continental can't quite pin down the style; "groove rock" i guess. we jam and mix funk, rock, jazz, etc. very free-flowing, but in a tight, grooving way. kind of like "soullive" or bands like that.
  • cornell lab ("jazz") ensembles i'm in the big band, as well as a small octet. good stuff.
  • another unnamed funk-jazz "jam" band we're in development right now.



• cornell university lab ensembles (10/30/00, new mp3's 9/27/01): i play trombone in CULE, cornell's improvised music ("jazz") ensembles. right now the group is split up into four small-combo sized groups and two big bands. it used to be under the direction of prof. karlton hester, who taught me volumes. now it's under the direction of donald byrd, the VERY famous jazz trumpet player (has worked with everyone -- blakey & the jazz messengers, coltrane, max roach, sonny rollins, parker, monk, coleman hawkins, lionel hamptin, herbie hancock, horace silver, dolphy, as well as his own best-selling groups in the 70's). it's also a lot of fun.
  me playing jazz on mp3:
  • ('Round About) 'Round About Midnight arrangement by prof. pond, combines the song with "Insensitiv." yep, that's my best attempt at an intro. (spring 2001)
  • i mean you funny 3/4 rendition of i mean you, with a 4/4 swing bridge -- my idea, so i get "arranging credit." sure. (spring 2001)
• listen to me on the radio! (8/30/00): i do a radio show on 93.5 WVBR-FM Ithaca called "Ithaska." the best part about the show is that we get to play whatever music we want, so we play a lot of punk, skapunk, and emo. listen to it every saturday evening from 9pm-midnight. call us and request something! we really love requests. it gets kind of boring otherwise.

• apartmentmate ben took some pictures of me and they made this neeto animated gif. thanks ben!

  song-a-day (4/5/00): if you're one of my nice, tolerant, roommates, you'd know that i brought to ithaca my $50 acoustic guitar up from new jersey and have been playing it a lot recently. now i am a songwriting machine. and when i say, i'm a "songwriting machine," i mean that in the sense that i SUCK.

  anyhow, i have been writing a new short songy-thing every day since friday, march 31, 2000. my psychiatrist (that is, foggy memories of "dr. katz" episodes since they cancelled the show) tells me that's it's therapeutic, so if you don't like the songs, well, what are you doing listening to them for in the first place?

  this regime of writing a new short song every day sounds hard to keep up (it is right now monday, april 3), and so i don't know if i can keep it up. but anyhow. i got cakewalk over the weekend, and the result is i now have mp3 recordings of these songs, in low-quality four-track style.

  beware: the recordings feature me on guitar, vocals, AND backup vocals. (read: they suck a lot.)

  the songs

  (links indicate mp3 download available, all others are available in person at my apartment :>):
  
  
  • fri, march 31, 2000: 21 hours in the day (short version)
    origin: this song came to me while walking back to my apartment from the arts quad. there is a much longer version, with verses, and a bridge, etc., with lyrical help from mike poiesz, that will be put online soon.
    rating: doesn't suck, the whole song (with all the verses) is semi-funny
  • sat, april 1, 2000: i can't sleep (not recorded)
    origin: i had a bad case of insomnia and got out the ol' guitar to try to help.
    rating: i really like this one, so do a few of my apartmentmates..
  • sun, april 2, 2000: adaptation of "tequila" (title of song censored) (not recorded)
  • mon, april 3, 2000: lost her sense (and sandals)
    origin: once again, walking through collegetown to my apartment
    rating: "catchy," "best yet," but still a bit silly
  • tue, april 4, 2000: the sucky spoon song
    origin: i had a lot of other work to do today and needed a quickie song. i couldn't think of any words that fit, so i got out more cheap instruments and started adding more tracks. the cheesy crappy casio organ is on this, as well as a pair of spoons that i'm jangling furiously (first try playing "spoons," thanks to my apartmentmate brian for spoon instruction).
    rating: really, really sucks ... a whole lot. oh well.
  • wed, april 5, 2000: workin' for the road
    origin: walking back to apt8a again. once i got started adding vocals, i couldn't stop! then i added the "hah!" guy and i was happy. that makes 6 vocal tracks, i think. it's a bluesy number with guitar too. you'll like it.
    rating: "by far chris's best attempt to reach into to his ghetto roots" --brian. "sucks way less" --ben. i think it's one of the best, too.
  • thu, april 6, 2000: notice knowthis notice
    origin: this song came to me while walking to sage chapel from bailey hall. then i added my cheap-ass casio keyboard (the cheesy electronic drums come off of there). then i added a vocal track; with no inspiration for lyrics (hey, it's late), i read from a memo ("NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE") from my apartment's maintenance people to all the tenants regarding fire alarms being installed in my apartment. you'll love it, really! also check out the very obvious pun in the memo's name.
    rating: "a great combination of urban hip hop and maintenance memos; the best i've ever seen." --brian. "a sonic melting pot." --ben.
  • april 7-10, 2000: sorry! i wrote some songs over the weekend (and recorded rough takes of them) but they're a bit embarrassing (as in, not good), i am not sure whether to put them here, or polish them a bit sometime later and post them later. sorry...
  • tue, april 11, 2000: i can't remember
    origin: i thought up this song on monday while walking back to my apartment, recorded me singing it quickly just to get it down and came back to say "what the hell is this?" when i heard the playback three hours later. then i worked on it a little and it's a fun song. i wish i had some more instruments to record other than my guitar and voice ... oh well. it's a cute li'l soul song; i try my best to do it justice with just my guitar. check out the middle section and the fun modulation at the end.
    rating: "a brilliant combination of soul-searching and amnesia ... guaranteed to make you forget your troubles." --brian. i think it's ok.
  • wed, april 12, 2000: unnamed jazz tune (trombone / piano) i don't have this one recorded yet. it's too late to play trombone out loud in my apartment (out of courtesy to those downstairs) and so i won't record this one tonight. stay tuned, though, i wrote it down so i'll record it later, hopefully.
  • thu, april 13, 2000: good soup
    origin: this is the same song i talked about yesterday. it's a jazz piano & trombone song. it is neeto. i recorded the piano track by lugging my laptop to the practice rooms in white hall (music department) and recording them there. i was pressed for time so i only did a couple takes of piano and trombone each. i tried my best to make it sound like i was playing a duet with myself -- the solos could be better, but not bad for less than an hour's work. i like the song a lot -- it is a cute tune, and i used all my piano jazz chord substitution knowledge on the piano part.

    i decided to call it "good soup," if you want to scat-sing along with it, the words are: "i like good soup, i like it in the rain / i like good soup, i like it on the plain / i like good soup, i'd like to eat some now (right now) / i like good soup, you dumb brown cow."

  • fri, april 14, 2000: added a bass track to good soup
    
    origin: on a suggestion by my friend bryan renne, i added a bass track to "good soup." it kinda sucks because i played it on my guitar, and then used the "pitch shift" function in cakewalk to make it sound like a double bass. plus, i did the bass track in one take, because i'm all busy and stuff.
  • sat, april 15, 2000: someone likes katrina
    
    origin: this is a song i did in one take to tease mike poiesz (one of my apartmentmates) about a good friend of his. he doesn't actually "like" katrina, they are actually close friends and not romantically involved. sorry, mike.
    rating: i have been really busy (and missing my song-a-day schedule) so this song was done in one take, singing and playing at the same time. same with my work yesterday, one take, too. i think it adds a "documentary" effect to the songs, a nice "live" feel to them. anyhow. or, a rationalization for the songs' poor quality.
  • april 19, 2000: busy
    
    i have been very busy (a deadline on monday for a freelance job of mine). i have still been writing songs, i just don't have the time to put them into the computer and put them online. so, sorry ... i have been recording them on this little handheld recorder device thingy i got recently, though ... and writing them down, too ... expect a bunch of new songs from this week posted on monday or tuesday of next week.
• taxicab samurais: my old ska-punk band from maplewood and south orange, new jersey. oh, the stories i could tell ... (but won't, at least not right now).

  we played good music, if you like that sorta stuff (skapunk, with "traditional ska" breakdowns, horn solos, hardcore breakdowns, pop-punk sections, and a very heavy influence from the classic skapunk band "slapstick"). we became pretty popular (as far as northern new jersey is concerned) and made a CD on the ska source recordings label, from san diego, california. it was released a couple years ago and were lucky to get national distribution (virgin megastores, tower records in major cities, cdnow, amazon.com, barnes and nobles, etc). i was in san francisco over summer 1999 and found the album in the virgin megastores there. fellow samurai mike (trumpet) reported that we had our own "cd-rack plastic divider with our name on it" at a tower records in boston. and we've all got plenty of stories about "getting recognized" and being semi-famous in public places (in new jersey, of course). pretty neat, huh?

  i guess you could say the cd was pretty "raw," but i still like it, and it's a good archive of our band (pretty much every song we played at the shows is on there). especially since we're not around anymore (sob!). i still have very fond memories of the band & all.

  someday i will put a band together with dave (guitar) and dan (bass) of the band, and we will be rockin'.

  links:

  • the taxicab samurais website (soon to be updated)
  • taxicab samurais mp3's on mp3.com
• other groups: i was in cornell wind ensemble last semester. i've played in a few small jazz combos with friends from CULE at Collegetown Bagels and other such small gigs. i'm always up to play music with people, so drop me a line, eh?