Posting a song a week here at SciFi Songs has been a blast. It was a great first month and I hope to be able to continue at a similar pace over the course of the coming months.
Here are the links to the first four SciFi Songs:
1. Before the End of Time
2. Page 123
3. Vilfredo Pareto
4. The Return of Titus Quinn
I'm currently about half way through recording a song which is inspired by Brandon Sanderson's Elantris and I'm also about half done with writing a new song based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Those should be the next two songs posted here.
Thanks so much for listening,
John
If you have a suggestion of a book, short story, anime, movie, or piece of visual art that you think would make an interesting SciFi Song, please e-mail me at 27summers@gmail.com
Sci-Fi Song #4: The Return of Titus Quinn
This week's song was inspired by the protagonist from Kay Kenyon's excellent Bright of the Sky. The Return of Titus Quinn is a solo acoustic guitar piece played in the DADGAD alternate tuning.
In the novel, Titus Quinn takes on the identity of Dai Shen, a Chalin man. The Chalin are a race of people that bear a strong cultural resemblance to earth's Asian population. I tried to interpret this by taking my initial "Titus" theme of the A section and transposing it into the Chinese pentatonic scale of the B section.
This piece is a bit of a departure for me. Many of my formative influences (Steve Morse, Alex Lifeson, Steve Howe, Leo Kottke, John Fahey, and Michael Hedges) have recorded numerous solo acoustic guitar pieces. As much as I love this style, I've never given a serious attempt to compose and record one of my own. I had great fun putting this together, and I hope you like it.
Has a novel ever inspired you to write a piece of music? Has a song ever inspired you to compose a novel, short story, or piece of visual art?
-John
More info on Bright of the Sky
Sci-Fi Song #3: Vilfredo Pareto
Because the world has been clamoring for more songs about turn of the century European economists, I submit to you this week's song based on the life and work of one Vilfredo Pareto.
The last few non-fiction books that I've read(The Long Tail, Wikinomics, Here Comes Everybody, Citizen Marketers) all elaborate on the significance of The Pareto Index. In a nutshell, The Pareto Index states that 20% of the population has 80% of the income.
Because of his relative ubiquity in recent economic texts, I was motivated to do some more research on Pareto. He was quite a compelling figure and his story inspired this song.
Here are some of the tools that I used to record this track:
- Martin Acoustic Guitar in Standard Tuning with a capo placed at the third fret
- Rode NT-3 microphone (to record the guitar and my vocals)
- Apple Logic Pro 7 recording software
- Logic's compressor and reverb plug-ins
- The EXS24 Sampler for the drum sound
- The Apple Garage Band Symphony Orchestra Jam Pack for the violin, cello, piano, and clarinet sounds.
- Have you ever been inspired to create a song, poem, novel, short story or piece of visual art based on the life of a historical figure?
- Do you have a favorite piece of work that uses a real person as a character? (I'm partial to Neal Stephenson's use of Isaac Newton and other scientists in Quicksilver )
Thanks,
John
Here are the lyrics:
Vilfredo Pareto
Vilfredo Pareto was an economist
He was the son of an Italian nationalist
He earned his degree at the Institute of Turin
Where he worked on mechanical equilibrium
He became a civil engineer for the Italian Railway
Then he lectured in Florence and had plenty to say
He wrote critical essays against the government
for that he faced persecution and fled to Switzerland
He stated 80% of the wealth in the land
was owned by just 20% of the men
The concept of wealth distribution survived
and still to this day its widely publicized
Pareto had a theory of society
there had to be balance amongst the ruling elite
but then Mussolini overtook Italy
when Vilredo Pareto died in '23
Sci-Fi Song #2: Page 123
This week's song was inspired by a meme that has been circulating through some of the book blogs that I read regularly. Here it is:
- Grab the nearest book
- Turn to page 123
- Write down the fifth sentence. (Go ahead, try it!).
I figured that it would be fun to try and write a song based on this meme. The nearest book for me was Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams.
Here are some of the tools that I used to record this track:
- Martin Acoustic Guitar in Drop-D tuning: DADGBE
- Rode NT-3 microphone (to record the guitar and my vocals)
- Apple Logic Pro 7 recording software
- EXS24 sampler for the drum, bass, and wurlitzer electric piano sounds
- EVB3 software instrument for the organ sound
- Logic's compressor, tremolo, and reverb plug-ins
Are you a blogger who tends to participate in these types of memes? If so, do you have any suggestions for a meme that might make a good song?
Special thanks to the following blogs for the inspiration:
Thanks,
John
Here are the lyrics:
I'm staring at my laptop screen
Scrolling through the feeds
I'm subscribed to a hundred blogs
but there's still nothing to read
While clicking tabs in Firefox
A theme seems to repeat
Grab a book from off your shelf
and find page 123
So turn to page 123
and write the fifth sentence that you see
So turn to page 123
Cause that seems to be the latest meme
So I take "Wikinomics" by Don Tapscott
and Anthony Williams
I open to page 123
and do what must be done
It reads "Firms will still need to invest resources
in internal R & D
to be able to recognize
a commercial opportunity"
Sci-Fi Song #1: Before the End of Time
Here is a composition of mine that was inspired by the visual artistry of Janet Chui. I find Janet's angel art to be compelling and referring to this visual made composing this piece a gratifying experience. Please check out Janet's other work here.
Click on the play button to listen or click on the MP3 link above to download the file. I encourage you to download the MP3 and if you like it, please share it with your friends.
All of my original music is housed under a Creative Commons License. (check sidebar for more details) That means that my music is completely free and you can do whatever you want with it. Share it with friends, post it to your blog, use it in your podcast, use it in a video project, etc. I only ask that you attribute it back to me and send me an e-mail to let me know what you'd like to do with it.
For those who are musically curious, I composed this piece on my old piano and recorded/sequenced it entirely in Apple's Logic Pro 7 recording software. All of the sounds that you hear were created using Logic's included software synthesizers and samplers.
I hope you enjoy it!
John
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