Eking Out The High Notes

It’s like eeEEeeek!

The storm is one of my recent songs. It has some really high notes that are held out. It took many takes to get them right, but I managed.

The Storm
by Timothy Price

[Verse 1]
Riding on the edge of night
Rainbow storms play on left
Sun shines on the right

[Chorus]
Light bounces off gray clouds
Shadows cling to the ground
Dead trees stare at useless rain
Much too late to ease the pain

[Verse 2]
Standing against the wind
Vultures circle overhead
Wishing my demise

[Bridge]
Angels ride
On lightning bolts
The gods argue
Their thunder rolls
Primary colors
Come undone
Trying to calm
The violence
Of the sun

[Outro]
Light bounces off gray clouds
Shadows cling to the ground
Dead trees stare at useless rain
Much too late to ease the pain

May’s Flower Moon

Dusk

Michele’s Monday

Please take a moment to checkout the same Moments featering Teagan Geneviene on vocals that I posted last Mondy, but with a different video animated with a Shadow Dancer derived from Michele at My Inspired Life. Michele is into dancing, and working on a few different styles of dance, so when I was creating dancers to animate for the video, I made one with Michele in mind. While the AI created the dancer as a silhouette, the silhouette could be Michele. I described the choreography for the animation and it came out reasonably close to what I wanted.

Jake: “Whoa! Michele is a great dancer. How do I get attention for her?”

First Iris

Teagan’s Moments

TnT’s latest musical collaberation is a version of Moments I made for Teagan. While I was trying different animations for the video, Teagan created a happy image of a singer and musicians for me to animate. Of the many problems I encountered creating animations for the a video to go with the song, the main two issues were 1) getting a consistent singer and musicians through the entire video, 2) syncing the singer’s mouth to the lyrics.

Using Teagan’s image, I was able to keep the singer and musicians the same all the way through the video. I gave AI the lyrics and incuded timing and prompts in attempts to sync the singers mouth with the lyrics. I do not have an AI subscription that allows me to upload the music in an attempt to sync the music with the animation, so I have to do a lot of trial and error to get things synced up the best I can. I got the mouth syncing moderately close to the words in the video, but they are still off.

I know a lot of people don’t like AI imagery and animation and are put off by it. However, it’s getting better all the time. It also gives artists like me and Teagan a way to create images and animation that we could not afford to do in the traditional ways of creating images for animation and video, or paying someone else to do it for us. Teagan has really polished her use of AI to create images, and I am getting better at the animation for video. We are really psyched about the possibilities that lie before us.

Dawn

Dreaded DST 2025

Dreaded DST 2025. Lyrics: Timothy Price. Music: Timothy Price with AI. Vocals: AI T&T.

My annual song for changing to daylight saving time. I used AI to generate the music from my lyrics based on my guidlines for the key, style, meter where to place vocies, etc. I also had AI create voices for me and Teagan, and named our AI duo “AI T&T.” I used AI to create the images and used AI to animate the images for the video.

We’ve also been having weird weather that doesn’t play well with my joints on the eve of the dreaded DST.

Still Crazy @ 66

After I read Why people over the age of 55 are the new problem generation: Baby-boomers are keeping their bad habits into retirement in The Economist in early January, I was reminded that I had a song I had started working on a few years ago called “Still Crazy at Sixty!” Keep in mind that 55-year-olds are the end of the Baby Boom. People aged 66 and 67 are the peak of the Baby Boom.

“Still Crazy at Sixty!” was inspired by Ron Blood, bass player extraordinaire, who suggested that I should write a song about still being crazy at 60. I wrote the lyrics based on me, Joel, and Ron growing up in New Mexico and our various adventures through our youth and adult lives. I didn’t like how the song came out in 2019 and never published it. I messed with it three years later when we turned 63, but still didn’t like how the song turned out. With the inspiration of being part of the new “Problem Generation”, I pulled out the song again, updated the lyrics, but I was frustrated again, still stuck creating another sorry tune, so I had AI help me with the melody and the music. A fresh perspective from an artificial brain made all the difference.

Cranes @ dusk

Winter’s Moon Metal

Winter’s Moon Metal: Lirycs by Timothy Price. Music and Vocals by Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene.

This is the Metal version of the song I made with electric guitar, bass, and percussion instead of piano and acoustic guitar. The vocals and melody are the same as the version of Winter’s Moon I posted yesterday with piano and acoustic guitar. The Metal backing track really affects the mood and feeling of the song.

Winter’s Wolf Moon Rising

Wañusqakunamanta

WARNING! You may find the above video’s music and content disturbing.

Wañusqakunamanta*
By Timothy Price

Sacrificed
To the gods
Drown in the madness of his name

Smell of the dead
And their sins
Of the dead and their sins
Of the dead and their sins

Take me, take me on a boat to see Arkos
I can’t feel the sea on Arkos

Embrace the truth
And shake us free
Make us free to rise in the end

Meet a person
Of great heart
In custody to persevere

But the devil’s in the way
Yes, the devil’s in the way
Why’s the devil’s in the way

He digs down to the core
To the flesh
And
To the bones

V for Venus

Cranes couldn’t care less

Osric Owl doesn’t give a hoot

Sandias @ the Beach

*Wañusqakunamanta is “Of the Dead” in Quechua. I have been working on the song for a long time. Originally named Weird DST, I wrote the song intending to use it for my 2024 Daylight Savings Time protest song. The idea behind the asynchronization between the metered drums and bass and the unmetered guitar was to simultaneously feel in and out of time. I tried to make the lyrics as strange as the music. I didn’t post it on DST this year because I didn’t finish it in time for the time change. Given the state of the election, I took another look at the song and decided I might as well use it to make a statement about the 2024 election.

Silence From The Frogs Featuring Teagan

Silence From The Frogs (Featuring Teagan Riordain Geneviene on Vocals)

Teagan was gracious enough to lend her beautiful voice to another of my original songs, Silence From The Frogs. I first published Silence Of The Frogs as a poem in 2017 while blogging on T & L Photos. I made the poem into a song in the summer of 2022. I first published the song with my vocals in February 2023. Teagan’s voice is a vast improvement over mine.

The tree trimmers cut the branch that fell on the powerline off the powerline but left it in the bamboo, still pulling down on the phone line. I have to duck under the phone line when I go out and in the gate. The tree trimmers worked late into the night, trimming the trees back from the powerlines and cutting the fallen branch off of it.

Pre-dawn

Dawn

Loki

Sunset