A Birthday Happy-Song

Franklin and I made a birthday-song for his sister today, and then we made a video complete with stop-motion animation, subliminal cat footage, and socially awkward lions.

Here it is:



instruments: flutophone, ukulele, bongos & tambourine

Franklin's sister Lindsey has her birthday a day before mine, and, a few years ago we kinda started this unofficial tradition where we'd leave each other homemade birthday songs via voicemail, since our birthdays are so close. Franklin & I thought it'd be fun to make something more substantial this year. We hope she likes it!


and we hope you dig it, too!

-Elizabeth

Rectangles + Squares

City-dwellers are we! We're going to try to take more pictures of our current surroundings, because there's an awful lot of wonderfully aged buildings around here and stuff. I can't believe we haven't been doing that already. Also, we're trying to be a little more involved in the artsy community. We've gone to a few open mics (without participating - 'cause we got too nervous!) and we want to start going to more events and stop being such reclusive shut-ins, haha.

We're finally getting involved with some creative projects again! Our friend Carlos, in Seattle, is putting together a sweet old-time inspired talk show, and he asked Franklin to make music for it! They're working on the pilot episode right now, which is going to be live + televised at the Columbia City Theater in Seattle. I've helped Franklin cover a Twin Peaks song for a bit they're doing, and it was super fun putting it together (click here to listen to our casiotone + melodica cover of Angelo Badalamenti's Dance of the Dream Man). Franklin's been working on new songs left + right, and it's super awesome to see him working on creative stuff again!

Similarly, I was just contacted by an old friend to put something together for a booth at an art show they're putting together in my hometown. I decided to showcase my brooches on vintage-fabric stretched over embroidery hoops, so the brooches can live as art on a wall, or removed and worn on your sweater, if ya want. I've got to get working on more brooches, though, because my selection has almost sold out! haha. My etsy shop only has one brooch left!

It's seriously crazy, and super exciting :)

-Elizabeth

Musical Meet + Greet

Last weekend we invited various musician friends to our house to play a song or two, and to discuss how everyone creates their individual noises. 

My primary goal of the night was to gain various perspectives on the music-making process, and document the night with my 8-track, record everything from 2 overhead mics, with 2 separate camcorders (a tablet (horrible video!), and Sony Cybershot (actually not too bad!)), and put everything together throughout the week on Elizabeth's mac. 

...We did everything but the music-making discussion.  Not so bad! But next time, I'm thinking I should probably be a bit more "hostly", and direct the events to hold more discourse.  I think everyone would agree, that was an important aspect that was sorely missing.  We got some sweet footage though, and I had a great time both during the event, and throughout the week, learning how to use imovie.

Meet n' Greet montage
this is a song Elizabeth and I made a while back, that had been on the back burner for a while.  Everyone was kind enough to jump in, and we had a short song with most everyone participating!  We didn't have a whole lot of footage from that performance, so I put together a "teaser trailer" of sorts, to accompany the song.

Leaf Colors
Jeremy came by, and played a few songs!  We weren't able to get much footage from all the songs he played (technical difficulties/rapt attention), but luckily we we able to capture "Tatooine Blues", one of my favorites.  Scotty couldn't stop talking about Jeremy after the night wound down.

Sea Hearts
Justin and Tim got together and wrote this song over the course of 2 practices prior to the Meet!  This kinda has an Iggy Pop turned gansta feel to it.  Haha, I'm excited to hear what they come up with next!

 Red Hot Buckshot
I've known Ben (dreads), since high school, but it was my first time meeting brothers Jon and Jared.  They all played a slew of songs, solo and in a group, but I think this was my favorite.  Jon had this Darby Crash meets Joey Ramone kinda sound that I really dug.  This song has been in my head all week!

stoic + pariah
And finally Elizabeth and I played a song we made about a History Channel series called "Ancient Aliens" haha.  We were kinda obsessed with the show for about a week.  Enough to write a song about it.

I'd like to hold the event again, with maybe more people, and a firmer course towards the discussion of the music-making process.  Less wine for me! Maybe in a month or 2, be on the lookout for a lame documentary-style video(s), based around the musically-inclined friends and acquaintances we have from around the Puget Sound.

-Franklin

Sunday Song: Hypnotic Regressions

We recorded a new song! Our intention was to make a grunge song, after a night of listening to a bunch of Talulah Gosh & Beat Happening. Instead, we ended up with somethin' pretty surfy soundin'. Not what we intended, but we like how it turned out!

Have a listen! (If the player isn't loading, you can click here to go listen at soundcloud)


We named the song Hypnotic Regressions and the lyrics were inspired by this strange book I found at a used book store a few weeks ago, called "You Were Born Again To Be Together - Documented cases of reincarnation that prove love is immortal". It was written in 1976, by this hypnotist from Arizona who uses regressive hypnosis to send people into their past lives. The book is like, a series of interiews with people he put under hypnosis, from the perspective of their past lives where they first met their significant other. I don't know how accurate it is, but it was a really interesting read! I like to read it when I'm feeling blue, haha. Here's a picture of the book:

(click here for lyrics.)

We have a couple other songs in the works. We just scored a really sweet casio at our secret thrift store the other day, so we're gonna try to make a super beepy keyboard song tonight. huzzah!

Anyway, hope you like our song! it was super fun.

-Elizabeth

Snow Day

Going through old files on the 8-track, I stumbled upon a recording Elizabeth and I did last winter when we got snowed in and couldn't get to work; aptly named "Snow Day".
It's kinda loungy, and feels more like a lethargic, lazy summer day in France, rather than a snowed-in excuse to skip work in the Pacific Northwest.
Maybe thats its charm?
Maybe not.

I use the ol' acoustic and bass drum/tambourine set-up, while Elizabeth did the lyrics, sang, and played the keys.

Take a minute out of your hot Labor Day weekend, and have a listen to Snow Day.

-Franklin

Ya Got Moxie, Kid!

There was a short little ukulele ditty I had on the back-burner, that just kinda sat in the back of my head while we were living in our little 1 bedroom apartment a few months ago, just itchin' to be recorded and dubbed over with more than 1 instrument.
So now that we're living in the farmhouse, I figured it'd be a good time to get it down, and have some fun by pairing it with the ol' Casio, and some festive steady bass drum/tamborine percussion.
I dub thee, "Ya Got Moxie, Kid!".

Join me won't you?

-Franklin

Future Projects!

I never like to start new projects when I've got some obligation that needs immediate attention -- in the case for this month, it's been MOVING. I'm really bad at packing to move. I spend a lot of time sitting and staring, or trying to memorize where I put every little thing. "Okay... I need to remember... that this little scrap of fabric... is going right here." Sigh! The process of packing things into boxes, which shouldn't take long at all, has taken me all of a month. But we're making the move in two days! So after that, we can finally commence to makin' stuff!

The project that I have at the top of my list is a video project I wanna work on with Franklin. When we were doing the long-distance-relationship thing, Franklin and I made a bunch of songs for each other. The ones I made were ridiculously short and embarrassingly silly, but, I really want to go back to those songs we made each other and make videos for them - together!

Here is the first one I made him, and the first one we'll make a new video for:

"good things"


I didn't have any sort of audio program on my computer, so I used iMovie to piece together audio tracks so I could have multiple tracks playing at once. The problem with using iMovie, though, was that the end product was a video, not an mp3 file! So I had to lazily whip up some videos to accompany the songs, so I could send them to him via youtube. They're pretty awful. I was watching a lot of sesame street with my nephew around the time I made this video, if you couldn't tell. I still want to incorporate the sock puppet theme into the new video for this song but maybe use something a little less creepy. Yes, I put lipstick on my sock -- and, no, it didn't wash out. I mean, what else was I supposed to do?

-Elizabeth

New Song #2

So we've been watching this documentary on netflix called "Ancient Aliens"
So we wrote a song about them.

It's called "White Blue Super Giant"



Elizabeth:
Singing Stuff
Glockenspiel

Franklin:
Ukulele
Drum Stuff

Click here for the lyrics


-Franklin

Laundry Day

This will be our first video game ever.  It will (tentatively) be called "Laundry Day".  It will be about, yep, you guessed it, doing laundry.  Exciting I know.

 

But check out the video footage of what we have so far.  Elizabeth did all of the artwork, I did some of the game scripting, and we both did the music.

Keep in mind, we JUST started on this, so it is nowhere near complete.  Just what we have so far.

Enjoy!

-Franklin

Song Makin'

Hello.
Elizabeth did a cover of a song I wrote about her.
I liked it a lot.  So we combined our forces, thus spawning a new edition, we call, "fancy edition".

Have a listen:





-Franklin