davidjmurphy.net

New gigs

davidjmurphy — Fri, 10 May 2013 23:25:33 +0000

I’m excited to say that I’m playing a show on May 28th at The Beauty Shop. Full details soon. It will be an all-acoustic lineup, and I hope to have some brand new material for this gig.

I’ll also be playing in this festival on June 22nd in Fairfield. Check out the video (and pardon all the thrusting at the end). This gig will NOT be acoustic :)

UPDATE — Here is the event page for the show at the Beauty Shop. I hope to see you there!

davidjmurphy — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 00:24:47 +0000

Writing music is like learning to ride a horse. You need some education, like how to establish communication with your animal, how to bring the horse from pasture to stable, where to put the saddle. You need a lot of coordination in your steep learning curve. How to balance, what to hold, how to tell the horse to walk, trot, canter. How to move from G minor to A major, how to balance lyrical meter with musical meter. How to move with the beast’s rhythm, to post, kick, tug the reins, signal him for turns. How to keep up the pace and keep moving. Maybe you’ll fall off. Maybe the horse will even get lazy mid-trot and stop, causing you to smash your balls on the saddle horn. But once you get the hang of all those crazy aspects, learn what your animal wants, how to listen to him, and how to make your statements confidently, galloping through that sunlit field feels like flying.

Paper

davidjmurphy — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 04:25:19 +0000

Is it weird that PA speakers excite me? Amplified music? The fact that a simple paper cone can take your mp3 and move someone’s bowels with it? The art of tightening that musical waveform into a compression of air particles that touch and pull your skin, by way of a copper coil shoving and yanking that paper cone back and forth, because its magnetic center shifts with the signal sent to it by an amplifier, and that center is strictly held by a giant magnet bolted to the speaker box? Is that weird? That magnetic center shakes your organs. Your tailbone. Your marrow has heard this music.

‘Persephone’ lyrics are up

davidjmurphy — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 22:33:01 +0000

Take a glance over to your right. The column titled “Pages,” (soon to be called “discography” and contain a complete list) now contains a link to the info on the album. Info includes credits, track listing, and complete lyrics.

As time goes on I’ll be updating the discography with all my other releases, all of which you can find on bandcamp. Also at that link are links to my other music involvements, at the top in the banner.

Enjoy!

The Vindication of Ronald Clay

davidjmurphy — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:06:15 +0000

Where to begin?

Last night was a hometown-screening of the film I’ve been working on with writer-director Cullen Thomas and producer Donald Revolinski. I composed and recorded/produced the entire film score and have been working on the audio post-production for some months now. There are still some finishing touches to apply, but last night was definitely a blast. Like, seriously a blast. I don’t mean that something exploded catastrophically like dynamite, I just mean that, when I go directly from pulling a 36-hour work day on the final crunch to standing in front of hundreds of appreciative viewers in a tuxedo, it feels like a blast. As if one reality got blasted away by another. So, it was a blast!

All of that aside, several fans now hold soundtrack CDs, which are labeled with text directing the holder to davidjmurphy.net for complete information on the release. WELL GUESS WHAT I just added a whole page dedicated to it: Click on the “Soundtrack – The Vindication..” link in the column to your right. Failing that, here’s the link.

Enjoy! I will be posting the album to my bandcamp page for listening and purchasing very soon! Like tomorrow.

UPDATE: The Vindication of Ronald Clay soundtrack is now live on bandcamp! Included with the digital download purchase of the entire album is a PDF that includes cover artwork by Paul J. Morehead, album credits, song lyrics, and disc art! Please visit http://davidjmurphy.bandcamp.com/album/the-vindication-of-ronald-clay-and-other-fables-for-a-rainy-day-the-soundtrack

What am I thinking??

davidjmurphy — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 00:56:24 +0000

Something I’ve forgotten: To post the Persephone: A Rock Ballet soundtrack link on this site.

A petty note about this album: I bit off more than I could chew with the whole Rock Ballet project, as many can attest. One thing that didn’t receive as much time and attention as I’d have liked is the general mixing and mastering of this album. Well, it didn’t receive ANY real mastering, as the time required to get it through a mastering house wasn’t available in my Supremely Organized Calendar Of Events.

That being said, the mix definitely has a “character” to it. In other words, it’s less universal than a professional mix. A professional mix will translate well to any sound system. Some of mine do achieve that coveted status despite being more or less amateur, some do not as much. Many things factor into this, but regardless, the reality is that Persephone definitely sounds best through certain speakers. A good choice in this case is the inexpensive and trusty Sony MDR-V150 headphones. I will not recommend specific non-headphone speakers as the room you’re in affects things a lot as well and, well, let’s not get into audiophile shit right now.

Shall we talk about poop instead? No? Ok… that’s ok…

Despite the fact that, in my perfect mind-world, all the music I’ve made would be released chronologically in the order in which it was written, and despite that, because it’s not, the listener’s ability to track my “journey as an artist” is impaired, I am still pretty damn proud of this collection of songs. I mean why wouldn’t I be? They’re some of the best ones I’ve written to date, thanks to the whole artist journey thing mentioned above.

There’s been an eight-year gap since my last official “studio” (I use the term loosely) album as solo-artist-davidjmurphy, or David J Murphy or whatever the fuck my name is. Eight years! You don’t see it anywhere but in that time I’ve written A LOTTA MUSIC. At least a few albums’ worth of completed songs, in fact, plus a bunch of odds and ends. Most of the time I would record a prototype/working version of a song and post it on MySpace before MySpace went the way of a condemned, haunted, inner city asylum. These albums of songs of which I speak WILL be recorded and released, rest assured (I know you were really fucking worried about that).

None of the songs I wrote in that eight year gap appear on the Persephone soundtrack. All of those are fresh and new (well with the exception of the beat in The Dance of the Lost Souls whose riff was one of those ‘odds and ends’ until this show came along, aaaaand the instrumental Alone which not-so-secretly steals a theme from {guess which other soundtrack}). Anyway you’ll get the older stinkier davidjmurphy stuff soon, all spit-shined and buffed to a brand-new, still-stinky, little-too-personal, indie-produced sheen!

In the meantime, back to work on the Vindication of Ronald Clay soundtrack!

davidjmurphy — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 05:35:11 +0000

Today I sat at my drum kit for the first time in over a month, and beat the living fuck out of it to some of the greater and lesser-/un- known The Speeding Trees compositions. Got blistered and stupid sweaty. Feels good man. Bodies block energy in weird places. Under the small of my back is a nucleus of godhead. Free energy, trapped by beliefs that are fused into my meat, like a gold stash under a padlock. The key is a radio channel, my sense of mission the tuner, invisible wings the antenna. Fuck you it’s poetry.

Persephone: A Rock Ballet went over really well, despite technical flaws aplenty. It was incredibly gratifying to be able to create, manifest and perform that production. Hilary is a great organizer and her talented cast of dancers really brought the story to life. We tried booking it in Burlington (an hour east of us) but for several reasons it won’t be happening, I’m sad to say. The DVD of our Fairfield show will be produced shortly and available for sale.

Work has continued on the score for The Vindication of Ronald Clay and the film should be complete in mid-August! More info on this soon.

At moments I feel consumed by life’s challenges and left without a moment to put my conscience at rest. At other moments I feel like nothing more than a pair of eyeballs and a rattling mind drifting through the void of living. At others I feel driven by an unending force.

General update

davidjmurphy — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 18:22:26 +0000

So! The Kickstarter campaign came to a close last week. Again, a huge thank you to everyone who helped by donating, sharing the link with their friends, or even just watching our video. We really want people to see this show because we’re already super proud of it, so hopefully you can catch it on DVD if you can’t make it to Fairfield June 9th or 10th.

In case you didn’t hear or haven’t checked it out, head on over to www.PersephoneARockBallet.com for the video link and a synopsis of our show!

Songwriting for the show is still going strong, and choreography, and rehearsal. Couple days ago I took some pictures of my studio to share with people online. If you want to check them out, click the image or here. And yes I’d love a decent camera :)

3 days left!

davidjmurphy — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 16:53:47 +0000

Dear friends and everyone else, if you’ve considered pledging to our Kickstarter campaign to help us put on Persephone: A Rock Ballet, now’s the time! Only 3 days until the fundraising period closes. We have met our goal of $2200, for which we are extremely excited and grateful. However, we set our Kickstarter goal lower than we actually need, since we were operating on such short notice. We wanted to make it easier to guarantee a certain amount, since with Kickstarter, if you don’t meet your goal you get nothing (besides exposure). If you read the project description (the text below the video), you can see exactly where the money is budgeted for everything over $2200.

In any case, I am excited, honored and amazed to be putting on this production. The music I’ve had the opportunity to write has amazed even me, if I may say so. It’s a really great exercise to write songs in a context that’s already so well defined, like a Greek myth. When you write songs about your own life, identifying a context to write about can be a challenge, at least for me. With this myth, the context is very plainly laid out, and I can put a lot of energy into a song that expresses the tension and urgency of the situation. In that regard I consider it some of my best songwriting. And as you probably know, in Persephone the music is performed live behind all the dance. I’m very excited to put on this show!

The above links point to our Kickstarter page, but I’ve set up a website that’s got an easy to remember URL, PersephoneARockBallet.com, where you can read a synopsis of the plot that I wrote. Here you can see our interpretation of the myth and look at what twists we’ve put on things, and get a sense for the message in our story.

Enjoy! Share! Be merry! Or pissed off, whatever you want!

Going pro

davidjmurphy — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 02:10:45 +0000

I’ve decided to actively seek out scoring and composition jobs, instead of just dreaming of one day getting paid to write music and hoping they’ll come to me (it doesn’t work as well as you might think). Mainly, it finally clicked in my brain that I could actually seek them, and potentially make a living through active freelance musicianship. A catalyst for this decision was being hired to score The Vindication of Ronald Clay. This commission, a part time job, and some prospects, have allowed me to “graduate” from my position as audio tech at the Fairfield Arts and Convention Center. It finally clicked and makes sense to me, in a practical day-to-day way, how I can go about living the life I want to live and pursuing my dream career. Well, David, you may ask, how’s that? Well I realized that a job writing music is… tada! A job. How do you get a job? You go looking and making friends and applying, building experience and reputation. So as part of going and making this type of connection, I slapped a résumé right on this site. It may need some tweaking but feel free to check it out. If you need original music for something, let me know. Wish me luck!