Asa is a Shitty Musician

It's true, but that won't stop me from doing a post about the song I did for my Computer Music class this semester. If it sounds rushed, it is. I was asked to write program notes for when it was played live at the culmination concert, and they are as follows:

“You Have Only Now” was composed during the late winter/early spring months of 2008 by Asa E. While he considers himself a bassist before a guitarist, he had a few riffs kicking around that were written on the latter instrument and attempted to assemble them in a cohesive, song-like manner, adding in odds and ends where necessary. While he attempts to not to rip off his direct influences, he’s quite open about the fact that My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, Jesu’s Silver, Opeth’s Still Life and Dinosaur Jr’s You’re Living All Over Me albums were all in rather heavy rotation at the time of writing, and hopes that some of the elements come through.

If my underconfident guitar solo (the only time I feel like I've played EXACTLY what I wanted to) doesn't SCREAM J Mascis worship, I don't know what will. Aside from dyeing my hair silver, of course. And yes, the rhythm's off at points and the opening Opethy strum part is totally tempoless. I never said I was good. But as simple and/or lackluster as the piece is, it's the first song I "composed" on my own–guitar, bass, and even that minimal drum loop.

I didn't really say what the song was about because I don't really know. I wanted the wall-of-sound guitar stuff to emote a hazey, euphoric sort of feeling. Don't know if that came through.

For those who haven't stopped reading and/or care about technical crap, the song is in D standard tuning. I ran a Fender Mexi-Strat through my Sansamp Para Driver DI preamp pedal for the initial distortion sound, then added amp simulation, reverb, and some chorus in Logic 7. The bass tracks were written and cut entirely in one night on a borrowed Ibanez SRX300 4-string run straight into the board and EQ'd in postproduction. The drum loop was an impatiently-produced thing based on a pattern from Logic 7's built-in Ultrabeat drum machine. Finally, the glassy synth string melody over the intro was added at the last minute via a Logic Softsynth MIDI patch triggered by a two-octave MIDI controller the studio had by the board.

And with all this said, I give you the mediocrely-titled "You Have Only Now."