Art Please

Hello Everyone. It's been a while since I've used this blog. It's been a long semester, making New York my home and rocking my grad program, but now that I have a month off I can focus on music. Dave Pinkham, the genius behind the controls, is finishing with the pieces we've been working on over the last year. Now I can't play out or print an album, but I don't want the stuff to just sit on my blog, so here's the plan: I'm posting the work here, you can download it from vimeo, put visuals/video/animation/etc to the tune, and e-mail me your creation. I'll post it, share it with my growing New York creative contacts, and see if we can attract some attention for one another. Mostly I just want to create something beautiful with other creatives. The music is licensed under creative commons so that no one can make any money off it, but feel free to make any other use of my music.

Here are the first two pieces. Beautiful Summer's Day is a little latin and a little dark, with a little waltz thrown in. I dig the syncopation and the loose ending. City is the simplest song I've ever written. Dave rocked the keys, providing a warm environment for my falsetto to swim in. Can't wait to see what you all turn out.






Beautiful Summer's Day by Jesse Ricke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.


City by Jesse Ricke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Solo Stuff - Yummy Num

Here's the goods, or at least a handful of them. Most all the tracks need slight adjustments but overall I'm rather proud of what Dave and I have gotten out of them. I find the music imaginative, eclectic, rockin', and a little dark. What do you think? More to come.

'Beautiful Summer's Day'

'City'

'We are Your Lovers'

'The Beast is in You'

Music for Website and Recording Update

So music has been moving forward, though there is still little to show off. With The Frigidaires recording, Everette has been out of town and we have been recording by ourselves with Alex taking charge of mixing. But it ain't bad having a house full of expensive microphones at our disposal. We go in, we throw up a mic, we rock, and we wallow in our rockfullness. We got one more tune to go. I got with Dave earlier this week to finish vocals for my solo stuff, so that's almost done as well. He also has great gear, a lot of patience, and resourceful mixing chops. Things are sounding weird and hip. I'll have some previews from both projects forthcoming.

In the meantime, I'm putting together some music for a landscaping website, incorporating natural sounds with my own brand of cool jazz. Just a few short themes to engage the user. Here's the main theme for the site. What you all think?

'Zito's Theme'

sneak peeks at The Frigidaires

Today Dave and I laid down a few more key tracks for my solo work.  With one piece called 'Slow Fuse' the choice of keys voice and the palm muted bass made for a sparse and sultry sound, which are qualities I very much cherish.  With another track the keys voices we added seemed somewhat wacky and disappointed me.  Dave suggested we break that song down to guitar and voice with some percussion, an inspired decision.  So after percussion, vocals, and a lot of mixing we'll have a product together in about a month.  At the same time The Frigidaires has completed three tracks for our release with a fourth in the works and another three to be started next week.  The songs are fun and intelligent, reminiscent of the Ums, but with some daring choices that I'm rather pleased with.  So check this out:

  

'Same Thing Again'

'All That Hate'

remembering the Ums

here's a sampling from the Ums, as a musician I grew up with these fellas and it's going to be tough finding anyone I work with so well, Start a War comes off our second release and was always a party favorite live, the other two were a part of our art pop suite 'Sleepy Time' and began as my own compositions, I feel I began to come into my own as a writer with these two       

'Start a War' from Give Me Pause

'Nighty Night' from Sleepy Time

'Seed Song' from Sleepy Time

hiD for Heidi

here's a cute little piece I put together for an animation by the lovely miss Heidi Zito, it was interesting for me because I was listening to a lot of Moondog and really getting a hang on simple recording and editing techniques, it's plenty messy but served the cartoon well

live video 'The Beast is in You'

Here's a recent video of a new song,  It's a blast to perform,  The album version is coming along nicely as well,  Me and Dave are using a real grungy keys sound,  Very Animals,  But this will suffice for now

at the moment

I'll put up some examples of past work and some videos of what I'm working on at the moment.  More music to come as recording lumbers forward.  Making good anything is a life time's effort and currently every effort to produce strong recordings is stifled by conflicting schedules and stubborn technology.  Though I whine with little reason.  I've been very fortunate to have the help of some wonderful and supportive recordists (i like that word) who don't mind doing it on the cheap so long as I'm patient.  Everette and Dave are my darlings and will do anything, and I mean anything, to please them.  I also feel I've made serious breakthroughs with my compositions, improvising, and vocal performance and am eager to dive into the trenches of promotion and gigging.  Let's see where things end up.