A generous soul recently offered me a bit of webspace. Right click on the red underlined song names and press "save as..." so that it doesn't save it to a temporary directory! All songs composed, written and recorded by Sandman unless otherwise specified. Songs encoded originally in WAV format and are transferred to convenient compressed MP3 format with bitrates varying from 128 to 256 kbps.

Stupid me the songs are kinda unsorted. Newest ones are added to the BOTTOM of the page...

Newest added song: Sleaper and SJ tunes (added May 2005)

THE GOODIES! All songs from the 2002 album Trigonometric Parallax can now be downloaded from this page. This is NOT for a limited time as was originally thought. The songs will be up indefinitely and the bandwidth ranged from 60-150 kB/s. It's my pleasure to provide these songs for you! These three songs are from a jam session called Loose Structure from a few months ago with me on bass and my friend on drums. No songs were discussed beforehand, the tracks are completely improv. The premises were pretty simple, first song was a grooving funk-style song, second song was dark and asian sounding, and the third song was a jam in 5/4. Turn up your volume for them as their encoding left the volume slightly low. These songs were recorded using a Yamaha 8 track recording system and 2 mics, one above the drums and one at the bass amp. We don't think it sounds too bad considering we're using a low budget amp, 2 mics and a low budget mixer... Sandman - bass JT - drums Loquetious Ri Slanka Pentagonal At the moment Atmospheric Instability is a two part song about bad weather. First part is actually a composition encorporating riffs I had lying around for some time. Note that the drums are totally off at almost every beat in part 1 as I had attempted to pull this song off with no metronome. Part 2 sounds much better as it made with a metronome (and boy it makes a difference!) and has a bit of reference to the first part in terms of keys and themes. Expect more vocals in part three as soon the plague of laziness is over! Lyrics for part two can be found HERE. part 1: Sandman - guitars, bass, keyboards, programming part 2: Sandman - guitars, bass, programming, vocals Atmospheric Instability i-A Frigid Wind Atmospheric Instability ii-Eye Of the Storm Panorama actually encorporates ideas I had wanted to use ever since I heard Battle of The Hands by Ron Jarzombek. Way back when my old Casio keyboard used to work (before I blew out its output resistors), I used it's horrid sounding drum system to put a sort of beat to this song. The premise of Panorama is that the lead guitar lines in this song constantly shift between left/right and high/low and harmonizing/not,etc. which creates essentially limitless possibilities, while the bass plays along, "foreshadowing" future ideas while staying in the center pan. There are many subtle changes between lead structure, tone and patterns, it's advised that to fully blow your brain you listen carefully with headphones! :) For the bored, write out the patterns of each guitar lead (be it high, low, short, long, etc) and figure out whether the same combination is ever repeated. Um, yes, you have to be REALLY bored! If you don't feel THAT bored, find the ONE guitar lead line (that lasts a whole <2 seconds) in which I used a metal guitar pick instead of a plastic one. Listen carefully, it's easy to distinguish. Sandman - guitars, bass, keyboards, programming Panorama Purging Of the Oath is probably the zaniest track I have ever created. It's the first song I made with the old Casio keyboard, and encorporates a variety of styles, moods and patterns. One might hear some Ozric, Jarzombek and even some Mike Oldfield in it! This song's premise is dance around the mainstream by jumping from style to style while maintaining NO continuity whatsoever. It's as if you're listening to like 5 or 6 mini songs :) For the bored, locate the guitar solo which is totally improvised on the spot in one take, and therefore probably will never be able to be reproduced. Sandman - guitars, bass, keyboards, programming Purging Of The Oath Upon purchasing my Korg MS2000 in May 2003 I made the song below in about 15 minutes. The underlying chord progression is pretty simple, and I sampled about 8 other tracks over it. Going from using a garbage Casio keyboard to a glorious Analog styling synth was quite a transition, at times even daunting. It was difficult to come to terms with the fact that I would probably never fully understand the Korg's capabilities, and hence I made this song to showcase that. The synth solos sort of cry out in pitious help, begging a sort of "what do all these knobs and buttons do?!" :) For the bored, locate the "whistle" and hum along to it, it'll get stuck in your head almost instantly! Moreover, it almost sounds like an actual whistle! Sandman - synths, programming Digitized Harmonious Disenchantment was actually my first GOOD sounding COMPLETE song. It was originally about 8 guitar tracks, then I added bass and about 8 synth tracks. Last, I borrowed my friend's Yamaha recording console (the one used to record the three tracks from Loose Structure), which happened to have a SICK drum machine built into it, and added 4 or 5 drum tracks. Voila, a complete track! Actually, this is the track that was submitted to the Progressive Music Society's second compilation PORTALS 2. I hope your ears enjoy it! For the bored, try and find the guitar lead line which almost mimics the beginning guitar lead line, but is in a different context and key (i.e. the opening lead guitar is heavy and crunchy while the mimicked one is much happier). Also, try to discern between where there is real bass, and where there is synth bass! Sandman - guitars, bass, synths, programming, percussion Harmonious Disenchantment Taking a break from recording stuff for my upcoming album which seems to be pulling a Jarzombek by not ever wanting to complete, I decided to take a break from proggish, metal insanity and make Breaching The Void. A product of learning to use Fruityloops FL studio 4 and messing with delay effects on my synth, this song is quite different from what I'm used to composing, so don't expect a crazy odd time signature fest. Nonetheless, this song has better sound quality (I think, at least) than my previous ones and is a strong composition. Thanks also to Fred White and MohoDisco of Erpnotes for helping me figure out how to encorporate a certain kind of resonance sweeping sound into this song! For the bored, attempt to figure out which movie I was watching when I came up with the "chorus" riff which appears twice. It's remarkably similar to the music at the end of the movie (read: I didn't rip it off, it sort of made the progression pop into my head). Sandman - guitars, bass, synths, programming Breaching The Void. Influenced by watching a little too much anime, this has an electronic, sometimes spacey feel, but heeds a call of Asian-style progressions and themes. Originally this song was entirely programmed into FLStudio 4.01, but I changed some parts around in the end to give it more continuity, and then added non-programmed "real" instruments :) This song is closer to Breaching the Void than my others, and was my way of exploring the various ways FLStudio 4.01 could be used (i.e. as a synthesizer, a sequencer, a beat programmer, etc). Don't expect much time changes or prog metal riffs, but the song has its share of complexity. For the bored, try and find which themes repeat and where, there's more than you think! :) Sandman - programming, synths, guitars Another Word For Synonym (or My Imaginary Trip To The Orient) One lovely snowy day in March drummer friend JT created what he called a "phat beat" in Reason. Sounded like something interesting, I thought, until he told me that it wasn't actual drum samples. Believe or not, this is my voice beatboxing while tapping an acoustic guitar with my fingers, recorded by a condenser mic, and then resampled and altered. Upon looping this beat at my house, I turned on my synth as a study break and proceeded to jam out for what seemed like 30 seconds. The more I played and fidgeted with knobs and effects, I found this jam sounded more and more like travelling on some sort of spaced out train, passing various stops, people, passengers, stations, etc. Upon finishing what sounded interesting, I looked at the clock to find I had been playing for almost 12 minutes. Astonished at what I seemed to have improvised on the spot to a single chord progression (not in the C major scale this time ;)), I decided to add some samples, guitar licks and other synth tracks over it, nothing too complex. The end result appeared aurally to still maintain the same mood the jam had originally, while simultaneously taking it to another level. I then took the song back to JT and asked him to fade out the beat somewhat near the end of the song and replace it by actual drums. This is my first actual synth improv-based song, and may even suggest that I'm getting the hang of this Korg! :) JT - programming Sandman - programming, synths, guitars All Aboard (version 1) Before we get into this section, I should warn all of you that these are, as the song titles say, extremely ROUGH versions of the songs depicted. The sound quality is not great, things may be low in the mix, or even clipping and horribly loud in others. The songs are exactly the way I left them when I took a break from recording them, and that's the way I like it. Read on... :) Welcome little boys and girls to the "album that could have been and still can". That is, the tracks I had worked on feverishly in 2003, but never completed, for the concept album A Cosmic Requiem. The premise can be explained better in the Music section. Believe it or not, I actually compiled a text file which would serve as the scientific and musical read along companion. I won't quote it, you should be thankful... Basically song 1, listed below, is the beginning of it all. Picture a somewhat dead space, swirling with different particles of different masses and densities and compositions. Some of the effects, granted, are kinda cheesy, but I like the delayed, speeding up and falling down sounds. I'm fond of the bassline, as it strangely goes over the distant arpeggios quite nicely. I got the idea for the progression this song is based around from an OSI song. Sandman - synths, bass Spacetime Harmony: Prologue Nebulous Anomaly is basically an extension of the Prologue. The bassline of Prologue ends with a slight hint as to what to expect from Nebulous Anomaly here. For this track, picture our "celestial camera" tracking this event-to-be focusing itself on a particularly unexciting cloud of dust and space matter. The offtime arpeggio in the beginning of the song couldn't be reproduced if I tried, I don't know what effect it was, or the tempo I used. The idea for the warm bass that looped and became progressively more powerful came from the outro of Crackerblocks by Ozrics. The solo around 0:50 is actually one of my favorite written ones, but unfortunately, it's too low in the mix. You may remember the complaints of Cool Edit Pro eating up this track, it's true. Basically I lost tracks, and their order, but had the mixdown. I had to make do with the mixdown, adding various tracks to compensate (like at 5:00, the synth lead has a blatant mistake, covered up by guitar lead). The guitar 6:00 guitar turned guitar and synth solo is also one of my favorites. Around 7 minutes, we experience the shockwave, that is a disturbance from an outside force, perhaps maybe a supernova wave hitting the cloud (I wish I knew how to do what I did to the synth lead at 7:30). This causes turmoil in the cloud, thereby creating a reason for this cloud of dust to start to contract. Korg percussion is replaced by programmed drums (same as the ones in Harmonious Disenchantment), and chaotic synth effects and explosions lead us to the stage of Collapse... Sandman - programming, synths, guitars Nebulous Anomaly (rough) Let's start off by saying that I always wanted this song to have percussion and real drums. I never got around to programming it (as you'll hear why... this has so many pauses and rhythmic changes...), and this song may sound cool initially, but unfortunately there are a lot of blunders in it that I didn't get around to fixing. Collapse / Protoform begins strange, it uses a riff (and a somewhat jazzy chord accompaniment) I had came up with many months before recording this. Picture all the chaos of collapsing is beginning to take form. At approximately 1:30, I attempted with some musical humor to illustrate entering the protostar stage. At 2:06 comes a great riff I had under my belt for months as well, played on a sweet 12 string and a contrasting warm riff. This part illustrates the battle of gravity versus ejected photons. At about 4:30, material has made the core big enough that it starts shooting out jets of hot gas or other compounds. 5:10 or thereabouts, unfortunately, has a bass in the wrong key. Couldn't fix it without messing up the session. I like the following guitar solo, though. At 6:05, gravity begins to be the winning factor. Picture the clouds of dust being shot out as this happens, revealing the hot, shining core of a newborn star. For the next minute, this is supposed to sound extremely powerful and spacey, and it gives ME goosebumps, so hopefully it does the job for other listeners ;) After this, matter accumulates over the new star's core, and we exit the protostar stage... Sandman - synths, bass, guitars Collapse and Protoform (rough) We're getting into the real nitty gritty of things here. ZAMS is an acronym for Zero Age Main Sequence, basically a star who's hopped off the protostar stage and is beginning it's life on the nice and comfortable Main Sequence. My problem with this track is that the MS stage of a star is supposed to be its longest life stage, but this track came out to be really short. The MS stage is also pretty uneventful, and I had trouble thinking of musically representing sunspots, basically one of the only things that could happen in this stage. I decided to forget about it, and just keep the song whatever length it became. I kept the "uneventful" theme in mind, keeping an almost constant progression and bassline throughout the entire song. The idea for the bassline being in 5/16 while the rest of the song was in 4/4 was an idea I had worked on with JT, and decided to implement here. I borrowed my friend's 12 string acoustic electric (or 11 string, rather... the G is missing it's double) and added some cool somewhat structured diddles. I have to admit though, even with a metronome, it's hard playing guitar licks in 4 when your bass as a backing rhythm is in 5. At 2:33, I decided to be fun and add a contrasting pattern in the synth bass, then to later change the actual bassline to this, and then at the end of the song, change it back. It met with some difficulty, as you can hear. I think it could use a smoother transition. You can hear a soothing melody at the end of this song, and that is the main riff I was going to use to base track 5 on. The premise for track 5 was actually extremely wild. I would be constantly subtracting the number of bars and reducing the time signature until I was left with a unison riff. Sort of a Shrink N' Grow section like Dream Theater proposed, but without the Grow. The track began, but never saw fruition. We'll see what the future brings... Sandman - synths, bass, guitars ZAMS! (rough) Ah, yes, the famous Event Horizon. If I didn't mention this before, this actually is probably the most musically complex song I ever wrote, and it's less than 3 minutes... I started with the principle idea that the end of the star's life, a horrible black hole of DESTRUCTION AND CHAOS, would have to be utterly heavy and downright insane. I wrote this and was happy with it, but decided I could do better, and therefore had it as just the INTRO to the Black Hole section ;) With that in mind, the main theme of this song is in 25/16, and its contrast is in 11/16. A rather mind melding set of time signatures, but much easier to play along to when you learn how to use FruityLoops FLStudio. This was my project that got me to learn how to use said program. I actually composed the entire song in drums first, and then wrote the song around the drum parts. I used the constant hi-hat in 4/4 over the 25/16 part, which sounded sick, reminded me much of good old Virgil Donati. The song begins by hopping right into the chaos of the almost Metallica-esque rhythm, ascending chromatic lead, blasting synth arpeggios, then into trippy guitar screeches (simulating x-rays tossed into the atmosphere) and other chaos. For good measure, I tossed in some contrasting bass dynamics. At around 1:10, the lead guitar becomes purely Jarzombek, into spastic, jagged tones, morphing into chromatic shreds. The song builds momentum then slowly explodes into a synth ensemble reminiscent of Planet X. I wasn't sure if I was going to keep the synth ending, or if maybe the following stage was going to begin with it, but I left the track as-is for this rough version. So there you have it, folks. 5 out of what was planned to be 12 songs, based on the concept of geeks like myself's interest! With time, maybe this album may come into fruition with other players, other instruments, other equipment. But until then, it's always nice to look back and listen to the ambition I had. Sandman - programming, synths, bass, guitars Event Horizon (rough) On a day much like the one you're experiencing while reading this, I settled down with my guitar and decided to jam. It had been many months since I had composed anything significant, due to the lack of recording equipment, effects, a guitar that would stay in tune, and free time above all. I decided to use the pedal an old bandmate lent me, and use my old method of "plug and play". The premise of this song was pretty much spur of the moment. The main theme is played entirely using the left hand with no picking or strumming. The right hand keeps rhythm in this track by holding an A chord and pounding on the guitar body to keep the sound resonating in a sort of heartbeat like pulse. The vibrato violin-lead placed over the main track was obtained by rubbing a finger from the right hand on the B string while using the left hand to mute the neighboring strings, and adding delay. The final lead track is the only one that uses both hands, and until the outro chords, uses the same notes used in a solo for the Shawn Lane song (coming soon!). I debated for a while adding synths, drums, or distortion even, but decided to leave it as is. *EDIT: The original version has been replaced a newer version that went through some dynamics processing and noise reduction. The current version is therefore louder but should sound crisper. Enjoy! Sandman - guitars, production Left Wing As mentioned many times ago (and even further in the Music section), back in June 2004 myself and drummer friend JT took the daunting task of creating, from scratch, a purely original guitar based tune for the purposes of a tribute to Shawn Lane. Taking an entire 7 months to finish, we ended up agreeing on rather amusing but still-can-be-serious title of "I Can Wait Forever". Made in 10 or so recording sessions, myself and JT first composed a bunch of progressions (the main two riffs were ones I had lying around to begin with), then made a rough order of things. We then recorded, extremely roughly, all the guitar and bass tracks. My guitar leaves much to be desired, as it always has, and needed constant tuning, noise filtering, preamps, and effects. We ended up settling for using a Yamaha mixer as a preamp (and for the effect in the short solo) and a blue DanElectro delay pedal for the entire song. The solo took several days to get perfectly, as I have many short videos of me attempting to get it right but getting too frustrated to continue. Many months later, we re-recorded the tracks well and JT rented a few drum mics and a 4 track. His drumming and rhythmics are quite impressive, keeping the groove while giving some definite indication of his creativity and ability to adapt to the different rhythms in the song. Then came the end of January where we received word that only days remained to send in our track. We had a final mixing session, as can be explained in the February 1 update of the stuff section, and there you have it! Sandman's recipe for a 5 minute song in 7 months! Sandman - guitars, bass, production JT - drums, production, mixing I Can Wait Forever Now up for grabs are songs from each of my bands! First up are the Sleaper tunes! These are "demos" recorded in a local jam space back in February. The Sickness is a crowd favorite because it is our slowest, chillest but also fastest and heaviest song. There are good vocal harmonies we came up with on this tune, but this is the instrumental version. Racism is quite the noggin-scratcher. Its name came from our old singer Angelo who used to improvise singing about said topic. The song is based on chaotic changes revolving around a particular theme. My personal favorite is the riff that repeats 4 times in the song but is faster every time you hear it! These were recorded with a minidisc system and 3 mics. More Sleaper tunes to come eventually, enjoy these for now. Sandman - bass Costa D - drums Costa S - guitars The Sickness Racism All Shaking Judy tunes were taken down on December 4, 2005 due to our increasing popularity. Yeah right! Actually, CD would be recorded soon and therefore those demo tunes will be more valuable if you kept them ;) Visit www.myspace.com/shakingjudy for the newest updated tunes.

Sound quality is getting better as I buy better equipment. Tracks recorded using Cool Edit Pro 2.0, Cubase SX, FruityLoops FLStudio 4.01 Producer Edition and/or Reason 2.0 unless otherwise specified.