Last Summer's Top 3

It's sometimes useful to look backwards to inform future direction, so I looked up which songs I recorded last summer sold the best over one year. These are the three most successful selling songs that I did last year.

3. Oriental Journey


Kind of a surprise - It's not the most authentic piece you'll ever hear. I guess it's what the average American musician thinks traditional oriental music sounds like. It will work just fine in your ninja movie trailer.

2. Island Bounce


I always loved the song "White Sky" by Vampire weekend, and that sort of bouncy and busy vibe that similar songs have. Another example is "Proof" from Paul Simon's "Rhythm of the Saints" album. The sweet sound of music from Camaroon, Carribbean islands, or many latin countries. It inspired me to do one of my own, and this was it.


1. Accordion Duet


Lovingly referred to by my kids as the "drunken frenchmen song." I get why they associate accordions with France, but I'm not sure about the drunken part. Who cares? It was the best selling song of last summer.

So what is the lesson for future recordings? I guess find some interesting style of world music, and zone in on making an instrumental only composition in that style as authentic as possible.

Sounds like a fun plan.

Short Theme

This is the number 2 submission of the summer. I actually have bigger projects in the works, but knock off some of these short ones to give myself a break. I seem to do better when I have 3 or 4 songs to work on at the same time. It's better if I can switch to something else for a while and come back to it later with "fresh" ears.

Sarasponda

Sarasponda is my first official submission of the summer. It's a dutch spinning song, but my version has a definite appalacian folk feel. What can I say - I've never been to Holland.

I picked this one because It's one of the songs I like to play on the mandolin I got for my birthday. After 3 months of practice, I'm certainly proficient enough to produce a commercially viable recording on the instrument, right? We'll see.

First Recording of the Summer

The first offering of the summer is a quick little EDM song I cranked out more to familiarize myself with new equipment than to produce anything usable from a commercial standpoint. Still kind of catchy.