What would happen if Dan Brown joined Weezer? See, if you’d asked me this, I would’ve said that Dan would end up crying in a corner after it became clear that his input was not needed, and that his musical ability was insufficient.

But put the question to Dennis Mott and you instead get this brilliant reimagining of “The Alexander and The Swine Flu,” which he has transformed into a fictionalised history lesson (with bonus conspiracy theory) about our favourite Macedonian king. It is awesome.

My apologies for the radio silence of the past month, I know I said I’d be back in a week or so with a new music site, but that seems not to have happened. It’s partially me being busy, partially me being lazy, and partially a huge case of analysis paralysis because I want to come back with something that has proper artistic merit.

Bit anticlimactic, this, I feel like I should’ve ended on a high note – but since this isn’t really an ‘ending,’ we should be okay. I’ll get that link up in the next week or so.

(YouTube link)

Hmm.

(YouTube link)

This is a song about gender stereotyping.

Also, a few of the lyrics lower the brow of this entire project by a good few milimetres. I was powerless to resist them.

(YouTube link)

I was wondering if I’d put any instrumentals on this site. Now I know.

(YouTube link)

Had I lived in the 50s, I’d totally have been a jingle writer.

(YouTube link)

There’s a craze on YouTube of humorously editing movies to sum them up “in 5 seconds.”

Note the quote marks.

Just so you know, tomorrow will be another microsong too.

(YouTube link)

(YouTube link)

A song about the lesser-known “no horses” conspiracy theory.

(YouTube link)

And today I give you yet another rushed last-minute song with bland lyrics and bad singing. Enjoy.

(YouTube link)

I won’t embed it, because there’s a spoiler in the thumbnail pic, and because it’s weird seeing two little me’s looking out from the screen.

Happy Birthday, Dawa! You’re disappointed in me!

(YouTube link)

Goddammit, YouTube. All of these songs are rushed, but this song is super-rushed; done in about ten minutes when I saw YouTube was going down for maintenance, and would not be back up before I left for work.

When it was done, YouTube had already gone down for maintenance. Oh well.

(YouTube link)

In which I turn last-minute laziness into a learning experience!

(YouTube link)

And now this, which science has proven to be the polar opposite of yesterday’s song in every conceivable way.

(YouTube link)

“A mirror looks at another mirror” ~Dawa

I hope this story reads. I’ve never written anything like it before, and there are some big plot points that I leave unspoken. I hope it’s not too difficult to follow.

(YouTube link)

I am bored of the way pop songs won’t shut up about “living for today,” “embracing the moment,” “making the most of now” because “tomorrow may never come,” and all those other worn-out platitudes. Tomorrow’s been feeling very left out (Annie notwithstanding), so hopefully this song will make it feel more appreciated.

One of my few songs where I don’t try to be funny.

(YouTube link)

This is a cautionary tale.

I should try reversing some of my other song names, see if they give me ideas too.

(YouTube link)

I started playing Street Fighter IV last week, which inspired this.

(also oops, it’s not a microsong! My mistake.)

(YouTube link)

Real instruments? In my Daily Refrain? It’s more likely than you think.

This is a happy song about clapping.

(YouTube link)

Not sure who this ‘we’ is, but I tried it with ‘I’ and it sounded weird.

(YouTube link)

I really couldn’t be bothered today. You can probably tell.

(YouTube link)

My tribute to the delightfully surreal http://tatatataa.cn/, which appears to feature Duke Nukem reading the menu tree for TextEdit.

No, I have no idea.

Special thanks to Mika for showing me the site.

(YouTube link)

Apropos of nothing at all; I just like the term. And wrote a song about it.

Is it actually a term? I heard it somewhere, I think.

(YouTube link)

(whilst hearing #21)
Nate: harmony
Nate: that part is so amazing
Gwilym: there are no harmonies
Gwilym: it’s all unison
Nate: oh you semantic jumble
Gwilym:
Nate: ok here is your theme for tomorrow: a song with a whole lot of harmonies about harmonies

I’m not sure this song actually works. Thanks, Nate. Thate.

(YouTube link)

This song is precision engineered to make my sick friend feel better.

(YouTube link)

I am not sure what to make of this.

Anyway, as promised, I’ve added an Older Songs page, with about an hour of material, which is more than I expected. I’m not so sure about the name, since it’s easily confused with the Archives section, but I can deal with that later (come to think of it, I might remove Older Songs from the sidebar and add it to the Archives page).

I’ve actually had concerns about the user-friendliness of the site in general. There’s a lot of info all in one go, and nothing to really show the user where to start. Perhaps if I add a picture to the top of the sidebar it’ll both break up the wall of text, and draw the attention of new users to the introduction.

In other news, as per the request in song #15, I’ve received my first cover song: ‘Grim Beards,’ by Quinn Fox. For the moment, you can download it here, but once I’ve received a few more I’ll add a ‘Fan Contributions’ page. When people take the time to do this sort of thing, I want to make it easy for their work to be heard.

Not much else to say, except: please keep sending song ideas in! Don’t be discouraged if I don’t use your idea straight away – I’m not casting any of them aside, they’re all being kept for possible future use. All ideas are welcome, don’t sit there waiting for inspiration to strike. Just let your brain pour through your fingers and onto your keyboard. Except, you know, not gross.

As usual, thanks for listening, and thanks for reading. And enjoying, hopefully.

Time is a cruel mistress.

edit: some people have asked what “that 2012 bullshit” means. If you haven’t heard about it, consider yourself lucky, and then read this, and then despair. Or laugh. It’s ridiculous, really.

(YouTube link)

“seeing eye dog jogging (hyphenate as you see fit)” ~ansgaros

Today we investigate the downside of recurring dreams.

(YouTube link)

Remember when I asked how to give myself time off this project? And gave three options? I ended up settling on ‘none of them.’ My friend suggested microsongs, and remembering the greatness of TMBG’s “Fingertips,” and just about anything by Bob Drake, I liked the idea.

So I think I’ll divide up each week’s songwriting with a microsong every Wednesday. No more weeks off. Like all my plans, this is of course subject to change massively.

In hindsight, Headphones should’ve been a microsong.

(YouTube link)

“I know it’s only breakfast time but I was thinking of veggie stew for dinner tonight. I’m currently off wheat and sugar so foods not as much fun as it used to be, but thank god for veggie stew. Lentils, barley, stock, potato, kumera, butter beans, kidney beans, carrots, and, of course, peas. Sometimes I add chick peas, but I really shouldn’t.” ~Fiona

Definitely the strangest thing I’ve received via the Suggest a song idea section. Whether it was a a genuine suggestion, someone messing around or possibly even a spambot, I have no idea – but I couldn’t leave it alone.

(YouTube link)

Usually I’m good about replying to e-mail, but sometimes I’ll take between a million years and an eternity to respond – and it’s almost always for the exact same reason. This song is for those who have suffered this terrible fate.

I’m sure that someday I’ll get over this whole ’super-dramatic song about trivial thing’ schtick, but that day is not today.

(YouTube link)

(If you haven’t heard #13 yet, it explains that I’m taking every fourth week off. We’ve just finished the third week.)

This doesn’t seem fair to them, and on a selfish level it also reduces the chance that checking the site will become a habit. Basically it’s making me rethink the decision. As I see it, my options at the moment are:

1. Three-weeks-on, one-week-off. It’s what I’m running with at the moment, but it’s also the option that gives listeners the greatest opportunity to forget about the site and never return.

2. Doing it every week, but skipping Wednesdays in addition to the weekends. My main problem with this is that it messes up the name of the project.

3. Doing it every day, every week, but artificially limiting how long I allow myself to spend on a track. The obvious risk here is that the quality of the songs could (and probably would) take a dive.

So please weigh in, I’d like that. Either say which of the three you’d prefer, or suggest other options altogether. I’m open to ideas.

-

On another note, my good friend and musical almost-rival Quinn Fox found himself inspired by this site, and set out to do a song-a-day project of his own. The result is “Survived The Cold War,” which I suppose I’d call an EP. It is excellent, and freely downloadable in MP3 format.

-

Speaking of MP3s, I’ve had a few people ask why I don’t post them, instead releasing these songs exclusively as YouTube videos. Simply put, it’s for the hits. The way I see it, getting decent view counts on YouTube is pretty much my one chance of gaining an audience for this project (side note: it helps a lot if people rate the videos too ), and as much as I’d like to make MP3s available – they sound a lot better, for one thing – I’d be robbing myself of views.

Once the view count for a song reaches a certain amount I’ll make its MP3 available, though. So yeah, I’m holding them for ransom. Ruthless, I am.

-

Last of all, I’m probably going to add a ‘Previous Work’ section to the sidebar over the next week or so, with some earlier, non-Daily Refrainy songs. I might not, but keep an eye out for it anyway.

-

OK, that was ridiculously long. This is why I don’t blog. Perhaps I should vlog instead, though I’d have to buy an egg timer or stopwatch or something. If you’ve read all of this, then thanks! If you didn’t, then thanks for reading this sentence at least.

And thanks for being here at all. I hope you’re enjoying the music.

(YouTube link)

A tribute to an awesome narrative convention, especially popular in serial television.

I wish I’d included a lyric about Riker being the exception.

(YouTube link)

Kind of a game-changer, this one. Hope you’re not disappointed.

(YouTube link)

In which I suddenly go political. Which is of course incredibly stupid, because (a) most of my regular listeners don’t live in New Zealand, so the song won’t make the slightest bit of sense to them unless they do lots of googling, (b) it’s going to age badly, and (c) going political is always stupid, because it alienates the people who don’t happen to share your exact point of view.

For what it’s worth, I only genuinely believe about 14% of what I say in this song. I have nothing against Larry; I’m sure everything he’s done has been with the purest intentions. But when when you single-handedly spend $9,000,000 of your country’s money, I’d say that makes you fair game for some good old-fashioned theatrical vitriol.

In related news, “theatrical vitriol” is really fun to say.

(YouTube link)

Vocals are still cold-y, but this track-doubling thing covers it up decently.

Some end-of-word consonants get lost though, which is something I’ll need to try and avoi.

(YouTube link)

In today’s song, Gwilym writes way out of his comfortable vocal range and damn near passes out on the high notes. Also, totally emo.

Which I guess means this is my first non-comedic song.

(YouTube link)

“now make one about bunny rabbits or possibly random foreign people texting you out of the blue” ~ansgaros (10 Jun 2009)

It appears that I now do requests! I might add a ‘Suggest Song Ideas’ page to the site, but in the meantime feel free to let your imagination run wild in the comments section.

(YouTube link)

I have a cold. This song started off as about that.

(YouTube link)

This is a song about Dennis Mott.

(YouTube link)

This is a song about skeletons.

(YouTube link)

In today’s song, I lament the fact that Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog only lets Americans watch the show.

This may sound like a thin concept (because it is), but bear with me.

Special thanks to Dawa for helping out with a handful of lines.

(YouTube link)

This began as a silly apology for yesterday’s short song, then went all metaphory and ended up about… I have no idea, actually.

Were it not for the bizarre bridge section, I could almost call this the first non-comedic song I’ve recorded. Oh my.

(YouTube link)

I’m disappointed I got stuck on the second verse, but oh well. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

(YouTube link)

Not sure exactly where this came from.

If this is your first time here, be sure to listen to yesterday’s song as well. It explains what this project’s all about.

(YouTube link)

The first of many! This song is mostly an introduction to the project.

From here, you can either listen to the next song by clicking the button at the bottom of the page, or you can head to the Archives and be more selective.

I should mention that while this song pretty well represents my lyrical style, musically the project goes all over the place. So even if you hate toe-tappy stage musical swing, you’re bound to like something here. Browse around.

(YouTube link)