Music sketches and themes by Ken Loge
Bellando
Written around 1998 to accompany a series of images that were presented as a slide show. But wait, they were real slides, Kodachrome style.
Deep Wood
A lovely little romp through the sunlit trees. Beautiful wildflowers all around, a gentle brook of clear running water. Fall asleep in cool grass, then dream of forest fairies that sing to you and lull you away into a land of rainbows and astral delights. Yech, that’s a little too sappy, even for me.
Devoid of Time
This song was probably influenced by my playing too much Diablo near the turn of the millenium. Diablo was an addicting game where the task was to slaughter lots and lots of demonic appearing monsters. It had a haunting soundtrack that enhanced the game very much. I slayed many a pixel beast in those digital underworlds, but after a long gaming session I kept seeing little animated monsters in my head when I closed my eyes. I think some of those little pixel demons are still crawling around in my mind, but they hide well enough that I don’t see them most of the time…
Fen Devil
If this were to be formally classified it might be considered “cheesy jazz.” Then again there are parts of it (a note or two) that kind of stick.
Flow
I originally wrote this song using a program called Music Shop on a Commodore 64 when I was about 17. Working with a C64 was great, but the SID sound chip could only produce 3 different sounds at a time, so the musical ideas had to be somewhat simplified. I eventually made this mix of it using an Alesis QuadraSynth S4, which is no longer manufactured. In its day the QuadraSynth was an affordable way to make musical noise.
Jarach
Just a little dramatic snippet. I’m not sure why, but I can imagine this used in a commercial for a dirty toothbrush. Twisted bristles with gooey bacterial slime on them. “Isn’t it time you bought a new toothbrush?”
Mind Lander
Why is this called “mind lander”? I couldn’t tell you, but the song snippet makes me think of part of an action sequence of a 1970s B-Movie. Too bad I lost my market. I might have been able to make some money with this.
Six Eight Swirl
I wrote this with a friend in the late 1980s. We locked ourselves in a very small analog studio with an 8 track 1" Tascam for a weekend at a college we were attending. We had a Yamaha DX7 and a Roland RX 11. DBX noise reduction and a lot of patch cords.
Snowlines
This one makes heavy use of some unaltered Morpheus patches. I think I was exploring some of the sounds of the Emu Morpheus at the time to see what I might do with it. I think I bought the Morpheus from E-MU (now owned by Creative) for around $300. Such fun for a song.
Tanks A Lot
This is a sketch for an unfinished tank battle game. This would have been the music playing for the intro or splash screen.
Var Droole
Another peculiar name, “Var Droole”. When I hear it now I think of all of the poor little bugs and arachnids in the world that have been flushed down the toilet. It’s kind of a dizzying feeling theme. Not too interesting by itself, but maybe better with some cool CG of swirling, turbulent toilet water? Hmm. Maybe I should take my early work more seriously.
Gliderz
This is a screen video of a song I wrote on a Commodore 64 in 1986 using a program called "Music Shop". The song was on a 5.25" floppy disk, and through several miracles of electrons and magnetism I was pleased to be able to bring it back from its 8-bit tomb.
