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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / Cosmic Cairns's music / Playing Backgammon With the Elves Who Control the Universe

Playing Backgammon With the Elves Who Control the Universe

By Cosmic Cairns on April 11, 2018 11:05 pm

This is the longest track I've done so far this year.  I hope it won't test your patience, but I wanted a little room to stretch out and go on a bit of an epic journey.  I utilized a ton of sounds including some samples from earlier tracks I did this year as well as voice mail messages on my phone, the sound of my dog jangling his collar, and a recording I made of my 5 year old niece playing with a toy walkie-talkie I gave her when she was visiting town recently.  I had to upload a lower quality mp3 than normal due to WeeklyBeats' limit on file size, but hopefully it doesn't affect the sound quality too much.

Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial (BY-NC)

A sunny day encapsulated in a song. The strumming holds it all together.

Much appreciated.

Wow dude! There's so much cool stuff in here. You gotta stretch out every now and again, right?

yeah, the guitar makes for a great rhythm. the vocals (and probably some of your lyrics) give it a fantastic folk vibe. THUMBS UP, KEEP EXPERIMENTING

fantastic trippy piece of music. It sucked me onto an epic journey. great singing CC. Especially love the background vocals.

The strumming gives it a very nice, slightly hypnotic feel. Everything works together in a very cool way here. Much enjoyed!

Jim Wood wrote:

A sunny day encapsulated in a song. The strumming holds it all together.

Much appreciated.

  Thanks.  I was briefly thinking about having the strumming drop out for at least part of the middle section, but then decided I liked it going all the way through.



cfurrow wrote:

Wow dude! There's so much cool stuff in here. You gotta stretch out every now and again, right?

  Yeah for sure.  I used to think there was no reason for anything to be more than a 3 minute pop song, but I've come to appreciate the need to stretch out once in awhile.



strolts wrote:

yeah, the guitar makes for a great rhythm. the vocals (and probably some of your lyrics) give it a fantastic folk vibe. THUMBS UP, KEEP EXPERIMENTING

  Will do!  Experimenting is definitely what keeps music fun and interesting for me.



Q-Rosh wrote:

fantastic trippy piece of music. It sucked me onto an epic journey. great singing CC. Especially love the background vocals.

  Hey thanks.  I suppose they're only a small part of the song, but I felt like those background vocals were needed.



Plantrain wrote:

The strumming gives it a very nice, slightly hypnotic feel. Everything works together in a very cool way here. Much enjoyed!

  Thanks!  Yeah, I'm glad I didn't drop the strumming out like I was briefly thinking about.

Maybe a little long for my taste, but I am very happy that you took the creative risks.  I'd rather a musician take risks than not!

This would be awesome in a movie where there was a long sequence going from character to character as they take personal risks.  The drug addict trying to get clean, the young boy walking to the doorstep with a bouquet of roses, the injured policeman suiting up for first time back on the job since the injury, the boxer wrapping his gloves before the fight, the bride adjusting her veil in the mirror, the basketball player quietly saying a prayer before the championship, the teen sharpening his pencil before the college entrance exam, ETC!

Haha, one or two weeks ago i've stated that my attention didn't go longer than 5 minutes.
Somewhere when this nice guitar melodies came in i aked myself wasn't he singing on this one wink
But Sounds are really good on this one the voice of your nice with this walki-sonds are awesome.

And i think i heard some whales smile

orangedrink wrote:

Maybe a little long for my taste, but I am very happy that you took the creative risks.  I'd rather a musician take risks than not!

This would be awesome in a movie where there was a long sequence going from character to character as they take personal risks.  The drug addict trying to get clean, the young boy walking to the doorstep with a bouquet of roses, the injured policeman suiting up for first time back on the job since the injury, the boxer wrapping his gloves before the fight, the bride adjusting her veil in the mirror, the basketball player quietly saying a prayer before the championship, the teen sharpening his pencil before the college entrance exam, ETC!

  Honestly it's probably a little long for my taste, too, but I wanted to allow myself to be a little self-indulgent.  I like your idea about cutting to various people.  Sounds like it at least invoked some good imagery for you!



theGuen wrote:

Haha, one or two weeks ago i've stated that my attention didn't go longer than 5 minutes.
Somewhere when this nice guitar melodies came in i aked myself wasn't he singing on this one wink
But Sounds are really good on this one the voice of your nice with this walki-sonds are awesome.

And i think i heard some whales smile

  I used to be very anti-long songs in my younger days but my opinion on them has evolved a little bit.  I still generally tend to lean towards erring on the side of shorter is better, but 52 weeks is a long time and I want to try some different things over the course of it.  Yeah, I gave the walkie-talkie to my niece just as a belated Christmas gift but then she started playing it and making these crazy sounds and I was like, oh I have to record this!  And good ear, I forgot to mention it but there IS a little bit of whale song in there as well.

Love the use of the voice messages and misc babbling.  It complements the guitar strums keeping the pace.  Your vocals especially during the 'Listen, Listen', reminded me of Pink Floyd a bit smile  Those whalish guitar sounds are cool too.  Nice work!

orangedrink wrote:

Maybe a little long for my taste, but I am very happy that you took the creative risks.  I'd rather a musician take risks than not!

This would be awesome in a movie where there was a long sequence going from character to character as they take personal risks.  The drug addict trying to get clean, the young boy walking to the doorstep with a bouquet of roses, the injured policeman suiting up for first time back on the job since the injury, the boxer wrapping his gloves before the fight, the bride adjusting her veil in the mirror, the basketball player quietly saying a prayer before the championship, the teen sharpening his pencil before the college entrance exam, ETC!

Ha, this! I love a good movie montage with good song.

This was a fun trip. Enjoyed the sounds, I got lost in it. Digging up sounds from the archives is much fun too. Every week I seem to go long, then I make an effort to cut my stuff down to 3 - 4 minutes for reasons, so props for going long and yeah, taking those creative risks!

This was a cool texture. The guitar obviously held the whole thing together. Would have been quite abstract without it. Instead, I found this really contemplative.

Tone Matrix wrote:

Love the use of the voice messages and misc babbling.  It complements the guitar strums keeping the pace.  Your vocals especially during the 'Listen, Listen', reminded me of Pink Floyd a bit smile  Those whalish guitar sounds are cool too.  Nice work!

  Thanks!  I thought it would be interesting to have some voices other than my own popping up in the mix.  And I'm always down with a Floyd comparison.



miraclemiles wrote:
orangedrink wrote:

Maybe a little long for my taste, but I am very happy that you took the creative risks.  I'd rather a musician take risks than not!

This would be awesome in a movie where there was a long sequence going from character to character as they take personal risks.  The drug addict trying to get clean, the young boy walking to the doorstep with a bouquet of roses, the injured policeman suiting up for first time back on the job since the injury, the boxer wrapping his gloves before the fight, the bride adjusting her veil in the mirror, the basketball player quietly saying a prayer before the championship, the teen sharpening his pencil before the college entrance exam, ETC!

Ha, this! I love a good movie montage with good song.

This was a fun trip. Enjoyed the sounds, I got lost in it. Digging up sounds from the archives is much fun too. Every week I seem to go long, then I make an effort to cut my stuff down to 3 - 4 minutes for reasons, so props for going long and yeah, taking those creative risks!

  Thanks!  I won't go this long every week, but it felt like a good time to do a self-indulgent experiment!



Ryan wrote:

This was a cool texture. The guitar obviously held the whole thing together. Would have been quite abstract without it. Instead, I found this really contemplative.

  Thanks!  As mentioned earlier I was toying with having the guitar drop out, but I think I made the right call leaving it in.

Oh man, this is great! Lovely vocals and the samples weave nicely together. Playful and mystical quality... And did I hear sea cucumbers in there among the whales? Well done!

NWSPR wrote:

Oh man, this is great! Lovely vocals and the samples weave nicely together. Playful and mystical quality... And did I hear sea cucumbers in there among the whales? Well done!

  Thanks!  Yeah, I wanted to have a few "understandable" words pop out among the gibberish and I was utilizing some different images as sort of a free association thing and sea cucumbers was indeed one of them. 

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