fbpx
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
    • Get Home Delivery
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Customer Support
    • Submit A News Tip
    • Where’s My Paper?
  • Manage HV1 Account
Hudson Valley One
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Log In
No Result
View All Result
Hudson Valley One
No Result
View All Result

Surprising quality

by John Burdick
May 1, 2020
in Village Voices
0
Surprising quality

PIOP! Say it a few times. Sling that diphthong around like a tether ball one orbit from the top of the post. Make it home in one syllable, if you can. Shoot it with a downward pitch glide through a high pressure, double-reed embouchure, like spitballs through a straw. Try it backwards, too. There’s mouth fun to be had there as well.

You have now successfully passed 17 or 23 seconds of Quarantine Day fifty-what? Is it, perhaps, cocktail time?

It’s an acronym, silly: Pass It on Project, and for me it has been one the sunniest and most productive redemptions in this the age of plague.  Suggested by the drummer and songwriter Sammi Niss, PIOP is a collaborative songwriting and recording process that has filled the last month with challenge and reward and that has yielded, to date, upwards of twelve songs of surprising quality, and of unsurprising, attention-deficient diversity.

The cast is six musicians that together in various alignments represent near total membership of four well-known Hudson Valley bands — Battle Ave., American Film History, Hiding Behind Sound and Peter Naddeo — and nearly the complete roster of SubFamily Records, a micro-collective of bands and record makers we all founded a couple of years back.

The premise is simple. Someone records a riff, a fragment or in a few cases a demo of a whole song. Availing themselves of an online randomizer, they pick the next person in line, and the file moves from one bedroom studio to another. Sometimes the next person does something obvious like a bass line or a solo. Other times, it’s a whole micro-choir arrangement or a complete electro-meltdown that the poor saps downstream will have to make sense of.

The wheel spins again, and on it goes. Frank McGinnis maintains an online spreadsheet that tracks the progress of each “seed,” as we call them.

After the sixth person has had their say, the invariably chaotic project heads home to its originator for mixing and sense-making, though the ownership and right-to-mix can be murky, disputed and contentious, even, and that is part of the fun.

The joys and surprises are exactly as you’d expect — songs that seem to be one thing and headed one way transforming into something radically otherwise; even more, a writing personality that sounds maybe a little like each of us but not a lot like any of us—a new self in which we are all kind of equally powerless. A life of its own!

Hey! Want to check out a few? Here’s two examples that sit nicely together but came about in opposite ways

I offer:

1. “CompliKate”

A seed I started as complete song demo and that progressed entirely as the song would have wanted, if a song could have wishes and aspirations and dreams for its future and its children. Voila, out the other end pops a cheeky midtempo rock track I am hardly embarrassed to call one-sixth mine.

2. “You & the Government”

A kind of miracle of self-forming rock, started by Sammi as a T-Rex inspired riff, picking up wicked dual and dueling lead guitars from Adam and Jesse, a spot-on period drum track from Peter and a thumping pop bassline from Frank before dropping in my lap, the sixth lap. I wrote some lyrics — what else could I do? —  that I cannot explain, did a vocal part that surprises me still with its lecherous and really unattractive personality, and there it is. Unlike “CompliKate,” this is a track that none of us would ever have had a chance of writing on our own.

PIOP!

Read more installments of Village Voices by John Burdick.

Tags: John Burdick Village Voices
Thank you for reading Hudson Valley One. We rely on your support to continue providing local, substantive news. Please check out our subscription options to keep local journalism alive in the Hudson Valley.
- Geddy Sveikauskas, Publisher
Previous Post

Ulster’s curve is flattening

Next Post

Saugerties village will waive late fees on tax payments

John Burdick

Related Posts

Village Voices are on hold
Village Voices

Village Voices are on hold

November 17, 2020
A liberal education
Village Voices

Keeping it all together

August 24, 2020
Writing about oneself
Village Voices

I need a day off

August 24, 2020
Saugerties initiative combating addiction and suicide adds more events
Village Voices

Time travel

August 24, 2020
Where to buy face masks locally
Village Voices

A story of three states

September 2, 2020
The kids talk politics
Village Voices

Stories on the ballot

August 23, 2020
Next Post
Saugerties village saves $30k on insurance

Saugerties village will waive late fees on tax payments

Trending News

  • AutoCamp Catskills brings fleet of Airstreams to former Saugerties KOA 1.4k views
  • Homeless in Woodstock doc draws crowd as officials seek answers 1.2k views
  • Small freedom convoy makes its way through the streets of Saugerties  1k views
  • Saugerties highway department saving with oil and chip road surfacing 755 views
  • New Paltz highway money mystery 591 views







Latest HV1 Podcast

Weather

Kingston
◉
73°
Cloudy
5:22am8:35pm EDT
Feels like: 73°F
Wind: 4mph WSW
Humidity: 81%
Pressure: 29.91"Hg
UV index: 6
TueWedThu
79/55°F
84/59°F
88/63°F
Weather forecast Kingston, New York ▸

Ulster County COVID-19 Active Cases

Subscribe

Independent. Local. Substantive. Subscribe now.

  • Subscribe & Support
  • Sign up for Free Newsletter
  • Print Edition
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Contact
  • Manage HV1 Account

© 2022 Ulster Publishing

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Schools
    • Business
    • Sports
    • Crime
    • Politics & Government
  • What’s Happening
    • Calendar Of Events
    • Featured Events
      • Art
      • Books
      • Kids
      • Lifestyle & Wellness
      • Food & Drink
      • Music
      • Nature
      • Stage & Screen
  • Opinions
    • Letters
    • Columns
    • Editorials
  • Local
    • Special Sections
    • Local History
  • Marketplace
    • All Classified Ads
    • Help Wanted
    • Post a Classified Ad
  • Obituaries
  • Podcast
  • Subscribe & Support
  • Contact Us
    • Customer Support
    • Advertise
    • Submit A News Tip
  • Print Edition
    • Read ePaper Online
    • Newsstand Locations
    • Where’s My Paper
  • HV1 Magazines
  • Manage HV1 Account
  • Log In

© 2022 Ulster Publishing