Ziray Studio Labs

I recorded this song just to capture some music I had in my head. It’s not meant to be a final version, but more of a “stream of thought” in terms of music (though edited). I still need to go back and gather those thoughts into a comprehensible “song” that has all those melodies and harmonies that makes music so structured, or not.

The recording goes along with its own first draft lyrics which were also created from stream of thought writing, which is inherently unstructured and mostly incomprehensible. So, you won’t get to hear the lyrics anytime soon (because I can’t sing).

This is probably as far as I’m going to go with this particular song. I just threw it together because people often ask what songs I’m playing when I play my guitar. I’m just making junk up as I go along, and this is the junk I came up with so I thought I’d share.

I hope you like it, feel free to critique it as I’m always trying to improve! Oh, and I know the timing is a bit off. I need to invest in a metronome.

I present:

Michael Ziray – Perfect is the Enemy of Great

Aside: The title comes from a Voltaire quote (my translation): ”Le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.” The song’s lyrics are actually about a girl and knowing that perfection is the goal, but by no means the finish line.

I started this song over a year ago (March 2007?). I worked on it a bit since then but completely lost the direction I was going with it and gave up trying to make anything from it. Thus, I think it’s probably one of my worst songs. However, in the interest of finishing what I started and the fact I hate to leave things without closure, I decided just to cut it short and finish it up.

This one doesn’t contain any stock loops and is created entirely note by note in Apple’s Garage Band.

I present:

Michael Ziray – Undeserved

I hope you enjoy!

Some of you know that I work for the coolest music store in Blacksburg, but maybe you don’t know exactly what I do (I’m not exactly sure myself sometimes), so I figured I would share some of the photography work I’ve done for them:

Continue reading

This last piece of music was made with the intention of being used as the introduction. Thus, it’s a bit shorter than the last four but like the last four, it’s also meant to be looped.

Mike Ziray – Intro

Enjoy!

This next song I made was intended to give the impression of being in a mystic forest. These songs are suppose to be looped and played in the background of a game a few of my friends and I were developing. So if you can imagine playing through a game, moving your character through an unknown fantasy-inspired forest, I hope this music heightens that imagery.

I hope it inspires that imagery for you:

Mike Ziray – Dark Woods

Enjoy!

*This one is in AAC format, but as long as you have QuickTime it should work for you.