D. Lee Jackson

Words and Music

New Music Collaboration In The Works

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Agony logoA contest has just concluded over in Facebook involving the Bass Guitar player from the San Antonio-based Nü-metal band Agony and myself. The Bass Guitarist, Alan Wehrmann, would toss out a one-liner from Duke Nukem 3D (specifically from E1L1, “Hollywood Holocaust”), and then I would post a riddle to accompany it. The idea was to point people toward what the two of us were cooking up: a secret collaboration between his band and myself on a Nü-metal version of “Stalker,” the music from E1L1 of Duke Nukem 3D. We declared a winner early this morning.

So now, the cat is out of the bag. Agony and myself are cooking up something we hope will be worth listening to, at least if you are a fan of the heavier of the heavy metal genres. It’s going to be very loud, it’s going to be very crunchy, and it’s going to be very growly – very much unlike the original “Stalker.” I’m stoked.

The whole thing started off when I saw Alan post something about music on Doomworld in the “Everything Else” forum. I learned that he was with a band, listened to their music, and issued him and his band a friendly challenge: remake “Stalker” in his band’s style. Agony talked it over, and Alan told me they decided to go for it.

Right now, my role in the new version of the song has been limited to consulting from afar. Soon, however, I hope to attend a rehearsal with my MIDI setup and possibly contribute to the sound. Maybe. They may not need me – only time will tell. Regardless, this is going to be fun, and I hope you will enjoy it, too.

New – “Song of the Weekend” Archive Online

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There’s a new feature available here on my website – the Song of the Weekend Archive!

You see, starting back in 2019, I used to do what was called the Song of the Weekend over in the Lee Jackson Audio Community Discussion Group on Facebook. Every other week, I’d let the members vote on a group of three of the songs I’ve written to choose which one would be the Song of the Weekend. I would do a write-up on the winning song, including history, anecdotes, musical analysis (where possible), and any other information I could come up with. This went on until the Spring of 2022, when I started getting too sick to post it regularly.

Anyway, the write-ups from the Song of the Weekend winners are now available for reading in PDF form from my website! No need to dig through a Facebook thread anymore. Simply go the Song of the Weekend Archive top page and choose if you want to browse by date or alphabetical order. It’s not a complete discography of my works, but it’s a pretty big collection. Please take a look today!

Commissions, and a Fall in Winter

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Montrose.is/gamesTime to report on another completed commission! While nowhere near as complex as the Ereis Overture commission, this one was difficult on a completely different level. It involved rock & roll that mixed a 70s sound with modern electronic drumming at breakneck speed. Not an easy pair of sonic textures to blend, but in the end the client was happy with the result. (I can’t share the result, unfortunately, because it is for a game that is still under development. Sorry.)

Speaking of the client, I would like to extend my gratitude to the husband and wife team behind Montrose.is for commissioning me to write this piece! They have been the best pair of folks that I’ve worked with in a long, long time. I wish to thank them for putting up with my hit-or-miss compositional process in the start: I take a while to get rolling, but once I do, watch out! 🙂  Please pay their website a visit, and if you have some free time on Saturday nights at 9pm Eastern Time, please head on over to Montrose.is/chatting for some good talk and some livestreamed art! (warning: can occasionally be NSFW).

Now for some other news. You may have noticed me missing from a lot of the usual places on the internet lately (Facebook, Twitter, Scribophile, etc.). That’s because I had a rather nasty fall on February 5th, the Saturday after the big ice storm hit the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. This was during the melting phase. I thought I’d heard rushing water outside our house, so I put on my shoes and jacket and went outside to investigate. I didn’t make it one step out before I slipped on black ice on our concrete patio. I fell forward and landed face first, hard. I had no phone with me, and I was in one of those, “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” scenarios (I’m old, plus my knees hurt), so I crawled from the patio into the house and then onward to the living room to get my cell phone. I had to have Google call 911 for me because my glasses were so badly bent and scraped/gouged that I couldn’t see to dial the number (I’ve got a Google Pixel 6, so thank the maker for “Hey, Google!” built-in). To make a long story short, I wasn’t badly injured aside from some soft tissue damage, but my glasses were almost totaled. I’m lucky they didn’t shatter, but I can barely see through what’s left of them.

I managed to pull everything together and do work on my commission for Montrose.is, but that’s about all I was able to handle without getting a major headache. I’m still on hiatus from everything else, save for this blog entry (and for the next commission, on which I’ve already started work). Once my $400 lenses (you read that right – $400) come in, I’ll be fully back online. Until then, I’d appreciate it if you’d spread the word about this blog post for me across the social networks. Thanks in advance for your help!

New Commissioned Single Out Now

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Ereis Overture Single CoverThanks to commissions, it’s time to announce the release of a new single! This one is dropping today (Friday, January 28, 2022), and it’s the result of a client by the name of Mr. Peter Campi, who wanted music that sounded like the works of composer Miklós Rózsa, with a little bit of John Williams tossed in. Mr. Campi wanted something that evoked the sounds of the sinister side of the Roman Empire, but in an outer space setting, all within 3 1/2 minutes. Not an easy job to fill.

The end result is a work that I’ve named “Ereis Overture.” I will let you guess at the meaning of the word “Ereis.” The overture pushed me in ways I’ve never been pushed before. First, I had to unleash the forces of a pair of virtual instruments I invested in last year but have never used until now. These instruments, created by Aaron Venture, were his Infinite Brass and Infinite Woodwind virtual instruments. They’re quite the powerful beasts, and I fear I haven’t tamed them – I’ve only managed to get into the same arena with them, thanks to the help of a new piece of hardware, the TEControl USB MIDI Breath Controller. I also had to learn how to use the percussion part of another virtual instrument library, that being the Sample Logic Virtual Ensemble Trilogy. (Fortunately, I caught a break when it came to the strings – they were supplied by the Mighty Roland SC-88Pro.)

I wasn’t alone on my journey through this piece, thank goodness. This time, I had a special beta team helping to guide me as I wrote and produced the overture. This secret group of folks, who I call the Night Hawks (in homage to the late drum corps out of Houston with which I marched in 1984), worked with me on the project for several weeks, and they were incredibly helpful. I’m recruiting new members for the Night Hawks as I transition into work on my next commission. The recruiting is taking place in my Facebook discussion group.

Anyway, Ereis Overture is officially out on Bandcamp! I hope you’ll purchase a copy, but if you’d like to hear a preview, here’s a player for your listening pleasure: