In December, 2024 I started Second Story Records as a sort of umbrella label for the current pseudonyms/artist names I work under. Right now its purpose is to be a common place to get updates for all music related to both The Darph and Midori Moss.

In the future I hope to collaborate with other artists, work together, have them join the label, and work toward helping each other promote our music to audiences who might like it if they enjoy it. It would be great to work with other labels on joint projects as well. It’s always great when artists come together to share their work and grow their audiences.

For now, however, it’s just my artist names and will be a place for anyone interested to see what the latest release is, what’s coming in the future, and more. Right now the site is very barebones and even when it’s finished it will continue to be very simple because all it needs to do is provide links to the artists on the label, discographies for the artists, and news. The idea is to promote the artists on the label, not keep your attention on the label itself.

So in the future if you see posts from or references to Second Story Records that’s just the label that The Darph and Midori Moss are releasing records under.

That’s all for now. Will be back when there’s some new releases for you (there are 3 in the bag right now).

I did it. It wasn’t perfect but I stayed relatively in time and recorded the backbone of one of the final songs on this upcoming LP. You can listen to the acoustic arrangement below. Aside from some mixing and additional instrumentation to be added the hard part is over. Recording against the backbone of the song is the easiest, fastest part.

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There are two companion videos set to release after I finish the song completely. One is meant for nobodies like me with families who have to take time after work to finish their hobby of recording music and making art and how I personally get this all done.

The other is a simple animation I’m working on in Procreate that’s meant to be the music video for Seance which may be the first or second single off the new LP.

Progress is coming slowly but surely. The more time that passes the more outdated my computer, phone, and iPad get so I’m not as efficient as I once was but incremental progress beats none at all. I’m feeling positive about the future and my ability to release this record to positive reception.

Right now no one cares what I’m doing but it’s important that I just keep creating content so that when it is time to promote my release I’ll have a lot to share with everyone.

There are a few songs I wrote that I remember by heart from when I first learned guitar. It’s been around 20 years now and I have around 3 songs that I could finish based on memory and d recordings.

Recently I took the backbone of an old ambient song written in 2004 and adjusted the arrangement to add a few parts, add lyrics, and now it’s ready to be released on my first EP.

Very old songs are difficult to finish for me because I cannot let go of their original meanings and the headspace I was in when I wrote them. As I progress through the process of completing my first LP as Moss I am finding that I’m beginning to be able to let go of some of that and recontextualize the meanings of these songs. To really divorce them from what was intended and look at them from a more clinical perspective.

I ask myself:

• What does this song feel like today
• If I came up with this music today, what would I want it to express? It may be the same emotion but not the same situation, theme, or story that came with the original mindset
• Can I improve it?
• Can I add an arrangement around this or is it a dead end riff?

I have a few old songs I’d like to get back to eventually. Thanks to my excellent record keeping (when it comes to my artistic output) I have demos, maybe lyrics, chord progressions, and sometimes tabs written out for these songs. It’s funny that some are so old that they’re on cassette tape. Not even recorded on a 4 track but just an old cassette recorder my parents had at home. Some come from when I used to plug this cheap AudioTechnica microphone directly into the 3.5mm jack of my 1999 Windows ME (millennium edition) laptop and record right into Audacity thinking I was somehow getting close to how real studios did things.

What are the songs?

Well, since I know you’re just dying to know and this post isn’t purely me masturbating to my own nostalgia, I’ll tell you.

• A Steady Diet - this one is about a short time where I’d chain smoke and spend Fridays escaping my severe anxiety with my prescription benzos
• Thebaine, My Lover - I had a problem for a short time. Google what thebaine is a component of...
• ...hmm I know there’s more but that’s all I can think of now.

See you next time. I’m making progress on the LP so wish me luck in finishing this year.

There was a time when I exclusively wrote concept albums. Not that it mattered since they were all instrumental anyway. Plus it’s obvious looking back that while the records had a theme they weren’t concept albums.

The new record is much closer to a concept album than anything I’ve written before. Ghosts of the Living is about people who are alive and well who I do or have had relationships with at some point. There are songs about lovers, friends, family, and even strangers. Let me give you a rundown of what to expect out of this batch of songs:

1. Seance - song for a long lost love

This one is a song about one of my very first relationships as a young man. I’m married now and have no desire to go back to that time but the feeling of that time can come to me in these palpable waves of nostalgia, especially as I approach closer to 40 with each passing year. The song is about how I did not get over that relationship for a very long time and used other girls to fill the voice left behind by the first girl. I held metaphorical seances. I’d find similar looking girls, do the things I once did with the original girl, but no matter what I did none either wanted to or could be suitable replacements. It was really sad on my part. The song is written in 3/4 time as we used to dance the Waltz sometimes.

2. I wanna know

This is about a close family member who I will never know. This person has a history of abusing everyone who gets close to them. In short, I want to know who they really are but I never will and it’s about coming to terms with not only never knowing the people who raised you but creating your own family with them cut out of your life.

3. The New Rush

This is a rather short song meant to convey the very brief but impactful summer romance I had with someone who I now feel guilty for not being clear enough about my intentions. I thought we were in the same page but weren’t. In the meantime we had one hell of a summer that I will never forget. My favorite lines are “i took it casually/But you did not agree/I said I had to leave town/You said that you’d kill yourself/I said I’m leaving anyway”. That perfectly encapsulates the infatuation, the desire, and the dynamic of that pre-college relationship.

4. Should have listened

This one is a working title. I had a good friend who gave me some very wise, sage advice that I did not take. The song is about how I focused on issues that were skin deep and didn’t listen to the excellent advice my friend had given me.

Additional songs

I have more in the works. One is about a childhood friend I didn’t lose until adulthood. Another is about my wife. There’s some written about myself and the things that have happened to me within living memory, sort of like a medley or introspective song.

I have two and a half songs to complete before the entire record is done.

I’m looking forward to finally releasing music with vocals and melody. I may not have a good voice but the point is that I finally express an idea clearly rather than just hope someone asks me what my instrumental vibes mean.

Now that my birthday has passed and the weather is cooling down it will get quieter in the studio and it’ll be easier to record without having to fight the sound of the air conditioner. After a full year in the new studio I think that summer is the time for writing and late summer/fall is best for recording. Of course that’s not a rule set in stone since I get most of my writing done in summer but I know turning off the AC is going to make it a lot easier to record in a quiet room that isn’t too hot.

And my point in writing this is just to let anyone interested know more about my process and to know I’m still working on music.

The Darph is still going to release music as well but I want to put out a more grounded record that incorporates vocals and melodies as Midori Moss too.

The New Rush is almost done. There's the backbone tracks of guitar, vocals, and bass along with some added backing vocals and xylophone for ear candy. If I add anything now it'll be a very simple drum track, a guitar fill in a few spots, and maybe I'll re-record the vocals if I get up the courage and think I could do it better (vocals are clearly my weakest area). You can listen to it here now.

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Please excuse the roughness of the audio. This is completely unmixed. There is literally no processing whatsoever on those tracks. It's exactly what the microphones captures. I'm hoping I'll be able to take that raw sound and shape it into something more energetic and musical in the mixing process. Even sad songs can be energetic.

I've made progress into the new album, Ghosts of the Living. I spent last week finishing the arrangement and week prior writing. This week I've been recording and so far I have a decent backbone consisting of 3 acoustic guitar tracks, a xylophone track, vocals, backing vocals, and a third track of sort of messed up vocals that comes in only during the bridge.

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This version is different than what I posted yesterday as it ditches the scratch track I was using for drums and the vocals have a bit more beef to them now that they're double tracked.

I'm not very happy with the vocals. I'm not a good singer and it's even worse when singing without confidence so that may need to be a whole day or two spent on just recording new vocals but for now we have a backbone.

The next thing to add is going to be a very simple drum or percussion part. I'm thinking of something soft with a kick on each measure and soft eighth note hits on a hi-hat or something. I'll almost definitely be sampled and electronic.

There's a little guitar fill after each line of the chorus I'll be getting the Jazzmaster out for and then a simple bass line will be all that's needed before I go onto mixing. If I'm consistent this can be done within a week. I'd like to get this LP out before the end of fall. I've been sitting on the previous EP since last summer so that should go out soon too.

As always, no promises. It'll go out when it's ready. I'm not committing to any dates until I'm ready to stick to my commitments.

Two days ago I complained that I could not bring myself to record any song I’d written. Later that same day I took steps to rectify that. There is progress. A song (The New Rush) is being recorded.

I spent 3 hours just setting up the tracking room, placing mics, checking levels, and setting up the arrangement in Logic.

In the end I found I had set the tempo too slow, it was getting late, and so I decided to leave the studio as it was and come back to it today.

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I’m hoping to finish tracking guitars by Tuesday night. That’s four days for three tracks but I have a job and a family. Give me a break.

Update (8-12-2024)

Two guitar tracks have been recorded. This is a very acoustic song. There will be few, if any, drums and almost no electric guitar.

I want to record the third acoustic guitar track tonight but I’m not sure if I will since I have to wake up early for work tomorrow. Once that’s finished I’ll have the backbone of the song completed. From there it’s a matter of adding ear candy and building/releasing tension through the arrangement.

One drawback of the TX-6 is that it lacks a way to provide phantom power for microphones. I found a couple great ways to get around this which are simple and use gear that most artists likely have or could get for very low cost.

For dynamic microphones I was lucky enough to be sent a free XLR male to 3.5mm female adapter. The idea here is to connect a male 3.5mm cable to the TX-6 and to the adapter. From there you could plug the microphone directly into the microphone or use an XLR cable to extend it, if needed, then connect to your dynamic mic. This is perfect for SM57 mics and other dynamic mics that don’t need a ton of gain to get up above the noise floor.

If you’re dealing with a condenser microphone then you could use a field recorder like one of the Zoom units or a Tascam. I own a Tascam DR-40x which lets me record 4 mics at once (2 internal and 2 external) with the option to provide the mics 48v phantom power.

For these condenser situations I’d set up the recorder in a way you normally would if you planned to record directly into the recorder except you simply turn on input monitoring without recording and send the audio out via the 3.5mm headphone jack into one of the TX-6 inputs. Now you can record condenser mics without buying a dedicated tool like an iRig just to get phantom power and little else. Check out the short video on this for more info.

I find it difficult to do anything this past year. In August of last year I began work on my first EP as Midori Moss. I finished those songs but never released the album. I’m pretty sure they’re all recorded and just need to be mixed. This summer I began recording my first full length LP, Ghosts of the Living. I have four songs written but not much recorded. In the past year I have finished four out of six of the Dune books but only started recording one or two songs. I’m having a bad time.

Something has me blocked. My mind is wanting to do this but my body tells me not to.

It is good to take a break between releases as an artist, sure. My last release was a Darph record that I put out in 2022 or early 2023. Since then I moved and life has changed a lot. I’ve been working a lot on the house. I tell myself this is the reason I’m so tired.

That said, summer is coming to a close soon. Summer is my time when I am most creative and able to work. The only downside to summer in my new studio is that the air conditioner and fan make it very noisy. I have to keep them on full blast all day so I can be sure it’ll be cool enough at night to turn them off while recording. The upside is that the studio is a separate building the size of a studio apartment where I can be as loud as I like. You take the good with the bad.

I’m not really saying much with this post. Just venting. Once I get started I will have something good to show for it. I suppose I’m writing and publishing this just to let whoever cares know that I’m still working on being creative and so that I can tell myself I’ve done some sort of creative work. Publishing this counts.

Anyway, that’s all for now. My birthday is in a few weeks. Okay, whatever, later.

Sincerely,

The Man Who Calls Himself Moss

I own most TE gear. I’ve gotten a lot of use out of that gear on the last four records I released as The Darph but lately not as much. It’s got me thinking about why I bought such expensive musical toys. What is their real value?

Mostly vibes

I’ve come to the conclusion that what you’re paying for is mostly vibes and that’s alright.

The design of TE gear is beautiful. Sometimes the build quality is nice too! The design of these products is something that makes you want to sit with them and make some music. Not only that but they make gear that appeals to more than just beat producers. As a guitarist/singer-songwriter I love seeing how I can fit those sounds into a mix especially seeing as how I haven’t haven’t had a live drum kit in the studio since I was 17.

Workflow

The workflow on these toys is crazy. I’m not going to pretend like it’s straightforward because it isn’t. Just enough is obvious to you that you can do some simple things but most of the really fun stuff his hidden within menus within strange combinations of keys which you just have to memorize. Luckily most of their products are exactly the same guts shoved into a different chassis with a different color so knowing one lets you transfer that knowledge.

But in all seriousness, the workflow can get you out of your head and break a creative block sometimes. Just last night I decided to unplug my TX-6 from its station on my desk and place it on the floor along with some other portables and an iPad. That change - and that ability to change things so easily - broke me out of a rut. No, I didn’t write a new song but I did focus on making music and tried some ideas out for once.

Budget?

My gut tells me that TE is overpriced but then again I also can’t afford to make as many sounds as easily with so few devices at this price point so maybe they’re not. Maybe it depends on who you are and how you work. I’m not zoomer who makes beats. I’m the elder generation redacted grunge/folk rock/ singer songwriter dude who sprinkles in some experimental sounds where it makes sense.

So that is my take on TE. It’s mostly vibes. That’s okay. You buy what you like. Let’s all just be honest about what we like and why.

By the way, I might never release music ever again because I just can’t seem to finish a single song. I got three in the pipeline right now but life just loves to throw health issues my way and whatever else it decides is my burden to bear. The goal was to finish and release this summer. I haven’t given up on that goal but I’m not going to pretend like that’s realistic. Perhaps I can put out a single or two if I don’t make it all the way then the full length can come out next summer.

Or I could finish mixing that first EP I did finish and put that out first.

This is not about music played at a slow tempo. This is about how we consume music.

Modern music is too fast. Like much of the world we’ve created and became intoxicated with we took it too far. Everything, even ideas, are mass produced disposable plastic crap. Streaming has made it so that as long as you pay your $10 a month you get to hear the latest release every Friday, press that button to add it to your library, then never listen to it again after a while.

Don’t forget that the way we consume most media these days drains your wallet and leaves you with nothing should you decide to stop paying. From streaming TV and movies to the movies you “bought” from your cable provider, all the way to your music. If you don’t pay it’s all gone. Switch providers? Gone. Sometimes they just take things away from you for no reason and there’s nothing you can do about it because you had to accept the terms of service.

The hunger

People are getting tired of the situation and it looks like we’re at the start of a backlash against it. I took to buying tapes and old Walkman’s some years back, I have a small vinyl collection, and I never got rid of my old CDs from when I was a kid. Now we’re seeing people restoring iPods so they can hold their entire music collection that they care about.

People have a hunger for things that are real, with craftsmanship, something that speaks to them. It’s great that we have whole computers in our pocket but the novelty has worn off and we’re all asking whether we really need to be using them as much as we do. Our faces are buried in these screens all day long. Our attention is on everything always except what’s right in front of us. Distraction is normal but the level of it we have now is like obesity of the mind. Just truly unhealthy.

How to slow down and why

I’m no Luddite. I love my phone but hate what it’s done to me. I don’t have the solution to how to fix phone addiction but I do know it’s time to start paying attention to one thing at a time. All that talk of mindfulness that we hear about might be useful.

When it comes to music we luckily still have options for how to enjoy it. Each has its place so here’s how I think of it.

Streaming

Streaming won’t go away and I’m not going to stop using it. I have stopped paying for subscriptions I didn’t really need like the Netflix account I used once every other month and Amazon Prime (you’d be amazed at how little you really need delivered and how waiting an extra day or two doesn’t hurt).

But for music, I won’t stop paying for Apple Music. It has its uses like being able to preview the entirety of a whole album before buying it. I mostly use it as a music discovery service and I keep my library full of what I own physically plus the stuff that I don’t like enough to buy any copy of.

Digital files

Digital files to me are the songs that are important enough for me to keep a lossless copy of on my own hard drive but maybe not important enough to buy. Or maybe I’ve bought the record and want a digital backup in case the physical copy gets messed up. It’s a time consuming process at first but once you have everything digitized you spend 20 minutes per new album you buy to keep it up to date. I even got an old iPod like I used to have in college to store all my music.

CD, cassette, vinyl

Physical media is something I buy for the music I cherish most. Sometimes I’ll put it in a portable CD player or Walkman while commuting but the real joy of it is in the experience. CDs are close to digital so the experience isn’t much different but with a cassette you pretty much have to play it all the way through unless you want to fast forward and search for the start of any given track. The vinyl experience is something I cherish most. I don’t care that the sound quality is objectively worse than any other medium. I put a record on, always listen to it out loud, and sit in a room with the music. Sometimes it’ll be background music while I read.

Physical media forces you to slow down and engage with the music, even if it is just at first. Often times those first moments are enough to drive some momentum and get you to be present for the experience. You may decide to sit back and listen instead of opening 50 browser tabs and scroll your shitter feed.

I’m deciding to slow down. I’m consciously aware of my decision. That doesn’t mean I’m in some zen Buddhist state of mind all the time. I’ll get distracted on my phone and act ADHD like everyone else but I’ll be doing it less and enjoying learning how to be present like I knew how to do when I was a young, before we opened our wallets and minds to the greedy, attention robbing services we have now that we traded in what matters to us for just a little more convenience than we used to have.

2024 Collection

This is the start of a tradition where I list the records that I feel are worth owning and have purchased throughout the year. It's a running list that I'll be updating throughout the year.

This list includes all music I purchased rather than relied on streaming services to manage for me.

1. Boygenius / The Record on VINYL
2. Pete Yorn / Hawaii on VINYL, digital (iTunes, 256k AAC)
3. Pete Yorn / Caretakers on VINYL
4. Pete Yorn / Someday, Someday on digital (Bandcamp, Apple Lossless)
5. Nine Inch Nails / Pretty Hate Machine on VINYL
6. Tame Impala / Currents on VINYL
7. Nirvana / In Utero on VINYL
8. BOY / Boris on digital (Bandcamp, Apple Lossless)

I have fond memories of my 10,000+ song music collection that I stored on an iPod back in college. I also have fond memories of discovering and downloading a decent portion of that library off OurTunes over the dorm network at speeds I never dreamed of back home.

When streaming first came on the scene I was one of the first to use Spotify back when it was only available in Europe (forgot how I got around that restriction in the US). Suddenly I had all the music in the world in the palm of my hand, literally. Looking back, it’s clear that I was mainly using it as a discovery tool at first and still loading files into my phone or iPod.

The problem streaming will never solve

Back then, just as now, there was a portion of my music library that wasn’t available on streaming services. When Apple Music was launched I jumped ship from Spotify because for $25 a year I could upload my entire library to iCloud and access it through Apple Music regardless of whether any streaming service had the rights to the songs I liked.

Over time I relied more and more on streaming providers to catalog and keep my music library available to me. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, my library felt like it had shrunk. Shuffling my songs would always bring about the same few artists. Trying to browse the library became tedious. I had too much music and not enough simultaneously. It didn’t make sense until I took a look at what was happening.

Hoarding

Streaming is great for discovering music. It makes music cheap. A new hit song can be played for practically free on repeat right on release day. But think of some of the music you once liked that comes up in your library. Maybe it’s some crappy song you convinced yourself you liked because they’d play it in the car with you. Maybe it was something viral that sounded good at the time but you never want to hear again. That stuff is collecting digital dust in your library and I’d argue that most of it wouldn’t be there if not for streaming making it a little too easy to just tap that plus button and add it to your collection. Your collection right now is full of crap.

Licensing/technology hell

At the same time your library becomes something you might see on an episode of Hoarders, it’s also somehow getting smaller. How many times have you added a new song from an indie artist or someone on the edges of major label deals and find a year or two later that they aren’t on streaming anymore. The track is there but not available in your country right now or it was just pulled completely. With streaming you’re at the mercy of the labels. This isn’t news to anyone so I won’t belabor the point.

You might also find that when switching phones or messing with technology in general your streaming library just up and loses a bunch of music. It’s not uncommon and not unlike instances when you upgrade an iPhone and find that photos you know you took long ago can’t be found anymore and for no good reason. What I’m getting at here is that you don’t own that music and in the world of cloud storage sometimes what you do own isn’t even yours as much as you’d think.

Disposable music

The problem with digital media primarily accessed by smartphones is that it makes all art disposable. Think of the countless photos taken on phones. How many of those does anyone really go back through and catalog, care for, or even have time to go back to. They’re mostly not special. They’re made not special because they’re so common. They’re all average. There’s nothing that’s setting them apart because when you can take a photo of anything anywhere you do and that makes everything boring.

The same has happened to music. The problem isn’t that anyone can make music, it’s that too much of the music made is being pumped out cynically. Take the latest Taylor Swift album. I like a decent amount of her music for what it is but TTPD is a soulless cash grab that could only have been made today. Instead of taking some time off to record a proper album Swift comes back after only a couple years with an uninspired, oftentimes cringy lump of a double album that sounds like b-sides and is being sold in several different editions to make sure she can milk her fans for every penny while they buy each of the almost identical versions of this record.

Streaming promotes this bad behavior. The way that album stats are calculated through streaming gives artists an incentive to make something that’ll be dated quickly but make big money right now. The flip side to this is that older artists can earn a steady income and that’s great but it comes at the expense of pushing out new talent that may have a slow burn in them before they can even catch on. The labels that everyone thinks lost in the age of streaming are still the gatekeepers of music. They just hide now behind digital distributors and streaming services that they invest in. They’re making money in new and more cruel ways than ever before and making sure that organic growth is kept to a minimum.

The alternative

The alternative to all this is to be mindful of how you’re consuming music. Is everything background music nowadays? What happened to the music that was the soundtrack to peoples lives at certain points? If you stop paying your music rent you won’t own that anymore. We used to own towers worth of CDs that were all ours. We traded that in for the convenience of being able to access that music whenever we wanted.

The alternative to this is to start owning your music. Whether that means downloading it again, ripping your CDs, or building up your physical media collection again, it doesn’t matter. We should all probably take a moment to think about how many more services (and their eventual price increases) we can deal with or how many licensing agreements have to make music previously available disappear from our collections.

We outsourced the management of our music libraries to the streaming providers thinking they’d do it better than us but in the end we just made it so that when they screw up it’s our problem. At least when you owned your music you had more control over fixing mistakes when they happened.