February Album Writing Month - FAWM.ORG

Ken Ficara (@kenficara)

progress: 21

winner!
joined: February 3 2007
location: New York, USA
website: www.kenficara.com
influences: Eno, Coltrane, Cage, Cale, Glass, brass, steel, wood, traffic, birds, subways.

Bio

I'm a songwriter/harmonica player/guitarist, based in Brooklyn and Ithaca, NY. For the last few years I've been focusing on a self-created genre called "harmonitronica," a combination of harmonica and electronica.

Harmonitronica fuses the organic and vocal nature of the harmonica with the layering and atmospherics of ambient music, the beats of electronica, and the unpredictability of found music, noise and chance. It is not computer music. It is not carefully constructed with software, but improvised live, using loopers and other effects, and recorded direct to two-track, usually a Zoom H4N. It's allowed me to combine two seemingly divergent musical passions: I've played the harmonica for more than half my life, and I've loved certain kinds of electronic and experimental music for even longer than that.

I used to use ProTools and GarageBand pretty heavily, but I have almost entirely abandoned them. The only pre-recorded sound you will hear on my harmonitronica work are samples and some sequencer rhythms. I do use Audacity to edit my live improvisations when they get too long, or to clean up dead-ends.

Please note that my improvisatory songs are often not copyrighted, but instead, licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows others to reuse the work in noncommercial work of their own, as long as the resulting work attributes my work and is also licensed to allow sharing ("share and share-alike"). Please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ for details. Each song will have details of how it is licensed; my original songs most certainly are copyrighted and may not be reused without permission.

2012 Songs

1	There Ain't No Snow	13 comments // 3 months ago
2	I'm Not Not Very Concerned	12 comments // 3 months ago
3	This Hole	5 comments // 3 months ago
4	Repugnance	3 comments // 3 months ago
5	On the Bicentennial Of the Birth of the Most Venerated and Verbose Boz	3 comments // 3 months ago
6	Leaving Again	2 comments // 3 months ago
7	Flight Of the Rock Doves	1 comment // 3 months ago
8	Sanctum (Odious) Sanctorum	2 comments // 3 months ago
9	Dude, It's Brooklyn (with mikeskliar)	5 comments // 3 months ago
10	Did you hear the news? (with mikeskliar)	3 comments // 3 months ago
11	The Sargasso Cathedral	4 comments // 3 months ago
12	To Dust Thou Shalt Return	4 comments // 2 months ago
13	I Don't Recognize Brooklyn Anymore	7 comments // 2 months ago
14	Two Minutes Silence (Happy Birthday Yoko)	2 comments // 2 months ago
15	It Wasn't Me	5 comments // 2 months ago
16	Have You Struggled To Sleep At Night?	1 comment // 2 months ago
17	Intercalary (with caterwauler)	5 comments // 2 months ago
18	Never Wanted to Be (with katebirdrex)	1 comment // 2 months ago
19	Never Wanted To Be (with katebirdrex)	6 comments // 2 months ago
20	Little Sparkle Home	1 comment // 2 months ago
21	Far Past Time For Bed	1 comment // 2 months ago

Soundboard

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caterwauler 2 months ago

Awesome. Thanks
johnnycashpoint 2 months ago

no problems, realy enjoying your stuff this FAWM
caterwauler 2 months ago

I know it's awfully late, but just in case you have something ready for a collab, I should be able to work on it tomorrow.
And if not, we can do it off-FAWM
Also, I'll be back soon to listen and comment. Now that FAWM's almost over, I have time. How nice...
jsini 2 months ago

Thank you so much for all your thoughtful comments on our music. Suzanne
natchdan 2 months ago

It's a softsynth in FL Studio called Harmless, a harmonic synth. I made the preset myself - nice and thick!
jsini 2 months ago

Thanks for all your great comments Ken. I really appreciate them.
katebirdrex 2 months ago

Hey Ken! Why don't I send you something in the next coupla days and you can see if you wanna do something with it? I haven't been on that end of a collab before, might be fun? Or feel free to send me something if you have it in the works already. You can email me at kaevans@hotmail.com
mattpierce 2 months ago

Hi Ken,
To answer your question, it really isn't any special tuning persay
Its just the four lower strings are replaced with lighter ones!
The low E is tuned an octive higher as normal and so on and so forth
until the B and high E strings, which stay the same!
katebirdrex 2 months ago

Hey, Ken! Thank you so much for the kind and detailed comments on my songs--they are very much appreciated!

Collab-solutely!! (heh, sorry, couldn't resist.) Any thoughts about how you wanna do it?
fendertele71 2 months ago

Thanks for the comment on Welcome Home. @JonnieGrunge lives in the greater DC metro area and I'm in Brooklyn so we do not play in the city. In fact, The Really Good Pot Roast (Our band) has never performed live anywhere. After FAWM we hope to rework a few of our songs so the 2 of us could do small "unplugged" gigs when we are together.
jsini 3 months ago

Oops, accidently posted twice
jsini 3 months ago

Hi Ken, thanks for listening and commenting on my songs. You asked about my new recorder, it's a Zoom R16. It works great, I just have not figured out mixing yet. It came with Cubebase, but I can't make that work yet. It's got a scrwed up license process. I'll mess with it later. Now I'm just using my Zoom PS04.
mattpierce 3 months ago

Thanks Ken thats a great idea about the gradual harmonies on "Let me in"!
Although, being me 3x, still doesn't allow me to have the girls sit on my lap!
mikeskliar 3 months ago

http://fawm.org/forums/thread/3014/ is the thread for the explore the core challenge
Which you had asked about.....
regnaracer 3 months ago

Haha, as I was listening to the first thing you posted I was sort of like "I'm not sure I hear all of these samples, I guess I'll talke his word on it..."

It all makes sense now!

Also, fwiw, no revision of comment needed, I actually might enjoy this more. It reminds me a bit of a mix between something like Prurient and John Wiese which is crazy rad.

Finally, I want to say a big word up to your Laurie Anderson influence. I've always been something of fan of Big Science, but in the last month or so after getting a few other of her records and returning to Big Science, I've become totally obsessed.
mattpierce 3 months ago

Haha, you got me there Ken!
max 3 months ago

Hey Ken, thanks for listening. The Banjo has been used before.
It's just that I feel more comfortable to turn it up in the mix this year.
Still there are only two banjo songs I play in a live-set. I hope to write more songs that are great to perform with banjo. This year the muse is going all different directions, too many styles on my wish-to-do list.
mattpierce 3 months ago

One thing about a dulcimer over a harmonica is that you can wear a beard and moustache without screaming half way through a song in pain, from pulled whiskers!
dawnsoap 3 months ago

Thank you so much for your comment on "Ocean Breeze"! I am so glad that you liked it.
caterwauler 3 months ago

Hey! Good to see you
Don't be sorry, I've been out of touch too... I'd love to work on .5, but I'm not sure I'll find time to do it
I'll let you know how it goes for me.
Re your comment : I've bought a MM6 synth last Summer and I can't help fiddling around with the orchestra sounds now
roberta 3 months ago

Hey
Thanks very much for your comment. Glad you like it
I can't get the demo for "There Ain't No Snow" to stream, btw...