Podcast: REVERIES

REVERIES is an ongoing project of music making for the sake of joy for the sake of music making for the sake of time for the sake of self therapy for the sake of sharing moments for the sake of making your day better. They are all instrumentals, a way to share the ongoing improvisations and compositions and whimsy of cellist/guitarist/composer/whatever Luke Janela. Listen either as an ongoing soundtrack or as a palate cleanser between talkie talk. Listen underwater, in midst of revelation, and especially while walking.

If you’ve discovered and enjoy this unique music podcast please leave a review. More though, take it with you, this moment that you are reading this, remember: you are alive yeah.

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I want to be cinematic. All my cinematic attempts lately veer so hard towards the melancholic. I blame cello.

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#musiceveryday 73 - Sirens
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In honor of The Boss being in town this week I played through as many songs off this album I could pull off. This one gets me every time.

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#musiceveryday 72 - The River (Bruce Springsteen Cover)
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I want to make a new album where I can sing and it’s just one cello part (no overdubs) so that when I play it live it’s something that is as real as the recording.

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#musiceveryday 71 - shtuff
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Recording today, my favorite chord of all time, A6

yay for A6

#musiceveryday 70

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#musiceveryday 70 - Sirens
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Here is enlightenment, you can pay with your time.

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#musiceveryday 68 - here is enlightenment
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#musiceveryday 69

This is one where I’m glad that the four track still works. I don’t know when I did this song, but it was very, very long ago. And it was when I’d use a handheld audio recorder to double up the vocals somewhat randomly.

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#musiceveryday 69 - The Great Escape (Light Repose)
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This morning the most tremendous thunder I think I’ve heard in LA… woke me up and admittedly I was kind of grumpy like “what is that rumbling sound argh” and then I’m so glad I got up in the early dawn and saw this wall of hail approach and flashes so close I decided being on the roof maybe not the optimal place to witness.

Also this is another solo cello improvised thingy.

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#musiceveryday 66 - Hail
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Playing cello and that’s all, seeing where it leads…

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#musiceveryday 65 - Formerly Known As
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Recording in a living room while a party outside. This song. The one about one night camping in the woods in North Carolina.

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#musiceveryday 64 - Fireflies
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#MusicEveryday 63
Playing cello and trying to pull something out of being erh… not the most inspired I’ve ever been. This ended up sort of being like a walk up and down hill which is what I did this morning so there you have it.

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#MusicEveryday 63 - Forest
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#musiceveryday 62
Was practicing for next week’s show at the silverlake lounge and just kind of ended up singing this. and so you have it, all I needed.

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#musiceveryday 62 - El Dia
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#musiceveryday 61 – making up a song on the spot. to tell the truth I really like this way of “writing” lyrics. I’m not saying that *just* because I’m lazy… just that some of these off the cuff lines might be a LOT better than something I could turn over again and again.

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#musiceveryday 61 - New String Theory
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#musiceveryday 60 – Just a moment playing. Honestly I kind of wish I could just play like this non stop, indefinitely.

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#musiceveryday 60 - Quietudes
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#musiceveryday 59 – I’ve never played this song on guitar… UNTIL NOW

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#musiceveryday 59 - On The Outside In The Nighttime (On The Guitar, In The Afternoon)
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For this edition of Music Everyday for some reason I took two junk guitars and tuned them to the same-ish note (whichever note would hold, they’re not renowned for their intonation) and pushed their backs together while I played, hoping to create a nice drone-y sound from the back guitar. Not too much drone action but made the crummy top guitar very warm and resonant. I might have my million dollar idea: lashing together guitars for a warmer tone. I mean, it’s not like I composed a masterpiece with this setup or anything. But it’s fun to try new things.

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Music Everyday 39 - Pushed Together
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?#?musiceveryday? 32: an idea that I should remember

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Music Everyday 32 - Once I Caught A Wave
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Here’s a raw song idea from a while ago. I’d like to turn this into something someday soon, it keeps hanging out.

*Also I want to explain what I’m sharing here since I haven’t really yet: raw, unedited music that I make shared everyday for the sake of sharing. Not for the sake of being cool or furthering my career or whatever, not to impress, just for it’s own sake on my end. So this ideally will be me each day picking up an instrument or singing something new and fresh and having the um, gusto to share it regardless of whether I am super duper confident in it. That’s the big challenge right there. I just want to find the joy in making music this year a lot more than I have when I’ve been overly concerned with what people think. You know? So take it as you like it, and thanks if you’ve read this far lol. And also thank you sincerely for taking a moment of your time to listen to this music.

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Make Music Every Day 7 - Back To Where
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Here’s my everyday creation for today. It turned out a bit weirder than I expected. It’s another from the cello in a church. Cheers.

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Make Music Every Day 5 - Another Sun
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Day 4: Just a simple idea in one ear, sounds of the city in the other

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Make Music Every Day 4
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I should record / share some music every day. Even if it’s rough and just because. Here, let’s start. #makemusiceveryday

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Make Music Every Day 1
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here’s another, day 3
not recorded today, and yet in the same spirit
raw rough never heard
until now
word
wow

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Day 3 - Take A Sudden Turn
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Day 2 of sharing something e’ry day. Made this today out of some cello I had recorded in a big beautiful church in LA, where I’m not entirely sure I had permission to play. I built the beats here out of these huge metal wine grape bins that you can find in the vineyards if you’re lucky. This is fun. I hope I can keep this up (he says after day 2)

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Make Music Every Day 2 - Psalms 0123
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I should record / share some music every day. Even if it’s rough and just because. Here, let’s start.

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Make Music Everyday #1
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I just felt like putting this up tonight.

It’s a fine Summer night. Is it the end of Summer? That’s what I hear. Me and Cinco are tending to the empty home while the rest of the pack is off at FYF Fest. Slowdive is playing. Hmm. I wish I was there. It was sold out.

I’ve mostly finished up on a big buffet of music I’m going to serve up in the near future. I’m happy with the work done and mostly the feeling of the songs.

Los Angeles for me: still and ever just past my fingertips somehow. It’s there, I push at it, brush it aside like curtains. But I have yet to pass through.

It’s a good city after all, and there are just so many surfaces you could attach your mirrors to here. Everyone is beautiful and larger than life, even if just in their own minds.

There aren’t country lanes, nature revery is rare, and the general balance leans one way and then the next, undecided. It’s menacing and inviting at once.

Blah blah poetic yada yada. Meaning: I’m here, making music in my dear studio with my dear cellos and my dear thoughts and I’m not on that damn stage at this damn point in this damn city.

That’s my check in.

Hope this version of this song fits with your time and place.

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Valley Of Gold - Instrumental Version
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You. My friend. Are the first. In the world. To ever. See this video.

Because you, my friend, are subscribed to the podcast.

High fives, to you!

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Take My Chances - NEW Song Live Video
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Wanted to give y’all a video-free version of the cover song I posted on youtube a few days ago.

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"Angeles" - Elliott Smith Cover - Audio
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This song has been around with me for a long long time. I probably wrote it more than ten years ago. Unlike some songs from that era it has aged well, ie. I’m not embarrassed by it.

I don’t know how it never ended up on an album or fully produced. It’s a perfect example of a thing that works well in a room with people and flat/not quite alive on album…

I’d tell you what it’s about but doesn’t that always ruin a song? I will tell you there is a lot of church related imagery in there. Clearly growing up Catholic and an altar boy invaded my subconscious and probably will give me songs by the bucketful forever. Because? Because church is the imperfect institution, the fallible middleman? Because church is metaphor for society? Church can be metaphor for any thing in our lives be it music or art or love or nature? Because because because. Whatever it is to you.

Without further ado!

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"The Longest Book Ever Written" - Performance Video
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E’ry so often I put ye old iTunes on shuffle and here something perfectly podcast worthy. Here’s an older live on-air performance from KDVS live in studio A. So much reverb! I believe I requested that. I can never have too much reverb.

Got that image from here, you can get a print of it even.

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Owls & Vultures - Live, Rare
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I’m a big fan of interludes and in between moments. I’m a fan of the album vs. the single, and I think these snippets create a glue to hold the other songs together. It’s a fine line and you can kill the momentum of an album pretty easily… But I can’t help myself.

It’s also a way for me to include snippets of musical ideas that maybe don’t ever make it into a song, and the why bother there is that for me albums are more about a certain period of time being captured, rather than a bunch of songs. And those little snippets tend to coincide pretty well with the feeling of the rest of the music.

ANYWAYS.

This one is called “Forge” and it’s a throwback to my ukelele addiction I suffered through last year. I listen to a lot of EDM and somehow someday I want to marry the pulse of that music’s kick drum to an acoustic instrument. For fun and amusement. For justice and glory. And stuff.

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Interludes & In Betweens: Forge
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And thus concludes our magical journey through the soundtrack to “You Follow”… thanks for following.

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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'Unraveling 3'
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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'Unfinished'
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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'To Seek Is To Find'
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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'On To The Next'
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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'Unraveling 2'
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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'The News From Afar'
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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'A Dialogue'
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Where Nisha receives some sad news via letter.

Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes

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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'Cello Blues For A Sad Letter'
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The next episode. I’ll be following up with the rest of the soundtrack in the next couple days.

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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'Unraveling'
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Thought I’d gather all the pieces I composed for Shar, Nisha and Brad’s film “You Follow”. It’s my first official soundtrack! I’ll be unrolling them in rapid succession here on the site, via the podcast. Hope you enjoy…

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"You Follow" Soundtrack - 'To Be Is To Do'
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Here’s the second part of the album I made for making things to. Make whatever you want! Again what we want is ambience and a lack of drama, without aspiring to New Age.

I had a friend who had a ranch out in the hidden part of Mendocino County, and one of our past-times during an amazing Summer visit there became “rock-hopping”, where you hop down a mostly dried up creek bed, ideally reaching a state where you don’t think between leaps. For some reason this song reminded me of that.

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Music For Painting To, Part 2 - Rock Hopping
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I had the honor of working on the soundtrack for “You Follow”, a story about a woman who goes to find out about her past in India. The main character does a lot of searching and I composed this piece to be her (Nisha) theme. It was a fun and interesting project and I’m excited to go see the opening screening tonight(!)…

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Film Music: Nisha's Theme
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A while ago I made my girlfriend Katy an album. She has a certain playlist she’s created for painting and has talked about the perfect music for that kinda thing… meditative and non-disruptive, but interesting enough maybe to be listenable over and over. So obviously I created a  polka/deep-house mashup. And that didn’t fit the bill. So I tried this.

Just a live cello performance using some looping, and a very brutish beat to pull it all along.

It’s long, and it’s a pretty good quality mp3 if you are into that sort of thing.

This is the first of three parts to that album.

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Music For Painting To, Part 1 - Unfold
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A while ago I made my girlfriend Katy an album. She has a certain playlist she’s created for painting and has talked about the perfect music for that kinda thing… meditative and non-disruptive, but interesting enough maybe to be listenable over and over. So obviously I created this flugelhorn polka. And that didn’t fit the bill. So I tried this.

Just a live cello performance using some looping, and a very brutish beat to pull it all along.

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Music For Painting To, Part 1, Unfold
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When my girlfriend heard me play the early version of this she said “that’s pretty is that a Bruce Springsteen cover?”, which I took as a compliment. Nebraska is one of the most beautiful albums ever recorded. I didn’t intend to have the influence be so obvious, it wasn’t conscious, and also, if there is a sound I’d love to pay homage to it’s that one.

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Valley Of Gold
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Canyonlands Guitar Actions

Came across this early version of “You Can Get Far” (video from the album REDWOOD SUMMER here).

And it reminded me of when I recorded it, at Canyonlands National Park, sitting up on a cliff’s edge. As you can hear not a lot is different in the studio version, just perhaps a nicer mic and the absence of the sounds of rocks scraping underneath my shifting weight. And the view I had was incredible.

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You Can Get Far - Early Version
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This song is made famous by the lovely Skeeter Davis.

We made a version of it a while back, with vocals by the also lovely Katy Unger.

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The End Of The World
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Here’s an update from a song I posted a couple weeks ago. I added a cello solo in there. It was imperative to shred. I also added backup vocals toward the end. And hand claps. Always more hand claps. Also as always I prefer the original, what do you think?

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Stardust, part 2
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The podcast was my main delivery about five years ago. Then facebook happened. The thing about facebook for me now, is that it feels WAY less personal than it somehow used to.

Also, I don’t need to share ALL my random songs with ANYONE who likes my facebook page. You, my friend, are here because you are (amazingly) dedicated and I appreciate that.

So we’re going to try to get the podcast back on its feet.

Here’s a new old song. I wrote the lyrics/melody quite a while ago, and stumbled across it in my lyric book, which happens when I’m playing little mini-concerts of old material.

It’s a bit rough, but I like the way it turned out. I’m thinking of adding a little more bowed cello, and perhaps more vocals at the end there…

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Podcast again? Let's try it.
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I’ve been putting off basically everything working on some new music, so much new music in fact that I’m needing to break it down into its respective pieces.

This one is on an album I’m putting out that is basically electronic music meets cello. I’ve done that in the past, but the key with this one is that I more or less be able to play it live. Or some semblance of it. With looping that is possible!

So without saying much more, here is a new electrocello song. I’m likely to take it down soon, as I don’t want to spoil the fun, but love rewarding you my faithful readers…

Take care, enjoy…

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alright, you're right, it's time for some new music
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