Songs For Dog Fitness

“It’s an album to walk your dog to made durning Covid…so if you don’t have a dog I’m not sure if you will like it.” - Chris Funk

All songs performed by Chris Funk live on modular and semi modular synths during the Covid-19 lockdown of 2020. Recorded and mixed by Chris Funk. Mastered by Jon Neufeld at Treehouse Mastering. Cover Art By OSMOSE and Rob Jones.

My friend, a producer named John Congleton, encouraged me to purchase my first modular “system”. He had brought a Buchla Work Easel in-tow to a Decemberists recording session. His system was daunting and expensive. But the way John put it was: “It’s worth buying this stuff as long as it keeps me inspired to keep doing this,” or something to that effect. So I did.

It’s no secret that guitar players are often prone to purchasing too many guitars, and too many guitar pedals to mold and shape their sounds. I had found myself drawn to pedals that pushed the sounds of the guitar so far away from the conventional tones of the 6-stringer that using control voltages sourced from something that looks like a guitar pedal—that is, the module—struck me as not much of a stretch.

As I tend to do with most of my flights of fancy, I went in headlong and deep. The modules started piling up over the next few years, and again and again, I found myself in front of a modular system, not really knowing what I was doing. I would turn them on, make a simple noise. Life would happen and I’d return to the tasks of what it takes for an indie rock guitar player to make a living in Oregon, which didn’t and still doesn’t involve much time to simply “make sounds.”

Enter a virus, loads of rain and the dark skies as my state is known for, plus total lockdown of my city. I seized the moment, blew the dust off of the robots and took over the dining room. I told myself I was going to create “a patch” (a song) every day with modular, record it and move on. And, for more or less two months, I did.

This music was all recorded live: one take while adjusting the units, until felt I “had something,” not over thinking it. I’d then dump it into the grid and take my dog for a walk, reviewing what I’d made on my headphones in the empty streets, businesses boarded up for what we thought was to be a month or so. But that cycle just kept continuing. Unfortunately, as I type this, it still is.

Realizing that this process and virus might go on and on, I marked the tracks that seemed to live together [in time? in mood?], often not remembering creating some of the music at all. Were the robots playing me? I bundled them up to be mastered, and now here they are for you and your pets to enjoy on a walk, or a treadmill, or laying around your house next to your dog. As you read this, hopefully the virus has passed, and a few of these songs can underscore you flight to somewhere far away.

May your dog forever underscore your life.

– Chris Funk, June 2020