the kris norris musical grab bag

Kris Norris, guitarist and songwriter for Darkest Hour and Locus Factor apparently hasn't been kept busy enough with two bands worth of recording and touring and making instructional guitar DVDs. Over the years he's composed and recorded over 700 little miscellaneous riffs and songs of various levels of polish with his guitar, a keyboard, a computer and a drum machine.

Now he's started trickling them out and making them available for free on his website.

I'm sure that lots of professional musicians are actually similarly prolific but it's rare that they let the world actually hear these rough little bits.

So far, I'm really enjoying digging through the ones he's put online. It's fascinating to see inside the creative process like this. I think it's similar to how I enjoy looking at artists' sketchbooks, seeing the preliminary studies and throwaway doodles that were never really intended for public consumption.

Of course it's not all very good and it's mostly really roughly produced with muddy sound and the really basic drum machine programming that you would expect from someone who's primarily a guitarist. But there are some real gems buried in there too like FUCKINA which mixes nice melodic acoustic guitar with massive doses of synths (I'm not sure if it's supposed to be pronounced "fuck-een-a" or "fuckin' a").

Actually, something about the mixed nature of the collection actually appeals to me in the same sort of way as digging through a big pile of unsorted used records at a flea market. Even though most of it might be crap, the promise that you might find something really awesome for next to nothing just cause you were willing to get your hands dirty and dig for a while somehow makes it all that much more appealing.