Pete Casale's Digital Piano Music

They say you can have a "stroke of luck."

This is some kind of idiom, which according to Google, means "a fortunate occurrence that could not have been predicted or expected."

Some people count on these things to become suddenly and violently rich, by way of winning a lottery. Other people may consider simply being alive a stroke of luck. Not me! I think luck is nonsense and balderdash, and should be relegated to mumbo jumbo shelf along with concepts like magic, quantum mechanics and "healthy sausages".

The moral of this story is that even if the packaging says they're healthy, 50 sausages for $20, reduced to $10, should raise red flags and if you ignore them you might shit out a lung.

Have you ever said or written something that you've realised was stupid, immediately after doing it? This describes pretty much everything I've ever said and written, including this sentence. Only recently I learned that it's possible to say things that weren't stupid; I just assumed everyone was the same as me, constantly saying something slightly stupider than the previous moment.

One of the redeeming features of the human brain is that it's capable of change. This means you can take the stupid thing you said, analyse it, and perform correctional routines in your mind to hopefully prevent that particular stupidity from being said again. With this superpower active, it is possible to say a whole sentence without being stupid. It's not easy, but it is possible.

On that note, this is a song called Tweak. For me, this song is about saying something stupid, then immediately regretting it. For you, the song should just be a tune that you might listen to and perhaps considered it to be suitable for some sort of ambient listening, such as having on in the background during a board game, or perhaps playing on your earphones while you paddle a boat or watercraft of some kind.

Here comes the apocalypse! Said many people throughout history. 99% of the time, they were wrong, with a one percent margin of error.

The thing is, you can't ever "be dead." Because if you be, you're not dead. If you're dead, you no longer be. Some philosopher probably said something like "If I am here, death is not, and if death is here, I am not." Google says it was Epicurus, who said a lot of hilarious things like this. Epicurus liked a good joke or two, if I know him, which I don't. Because he's dead, and has been for about 2200 years.

The point I'm trying to make is dinosaurs.

There is a children's song called "walking in the jungle" which is blatant rip-off of Junglewalk even though it was created many years beforehand, I heard it and I sung it many times before I created Junglewalk.

Confidence is a hilarious religion invented by Sir Edwardio J Confidentio back in 1886. Its core dogma involves self-belief and like all religions, the logic is completely circular. For example, if you believe you have a trait, such as the ability to climb ladders really well, you will probably climb the ladder and do just as good a job as anyone else who can climb ladders. Bare with me - the catch is coming up! If you believe you're bad at climbing ladders, you probably won't climb the ladder at all for fear of falling clumsily and looking quite the jester in front of your colleagues.

Meanwhile, back in reality, your colleagues simply witnessing you climb a ladder, or not climbing a ladder as the case may be, and possibly questioning why you brought a ladder into the office and what you plan on doing when you get into the ceiling cavity.

Family is the type of thing that you hear about on movies and TV, that doesn't really correspond to real life.

For clarification, this is an obviously inferior cover of the wonderful song Orion, by Metallica; probably the best song ever written. A rare and glitteringly complex, technical masterpiece of music.

In case you didn't know, martial artists are not always arrogant wannabe tough-guys like I am. ~100% of the time, martial artists everywhere in the world are respectful, courteous, friendly, humble and honest people. I always feel better after training, even when having been smashed repeatedly.

For clarification, this is another obviously inferior cover of the wonderful song Orion, by Metallica; probably the best song ever written. A rare and glitteringly complex, technical masterpiece of music.

You can learn a lot from a dog. There is no creature on earth that likes food as much as a dog does, not even fat people. It's their main thing, so it's wise to take lessons from dogs on how to enjoy food.

"But Pete, if you eat slowly, you'll get more time to enjoy your meal!" Nonsense! That's quantity over quantity. Would you rather have 10 minutes of fairly good eating, or one minute of delicious monstrous gluttony with only slight risk of choking?

This song is about nothing to do with food, it's about missing the dogs (again). It's not an attention-grabbing song, you should listen to it in the background, it's long.

Theo! The word means "God". I have a sheep whose name is God, and he used to be a massive dick to the other sheep, but they got bigger than him and now he's more passive. Authur, on the other hand! That heavy bastard almost weighs as much as I do, clipping his feet is not a light task because you have to wrestle him to his back.

This is a song about something overwhelming complicated but infinitely simple. The song itself is complicated, which reflects this. Every instrument represents something significant to me, but as always I encourage you to find your own meaning to my songs, assuming you can be bothered.

Theo is a return to the fine-sounding pianoish style that made me famous. 132 fans on Facebook can't be wrong! Look out Lady Gaga, Puff Daddy, Prince and whoever else is popular these days.

Deep in rural New Zealand, 1992, a song that played on TV for some bank advert had a classical tune that I liked. I figured out how to play it on the piano.

About the same time, a friendly, simple, loyal old sheepdog Bobby went missing during a scientific survey some 11-year-old idiot was conducting in a forest.

Where did you go to Bobby?

Where did you go my friend?

Where did you go?

Bobby come home.

In a bizarre and misguided attempt to create music that you should feel, I believe I successfully created a song that would be enjoyed by deaf people. Exclusively enjoyed by deaf people. I paid special attention to equalisation on this track, so that certain bass frequencies hit in different rhythms. 
Interestingly, this song is just piano, drums and my voice. The bass synth is my voice. The high pads are my voice too. What? Yes! It's all my own voice nicely resynthesised. And it certainly is not ironic that my voice is better enjoyed by deaf people.

I don't really want to publish the nature of this song, but don't let that stop you speculating its intended meaning! Much like not knowing how to drive a car shouldn't stop you attempting to drive, nor should not knowing how to build a house stop you firing your builder and doing all the work yourself.

With blind luck as my co-pilot, I have personally survived many of my attempts to undertake professional work myself instead of paying someone "qualified" to do it. In fact, a doctor once commended my attempt at midnight DIY at home self-surgery on my ingrown toenail when I was 24 or thereabouts. He said "we don't usually do that procedure any more, it is deemed 'too painful'." True story.

This may seem silly. Overhand is a type of punch which works by coming up high over your head then arcing downwards at an angle towards the opponent's skull. It is notoriously difficult to block because of its unusual trajectory and the misleading movement of the shoulders. Plus the overhand punch generates a great deal of kinetic energy and really rattles the brain good. 

Conversely, the word underhand denotes a kind of subtlety and snideness that generally describes a remark or verbal jab. For example, if I was to tell you your shoes looked nice for someone of your kind, you may well infer I'm making an underhand insult about you. For which, the correct response is a nice overhand punch to my skull. 

There are very few problems a good overhand punch can't solve. Guy in front of you in the queue just bought the last pie? Overhand punch to the skull. Suddenly, you have a pie! Car window broken and won't wind down? Overhand punch will sort that window out post haste. Ham sandwich too salty? Bam! Overhand punch will fix that, or your money back. Postman keeps delivering you junk mail despite your sign that says "no adverts"? Shoelaces too tight? Worker at the theme park refuses to let you on the ride for "safety reasons" because you're "too tall"? Overhand punch every time. 

I can't think of any problem that can't be solved with an overhand punch. And neither can you! 

This song is not really about overhand punches, but it was originally written at a time when I was quite into the old overhand punch and its correlating theology. This song a prototype, I'm almost certain to change this song radically in the future, unless problems occur such as I die or forget. Both of which can be remedied with a nice overhand punch.

I was in two minds about ever releasing this song, since everyonewho has ever listened to it hates it (except me). 

Granted, it is very unusual to find a song with 3/3 timing. And granted it is very unusual to have a song that uses the chromatic key or pentatonic scale. This song has both of these lovely features and more! 

Sometimes you have to let it all out. Some kind of yell or shout or scream. Prism is about pain, agony and anguish.

This is a song. 

At risk of being too descriptive, I'll elaborate: This is a song I originally wrote on the guitar when I was 19 or so. It contains guitars. It contains traditional music elements such as notes and chords. It has a 4/4 time signature. 

Too much information? If so, then please retrocognitavely eliminate the sentences after which you felt the information became sufficient.

It's the way Rain as we Sleep was intended to be.

I started writing this song in 1996, at the height of my Metallica and electric guitar obsession. I've just finished this song now, in 2012.

If you wanted to listen to a heavy song, then this song is probably too heavy for you. In terms of weight, I've aimed for somewhere between an amplifier exploding and a tank being eaten by a giant robot shark, all the while listening to this song on a stolen MP3 player made of depleted uranium.

Juggernaut is about anger.

Sometimes you have good news, but the catch is you don't necessarily know it's good news. For me, this song is about some recent good news.

Like the song "Lucid", I have dreamed about this song for a few weeks. I wasn't playing it on a piano in the (most prominent) dream, it was different. At risk of sounding like a crazy hippie, I was kind of "explaining" this song to a future being.

Unfortunately it is not easy to remember a dreamt song, let alone convert it to a real life digital production. But this is my best attempt, my best being about 15% efficiency. There may be more attempts in the future.

This song, and I use the word "song" loosely, began life as a nice old-fashioned piano song, but then devolved into what can only be described as LOUD NOISES, aka an interesting new genre called complextro.

If you don't like thinking too much, this song could be about frustration, otherwise it can be about whatever you like.

Where did you buy your clothes? From the toilet store?

If that last sentence makes no sense, you should refer to the brilliant comedy films of genius actor Steve Carrell. Steve graciously allowed me to use his voice in this song. And by "allowed me to" I mean "doesn't know that I".

Back to my old style of instrumental piano music?

I think I've mentioned once or twice before that all of my songs are instrumental for two main reasons:

First - I like songs that have no spoken lyrics because lyrics seem to force a meaning to a song that doesn't always suit the listener. The best songs always let the music speak for itself.

Second - I lack the talent, skills and equipment to produce and record tuneful voice.

Field is about certain things that make me happy.

Piper is my Shetland Sheepdog. He likes to sing, especially when there is insufficient attention being sent in his direction. In this stunningly high-quality, professionally edited song, you can see how his singing can be put to a delightful tune, of sorts.

Head like a fucking orange!" is how Ricky Gervais describes his friend Karl Pilkington.

One of the best conversations recorded between Ricky, Karl and Steve Merchant involves stick insects and the intricacies of evolutionary defence measures.

The full dialogue was cleverly stolen by me to use in this new song, named after Mr Pilkington himself, to which you can listen right here.

I had to make a TV commercial that gave the viewer energy. Energy!? It's difficult to express the concept of "energy" in musical form.

So I tried expressing energy in writing, mostly physics formulae, but it was deemed "too sterile". Then I tried to express energy with interpretive dance, but the people in the airport thought I was having seizure and called the ambulance. So I went back to expressing energy with music.

Luckily, music fits with a TV commercial better than a bland voice explaining the physical properties of energy in monotone, and far better than someone performing a seizure-like dance in the corner.

I learned two things the week I wrote this song:

1) Apparently, if you visually arrange a chord sequence to mimic the helical structure of DNA, you get a fairly pleasant sounding tune.

2) If you point to someone while gradually widening your eyes and mouth, they will get progessively more uncomfortable and agitated. Try it! It's fun until they threaten to call the pilot and have you arrested as soon as you land.

In any case, this song goes back to my old style, which gives me a break from attempting "dubstep" and similar offensive noises. Rah!

Tribute to one of the best songs ever written, according to myself age 15. Unlikely to be as good as the original "Enter Sandman", which isn't saying much because Sandman is one of the best songs of all time.

For me, this song is about fighting, in the physical combat sense. Little unimportant details such as when the fight starts to take control of the mind, rather than the other way around, and deciding you might not like who you are when you start fighting for real.

This song took awhile, because I wanted to do a good job to pay proper tribute to Metallica. Even though this isn't metal. Or "lica". Or music?

How appropriate! You fight like a cow!

The best song of the 80s-90s era was not "Smells like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, despite what every person in my year 10 class thought. No, the famed prize went to a fairly unknown song that featured in the Lucasarts puzzle game, Monkey Island. This song was the only song to reach 100% awesomeness on the Casale Awesomeness Scale (tm), which is obviously the most recognised official ratings system ever to be invented.

This is my cover. I changed the time signature, some chords, pattern, tempo, instruments, and pretty much everything except the fundamental melody.

I hope you have a lifeboat handy! Why? Did you want to borrow one?

What is a ghost? Is a ghost a misconstrued metaphorical idea, or simply a myth? Well, that's hardly the kind of question I'm intellectually equipped to answer, so I won't.

This song is called Ghost, because it is pretty much identical to the theme of that classic movie-film, Ghostbusters. Who shalt thou call? Ghostbusters! That one. I've changed it slightly, as I tend to do. Remember this is in no way due to lack of skill, it is all entirely intentional.

I think I'm slowly getting better at making songs. Despite what all my critics say! And by critics I mean friends, family and random strangers.

Who is a monkey? You are! And so am I. If this is not your current system of belief, I recommend thinking about it for a bit. If you aren't familiar with "thinking", it's this process where you question things that are told to you and try to make logic out of them. For example, if I was to tell you that there was an angry creature living in the sky who oversees everything we do, you might question that. And probably determine that based on overwhelming evidence the contrary, I was wrong.

This song is about none of that! For me it's about life and how splendid life can be.

Breathe is a complex song, and I don't say that lightly. For me this song is about "swimming" so to speak. Back in the days when I used to go down to the beach and swim out as far as possible then just wait in the water, where you can only hear water and your own heart beat. It's fun, until someone pointed out how dangerous it was. Pish posh! I told them between slurps of my delicious pumpkin soup. Pish posh. I'll not let idle threats like death by drowning stop me doing my ridiculous swimming challenges! Have a listen.

Have you seen Dexter? It's a television programme. It's about a guy who is a serial killer but he only kills bad people who the law can't touch for whatever reason. It has a pretty good theme song that uses strings etc. This is a cover of the original song by Daniel Licht. I've used the classic combination of electric guitars and ragtime pianner with a buzzing bassline and semi-dubstep beat. If that doesn't sound like a classic combination it's because it isn't.

While making my short video on lucid dreaming for Becky's website World-of-Lucid-Dreaming.com I needed a nice piece of music I could use without getting sued. I started by writing a kind of clunky piano piece in a hurried kind of way, but then I got tired so I went to bed. The next morning, before waking up, I had a small lucid dream during which I decided to compose a song on a piano made out of pure energy and light. That's right, this song was written while I was asleep. It was actually about ten times as long but I couldn't remember all of it. After I woke up, I hopped on the piano and started working out how to play the song, and I established as much of it as I could remember. Lucid is a strange song, amen.

Download the piano sheet music for this song here: http://www.petecasale.org/casale-lucid-sheetmusic.zip

Shelties are dogs, of which I coreside with two, named Mr Howard Woofington-Moon and Mr Piper Woofington-Moon (they are brothers). This is a short piano piece about these dogs and was written specially for a short video I made for Becky's birthday, called "The first year of the brothers Woofington-Moon." The video was essentially 150 various photos of our dogs in rapid succession, with the music playing in the foreground. Foreground!

Careful of this one. Very carefully made after I was tricked into taking some herbal sleeping pills prior to a long-haul flight across the world. Best sleeping pills ever, was not able to sleep, so I sat in a barely-cognitive state and wrote this song about my dogs, who I hadn't seen for a month and very much missed. Man I missed those dogs. If this track in any way conveys the feeling of "missing your dog" then I consider it a success. Like all my tracks, this is what this song is about for me - you can attribute whatever suits you.