Chrispy Bongo's Songs

The works linked from this page are Copyright © 1986-2003 Christopher A. Bongaarts. All Rights Reserved.
Last update: Sat Nov 29 04:41:49 CST 2003

Music I Make

I am self-taught at the piano, and also play clarinet and any guitar with three strings or less (my fingers are suited for typing, not guitar playing). I'm also in the process of trying a four-string (bass) guitar, progressing slowly.

I write songs occaisionally as an emotional outlet. Sometimes people ask me why I don't go into the music recording business. Frankly, I don't consider my songs inherently interesting or relative to other people. I write for me, not for others. If someone else happens to like them, fine. If not, fine.

I also enjoy transcribing music from one music format to another on my 'puter (e.g. mods->MIDIs, Commodore 64 SID file -> MIDI, and lately converting raw music code from classic video games -> MIDI format directly from ROM images). Coming soon: samples of my conversions.

Old note:
I recommend playing back the General MIDI files on a PC with a Gravis Ultrasound sound card, or other wavetable-based card. The .WAV files are short 11KHz, 8 bit linear samples of the MIDI files as played back on my computer. Not terribly hi-fi as compared to the MIDI files, and not as complete; I strongly recommend getting the MIDI files if your hardware can handle them. If you can't figure out how to get them and play them, you need to ask me.

New note:
I'm starting to distribute some of these in MP3 format as well as MIDI; see individual song descriptions for specifics.

From the Elastica FAQ:

Why are all the songs so short?

If you're watching a band you're not familiar with you wanna hear the verse, you wanna hear the chorus, you wanna hear the next song .... The whole thing of playing two middle eights and triple choruses to finish isn't music, it's brainwashing.
- Justine Frischmann
In the order I wrote them, roughly (song dedications are in parens):

  1. I Never Knew Before
    A li'l ditty I whipped up when I was still knee-high to a grasshopper. Richard Marx stole the tune and used it to make the chorus for "Endless Summer Nights".

  2. Just Another Friend
    I spent quite a while refining the music for this song, but have written only a handful of words. Ah well.

  3. Please Take Me Back (EKL)
    This is one of the few songs that I consider "finished". Not much more work to do on this one.
    Words
    Music (MIDI format, 35kb)

  4. Just Wanted to Tell You
    This song, which consisted of just a couple chords, eventually mutated into "The Strongest Force". Ironic, considering "The Strongest Force" has the most complicated chord structure of all my songs to date.

  5. The Strongest Force
    This one I consider "almost finished". There are some awk(1)ward phrasings that I'd like to clean up, and I'd like to add a bridge in there somewhere to break up the pattern a bit.
    Words
    Music (MIDI format, 20kb)

  6. The Rainbow
    I have a wonderful chord progression for this song, but in 5 or so years I haven't been able to come up with a decent melody.
    Words

  7. Looking for Someone Else (RAS)
    The title is rather ironic, as the speaker is actaully enumerating the reasons why "looking for someone else" is a pointless venture. This song needs a bluesy-jazzy instrumental in the middle - musically, it's long and boring.
    Words
    Music (MIDI format, 30kb)

  8. The Best of Both Worlds (JLS)
    This one also needs a bridge to break up the sequence a bit. Otherwise, it's basically finished. Unlike most of my songs, this one was NOT written from personal experience.
    Words
    Music (MIDI format, 42kb)
    Music (WAVE format, 306kb)
    Music (Sun .au format, 222kb)

  9. Lying Alone (RAS)
    My favorite song musically, and one of my dearest lyrically.
    Words
    Music (MIDI format, 29kb)
    Music (Sun .au format, 321kb)

  10. The Many-Colored Girl (AH)
    I knew a girl in high school who always wore a super-cool tye-dye shirt. I meant to write a song about her but never got around to it.

  11. Last Place (RAS)
    I consider this to the be the most depressing song I've ever written. Read at your own risk. (Well, OK, it's not that bad.)
    Words
    Music (WAVE format, 301kb)
    Music (Sun .au format, 218kb)

  12. Emotional Blackmailer (RAS)
    One of the first songs for my unwritten musical "How I Skipped Four Years of School".
    Words

  13. Out of Sync (RAS)
    Fun with rhymes. The quotes in the song are real ones that someone I know once said. One of my not-so-good efforts at lyrics, IMHO.
    Words

  14. See If You Can Stop Me (RAS)
    Another song from my musical. I love bad puns, and here they made it into a song.
    Words

  15. Waves (RAS)
    A duet that I wrote, exploring the differences in perspectives I saw between someone else and myself. The "C:" is the male part, "R:" the female part, and "B:" for both.
    Words
    Music (MIDI format, 2kb)

  16. Impossible Dreams (RAS)
    One of my more "surreal" songs... Like "Waves", it was written late one night up at the lake, sitting on the dock looking over the waves while meditating on a relationship that never quite got off the ground.
    Words
    Music (MIDI format, 13kb)
    Music (WAVE format, 180kb)
    Music (Sun .au format, 131kb)

  17. The Frog Prince
    The old fairy tale, retold in music. No words yet. Not even much of a tune yet.
    Music (MIDI format, 9kb)
    Music (WAVE format, 137kb)
    Music (Sun .au format, 100kb)

  18. Thinking Aloud
    Had an idea for a song. Wrote down the title. End of story. This was also supposed to be in the musical.

  19. Dreamless (RAS)
    Words can be "violent", too...maybe this needs a Doom-style disclaimer ("Profound Carnage").
    Words

  20. My Mr. Hyde (BMK)
    We all have different "sides" to us...
    Words

  21. Sand Castle (BMK)
    A song for those of us who can't seem to help making the same mistakes over and over and over and over again.
    Words

  22. Open Letter to Myself (BMK)
    Another song about repeated mistakes. Probably won't make much sense unless you know me very well.
    Words

  23. entropi (BMK)
    This was intended to be a goodbye letter to a friend, in song, but it turned out that a goodbye was not necessary, and I never wrote more than a line of words anyway. So I'm stuck with a rather pretty tune that will almost certainly be recycled sometime in the future.

  24. Simpler Days
    Finally a new song to add here. I might decide to add lyrics someday, or leave it instrumental; I haven't decided yet. While playing around with the built-in styles of my new Yamaha PSR-225GM keyboard, I found a pattern I liked and this song just sort of flowed out of my fingers. I forgot about it for several months, then rediscovered it and actually laid down the tracks, borrowing an idea from the "fantasy" theme from an old C64 game I enjoyed, Adventure Construction Set. The mp3 version is essentially the MIDI file played on my PSR-225GM (and is the way it's "meant" to sound).
    Music (MP3 format, 2074kb)
    Music (MIDI format, 9kb)

Chris Bongaaarts - bong0004@tc.umn.edu

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