How To Tie Your Shoes

This song, written for the August, 2006, kvraudio.com contest, is a statement on our culture's obsession with teaching everything didactically, as a set of instructions, instead of teaching by showing or doing (which is how all of us learned to tie our shoes). It attempts to show the frustration on the part of the instructor when the pupil can't follow the confusing instructions (though they are technically accurate) and the defiant resignation of the student (mad props to 'Xander for the collab!), in both asserting and conceding that he'll never tie his shoes, provided with that method of instruction.

Oh, yeah; it's pretty funny, too. Oh, and I was able to exorcise some of my childhood's own personal demons with this one. All in all, not bad for a day's work.

http://www.victorlams.com/audio/VLams_-_How_To_Tie_Your_Shoes.mp3

Hail Holy Queen

Greetings! We're back with another song for you, this one in honor of and to get you in the mood for tomorrow's Feast of the Assumption of Mary.

I did this track back in November of 2003 and at the time some folks felt that the melody of the hymn was not represented enough to justify the title. Maybe they're right. Or maybe, just maybe, the piece is meant to be evocative of the hymn in some other way than as a strict representation of it. Who knows.

NOTE: This song is now available on the new "Phreakbox v1.4: The Instrumentals" album (as "H.H.Q.", available for download from Amazon MP3, Lala.com, and available soon from iTunes and Rhapsody and on Audio CD.