grey and green digital: official website

I’m excited to launch an official website for Grey and Green Digital, an idea I’ve been cooking up in my head for some time. It’s a creative studio showcasing the intersection of digital art, improvisational music, and web development.

The project brings together three passions:

Digital Art — Abstract designs featuring a mix of natural and digital elements, from geometric patterns to organic forms.

Music Curation (aka Jam Snips)– Long-form improvisational jam band mixes featuring Phish, Goose, Disco Biscuits, and other artists from the scene (created for deep listening, exercise, or jamming out in your living room).

Web & Mobile Apps — Currently featuring GTFO, an outdoor lifestyle and digital detox app, with more projects on the horizon including a full Jam Snips website.

Grey and Green Digital represents years of creative output finally collected in one place. It’s a portfolio, yes, but also a living project that will grow as I continue creating.

Check it out at greygreendigital.com and let me know what you think.

blending jams and abstract designs: the goose 2024 bliss mix

I created a new mix in the ‘just the jams’ style, combining a bunch of “blissful” segments of improvisation by the band Goose. Not only did it come out nicely, but it seems to have gotten picked up by the YouTube algo, as it’s getting a very decent amount of views/listens.

digital art: fun with rain and rainbow shapes with “rainglow”

I recently put together this combo of a non-ROYGBIV rainbow and a matrix-like geometric cascade shape that I just love. It has so much movement implied even though it is not moving. I added a little glow behind it to fill it out a bit, and I really like the way it came together.

Here are some alternate color schemes, as I really had a tough time deciding on my favorite:

video: live, improv jam snippets + digital art (a new medium for me)

I’ve begun playing around with using some of my digital artworks in a new way by combining them with some music and adding some subtle animations. I’ve mainly been using the music of the band Goose as my audio backdrop, splicing some nice moments of improvisation from some of their recent shows (something I used to do back when I was writing and podcasting for Live Music Blog). I have not done a lot of video creation, so this is a new thing for me, but it has been a fun experiment and I am liking the results so far. Here are a few samples:

I made a couple shorts:

And I’ve been toying around with this “grids” concept which I plan to do more of in the coming weeks:

I also did some longer form videos to show off more images and let the jams play out a bit:

Video content seems to get more attention on some of the social media sites, so this experiment was a good start and something I’ll probably keep doing.

BTW, if you the “JOTY” acronym thing seems odd to you, it’s a nod to a Goose fan term I’ve seen thrown around and used here and there; the term is just short for “jam of the year” and has been used in making list of their favorite sections of of improv (jams) for each year, but it is also sort of a knock on overzealous fans calling every new great jam “jam of the year.”

digital art: more of the grey and green color scheme with “pixel pipes and city stripes”

If you thought I was done with my obsession with the colors grey and green, I regret to inform you that you’re dead wrong. In fact, I did something a bit compulsive and bought some domains, and now I have something cooking over at thegreyandgreen.com with this as the top banner image:

I’ll be honest, I don’t yet know what I am doing with this storefront. I had enough people ask me about my art creations (including some about buying prints) that I figured it’d be worth the experience of building my own little web store to test out the Shopify platform and see what comes of it.

This is still very much in the early stages, but I am going to gradually add more prints and products and see what happens.

If you like it, please consider helping me by:

  1. Sharing the link wherever you think is appropriate
  2. Joining the email list
  3. Buying something (if you feel so inclined)

If you do buy something, please let me know how the process goes for you. I’d recommend one of the mugs as a great place to start.

Music Discovery via Hip Hop samples: De La Soul and Cymande

As all my friends know I am a music geek at heart and I love discovering new music and sharing it (by “new” I mean new to me).

One of my favorite past-times is digging up the sampled original tracks from old school hip hop tunes to uncover interesting jams. And one of my favorite recent discoveries was from a sample used in De La Soul’s “Change in Speak” by Cymande (from their 70s funk/soul tune “Bra”):

Below is the original tune that De La sampled.

Starting at minute 0:09, you can hear two key Cymande samples used throughout the De La tune, the first using bass, drums and guitar and the second making use of the full horn arrangement. When I first heard this original tune, it immediately triggered a memory of hearing “Change in Speak” way back in the early 90s (notably, De La’s 3 Feet High and Rising was one of my first CD purchases ever, along with A Tribe Called Quest’s first album, People’s Instinctive Paths of Funk and Rhythm…yeah, I really lucked out with those 1st two CD picks!).

At first, this just comes across as a great old-school horn-based groove with some soulful vocals. But, as you listen it’s just gets even better. One of the best parts to my ears is the instrumental break/drop-out at ~2:50 when the horns and vocals stop and the band just grooves for a while on drums and percussion (and plenty of hits to the cowbell!).

I have dug into the rest of Cymande’s catalog and while nothing hits quite like “Bra” there are definitely some other gems including “Brothers on the Slide” and “Dove.”

If you dig this type of musical discovery, you should check out a playlist I made for this kind of thing I called “hip hop who sampled” which I often update with new tracks. Also, as the title of the playlist suggests, I often use the awesome who sampled website to dig up the original tracks and artists.

If you find other gems, definitely let me know!

digital art: the flex capacitor

Lately I’ve been playing around with a lot of shapes and images that evoke energy and sound. This was originally in a black, purple and yellow (similar to “reach“) but then I found this grey color scheme with teal and red colors and just loved it. Most will know this, but just in case, the name is a nod to the “flex capacitor” from Back to the Future. heh heh.

abstract art in grey, teal and red colors