Ever wonder what happens when a software engineer and a jazz trumpeter team up in a Venice Beach music studio?

Discovery some new focus music and jazz-enfused beats with the release of Chop Wood, Carry Water, my fifth album as Stellar Mammals and my first-ever collaboration with the incredible Jacob Burgdorf on trumpet 🎺 and co-writer.

The title of this album inspired by the Zen Buddhist philosophy of finding purpose in everyday actions. Hope you enjoy this latest collection of instrumental tracks for your flow, reflection or relaxation.

📻🎶 Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music and all major music streaming services.

Huge thanks to Jacob Burgdorf for bringing his incredible 🎺 trumpet skills to this project!

Check out our liner notes, reflections and more about the project below.⤵

Release Notes

Released on September 23, 2024. Performed, written, composed and produced by Stellar Mammals, aka Mark Koester Featuring, co-written and performed by Jacob Burgdorf Original Cover Design by Mark Koester using Assistive Generative AI Art Tools Stellar Mammals Production 2024.

Track List

1. Ignite your flow
2. Intrigue
3. Light the latern
4. Age of Discovery
5. Tides and Winds
6. Chop wood, carry water
7. Night Heron
8. Tend the fire
9. Great Grunion Run
10. Diving Cormorants
11. Slow Clouds

Artist and Producer Note from Stellar Mammals / Mark Koester

The gift has gotta move!

Chop Wood, Carry Water is my fifth album release as Stellar Mammals and my first with Jacob Burgdorf on trumpet and as my co-composer, co-performer and musical friend end-to-end.

I came up with title for this album “Chop Wood, Carry Water” from a zen buddhist expression. This abbreviated version comes from the longer and more traditional Zen expression:

“Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

The phrase implies that even after achieving enlightenment, one continues to perform the same tasks as before, but with a different awareness or understanding. Our mundane creative tasks are often overlooked but are fundamental to existence. Implicit in this phrase in my reading is the idea that transformation comes from doing these days acts in someways too. In Zen, this phrase is often used to convey the idea that enlightenment is not a destination or an extraordinary event, but rather a state of being fully engaged in the mundane, everyday tasks of life.

As a musician and music producer, there is no wrong way to make music and, in fact, there might just be an infinite number of right ways. As Moby put it in a recent interview, the “only thing that matters in that case is whether the end result was interesting and creatively satisfying.” I’m happy to say we are quite happy and pleased with the end result of these 11 all-original, instrumental gems grounded in joy, striving, resilence and taking steps towards what you care about.

While I made my first album Take Life Chill all on my own, with each of my subsequent albums I have continued to add various collaborators including guitarists, assistant producers, singers, keyboard players and more. When Jacob and I met, we immediately connected and gelled. I was looking for a horn player to help me finish my Stardust and Dreams. His trumpet additions to my songs took it to another level. With the release of that album, I knew I wanted to keep working with Jacob and hopefully finish and release another project together.

As a music maker, I tend to divide my work into two activities or phases. The first foundational layer is creating riffs, making demos and writing song starters. You can’t finish something you haven’t started. The second is the re-working and finishing phase where I leverage an iterative review and revision process tracked and organize with a spreadsheet. I believe one of the challenges on music projects is pursuing both essential activites while ensuring you periodically take an exclusive and almost manically focus on one in particular.

On this album, it felt like we got our demos and song starters done relatively quickly and intuitively. I used a lot of the same approaches and instruments I’ve used on my last three albums, like Arturia’s V Collection of classic synth emulations. Unfortunately, I struggled a bit more in the finishing phase. One challenge was getting the sound I wanted from his horn as well as incorporating the other instruments to complement that. Towards the end of the album finishing and as this became more of a hip-hop inspired jazz sound, I added the standup or upright bass from Kontact.

Another additional challenge was working with a co-creator. I have worked on my own music and worked and produced for others, but navigating the co-creation process was new to me. This was Jacob’s album too, which came with a learning curve and adaption. Jacob is an innovative and instinctual music maker but it took some time to figure out how to be sure we both got our feedback and input incorporated. There were few disagreements but there were some moments of ambiguity and uncertainty.

I was fortunate to again have another Venice Beach-based Music Producer and Audio Engineer, Kris Cruz, during the finishing phase. He is great at improving the sound especially on drums and bass. He also contributed some nice melodic lines on a few tracks. Find him on Spotify and Soundcloud

In terms of my time allotment, for this fifth album, according to my time tracking logs, between March 28, 2024 and Sept 4, 2024, I spent 154.5 hours on music and this album. This was about 26 hours more than the last album. Here is the breakdown:

• With Jacob Time: ~36h.
• Jamming and Song Writing: 55h48 / ~36%
• Reworking and Revising: 53h06 / ~34%

Interestingly, this translates to only about 58 minutes per day to produce and release this album.

Admittedly, even given infinite amounts of time, making art is really hard. I had my doubts. I was fortunate to have supporters, fans and collaborators. I still leaned heavily into journaling and reflection.

Philosophically, I feel grateful to be part of the gift economy of music. Music is a gift, both as a listener and as a creator. It’s a gift to be gifted and such a gift should be gifted back. We never really create music alone since it’s part of a deeply rooted and evolving human tradition dating back centuries and likely I hope continuing forever forward.

Practically, this album is a reflection of my own flow-filled work and creative doings and is meant to complement these kinds of activites. I think the core idea is show up, do the work, and maybe you’ll get lucky and make something awesome or at least make some progress. Trust the process.

In spite of the positive energy associated with making music for me, it’s still hard work and at least for me, I finish these unique creative acts with a certain degree of gratitude and humility each time. Many steps came together to these final shared pieces of temporally-organized sounds.

I believe enlightenment or some minor form of it can be found in our daily chopping wood, carrying water or whatever gesture we take on to manifest meaning and art each day.

By choosing this title, the album also symbolizes the act of finding peace, purpose, and joy in the routine, the repetitive, and the seemingly ordinary moments. It suggests that true fulfillment comes not just from grand achievements or lofty goals but from the mindful and intentional practice of everyday actions. I hope in some minor way each song is an invitation into this philosophy, inviting you the listener to find your own moments of clarity and connection.

I invite you (and your ears) to give it a listen, and I hope these songs help you cultivate good vibes for working, reflecting, enjoying and beyond.

We do these acts because they matter. We create the art because it inspires and was inspiring.
We do these acts to create, to express and experience the beauty. We create art as a unique artistic expression. Each work of art, a world of beauty unique.

🔮 Whatever your doings, happy Listening 🌃

Mark Koester / Stellar Mammals Music Producer | Software Engineer and Designer | Blogger StellarMammals.com Website | Instagram | Email Me: stellarmammals@gmail.com

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Artist Note from Jacob Burgdorf

First Thoughts - Showing up to the Venice Canals with my horns not, sure what to expect. I met the Stellar Mammal Mark Koester. The connection was fast, and we soon began making music. The project came from a series of collaborations. At first we recorded jams that we created in the studio and developed them. I don’t think Mark or I quite knew that we were starting the process of making an album. Slowly a project began to form. Much of the final music is a result of showing up and trusting the process. This more or less gave us the album name. Chop Wood Carry water. One day while making music and working on songs, Mark made the comment “Jacob like’s to chop wood”. After learning the full meaning of the statement it became sort of a mantra for our process.

1. Ignite your flow - The shape of this song shifted several times before landing on what is the final form. An example of how the first vision of something can be very different from what the end result is. Working with Mark as a producer helped add a lot of textural layers to the music that you don’t necessarily get from traditional instruments. Thats is the beauty of collaboration.

2. Intrigue - Inspired by Lo-Fi music this track took shape over just one session. Using the simple statements from the trumpet to keep lots of space in the music. This space adds to the sense of mystery. We had many discussion about how big of a role the trumpet would play in each song. In this example it walks the line between atmospheric support and lead. The audio clips taken from the Jack Benny Show add a feeling of noir. The use of audio samples in Lo-Fi is common and we were interested in doing the same.

3. Light the Lantern - The use of both muted and open trumpet helped add variety. Most of the inspiration came from the cool synth part and the heavier drum beat. As with most of the creating on this project I played what I thought would fit best over the music and we liked what came out. There are times when you can hear me testing new ideas out. We wanted to keep those moments into the finished song. These small imperfections help give the music a sense of realism.

4. Age of Discovery - This was early on in the creating process. Starting by laying down a simple chord progression in Fm using organ. Hit record and riffed on the trumpet playing jazz and blues ideas.

5. Tides and Winds - Adding ambient chatter to the beginning and throughout helped add a layer of depth to what we were doing. The initial track was missing some sound in the treble part of the spectrum. The solution was to add the arpeggiated part into the keys. This filled the space without committing to a melody. In this way the muted trumpet still held the melody. The melody, is built in long held notes.

6. Chop Wood Carry Water - Simple descending line like water dropping. This theme is used repeatedly throughout the song. Muted trumpet enters with sustained notes that create an introduction. A change in style to more melodic playing happens, giving the feeling of a journey or telling of a story.

7. Night Heron - The secret sauce for this track is in the keys. The cool sounding chord with a descending line followed by another chord. This repeated part ties the song together by creating an interesting base for all of the other parts to build upon. The simple melody in the trumpet we found ourselves humming after working on the track. Adding the marimba and guitar parts helped fill some of the space sonically. These smaller parts round out the song and give contrast for the listener.

8. Tend the Fire - Our one trumpet-free relaxing jam.

9. Great Grunion Run - The song was mostly complete but lacked something. We decided to add a trumpet solo. The notes used were mostly from the pentatonic scale. Playing from feel and riffing in the middle register of the horn until a climactic end with some higher notes that add excitement. Again the use of open trumpet and muted trumpet adds variety to the sonic landscape.

10. Diving Cormorants - Keeping the chords simple and open created a blank canvas for the trumpet to paint upon. The relaxing drum beat keeps the easy going feeling throughout the song.

11. Slow Clouds - Starting with a piano sample of jazz chords. To me this is the most Lo-Fi inspired song on the album. Long melodies played with the muted trumpet that sometimes include note that sound “out”. Finding the notes that sound right and but challenge your ears is rewarding. The melodica part

Final Thoughts - This project was an absolute joy to create. This being my first music release every step of the way was a learning experience. The exact genre is ambiguous, but seems to fall into the categories of Lo-Fi, Ambient Flow, or Chill Wave. Part of the excitement of creating something new is that it might not fit into any of the previous molds. Most of the trumpet parts used were first takes and initial impressions I thought would go well with the music. A lot of the music was written by following our ears and intuition.

The use of the mute is dominant throughout the album. The Harmon mute has a distinct sound that is still somewhat modern (within in the last 100 years.) It blends with the contemporary sounds of synthesizers and hip-hop driven drum beats well. This mute was first popularized by Miles Davis. He remains a large influence on my approach to music. In the way that he strove to innovate the music and push what the trumpet can do he continues to be an inspiration. Striving to push the instruments and adventuring into new territory is what excites us.

🌊 I hope you enjoy listening to our music. 🎺

Jacob Burgdorf Jazz trumpeter | Music Teacher (Horns, Guitar and Piano) Instagram | Email Me: jacob.burgdorf@gmail.com

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About Stellar Mammals

Stellar Mammals is a creative project centered on creating lofi, instrumental positivity music for any number of situations, moods and selves. It tends to lean into the hip-hop lofi while also offering up ambient and cinematic moments too.

Checkout our recent work:

• Stardust and Dreams
• Cosmic Coastlines
• Symbolic Wonderlands
• Take Life Chill

Along with create the music and art, I am pretty open about my journey and process. You can read an assortment of notes, blog posts and reflections on music production and creativity on my blog. Start with From Zero to Album: My Personal Music Production Learning Journey.

About the Artists

Stellar Mammals is a Venice Beach-based producer and technologist. His full catalog of music, projects and videos is online at StellarMammals.com. He is available for contact, performance, licensing, collaboration, music production and projects at StellarMammals@gmail.com.

Jacob Burgdorf is an LA-based trumpter, musician and music teacher and is originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Check him out on here. He is available for contact, performance, teaching, collaboration, and more at jacob.burgdorf@gmail.com.

Listen to full album on Spotify:

Got a comment? Send me an email.

AIDA (AI Disclosure Acknowledgement): Liner notes were written entirely by me without any AI assistance. Jacob and I wrote and produced all of the music ourselves (of course with help and feedback). Album art and short videos were generated by me with the assistance of an AI-based systems (Midjourney, StarryAI, RunwayML).