Music by Dave Jacob Hoffman
Instructions: Press the green play button to listen to a song. Right click and press "Save as..." to save an mp3 to your computer. Enjoy!
Favorites
Here are some good songs to get your feet wet.
Tip Jar
I spend hours slaving over a hot guitar to bring you delicious songs every day for free. If you like what I do, why not chip in a couple bucks?
Lots more music
When you're ready to dive in, here is a big bucket of songs for you.
Covers
All of the music that I make is released under a Creative Commons license, which basically means you can cover, remix, mashup, or do anything you want with my stuff as long as you give me credit for it and you share your work just the way I shared mine. Hooray!
A few of my songs have been covered by people already, and their work was so great that I decided to post them right here on my interwebs. If you've got a cover that you've done, send me an email because I want to hear it!
-Dave Jacob Hoffman
P.S. Oh yeah, here are the mp3's:
Dead Owl on the Wall
Way back in the 8th grade, I started writing songs about teachers and the people I knew. After developing a rudimentary understanding of how to play the guitar, I started recording these songs on my computer. Early on in high school, I got my first CD burner and made up an "album" to give out to my friends. It was called "Dead Owl on the Wall" after the stuffed owl mounted in the room where I had constructed a makeshift studio.
That was all a pretty long time ago, and I don't print copies of the old stuff anymore, but just in case there's any die-hard fans or bored people out there, here is "Dead Owl on the Wall" in its entirety. Consider it a "very early years" kind of thing.
About my music
My name is Dave Jacob Hoffman. I am a musician from Chicago, Illinois. That's a picture of myself strumming a guitar, in case you wondered what it might look like for someone to make music. Wait, the picture has gone. Where did it go? Nevermind that. I'm sure you can use your vivid imagination to conjure up an image of a guitar in my hands as I sit, in my underpants, strumming sweet melodies as the air trembles with ecstasy, and the trees weep, and the tacky 70's sofa on which I sit struggles against total collapse. That may be too much for you to muster. Or perhaps you're very familiar with making music, maybe you're just resting your fingers for a moment after a particularly furious session of playing your guitar, or piano, or hurdy gurdy. Then, maybe you have some insight into what it means to be a musician. Why do we do it? Is it for the money? Dear reader, allow me to set aside my cup of cold ramen noodles for a moment so that I may tell you very seriously that it is most certainly not for the money. Is it for the attention? Perhaps yes, perhaps not. Perhaps it is just a desperate stab at attaining a cheap immortality. You know, a shot at creating something that will last longer than the doomed flesh to which your spirit is bound in this world. Or maybe it's just a fun way to get a crowd together, reach out to them through the magic of song, and subconsciously force them into doing your bidding by way of hypnotic backwards messages in the chorus.
Forget I said that.
There are plenty of free recordings I've made on this website for you to peruse, and when I play live, I will try to give notice on my blog and through my mailing list (which you can sign up for if you wish by emailing me). If you are the kind of person who is in the habit of booking people to play in places, and you would like to book me to play in your place, please email me and we can be friends if you want.
If you have made it this far and you do not have a venue to book or any interest in music whatsoever, then you clearly just enjoy the act of reading, and I'm not sure what you're doing here. I applaud your literary interest, but you should really try reading something written by another Dave. How about Dave Eggers? He's pretty good.
Your friend,
Dave Jacob Hoffman