The Music-Creating Experience

i'm moving my blog

2010-09-24T16:17:00.003-04:00

if you know me at all, you know i love changing things around. so i'm moving my blog as of right now:

http://kiesshauer.tumblr.com

i won't update on this site anymore, but the archive will still exist here for now. hopefully i can move it all over to the new one at some point, but that isn't a feature they have at the moment.

see you in the new space!

the haps

2010-09-07T10:19:00.002-04:00

well, the contest was a no-go. i ended up being a little surprised by some of their finalist choices -- there were a few guys i thought for sure were shoo-ins that didn't show up in the top 5 at all. it would be interesting to see the overall scores for everyone that entered -- i wonder how far down the list i ended up? i suppose we'll never know. :) in any case, congrats to mr. jeremy poland, who ended up being the winner - you can check out his original entry here. you done good, sir.

i had the interesting experience of playing 'you are never really gone' at the funeral for my wife's grandfather a couple weeks ago. most of you know the song was written when rick's (a friend of mine) father died. it was written with him and his family in mind, but also drew on the experience of having two other friends of mine pass on in college, andrew clayton and justin fisher. but even though the song was written for a funeral i had certainly never played it at one. it was quite an honor. the experience of having something you write mean something to people reminds me why i wanted to write in the first place. to know your words have brought even the slightest measure of comfort to someone in pain, or the slightest amount of honor to a life well-lived is a humbling and fulfilling thing. i feel a sense of purpose, and it makes me grateful for whatever gifts i've been given to that end. i'm no good tunesmith on my own - God's in there, nudging, prompting, whispering....enabling whatever good comes out. i love it.

with that said, the nudgings to want to start writing again have been popping up more frequently recently. i tried to figure out why i hadn't started yet, and part of it was feeling disorganized. so last night i got all my previous bits together and sorted them out -- set aside stuff i'd already used and stuff that was....well, crap.....and kept the bits that might still be useful. now i'm organized, and the obstacles to start writing again have been cleared. so all that's left is inspiration, and then we'll see what comes out. if you read this, you'll know when (and if) anything noteworthy does. :)

other than that i'm just getting ready for the concert later on this month with warren barfield, which should be cool. it's in carrollton, which i know is far for a lot of you, but if you're around there or bored, come on out. it's for a good cause, as well. for more info on the event, click here. if you want to go ahead and get tickets, you can click here.

anyway, more to come. :)

the last week of the contest

2010-08-13T10:54:00.005-04:00

so there's one week left in the Fish contest - get your views in now, if you can! it's crunch time, people. http://tinyurl.com/2el9vch

i seem to be hovering around 15th place or so in terms of view count, if you're interested in such things. i'd love to breach the top 10, but that's more in the hands of my friends and cohorts than it is in mine. :)

throughout the contest there have been a lot of whispers and rumors and grumbles about possible cheating - i myself have witnessed some people's view counts shoot up by crazy amounts - on the order of 20k or so in a single day, haha - and figured they figured a way to game the system. apparently, however, the fish is aware of such things and sent the following email to all contestants, which you might be interested in:

--

You are receiving this message because you entered a video performance into our Opening Act competition.

There have been a lot of phone calls and e-mails from many of you asking about views counts and how we are tracking valid view counts for this contest. Per our official rules to the contest, we are using YouTube's official policy for counting views to determine which video has the most views. We have no control over these counts, and we cannot change the counts as the view counts are completely in the hands of YouTube. With YouTube being the standard for personal videos on the internet, we are confident that this is the most accurate and fairest way to determine which videos get the most views.

However, we do realize there are ways to cheat this system using software and websites that will help you increase your views by paying them a fee. We are looking closely at every video and tracking the view count trends on a daily basis. Should we feel that there is an abnormal increase in the video view counts for any contestant, we will take the necessary steps to determine if any of the video views were gained artificially through any of these means. If we determine that this method was used, then we will discount those views gained through this manner as we determine the finalists for this competition.

We want this contest to be as fair as possible, and your cooperation in this is greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for taking part in Opening Act. We wish you all the best of luck, and feel free to contact me with any questions.

--

so there is that -- good to know they're more or less on top of the situation. seems like a big task to track daily trends on each video, that's for sure.

apparently they are also going to watch every video that's submitted, not just the top X or whatever, so that's always good. i suppose they'll probably have some kind of forumla that awards points based on the views and talent combination, but who knows?

either way it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out!

other than that, i've got a few events coming up, which is cool. i've actually got two spots opening for other bands, (thanks to the waltons) which seems like a pretty great thing. one is for a couple of bands at an event at West GA - the bands are True Story, which i've heard of, and another one called A Ransom Plea that i'm not familiar with. the other event is a fundraiser concert with a guy named Warren Barfield. i hadn't heard of him prior, but have looked up his stuff and he's quite good. so who knows if i'll even get to talk with him or anything -- not sure how the interaction goes between opening and main acts -- but it should be fun in any case. i'll be reporting on everything here for sure to let you know how it all goes!

that's about it for now - just playing where i can, riding the wave and seeing where it goes. :)

A Contest - I need your help!

2010-08-03T10:18:00.005-04:00

so, long story short:

i've entered a contest that one of our radio stations (104.7 The Fish) is having. basically you have to upload a video of yourself singing either an original song or one of 4 songs they choose for you. then you get as many people to watch the video as possible, and they judge you based on a) how many views you got on youtube by august 20th and b) your talent. if you win, you get to be the opening act at a festival they're having on september 4th! plus you get a big chunk of cash and you get to have a bunch of money donated to a ministry of your choice from The Fish. (the ministry i'll pick if i win is Georgia Tech CCF, in case anyone wants to know. :)

you can view my entry here, fresh up on youtube this morning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl0nvoRcujI

there's some stiff competition out there so i need all of you in a big way before august 20th! watch it as many times as humanly possible - then tell everyone you know to do the same! it counts views every time you watch any part of it, so you don't have to watch the whole thing every time or anything. :)

anyway, it's pretty exciting. there are a crapton of entries of course, but who knows what could happen? i debated pretty hard between doing 'king forever' and 'nothing else', but settled eventually on the former since it's kind of "happier" in general and seemed like a better candidate.

so....wish me luck! and watch the video a lot if you want to help :)

in a store!

2010-06-01T14:14:00.004-04:00

so a friend of mine was in his hometown in north carolina the other week where there happens to be a small christian record and book store. since he knew the owner he mentioned my cd to him and the guy said he would give it a listen and if he liked it they might put some in the store.

well the guy listened to it and guess what - they're buying a few to see how they do! apparently they have some corner of the store where they highlight upcoming or local artists and have a listening area and everything. so we'll see how that goes. who knows, maybe they'll do well and they'll want more. :) either way if you're in the Franklin, NC area and you happen to know where Dalton's Christian Bookstore is maybe you can stop in in a couple weeks and check it out for yourself. :)

either way a big thanks to matt for taking the time to ask on my behalf - people like you are the best.

in other news - the Worship Leader thing might not be closed yet either. i emailed the guy back and he suggested i resubmit the record one other time. they also write reviews in their issues so i'm seeing if that's an option as well.

ahoy (or "altogether uninformative blog titles")

2010-05-17T13:24:00.003-04:00

so - here we are, about 5 months in from release day. here's what's been happening.

i finally got my first report from Tunecore - a report from the first two weeks of march, the first two weeks of being on itunes. it's pretty confusing with the delay - it's weird feeling not knowing what is going on now, and only what's happened 2 months ago. but i talked with the guy at Tunecore and he said that kind of delay is pretty common for the music industry for several reasons, not the least of which are fraud issues and verifying sales. so it makes sense and i suppose it's just another thing to get used to. while i may not understand everything about why Tunecore works the way it does, i will say this - they've been stellar at answering my wide variety of questions.

the song discovery thing i mentioned might not pan out - the dude said i'd be considered for either may or june and i think i probably would have heard something by now. will probably email him back to see if there are any other options. other than that i'm still just trying to play at stuff to get some more exposure. we played at a wedding last weekend and i sold a couple cds there. we're playing at a few events over the summer which should be good too.

travis told me when this started that the best thing to do when trying to promote a record was just to think of every possible avenue and pursue it. to get as creative as possible with how you think of it and what to do to get the word out and just do it all - not pigeonhole it at all.

if there's one thing i've learned about myself over the years, it's that i'm really not an idea guy, generally speaking. i won't say i never have any unique ideas about anything but that's definitely not something i'm good at. so what do you do when you're faced with something you're not good at? you get help from people that are good at it. :)

so i'm asking you, blog readers, or whoever you are, for your help. i'm sure most of you don't spend your time sitting around thinking about how to promote a record, but if you've got any ideas i'd love to know. email me, leave them in the comments, send me a facebook message, give me a call -- whatever. if you've got an idea i want to hear it! one of you could be the creative genius that cracks this thing open. i've already gotten such good advice from unexpected places, so let's have it. no holds barred!

ASCAP update. and other things.

2010-04-15T14:49:00.004-04:00

so yeah, my meeting was last week - just forgot to update until now. sorry about that. won't happen again. i mean it probably will. i'm forgetful, you know.

the meeting was pretty informative. i probably didn't need to drive down there to talk to them in person, but it was a bit nicer than talking on the phone would have been. the lady there was nice - she answered all my questions and gave me good advice about what to do.

ASCAP and organizations like it basically exist to pay artists royalties where they're due, mainly from radio play. so there's really no urgency for me to register with them, but she did say it takes 4-6 weeks to process applications, so you might as well do it sooner rather than later. there's two sides to registering - as a writer and a publisher. if you're an independent music type like myself, she actually recommended i register as both sides - basically there are twice as many royalties to be had that way if they ever exist. you pretty much publish yourself if you're not signed, and you can change it whenever. so i just have to come up with publishing names, which should be sort of challenging. i still need to ask if the publishing name has to be a registered organization or anything.

i also asked about internet radio - which is apparently covered by a separate organization or two, the main one seems to be one called Sound Exchange. registration with them is free, so i'll definitely do that. internet radio, mainly pandora, is something that seems very worth looking into. they have a lot of hoops you have to jump through just to be considered though - having physical cds for sale on Amazon (no idea why) and having a barcode. all of that costs money. it's pretty amazing how much money this stuff costs...it's like a never-ending flow of expenses the more exposure you want.

she also mentioned this other new website that is launching soon which i went to visit called musiconlinealive.com. it's supposed to launch in a week or so at some big ASCAP expo in L.A. the basic idea is that they're trying to do web-based versions of albums - virtual albums. you can edit them however you want, add images, and change them on the fly. will it be the next cool thing? i don't know. but registering is free so i'm probably going to try that out too.

anyway, still working at some other ideas and places to play. the red cross benefit thing got canceled for scheduling reasons - they might try to reschedule it later on, so we'll see. there's stuff coming up this summer that might bring some new playing possibilities.

onward and......well, just onward.

2010-03-30T13:08:00.003-04:00

i've been rather delinquent with my blogging because there has been little to report. but i'm going to try and tell you about what's been going on anyway. :)

itunes:
i still await the first statement so i still don't really know what's going on there. should be may or so i think is what i remember saying. however, i have been getting more reviews and ratings from listeners which has been great. it doesn't look so forlorn now as it once did. :) so thanks, to all of you who have taken the time to do that so far.

cds:
there have still been a trickle of sales here and there from the website, so it hasn't completely stopped there yet! just mostly. :) i've also been bartering occasionally with other artists - a few friends of ours have written books and we've done some swaps which has been fun.

playing out:
with the initial boom of the sales dying out i've been turning my attention more toward finding places to play. at this point i'm open to anything, whether that's playing solo somewhere or with the band or a piece of the band. (speaking of....i haven't really mentioned the band yet, have i? i will do that soon in a future post). some friends of mine are trying to start an artist agency that they've been talking to me about and they've been doing a lot of groundwork trying to get me some places to play, which is cool. most of it is just possibilities, but some of it is in the works and is very likely going to happen. a lot of things seem to be mostly unpaid at this stage of the game - which is probably standard fare i'd guess when you're not signed and no one has heard of you. :)

that said, if any of you know of any events or church functions or concerts or anything where i or we can play do let me know - like i said, i'm open to anything!

general:
if any of you are songwriters, you may have heard of organizations that are specifically for songwriters, most noteably ASCAP and BMI. they are sort of songwriter organizations, and if you write songs you register with them and they handle royalties and do some other stuff that i'm not sure about. anyway travis was telling me when we were finishing up recording that they both have atlanta offices and that i should try to meet with them. so actually just earlier today i scheduled a meeting with someone at ASCAP to talk about what they do for their members and for me to ask some questions about applying. so that's next tuesday - should be interesting.

also with a few people expressing interest in booking i started thinking about how to handle that. bethany said she'd be game to be in charge of all that, since it seemed kind of weird to have someone call me directly about booking information. so i ended up using google voice (which is awesome, by the way) to set up a separate phone number/voicemail thing where people can call and leave messages and get info. it worked out pretty well; now all i need is for people to want to start calling it for some reason. :)'

travis also suggested i look into the possibility of getting my music into christian movies. that huge church that made all the fireproof / facing the giants type movies is apparently here in georgia, in albany. i checked them out online looking for someone to ask about music and it ended up being a dead end. they put up there pretty clearly that they've got all the music covered for all their films and don't accept submissions. not sure i agree with that policy....but i do understand it i think.

there's also a magazine i get through church, called Worship Leader that is pretty good - i enjoy a lot of the articles and stuff, and some of it helped out a lot when i was writing. anyway, if you are a member of this sub-program of theirs called Song Discovery then with each issue (they do 8 issues a year, i think) they send you a cd with like 15 or so new (or new-ish) songs on it. i love it as a worship leader because it helps keep new stuff coming to me and lots of it ends up being good to use at church. anyway, i found out you can submit songs to them - they get a different panel of listeners together between each issue and they listen to every submission and decide on ones to include. so i got the info and mailed them a cd. the guy said i'd be in consideration for the may or june issue, so that's one more potentially exciting thing i'm waiting on. they're supposed to call you if they are going to use one of your songs, so......here's hoping!

emotions:
i have a lot of ups and downs. on the up sides it's exciting - as one of my friends said the other day, it seems like any moment you could get a call that changes everything. at some moments that seems true and it is exciting to say the least.

on the other side, though, it's easy to doubt what i've done. i remember when i was writing my doubts always centered around the songs themselves - are they any good? will they say anything to anyone? that kind of thing. now they seem to have proven themselves a bit more and my doubts now center around the execution of the record. it's easy to play the comparison game with other records. to a seasoned listener, you can readily tell that i did this record on a budget - as compared to a signed artist who spent likely upwards of 20-30k making their record. you could also probably tell that it was my first time making one.

in light of all that it's easy to wonder: is it going to be enough? did it need to be picture perfect the first time to have a chance at being successful? is it an opportunity missed before it even started because of money? if you believe in an all-powerful God (which i do) then the answer to those should be pretty readily apparent: money, or the lack of money, can't stop someone all-powerful from doing anything. pretty sure he can make something successful regardless. of course it all depends on one's definition of 'success'.... :)

i digress.

all that to say that it's easy sometimes to feel like getting people to notice your music is a pretty insurmountable mountain unless you've got connections.

in the end, who really knows? we march on toward what is ahead. because it could be anything. :)

so...how is itunes doing?

2010-03-09T10:19:00.003-05:00

and the answer is: i've got no idea! :)

i've had a bunch of people ask me how things have been going on itunes - how many i'm selling, stuff like that. apparently there is a 2 month delay between the record first going up and me getting the first sales report (which goes through Tunecore rather than Apple). so in 2 months i'll be able to tell you how i did this month. then after that i should get some kind of report once a month or so about any activity. i'm pretty curious about what the report will be like, and i'll share that if i can when the first one comes. payment apparently also comes through Tunecore - it seems to be set up a bit like Paypal, where you kind of carry an account balance on their site and you can withdraw it whenever.

if you don't mind writing a review i'd still appreciate it; a few people have rated it (which also helps - thanks!) on there, which you can do using the stars on the left. but if you search for me on itunes there is a link toward the bottom above the reviews that says "write a review". you do have to have an itunes account to write a review, but you don't have to buy it or anything. so if you don't mind logging on there and doing that for me i'd be grateful!

itunes! and reviews.

2010-03-01T10:35:00.007-05:00

well after much toil, the record is finally up on itunes!

get it here:

i made that button with a fancy thing called the ITMS Link Maker, which is a tool you can use to link to stuff on the itunes store. pretty sweet.

anyway, what i need now is reviews: if you like the record and use itunes to buy music, if you don't mind writing a review on there for me that would be awesome and i'd appreciate it. that way i don't look like quite as much of a music store noob. :)

of course the fact that no one has bought anything on there yet might tip some people off. :) who knows.

piano

2010-02-15T16:33:00.005-05:00

did i tell you we got a piano? well we did. for free.

it came from my wife's parents; they'd had it for years and it was pretty much collecting dust. so when they upgraded their living room furniture they were out of room for it and asked us if we wanted it....to which i said "um, yes please."

i took piano lessons as a kid and hated it. i didn't like music theory (still don't, in fact) and got tired of only playing songs from John Schaum's Beginner Book A or whatever it was. they all had stupid names, too, like "tune of the tuna fish". i'm not even kidding. so i quit, and was pretty much devoid of music until i found the guitar right before college.

anyway, i've wanted to tinker around with the piano a lot in the past couple years. i still have my old casio keyboard, but playing something like that doesn't exactly leave you inspired when it sounds really fake and the keys have no weight. there are no ups and downs or soft and loud and that really takes away from the enjoyment of it if you ask me. so having a real piano around i figured would be awesome - i could re-tech myself stuff i'd forgotten and try to relearn the thing. i'm really intrigued by the idea of trying to write music on it instead of the guitar...my theory is that if i write on an instrument i don't know as well that i might not be so boxed in by the chords i generally keep returning to and that i might end up more inventive with it. that remains to be seen, though.

so the big problem with the piano (aside from getting it inside the house, which ended up taking 5 dudes) was its out-of-tune-ness. i don't think they'd touched it in literally 15 years, much less tuned it. so it had seen better days. i'd heard you can pay quite a bit to get a piano tuned...so between my general lack of interest in spending a lot of money and my general interest in the instrument, i decided on a different route - learning to tune it myself.

so i got an apprentice piano tuning kit on ebay, set about googling, and got to work. i mean the thing is basically like a huge guitar inside - everything is strings, and you tune each string. but the kicker is that there are a lot of strings. i mean tons. it's like a frikkin' spider web in there.

and it's immensely time-consuming, although the technique does get easier the more i do it. but i've basically got it figured out. and while i won't say it's perfect by any means, it's basically in tune now and aside from the sticky keys here and there i'm quite happy with it!

what's really amazing is how much more sense this instrument makes to me now years later, having learned another. since i've mainly always been a 'by ear' type of musician, even just knowing the sound of things that go together really helps. not to mention which chords go with what and stuff like that. so now i'm relearning in a different way; figuring out what the chords are by playing around, figuring out a few variations, and playing bits of songs i already know the chords to. it's been a lot of fun so far. again i'm excited to see where writing on it takes me....just kind of sitting down and seeing what comes out. but i'm not quite there yet.

as far as the rest of music; i redid my booklet today and resubmitted to tunecore. so, as soon as they approve we'll submit it to itunes and then we just wait until it's up. pretty cool.

itunes is a pain in the butt.

2010-02-09T12:04:00.005-05:00

as you know i've been trying to get my music on itunes and have been using this service called TuneCore that helps get your stuff up there. and i was having problems with the dimensions and specs for the digital version of the booklet i wanted to include. but problems is really kind of an understatement.

they (tunecore) were telling me that you have to have specific dimensions -- rectangular, 11.2" x 8.5" or something to that effect. this is kind of annoying because the pages of my insert are square, not rectangular, and it would look kind of goofy.

so i double-check itunes itself and find digital pdfs from recent albums, in the itunes store right now, that are far, far different dimension-wise than those specs. so i'm thinking to myself that someone obviously doesn't know what they're talking about -- i just wasn't sure if it was itunes or tunecore. turns out it's itunes. i got in touch with some people there directly through email to ask my questions. they sort of tossed me around between departments and eventually told me that i had to keep inside those dimensions. the exact quote from the email:

"While our system currently supports different sizes customers receive the best experience when a digital booklet is 11 an x 8.264 in. Please deliver digital booklets as 11 in x 8.264 in. "

if anyone has any idea what a vague blanket statement like that means, please let me know.

the worst part about this whole process has been zero straight answers from anyone. everyone loves to tell me i can't change the dimensions, but they never tell me why. or, for that matter, why other people have and still do upload other dimension booklets into the itunes store which i can view just fine.

anyway, it's pretty annoying. so i guess i'm relegated to put my square design into a rectangle. it will basically be a square layout with stupid-looking whitespace on both sides now. i'm just tired of dealing with it....this has literally taken weeks to get no straight answers and i just want the thing up there at this point. :)

so....rant over! hooray!

good friends are the best.

2010-02-02T11:26:00.005-05:00

indeed they are!

last night i officially became the owner of a microphone that i borrowed for - no exaggeration here - no less than 5 years. i borrowed it originally with good intentions -- learning how to use it for recording, then using it for recording, then giving it back. i swear this is true. :) but time kept creeping on and i kept on having it. it ended up being invaluable to me in the recording process; having a nice mic around that can record just about anything (especially vocals pretty well) was a huge help. and last night, at dinner with the man himself, it officially became mine forever. guilt be gone! i am free! :) so thank you, Jacob 'Livingston' Garland* -- you are the man.

and while i'm on a 'thank you' vibe -- to all of you who have spammed and continue to spam my facebook wall with encouragement i say this -- thank you. i imagine as any sort of artist you never get tired of hearing that your work is being enjoyed or means something to someone - there is no limit to that. so thanks. :)

to all of you who have taken time to put thoughts into email and send it to me - thank you. the fact that you took the time to do it means a lot.

and especially those of you who have taken the time to post extremely nice blog messages (that i know of) - you are all my heroes. every little bit helps to get the word out. same to the one's who post about the record in their gmail status, facebook status, twitter, you name it -- it is all very much appreciated.

*p.s. - it was discovered that he too was the one who submitted my cd info for me. awesome!

getting your cd info to pop up in itunes

2010-01-28T12:35:00.002-05:00

this was another question i had that i just recently figured out - how do you get itunes or whatever music program you use to automatically fill in the track names for your cd when people put it in their computer for importing?

i use itunes, and i know it (and many other players) use the Gracenote CD Database to find album and track info for record. i noticed when i put other cd's in in the past that it would flash "accessing Gracenote CDDB" across the top while it looked for the info. so naturally i googled gracenote and found their website, but couldn't find any kind of submission form. so i put in a request for more info and a nice lady named Julie got back to me.

it's really, really easy to do. when you first put your cd in it will look for the track names and not find them. so, in itunes you just edit the info for each song and fill in the correct info - artist, song name, etc - that you want to show up. then all you do is go under the 'advanced' menu and hit 'submit CD track names', wait a few days and bingo! good to go. you should also apparently go back in a few days and force it to "get cd track names" to make sure it was submitted.

ideally though, going forward, one would do this while the cd is being pressed -- so that the first buyer that gets one and puts it in itunes already has all the info pop up....but alas. lesson learned. :)

the weirdest thing with mine, though....i know it didn't pop up right away for me, and my dad and others said the same. but one of my friends said the info came up for him -- and when i went into itunes just now to make it happen it already pulled up all the right info! so someone has either figured out how to do this before me and did so anonymously, or something weird is going on.

either way...from here on, when you pop it in it should come up right away. :)

how to get a record on itunes and other thoughts

2010-01-25T13:18:00.003-05:00

first, thanks a bunch to everyone who came out to the drop party last night; it was fun! i didn't take any pictures but i think there are a few floating about. if i can get my hands on some i'll post them up for you to see.

so how does one get an unsigned, independent record on itunes? i'm here to answer from my limited experience.

option 1 is that you could go directly through apple. this process basically involves you filling out an application on apple's site to be considered by them as a "content provider", a term that seems to apply to record labels, artists, and distributors alike. if accepted, one assumes that you are then free to upload your stuff. the caveat is the timeframe; i'm sure they gets hundreds of billions of these applications all the time and that they're hard to go through, so they basically say something like this right on the application:

"thanks for submitting an application! we'll get back to you....sometime."

no timeline. no promises. not a very inspiring way to go.

option 2, however, is a little more promising -- a service called Tunecore. it's a 3rd party type of service that will basically charge you a one-time fee to upload your stuff, and then like $10 per year per album, and they will do it all for you. they'll upload it to itunes here, itunes europe, u.k., australia, wherever -- not to mention amazon, napster, and a bunch of other services that people use. you can choose whatever you want and the one-time price goes up like a dollar per store i think.

most everything i found online when i was researching how to get a record on itunes led me back to tunecore, so i signed up. it's been pretty easy so far. but i'm adding a complication: the digital version of the liner notes. i've downloaded plenty of records off itunes that include them, and i wanted to make a point to include mine, mostly so anyone buying online would still have access to the lyrics should there be a word they don't understand or something. but it's a little more complicated -- i've had to email back and forth with a rep from tunecore who's sent me specs for how itunes needs the .pdfs to be -- filesizes, dimensions, etc. so it's taken a bit longer and i had to kind of rebuild the insert from the original graphic files. but it's done and sent to the guy as of today for approval.

tunecore claims 4-6 weeks before your music will show up in the store. but i'm almost ready to start counting down that number as soon as my booklet gets approved.

so there you have it, in case you ever wanted to know. :)

tinfoil record

2010-01-19T10:59:00.003-05:00

a gold record = 500,000 records sold. what do they call 100 sold? a tinfoil record? 'cause we've got a tinfoil record, people. :)

i printed a map of the u.s. so i could do the push-pin thing and see where all i've sent one. not bad!

so a big thanks to everyone who's bought one so far! i really hope you're enjoying it. i'm looking forward to the drop party this sunday night. sounds like i might see some of you that i haven't seen in awhile...

envelopes!

2010-01-13T16:06:00.002-05:00

envelopes are finally here, people. that means your orders are shipping out tomorrow. finally. geez.

thank you - and slight shipping delays.

2010-01-09T22:31:00.002-05:00

just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's bought a cd (or multiple cds, in some cases) so far -- i really appreciate it.

and to some of you i should warn that there will be a slight shipping delay on your order; i bought a ton of those bubbly envelope things to send them in and i think the recent bad weather has held them up so they aren't here yet. but as soon as they are, rest assured, i'll send yours out as soon as i can. :)

the drop party and buying cds

2010-01-07T14:53:00.004-05:00

sunday, january 24th at 7pm. come hang out and listen and maybe buy some stuff. :) if you're reading this then you are invited. bring whoever you like.

you can check out my site for details and directions on the party, as well as buy a cd: www.kiesshauer.com

if you are so inclined and don't mind, feel free to retweet, write it on your facebook wall, whatever you've got to help get the word out. thanks everyone. :)

the unboxing...!

2010-01-05T18:22:00.007-05:00

i don't know if you've ever seen 1000 cds except maybe in the movies. but I assure you, something gets lost in the translation:*

okay so yeah, obviously it doesn't look as grand as one might think. but there they are, nonetheless! they arrived via the UPS man at like 4:45 today. so of course, we opened them. upon opening the larger boxes we found many smaller boxes, which each say "30 count" on them.

and look! they have my name on them and everything.

and within the smaller boxes:

and finally the payoff:

a crazy day, to be sure. so many years in planning and writing and everything else, and now it's in my hands. it all feels very surreal.

and as you may have gathered from the box label above, it's called "Hope Lost / Found", and i think it's aptly named for its theme and purpose. you'll have to let me know if you agree when you hear it.

so the next item on my agenda is some kind of release event party type of thing where they'll go on public sale for the first time. i'm working out details now but i'll be yelling it from rooftops when i know the date and time. i hope to do it in the next few weeks. in the meantime i'll also be figuring out (and to some extent have already started figuring out) the other means of sale, via my website, itunes, maybe myspace, whatever options i've got. and i'll of course post everything i figure out on here and everywhere else i can possibly think of, so you'll know.

but for now, if you are close enough to me to hand me $10 (or whatever you think it's worth) then i will give you one. :)

happy day. but there are still many steps to take and no time to rest. so on we go.

* for the fellow Dodgeball fans out there. :)

printing is done!

2009-12-30T14:55:00.002-05:00

just got the call -- they've finished printing! they're shipping out today and should probably arrive early next week (due to new year's day on friday).

ohh mannnnn......!

artwork approved; waiting begins again. :)

2009-12-14T13:52:00.005-05:00

just got off the phone with final artwork approvals, meaning they are starting the production process. they say it depends on how busy they are (like it could be sooner) but they are thinking 2.5 to 3 weeks. so i'll say with some kind of crazy miracle it might be as soon as 2 weeks from today. that means this: sometime between the 28th of december and the 4th of january i'll have a bunch of boxes of finished cds delivered to my house. :) how crazy is that?

so now i wait again, for the last time in this process. it's hard to believe but it does feel good to have it out of my hands. only time will tell what happens next.

i'll definitely write and take some pictures when i get them - that should be a pretty exciting day.

artwork and honesty

2009-12-07T14:37:00.002-05:00

well i think the artwork is finally done. had to do some camera borrowing to get something that would take print-quality (or near enough) pictures, and ended up with this Nikon D40 for a couple days. that camera is completely ridiculous. it oozes proficiency. i picked it up and it's like it sits there in your hands and says to you "don't worry buddy, i got this. just let me do what i do." it was great. hopefully it comes out looking good too.

so i am uploading the art files to the production house as we speak, and they're fairly large so i do expect this to take just short of eternity to complete.

i should be finalizing the masters today too, so i should just have to send payment on that, then get it dropped off at the production house as well, and then -- the waiting begins again. :)

it's crazy to be this close to being finished, and it raises a lot of questions, to be honest. they're probably pretty normal things to feel when you put something you created out there. will people like it? will it amount to anything? was this a good decision? will it mean something to someone? did we do well at it? where will it take me if it fails? where will it take me if it succeeds?

questions, doubts, wonderings. i feel like at one time or another i've run the entire gamut of emotions on this thing. it's been quite the endeavor, that's for sure. i do think in general it is hard for me to wrap my mind around large concepts, so to step back and see this as a whole can be difficult for me to do. and i forget so many aspects of it, good parts and bad parts.

there's only one question i posed that i believe i can answer right now with complete certainty: "was this a good decision?" i believe the answer to that is yes. because whatever happens as a result of this, i know it would have eaten me alive wondering 'what if' if i never did it, you know? that alone makes it a good decision. plus i had things to say; i would like to think that i would continue to write songs for as long as i've got things i want people to know or hear or think about, regardless of what might come of them.

anyway, just a bit of transparency there. we're almost home...

first master!

2009-12-03T13:48:00.003-05:00

that was fast....the guy sent them to me yesterday - not 2 days after we sent the files to him. but i had a little trouble with downloading (my internet was being slow) and was busy with a friend from out of town yesterday...so today is listening day! i'm transferring everything to the ipod now and am heading out to the car to listen with bethany when she gets here....

excited/scared.

track listing

2009-12-01T14:15:00.005-05:00

so i've been thinking about this off and on for awhile. the track listing is fairly important, you know? you want to start off strong, but then you have to take it down a notch....there are a lot of rules.*

anyway, starting with 'king forever' seemed to be a pretty obvious choice, given that it's probably been the most polished and it's one i've played the most and gotten a lot of positive response to. 'bethany's song' was always going to be a bonus track, so it was always going to be last. the reason being that i did want to include it but i wanted to separate it from the rest of the songs because of its nature.

then i thought 'you are never really gone' would be a natural choice for the 12 spot - it's a great closer, i think. kind of sums it up. then i knew i would want 'not the end' to be in the 4 spot, for absurd and ridiculous reasons that i am not prepared to go into here. :)

so that left 8 songs to put in, which we worked out last night. it was kind of like putting a puzzle together -- you don't want too many of the more upbeat songs in a row, or too many of the slower songs in a row, and you sort of have to mind the transitions.** so we made a playlist in itunes of the final mixes and listened to beginnings and ends and i'm pretty happy with where it ended up. there's only one transition that's a bit weird...but then again, the record wasn't written as one of those where each song specifically flows into one another. (although...if any success should come of this endeavor i would love to make such a record in the future).

so with that we arrived at -- bah bada baaaaaaaa! -- the final track list.

1. King Forever
2. Rise
3. Cannot Escape
4. Not the End
5. Consume
6. Nothing Else
7. Bring it Back
8. Great
9. Questions
10. We Live
11. Beautiful
12. You Are Never Really Gone

Bonus: Bethany's Song

there we have it, people. it's offical, and it was sent to the mastering man this morning. now i'm just toying around with design bits and awaiting the first mix of the mastered record...very exciting.

*high fidelity fans may recognize this bit of hommage. priceless.

**these rules have no basis other than what i think makes sense. hey, i've never done this before - making it up as i go, here. :)

production company and other things.

2009-11-30T13:40:00.005-05:00

i had it pretty much narrowed down to 2 options of places that seemed to have good prices and reputations, and after working out some final details this morning i've picked one! which means that now i'm starting to download and look over things like this:

i know that's pretty small and hard to see, but it's one of many templates they give you for the design of the cd -- front, back, cd face, folding insert, the whole 9 yards. i'm pretty excited about playing around with it.

i have discovered i do need to borrow a decent digital camera, though -- one with high enough resolution to take a couple pictures to go in a print piece like this. mine is an embarrassment to nature -- one that came free with a laptop i bought maybe 6 years ago -- and it doesn't do the job. so i've been hunting for one this morning and have got a lead.

also i've been having some self-induced drama about the name of the record. i won't go into all the details about it because, well, frankly it's pretty stupid trivial stuff that i'm obsessing over. :) but i finally came to a solution last night i think and now i've got a name. what is it? i will tell you when everything is done. ha!

thoughts on the design: after looking through all the options (there are a lot) i decided on doing one of those 8-panel folding insert things that sits in the front cover of the case. i know for sure that i'm going to put all the lyrics in there, because i hate when i don't know what someone is saying and they don't put the lyrics in. drives me nuts. and i know i'll want the 'thank you' list -- i wrote my first version of that quite awhile ago and have been re-opening and revising and adding to it periodically as we've gone further into the process. so that part is pretty much done. then i've been thinking about pictures.....i'll probably put a picture of me in there somewhere, but mostly because i feel like i need to. as for other pictures -- when i was writing i would write all over everything -- papers, napkins, post-its, you name it. so i liked the idea of getting all that crap out and putting a picture of that in there. it sounded like a cool idea. so once i get the camera i'll have to mess with that and see if it comes out looking good or if i'll have to try something else.

so anyway, that's about it. travis is supposed to submit the final mixes to the mastering guy this week, so i'll let you know when i hear what's next on that, how long it will take for me to hear the first master mix, etc.

i think i also need to go ahead and start making decisions about song order. there's a couple songs that i already know where they go, but i need to fill in the holes. i'll probably post that when i've got it. heck, maybe i'll make that into a whole post, complete with all the (probably ridiculous) reasons why certain songs have to go in certain places. :) won't that be fun?

mixing is finished!

2009-11-27T19:41:00.004-05:00

it was a mad dash there at the end, with thanksgiving right around the corner, travel plans, and budgeted time running out, but we got it done wednesday night. i put the final stamp-off on the last few songs and that was that.

i panicked for a moment during 'nothing else' -- there is this background thing i wanted in there that i wanted both me and bethany to sing, and apparently we only recorded her singing it. it just wasn't the same and there was no time for me to sing something at the house real quick and send it over. luckily travis had the idea of looking back at the guide track; it didn't end up having the part but that reminded me that it would be in my original version. there was a difference in tempo but he solved it and the part got included after all -- crazy, right?

so far i can definitely see why people don't want to make records on a small budget -- the time constraints alone can cause a lot of panic, forgetting stuff, stress....you name it. but we've been able to find workarounds for pretty much every snag we've hit, so i'm grateful for that.

so....thanksgiving has come and gone (although for us we still have more visits and dinners on the agenda tomorrow). next the files get delivered to the mastering guy, who i hear might take about a week. so now before he's ready i've got to pick a production company (got it narrowed down to 2 or 3 at this point) and get their template so i can start designing the cover and insert and stuff.

still on track for christmas from what i can see! :)

more mixing

2009-11-24T17:17:00.002-05:00

still at it. somehow i've gotten behind (or travis has sped up like crazy) so i listened to mixes of 4 new songs yesterday, which was crazy. it's a time-consuming process to listen to everything on 2 sets of speakers, over and over again for little nuances and things that need fixing. it's compounded by the fact that apparently most people mix in the same room, not 4 hours apart. so in most cases, if a guy says to his engineer "hey turn that up", he hears it right away and can then go "turn that up more still." for us, i go "hey, turn that up" and then he makes the change, re-prints a new mix, uploads it, tells me, i download it, email back and say "turn that up more still", then he repeats the whole process.....you see where this goes. so it's taken longer than either of us anticipated.

but the end is near; there are only 3 songs left that i've not heard a mix of yet: great, nothing else, and king forever. i think he's working on 'great' now. so i'll probably need to go ahead and choose my production company this week, and maybe even start the design. i'm actually looking forward to the design part a lot - designing the insert ought to be fun. there won't be anything on the cover to speak of, really, so nothing much to do there. but it will be fun to mess around with the rest of it.

things are still sounding great, too. it's weird hearing everything so many times, so i try to have some fresh ears (bethany) on hand for second opinions whenever possible. i kind of get numb to a lot of it, which i hear is just kind of what happens when you make a record. but i'm still really happy with everything so far.

movin' right along

2009-11-20T15:18:00.003-05:00

just truckin' along with the mixes, here. things are sounding really good i think -- we're about 5 deep at the moment. almost halfway there. 'cannot escape' is one worth noting. i really like where this song has gone. i probably mentioned that before we went in-studio i ended up changing the time signature of the song, which gave it a different feel in itself. but then once the rest of the guys got behind it and everyone put their ideas into play it really took the song to a whole different place. before recording started i would have ranked this song somewhere closer to the bottom of the 13 i've got; but now it's taken a pretty serious jump. i just can't get over how much it's changed for the better from what it once was.

anyway, i've been doing research on production companies and will need to pick one soonish so i can get a template from them and start designing the cover and insert. most of it is already done (in my head) but it will be interesting to see how it all comes out on paper. or a computer, as it were.

just heard 'rise' today which has this cool "i'm driving with the windows down" kind of thing going for it that i really like. i don't know what order they're being mixed in so it's always sort of a nice surprise to me when he sends me the next one.

mix 2

2009-11-17T16:22:00.002-05:00

i don't know if i'll cover every single mix but for now it seems appropriate.

so i had a bit of a breakdown over song 1 last night. i felt like it just wasn't shining. it's hard to explain, but something about it just wasn't right. so i got kind of depressed, thinking 'geez, are they all going to be like this?' and spiraling with such thoughts until i was in a pretty worthless place. i felt like i just needed to hear something that was good -- to give hope that this record still had a shot at sounding great. i determined at the time that the best thing was just to get my mind off of it and head to bed, so i did.

well this morning i got the mix for bring it back and i got my ray of hope and then some. it sounds fantastic. like really, really good. i listened in the car first this time and have since discovered the main problem with the other song were those computer speakers i was listening through. i thought they were pretty decent speakers even though they are old -- and maybe they are. but they color the sound in a pretty unpleasant way as it turns out. so i've nixed them as a listening option and am much happier at the moment.

so i've sent in my latest revisions to both and am awaiting the next song. now i'm excited. it's amazing how quickly things can change...

the first mix

2009-11-16T16:58:00.003-05:00

i got the first mix of the first song just a little while ago. ....i was afraid. :)

the first song he did was 'bethany's song' - a relatively simple one since it really only has 3 instruments and my single vocal. but even given that it's amazing how tough this is. it's my job to basically approve the mix; make sure i like the overall balance between the instruments and the vocals, make sure i'm liking the vocal takes we chose, listen for anything that sounds weird....stuff like that. i'm also supposed to listen on a few different listening systems to see if anything sounds weird in one place that might sound fine in another. for my two i've chosen my car (obvious choice) and a set of speakers i frequently plug into my laptop that are pretty decent.

i can easily see why people say you could drive yourself nuts doing this. it would be pretty easy to be really nitpicky and never really be satisfied with any given mix. and that's only in this song which only has 4 tracks! i can't imagine what it'll be like to sign off on one of the more complicated ones.

anyway i've just finished listening through a few times and sent back my first comments. overall the mix seems really nice and i really don't have any complaints about it on that front, which is great. there are a few vocal parts that sound a little weird that i want to look for other takes of, but that's the brunt of my beef with this particular song.

so anyway that's a glimpse into my first reaction to the first mix of the first song. more to come, i'm sure.

Day 7 (which is actually today. but isn't done yet)

2009-11-11T22:38:00.006-05:00

today has been.....crazy. and interesting. and long. and then crazy again.

it was a 'record at home' day, which started this morning when travis got here around 8:15 ish. we unloaded all his crap that he brought, tested a few pieces, and then left to head to our church to record the actual piano there for 'you are never really gone' (which has turned into a solo piano number). so we left at 8:40 or so and it took us the better part of an hour to get over there....lots and lots of traffic.

so we get there, and who do we find in the sanctuary at the piano? the piano tuning man. totally unplanned. no one told me (or knew) that he was coming. and the piano, as it turns out, was noticeably sharp as a whole. so we got to play it freshly tuned. luck you say? favor of God i say. i felt smiled upon. it was quite fortunate.

so we got the piano done with eddie without any major hitches. took awhile. but it came together pretty nicely. then we lunched at zaxby's, because apparently travis is quite obsessed with zaxby's. and who wouldn't be? i mean it's really good, even if their products do have way too many corny "Z" names.

then we got back here and with the time we had left with eddie turned him loose on some synth sounds to help augment 'questions' from it's original form. it is sounding pretty darn cool at the moment. there are a lot of interesting ideas there as well and i'm interested to see how they come out. there is one particular sound that we put in a track that we nicknamed "Orcs", which made my day entirely. when you hear the song you'll have to tell me if you can figure out what sound effect you think we would have named in such a way.

then we re-recorded the toy piano, which came out a bit better since we took the lid off of it this time. i will be returning it to its rightful owner tomorrow, at long last.

after that we realized we made a grievous math error in how many songs we were planning each day. for some reason i knew we did 3 on day one, and during day two was like "oh well if we do 4 today then we'll do 5 tomorrow, which will be a long day but will be fine." travis agreed. neither of us realized that 3+4+5 = 12. not 13. and there are 13 songs. so at this point we realized that i have 6 songs left to sing lead on, all in the same day. this is unfortunate. that's a lot of freaking singing. the good part was that we did get the really tough ones out of the way. and with a break for eating dinner and another smaller break for me to eat raw honey (which i discovered is not at all underrated as a vocal remedy) i ended up being okay through all of it.

so now we're finishing up bethany's background vocals. then i have to transfer a few files over, decide whether or not i need to add any 3rd parts, help travis pack, and then we'll be done for the day.

it is 10:55 right now. i'd wager travis will be leaving here within the next hour. so 8:15 to midnight....almost a 16 hour day. whew. it's been a marathon. but tomorrow i'll be able to say "this record is done being recorded"! then it will be on to the next steps.

anyway, i'll go ahead and post the few pictures i took over the past few days. i really wish i'd gotten a picture of the piano at the church....but i forgot the camera. whoops. :)

this is me recording vocals in the "bat cave", which was constructed of styrofoam. and a mic. as described in my "day 5" post.

this is a flash-less shot of the same thing. sort of reflects the vibey lights (or lack thereof) that we had going.

'nother one.

this is the booth empty. i wish i had more room to take a wider shot of it because it was pretty crazy looking.

front shot of the singing bat cave area.

the music room at the house, except full of equipment and turned more into a studio type thing.

bethany singing background vocals.

and another shot of the action.

just finished doing all that other stuff i listed and finished helping him pack up and it is now 12:23 am. 16 hours and 8 minutes that we worked today. i'm really tired but at the same time i'm not...probably because my head is still awhirl about everything. hence the writing before i go try to sleep.

so next will be travis mixing everything down, a couple songs a day for me to comment on and send back. that will be 6 full days of mixing to get all the songs done - they won't be consecutive days or anything. a lot of them i feel like i have a fair sense of what they'll sound like but a few of the ones that we left ourselves a lot of options on will be really interesting to hear when they're mixed.

just like the first three days we recorded, this has felt like a total whirlwind. it happens and then it's over, and i've not even had much time to process it -- or, as evidenced by my attempts to recall what happened just yesterday -- even remember everything we did. it's easy to think we overlooked some kind of crucial detail, but i do think we got everything we needed to get with him here. obviously if time and money were no object we could have been much more leisurely and experimental with everything until we got it all just perfect. but i really am happy with what we've got. ...at least right now. :) i've no idea how i'll feel when things are getting mixed together and i'm trying to process the songs as whole units instead of a bunch of pieces and elements. that should be a pretty interesting process. and you'd better hope so, because i'm going to be writing about it either way so this is your boredom or entertainment on the line here. :)

whew. i'm going to try and rest now i think.

and again i say.....whew.

Day 6: A Recap (written on day 7, pretty much right before i write about day 7)

2009-11-11T22:30:00.004-05:00

wow now that we're at the end of day 7 (almost, i'm really just on a break) it's hard to remember what happened in day 6. which was yesterday. but here goes.

eddie came in to start the day off with doing a bunch of keys and synth, which all went pretty well. we did work on 'great' synth parts for quite some time. it's a giant mess right now; a huge freaking pile of options is really what it is. so that will be travis' job to sort through all of that and make it sound good. right now it's got a lot of potential....but yeah, pretty much sounds like a mess. in a good way. got me? good.

then we sang 4 more songs -- and now i don't remember what they were. wait, maybe i do. i know we did 'king forever' and then 'we live'.....after that we did one other one that i can't remember and we finished up with 'consume' when my voice was good and tired.

i also fixed an electric guitar part that was sounding out of tune on 'rise'. then i think we pretty much called it a day.

which brings us to today -- which is not over. i'm sitting here while bethany is finishing up her background vocals. so i think i'll start writing about today now. and will add the pictures.

day 5

2009-11-10T00:21:00.005-05:00

well we started right in with electric guitars. set up a bunch of amps and heads and stuff and just got straight to cutting. it's amazing how much less time was involved in setup than there was when we were doing drums and all...

did a bunch of lead stuff today. added the lead lines in 'we live' and 'king forever'. we ended up adding all kinds of crazy stuff to 'beautiful', not the least of which was an ebow part not unlike the one i'd originally envisioned for the song, which was awesome. i didn't do it before because i could never get a good tone with my crap guitar. but borrow some guitars and some decent amps and after some tinkering you've got a pretty decent sound. i hope i still like it the next time i hear it though -- these things are fickle.

also travis had a friend of his cut a few random electric parts up in nashville as well to save us some time -- most of the parts are keepers, too. thank you kyle, whomever you are. :)

then it was off to singing. we set up the fancy vocal mic on the largest boom mic stand i'd ever seen, and then travis and knox set about building me a styrofoam cave to live in. i mean sing in. i went in with my headphones and lyrics and bottle-o-water and got to work -- we got vocals done on 'nothing else', 'rise', and 'beautiful'.

so 95% of the electric stuff is now done, and main vocals are done on 3 songs - not bad for a day's work. i did take a few pictures but realized tonight that the cable that transfers said pictures to my computer is still at home. so...yeah, pictures will have to come later.

tomorrow we (hopefully) finish all the synth stuff with eddie first thing, then just track vocals until i can't take it anymore. (vocal tracking went fine today, by the way. i need to get some more water for tomorrow but my voice held up fine).

see you tomorrow night...

night before - again.

2009-11-08T19:39:00.002-05:00

welp, here we are again - night before studio time. two more days at the studio tomorrow and tuesday, then a day at the house wednesday. after that we should be entirely done with recording the album. crazy.

there is a crapload of stuff left to do though, so we're going to have to hit it pretty hard tomorrow. lead parts for each song, all the vocals, more keys...it's going to be a lot. so here's hoping the ol' voice holds up. say prayers if you're into that sort of thing - i know i'd appreciate it. :) i'm a little bit worried about it but hopefully it will be fine with the proper warmups and what have you.

so anyway until tomorrow night's recap of the day........bye.

next days are set.......finally.

2009-10-20T11:43:00.002-04:00

scheduling sucks as usual....we've been trying to work out when the rest of the studio days would get scheduled (finding days that work for everyone) and now it's finally on the calendar -- november 9th and 10th. we might end up doing stuff at the house on the 11th too, but we'll be playing it all by ear.

it's nice to finally have it on the calendar though, that's for sure. now it's just a matter of waiting and practicing till then.

i'm still hoping this thing can be in my hands by christmas....although that was when i thought we'd have finished the recording part in october. i'm just guessing as to how long each phase will take after this, but it does seem like it will be pretty tight. but whatever happens....we're getting close. :)

day 4

2009-09-30T22:13:00.007-04:00

with our last studio day for the moment behind us, today brought travis over to my house to sort of see where we were with everything and hear the mixes for the first time outside of the studio environment. ...which is kind of scary because part of you is afraid it only sounded good out of those great big nice studio monitors and won't sound good anywhere else. :) fortunately for us that was not the case. it sounded equally great on the speakers hooked up to my laptop and we were both still pleased with where things were.

so today wasn't really too interesting -- we mostly just punched some acoustic parts that we had changed arrangements on or parts that were a little shaky and needed fixing. we got rough levels on everything so far and started talking through what we wanted to add to the songs still and when we might do those things -- administrative stuff for the most part. i did record shaker and a tambourine for two of the tracks today, which will effectively allow me to join rich under the title of "percussion" in the album credits. awesome, right? but then we attempted to add a bit of mandolin. neither travis or me are much of mandolin players (read: barely know a thing about it) so we chunked through it several times each and will be lucky if any of it is usable when it's all said and done. :)

my homework is involving a few more shots at mandolin, an acoustic lead part for rise, and a the addition of a "nashville strung guitar" to one of the songs. this is a new concept to me -- one of countless things i've learned so far through this experience. apparently since 12-string guitars are annoying to keep in tune (this part i know, and it's an understatement) what a lot of guys in nashville are doing is just keeping a spare 6 string guitar that is strung only with the 6 'other' strings in a 12-string pack. so if you track the regular acoustic and then you track the 'nashville strung' guitar next to it then wham bam you've got a 12-string sound with somewhat less of the hassle. plus it sounds really weird and cool. so we got a pack of 12-string strings and strung up my old black guitar. it's pretty crazy. so i'm supposed to record that too over the next few days.

another discovery was the "jellyfish pick". as you might have guessed this weird little guy looks like a jellyfish, with little metal prongs that you use to pick the strings and it gives it kind of a lighter more scratchy clang type of sound. it doesn't sound good the way i'm describing it, mainly due to poor adjective choices on my part. but it sounds really cool and you can see it better in the picture i took of it below. i'm actually going to be combining that with the nashville-strung guitar for a pretty interesting sound. none of this was my idea, by the way. having an engineer is really pretty invaluable.

there are 3 more songs that we haven't done much on that still need attention:

'consume' is going to be pretty much entirely an acoustic song and we talked through some arrangement ideas of that today too. we also changed the tuning from the original drop-d tuning i wrote it in to an open-d tuning that is seriously making a lot of difference in how the guitar part sounds. after i sort of relearn the song in open tuning i'll be laying that down in the next few days.

'questions' is the weird acoustic song that's got synth treatment. the acoustic part is basically done but we're going to be turning eddie loose on it fairly soon to give it some heavy bottom end stuff and a some kind of atmosphere. i'm anxious to see what we can come up with to make that one cooler and more different from the original.

'you are never really gone' was written as a strummed solo acoustic song. then it changed forms into a fingerpicked slightly lower-key song. now the latest idea i had is to make it a piano-only song, which i think will be really cool. not to mention the only all-piano song on the record. so i've turned eddie loose on this one as well.

so what's next? we have a couple more studio days that are likely going to be early next week or early the week after, depending on some scheduling stuff. after that we'll spend one more day at the house finishing up stuff. over those 3 days we'll be doing synth and keys stuff, some more electric guitar stuff, all the vocals, and all the harmonies -- that is if all goes to plan. :) then i send it back up to nashville with travis and he starts the mixing process. then....well then we'll be almost done!

anyway here are some more pictures to round it out. again, devoid of any order.

me in the control room, apparently happy about something. maybe that my dream is coming to life, i don't know. :)

the crazy jellyfish pick i was talking about. how weird is that?

my old black guitar, strung nashville style. which, i am realizing right now, is something you cannot remotely tell in this picture.

eddie tracking keys on 'not the end'.

bethany and i, being critical from our spot in the back of the control room.

we ran eddie through a crapload of stuff looking for cool effects.

eddie's circle-o-keyboards.

another view from the main tracking room.

rich, travis, and sarah (studio assistant) changing drum pieces for bethany's song.

charley tracking upright for bethany's song.

this is the upright on the floor. again, something that seemed like it would be a good picture at the time. but obviously isn't.

bethany is chillin.

couch in the lounge area.

much better picture of the sign.

eddie in his keyboard circle.

the giant foam cube where the bass amp was isolated.

another main room shot.

me and rich and charley. or "the artists formerly known as The Well Band".

day 3

2009-09-30T22:07:00.002-04:00

actually this is the end of day 4 as i sit here - so i'm catching you up.

day 3 brought eddie into the studio to play keys and other synth wonderfulness. we took a bit getting that all set up and synced up (you might see why from some of the pictures) and weren't really sure how it would go introducing a new element into the mix. but eddie is a great player and really just fit right into tracking with rich and charley.

we finished up the backbones of great and nothing else. then while eddie had to dip out for awhile we tracked bethany's song - complete with upright bass, which was a nice treat. then the guys started breaking stuff down when eddie came back and we tracked piano parts for not the end. it's really amazing what keys can add to a track, i'll tell you that.

then we finished packing and headed out. 3 days straight in an actual studio. crazy, i tell you. but since you all know it's already day 4 i'll just skip straight to the next post.

day 2

2009-09-28T22:18:00.007-04:00

today was exactly what it needed to be. chiefly just goblin-free, but also everyone really did fire on all cylinders. we came out working hard right from the first downbeat this morning and ended up doing so well that we're completely caught up from yesterday's debacle and are totally back on track for tomorrow when eddie comes in to do keys on the other 3 songs.

so the only songs we got done on day 1 were we live and king forever. and even on king forever we had to do another take today because we ran out of time. that is not a lot of work for one day. it's a lot considering we did those two in just a couple hours on day 1. but then for comparison's sake, let's look at today: today we did another take on king forever, then finished beautiful, bring it back, rise, cannot escape, and not the end. not bad at all for one day -- it's the most any of us could have hoped for and it happened.

of course when i say "done" i mean we have drums, bass, and rhythm electric all tracked. there are more guitars and leads to add, vocals, and whatnot that we'll be doing here and there -- maybe some tomorrow, who knows -- and various other bits. we also have a couple more days next week that just travis and i (maybe eddie if we need him) will go back and finish up other stuff.

anyway everything is really coming out great so far. we're getting some really great sounds i think. in general i've been trying not to get carried away with wild hope that this thing will come out 100% awesome. but now i'm starting to dare to hope in spite of myself; a lot of this stuff is sounding really, really good. i find myself being really excited to get vocals, harmonies, and everything else added in -- everything is going to sound so full. so what the heck -- i'm pretty sure it's going to be awesome. :)

so tomorrow we do the rest of the full band songs that have keys or other stuff -- keys for not the end, then we'll do nothing else and great, and finish up with bethany's song, which won't have keys but has an upright bass which should be pretty interesting.

that's about it i guess. i'm pretty tired, but not as tired as i was yesterday. and i promised you some pictures so here goes. i didn't take any more today (maybe i did take like 2, i cant' remember) but i'll probably have bethany take some of us actually playing and stuff tomorrow.

these are totally devoid of any order at all, by the way.

view from the drum seat. not sure why i took this. seemed like a good idea at the time.

travis giving charley the business about some kind of arrangement question.

this is pretty much what i'm looking at all day while i'm tracking rhythm electrics. i sit in the back of the control room and everyone else is out in the big room through the window doing drums and bass.

the monitors in the control room and the window. you cant' really see through it too well in this picture. man i really need a better camera.

great view of the back of travis' head. and also the console with it's impressive-looking array of knobs and faders.

this is a freaking huge tv that's in the main tracking room. i guess longer sessions with people that have money and time to waste like to take breaks by playing wii or something on a huge tv. needless to say we didn't do any wiing.

side view of the drum kit. the door to the foyer is to the right over there.

some of charley's many basses. also you can sort of see the foam cube his amp lives in...i'll have to take a better picture of that.

general view of the main room with the drum kit. it's hard to see but there are mics all over the place.

rich behind the drums. this is on day 1, prior to any of us knowing that the next 5 hours would be filled with technical difficulties.

part of the wall of guitars. is it fun to be able to play a lot of different types on each song? why, yes. yes it is.

another control room shot, sans travis this time.

the lounge foyer area door that goes into the main tracking room.

so that's it -- last day in the studio for this stretch tomorrow. more to come then.

day 1

2009-09-28T08:52:00.002-04:00

it began yesterday at 9:00 am! but it was not as expected, which can briefly be summed up in one word: goblins.

goblins in the machines. setup and getting sounds took much, much longer than anyone expected, and basically the entire day was pretty much plagued by technical issues. computer crashed, sounds weren't coming through the chain right, mics weren't getting picked up....so yeah not exactly an optimistic way to start. the studio guy and travis both ended up re-patching the whole system from the bottom up and ended up getting things fixed. then we got more computer goblins by way of the hard drive not working right, and then we got that fixed. so by this time we've been there literally 6 hours and haven't recorded a thing. behind schedule? um, yeah. :)

but we finally got things going and ended up getting 2 songs done in a really short amount of time, thanks to everyone firing on all cylinders when it counted. so now instead of being way behind we're just a little behind, and one extra good day today could easily get us back where we need to be.

i did take some pictures, though, and will probably take more...i'll have to put them up later though because we have to head out in a sec. i'll put up a bunch tonight or tomorrow morning. in the meantime...pray for no more goblins. :)

the stage is set

2009-09-26T20:05:00.000-04:00

the players are ready, the instruments are ready, the times are set and everything is as prepared as possible....right? :)

tomorrow is the big day. not sure what to expect but we're all excited and ready to get this thing moving. more coming soon.

guide tracks are done

2009-09-12T19:45:00.002-04:00

accomplished my goal. i think that was my goal, anyway. getting the guides done this past week? well....they're done. so let's say it was a goal. check.

now it seems to be a lot of practicing, scheduling, and trying to work out loose ends like finding equipment, last minute scheduling, more practicing, brainstorming ideas, that sort of thing. i've been working a lot on electric parts, and now we're trying to look for a couple good equipment pieces to borrow, something along the lines of a Nord (fancy keyboard thing) or other cool sound effect stuff. need to find some good sounds for a few of these songs.

so we're t-minus 15 days until studio day 1. i will have the digital camera in hand so odds are the blog posts around studio time or after will be a good deal more interesting; pictures almost always make stuff better.

preparation

2009-09-01T13:00:00.002-04:00

there's a lot to be done to get ready for the recording dates. mostly travis and i have been working out final (or at least more final) arrangements of the songs through email and most of them are about there i think. there are i think 2 more at this point that we're still going back and forth on but after that we should be good to go. i also spent a fair amount of time yesterday just getting organized. in one extremely nerdy move i built a spreadsheet to track details of all the songs and where we are on each one, mostly for my own sake. travis said it's not uncommon to see those in-studio as well just so we all know exactly where every song is. so once i finished that i felt a lot better about things -- one, because i'm a pretty organized person, two because my memory sucks, and three so i know where to go next.

so the biggest job for me beforehand that i've been working on is guide tracks. for the layperson, it's just a version of the song with only acoustic and vocals, set to a click track at the right tempo, so that the other musicians can have something to practice with beforehand and hear when they're laying down their first tracks. so since we're on a budget and don't have a lot of time in the studio, i'm doing these at home. i spent most of yesterday and this morning working on guitar parts and have most of them done now. i still have to do vocals, but....you can't just do vocals first thing in the morning, or at least i can't. gotta let the old voice warm up a bit first.

so anyway that's what's going on right now. i still cant' believe that it's actually this month that we're going to start this thing. i don't think my brain has completely come to terms with that yet.

the dates are set!

2009-08-18T12:41:00.004-04:00

we've got recording dates!

the week of september 27th, 2009 is now offically blocked off for recording purposes. we'll be in-studio for 3 days and then will be overdubbing, probably at the house, for the rest of the week till this puppy is done. at long last! i feel like it's taken forever to get to this point. although it's my first time and all - i'm sure once a person is used to it it would go much faster.

either way, i'm excited. the biggest goal i've set in life thus far will soon be realized...

studios

2009-07-30T11:37:00.002-04:00

i have been a delinquent blogger, and for this i hope you accept my dearest apologies. although i do stand by the fact that there hasn't been much going on that is blogworthy*.

so i never updated you on the studio situation properly - what all the potentials are (or were) and what happened. here's where we are:

studio 1: the "swanky downtown" spot.
we checked this out a few weeks ago. everything inside is immaculate, the guys that work there are friendly, and they have in their hands just about every instrument, amp, pedal, and piece of equipment you could ever want. huge recording rooms, too. but alas, you get what you pay for -- meaning i could probably never afford to record here in a million years. axed.

studio 2: the "awesome looking on the web" spot.
i emailed multiple times to no avail. no phone number on the website, so i couldn't call. then travis (the engineer) used some crazy thing called a "phone book", a technology with which i am unfamiliar, and found a number. imagine that? turns out they use a board and setup that he's not familiar with. axed.

studio 3: the "i know a guy who knows a guy" spot.
i've a friend who has a cousin who has a studio downtown somewhere near or in atlantic station - so it must be pretty swanky. but the cousin seems to be out of town at every moment of his life. we've been trying to track the guy down and get in touch with him for literally 2 months. we're always "close" to getting in touch with him but never can. i've all but given up on ever hearing from him...but this one is still on the table i suppose until we make a final decision.

studio 4: the "not really a studio" spot.
a friend advised me about another place downtown that has recording equipment but isn't really a studio -- thus they'd be extremely cheap. turns out it's more of a community arts center type of place. i go down to visit and walk in -- it's rather cramped and everyone in there ignores me. i couldn't really handle the vibe in that place anyway, and vibe, from what i hear, is important in something like this. axed.

studio 5: the "the guy who owns it seems really cool" spot.
travis talked to the guy and we were supposed to see it right after the swanky downtown one but the owner has a lot of family troubles at the moment and had to cancel. i just got back from it about 45 minutes ago. right now this is the clear winner; it's smaller, but it's still got good equipment and a good room and it's definitely in the budget range. little bit dark in there, but bring in some more lamps and it should be good to go. oh, and the guy is in fact cool. we talked to him for a good while this morning.

so we're getting there, i think. unless by some miracle the cousin guy gets back to me i see us probably booking this place - we're hoping to get some details talked out in the next week or so to see for sure.

so it's getting closer by the day -- finally! i can't believe how long this has taken and i'm definitely ready to put this thing down and get it out there.

and we're off

2009-06-23T18:01:00.004-04:00

things are happening. finally, right? yeah. feel like i've been doing nothing on this forever with all of the waiting.

but now we are off! i've got an engineer and we're working through some ideas and questions about direction and arrangements and whatnot, and he'll be coming in town within the next couple week so we can go check out some studios and pick one. it feels good to be moving again.

in other news, i finally took the time to set up my myspace page. i hate myspace; always have. but it seems like a necessity as far as musicians go for exposure and what have you so i finally finished it up today. creating one is pretty easy; customizing it is a giant pain in the arse if i do say so myself. :) but it's now at a place where i'm reasonably satisfied with it.

the 3 songs i did on the demo are up there now for your listening enjoyment. at least i hope it's enjoyment. :) comments welcome.

the dust is settling

2009-05-04T16:34:00.004-04:00

from the move and i'm finally starting to get back into gear with this album thing. even though i'm still playing the waiting game on this last hook-up, i think i'm going to make the call if i cant' get ahold of the guy in the next week or two. then the ol' blog should be a shade more interesting since i should actually be in the studio getting this thing done.

today i practiced everything. i think i'm finally satisfied with the final tracklist so i've been playing through the parts i've got down so far, working on sections of vocals, and just practicing my chops. i'm going to try to do scratch tracks ahead of time this go-round if possible so i don't have to spend any time in the studio doing that like i did with the demo. plus now that we've moved i have this sweet room to play in now:

i've also got a running sheet now with which tracks made the cut on there, time signatures, tempos, and anything else that seems important.

so we're on the move, people. just a little, but it feels good to have my mind back on this thing. another couple weeks and i hope to be in studio somewhere or other making this thing happen.

...yep.

2009-03-30T16:43:00.002-04:00

still waiting. slightly ridiculous? yes. but what sort of timeframe does one put on a potential hook-up? how does one quantify such a thing, if at all? thoughts welcome.

in the meantime my birthday has come and gone which has yielded 2 new pedals; one that i've been learning for a couple weeks and the other which is supposedly in the mail. the pedalboard will be looking quite nice and much fuller with these 2 new additions. pictures to come. actually i don't think i ever even took a picture of the pedalboard at all, so...yeah, pictures for sure.

update

2009-03-06T16:04:00.002-05:00

aaallllrighty then. update.

the gburg conference was this weekend and it went pretty well. i forgot to take pictures so i have nothing at all to show for it. but having a pedalboard this year made a huge difference.

so i got back and immediately started researching studio options. i have a lot of emails going back and forth and i'm trying to find the best combination of quality and cheapness that i can get. :) i have one estimate or two back but am still waiting on others.

so yeah, that's it. just wanted to post an update. things are still moving -- no Ed doesn't mean no album. :)

no hook up...

2009-02-12T02:27:00.001-05:00

my friend's connection isn't responding to his messages. so i'm giving it a couple more weeks and still trying to see if anyone knows this guy to get him to fish the disc out of the pile and give it a listen! if there's no love from anyone by early march i'll start looking into a local place to get it done.

wishful thinking? but it's a small world.

2009-01-21T10:59:00.006-05:00

i always suspected sending a demo randomly to a big producer like ed cash might contain within it some element of wishful thinking. (read: a whole lot of it). but after talking to some folks it seems increasingly likely that this guy is probably flooded with demo submissions that probably just sit in a big pile and may never get listened to -- strictly as a practical matter. i relegated myself to give him probably up until this week to respond and then i was planning to move on with finding a local studio of some kind to finish the album.

but then, as chance would have it, our good friend dave was over last week eating dinner and catching up and he asked about album progress. this is a condensed version of the conversation:

dave: so how's the album coming?
ryan: good, man - i finished the demo and sent it to this one producer guy, so i'm just playing the waiting game to see if he responds.
dave: which producer are you sending it to?
ryan: ed cash.
dave: ed cash?!
ryan: so you've heard of him, eh? he's kind of a big deal.
dave: i know him!
ryan:.....huh?!

apparently dave's youth minister from way back is good buddies with ed (or at least he was...we're banking that he still is) and dave himself met him on a number of occasions. so dave has offered to email his friend and see if he minds asking ed to listen to my demo.

so the shot in the dark has been lit by a small light....maybe this will be just the thing to get him to dig the disc out of the pile and give it a listen, who knows? so the waiting continues for now.

making the final demo mix

2008-12-22T10:41:00.003-05:00

i set out friday afternoon to sit down with darian and work out the final mix for the demo. i expected this to take 1-2 hours, darian expected about 3, and it took about 3 and a half for everything including bouncing (pro tools term for exporting a finished song into a file on your hard drive) and burning the disc. so as usual it took longer than expected but it's done!

a lot of it was just playing with levels and EQ. hi hat is too loud there, bring the harmony part up, let's fatten up the guitar there, these kinds of things. the whole first mix was pretty crispy sounding (a lot of high end boost during mastering) so we fixed that. tweaked this great violin line we added to the end of 'questions.' tweaked the eq and ebow stuff on the 'king forever' intro. just a lot of little changes of this nature. but now it is done and it sounds great! i'm very happy with the result.

and now it is on to the next step: mailing the demo to a producer. there is one particular producer i've had in mind since this whole thing started - his name is Ed Cash, and i don't know if you've heard of him, but he's kind of a big deal (which you can tell because i capitalized his name). he does fantastic production work with a lot of big name artists and he is my 'shot in the dark' if you will, seeing as me randomly contacting him in this way will be something like cold calling coca-cola for a job. so my expectations are low, but i figure if i really want to do this thing i lose nothing by aiming high. he would be my number one choice out of anyone to produce the final album so why not see if he's interested?

so look out, Ed - here i come. :)

the first mix of the demo

2008-12-15T12:42:00.002-05:00

it came to me last night. it sounds pretty darn good. of course i have a million tiny changes i want to make....make this louder, make that softer, eq that part different, etc, but that is to be expected i think. overall we are almost there! there are some great pieces in there now....some great harmony parts, a new violin part, a bit of ebow, some great reverb...i'm pretty excited about it.

so hopefully we can sit down and do a final mix in the next day or two and then we'll move on...

vocals!

2008-12-06T15:39:00.002-05:00

as i said i went back...when was it...this past thursday, two days ago, to do vocals. i actually redid the electric part on questions because i'd used a volume pedal, which i never used, and i pretty much suck at the technique of it so i redid it without that effect, which was better. then i also added the ebow stuff and we fixed up the intro to king forever. then it was onto vocals.

i figured it would be one of the toughest parts, but maybe it was exactly that expectation that made it not seem so bad. it was a lot of work to be sure, but not too bad. first we tested out two of the mics he has and chose which one sounded better (an AKG, i think).

i started with 'questions' because that's the lowest register of the three and seemed like the best to warm up with. in retrospect it was the easiest one to finish. i've found it's hard for me in the moment to really 'hear' how something sounds; i find it hard to assess the actual quality of what's been done in that particular session until afterward and out of context. i don't know, maybe it's mental, but that seems to be the truth of the matter.

vocals were no exception, so it was nice to have bethany and darian both giving their feedback along the way. part of me is worried that when i go back and hear it again i'll hate lots of parts of it, but....no point in bothering about it unless it actually happens. :)

so getting back on track - i started with 'questions' and that went pretty smoothly. 'not the end' was much more difficult to get right; there are a lot of tricky parts in that song to sing perfectly one right after another. so there were a lot of takes but we pieced it together. then i sang the melody part for 'king forever', which i'm the most comfortable with and have sung the most, and that went pretty smoothly too - probably ranks number 2 on the smoothness list.

then bethany came back and added a harmony or two she heard for 'not the end' which we'll have to decide if we'll keep or not. on 'questions' i was certain that the nature of the song would be ruined if another voice were added, and 'not the end' may be the same way. but i'm not certain yet, so we laid it down just to have it and we'll see how it works. then she added harmony to 'king forever' which i think came out great and i even added a third part to the choruses. so once that's all dialed in and polished up it may be fantastic. there's a chance. :)

it's amazing how much you hear every little waver and mistake in your voice when recording like this - it takes a lot of work to sound as good as you can. playing live is much more forgiving in that way, which i probably take for granted. you can be playing live and easily think "i'm nailing this" but if you were recorded and hear it back you're like "no.....no i wasn't nailing anything."

also i think i unwittingly prepared myself mentally for criticism and that there would likely be a lot of redos and punches and that really made it pretty easy not to take anything personally during the vocal session. i think it made the whole process a lot smoother.

so anyway, here we are! he's working on a first mix over the next week or so, so then we'll sit down and polish it up and this puppy should be done!

Electrics

2008-12-06T15:30:00.002-05:00

i forgot to do this on the 25th so here's my recap.

king forever had about 95% of all the electric stuff. there is this one line that i have in questions that i did, but that was it - everything else was king forever. not the end didn't have any at all.

for questions it was pretty simple; just a clean, wet reverb kind of simple line where each note lingers for quite awhile. i used darian's guitar for that - a fender strat of some kind which was better quality than my telecaster. actually come to think of it, i don't think we used my guitar at all. :)

king forever had a lot of parts. there was a rhythm track we did first basically for the choruses and bridge. he actually had me double that part - we recorded it twice on two different guitars (the same strat from earlier and another older model one with a different tone a friend of his had left there). the biggest trouble for me with that is the sound of the distortion. i don't really love any of my distortion effects pedals, and i even borrowed some and didn't love the tone of any of them on that particular song. i really wanted something fatter. so that will be something that's revisited in the post stage and we'll see if we can fatten it up with some software effects. other than that, no problem.

then there is the main lead line which is this delay heavy part that i used my line 6 pedal for in the rough version. darian prefers to generate those parts through software so that the signal coming in is clean and easier to manipulate. so we had to fool with his software a bit to get the delay right, but i like how it sounds now - it has a fuller quality than the original did which is cool.

then there were some fill bits for some of the verses, bridge, and ending of the song that were fairly simple to do. nothing of note there; pretty much everything was done with his strat if memory serves.

then there was the intro part, which is just a driving clean chord of sorts and a swell. we tried a lot of things for the swell; an inverted piano chord, an inverted driving electric chord, but none of it was what i wanted. but the next session time i came back and did ebow on it which, when combined with the previous distortion effect (and altered some) it came out pretty cool, so i'm happy with that now.

all in all it took much longer than i thought it would - which could easily be a mantra for this whole experience. :)

now onto vocals...

preparation

2008-11-24T16:00:00.003-05:00

just doing a little practicing today for recording the electric parts tomorrow. i'll generally come up with parts for the stuff and then forget what i did, so i've got to relearn some of the stuff. there are parts in that song that, upon listening today, forgot were even in there. it's pretty funny really. so i'm trying to work some of that out. i still don't love any of the distortion sounds i've got, although they are okay. darian has another pedal i'm going to try in addition to the ones i have, so we'll see how that goes.

vocals are supposed to be tomorrow too, and i've gotten a touch of the cold everyone seems to have right now. while that part doesn't seem so bad, the other bit is that i may have worn my voice out pretty bad last night - tried to have my voice carry over the bass and djimbe for an acoustic service...may have been detrimental, so i'm trying to rest it today. here's hoping she makes a full recovery by tomorrow. :)

Demo Recording Day 2

2008-11-20T00:27:00.007-05:00

4:30pm to about 11:30pm this time.

today was mostly about acoustics. we used a couple different mic patterns for recording it which was interesting to me; both came out sounding really good. i did king forever first and it took several tries but it came out great. not the end was next and it was pretty much the same story there; took a few go's but it came out good at the end. since there's drums in the song now, when they come in we decided to add another acoustic track to fill it out a bit; used darian's "Franciscan" guitar to play that. it's a piece of crap. :) but it actually sounds really nice to use an older guitar with a different sound behind a newer one. so don't ever throw away old guitars. especially if they are "Franciscans".

i ended up using the same piano part from the previous version of not the end in this one. it was tricky to get it to line up right...i don't know what i did to my sessions that made them behave oddly but they did. tempos off, stuff like that. i apparently introduced goblins into darian's equipment too because it was acting up all night and usually doesn't. but anyway we got the piano lined up and that song is about done. we're talking about possibly adding a violin part to the bridge so we'll see how that goes.

questions got rebuilt using the same synth parts on the bottom, then i did the acoustic part over that. it was tricky; took more takes than the others, but i think we've got a winner there now. then we moved onto the toy piano, which looked even funnier than it did in my apartment when it was all mic'd up with nice microphones, displaying its chicken and painted finery. quite a sight.

so now all that's left is really just electric guitars and vocals. i think there may be a tambourine on king forever that i forgot about, but that's no big deal to add in. i'm scheduled to go in next tuesday before thanksgiving and finish up that stuff, then we're looking at a first mix the next week, which is great. it will be interesting to hear everything mixed together....

Demo Recording Day 1

2008-11-13T12:36:00.003-05:00

finally coordinated everyone's schedules and got into my buddy's basement studio last night, with the agenda to record drums, bass, and anything else we had time for (which turned out to be nothing).

it took much longer than i thought to get the drums all set up and cranking, but as soon as they were up, mic'd and tested, rich did a great (and pretty quick) job of it. king forever was first up and i think what he did there is going to work great.

not the end had percussion but no bass in my original version. i was just going to have rich do shaker for the whole thing, which we did, but he had a few drum ideas that we laid down too which i really think could work and add an interesting new feel to parts of the song.

then charley went to work on bass for king forever and really had some great ideas there. very tasty grooves. there is such a plethora of good lines and licks to choose from i think the hard part may be deciding between them, who knows.

charley also had an idea for using a fretless bass on not the end, just to fill it out in background and give it this sort of cello-feeling warbly thing which is really cool. so we put that down and i'll be interested to see how it complements the piano once that's done.

the original version of questions was entirely synth driven on the bottom, which i liked, but i was going to have charley lay down a deep live bass line too just in case that worked better. but he ended up saying he couldn't really duplicate that same sound, so i ended up deciding to just stick with the synth stuff to drive that one.

so day 1 worked fine. i was there from about 7pm to 2:35am so it was a long night...but worth it.

so now the rest of the instruments and whatnot are on me, and i have to live up to the great foundation that's been laid already. :) the plan is to go in again next wednesday and track acoustics, rebuild the synth parts for questions, and track piano - maybe start some electric stuff if i have time.

so we're off and running! onward we go.

feedback complete! as complete as it's gonna get, anyway.

2008-11-03T16:29:00.007-05:00

long time no see, eh?

well the feedback phase took longer than expected. apparently everyone is rather busy and it was tough to find time to listen to the songs. but i got a good number of responses which helped me to narrow things down.

it was fairly easy to pick the 3 songs to use for the demo; king forever was probably never a question, and was equally well received among the feedback folks. i would have originally put nothing else on the list and then maybe bring it back. turns out bring it back really doesn't really ring with everyone and might not even make the final album at this point. nothing else is a shoo-in for the album still, but i got higher responses to some of the other songs. questions turned out to be a pretty overwhelming favorite from just about everyone, so that's gonna make the demo for sure. and then to round it out i'm leaning toward not the end, which i like a lot and also got a pretty warm reception all the way around.

strong dislikes - are you here, which i never loved, is still an easy one to cut, since only a few people seemed to like it (although i love you people that did :) i would have probably put make me whole on the album easily because i like the guitar part and the groove of it, but that one was easily the least favorite; almost everyone came back saying "yeah that didn't really do anything for me". honestly the more i kept getting that same response the funnier it became to me. so that one was an easy cut too.

it was also pretty easy to pick about the first 9 that are probably going to make the final, but now i'm running into some tough decisions for those last few spots. certainly someone is going to be disappointed that a song they really like got left off by the end, but hey - that's the way she goes! we're looking at 11 songs plus a bonus (bethany's song) at the moment.

so anyway now i'm trying to schedule recording the demo itself with my buddy to see when he has some open time. he has a basement studio and the stuff he turns out is great sounding and should be perfect for a demo. the guys who play with me in douglasville are going to help me out with percussion and bass where needed, and then i plan to fill in the rest. when that gets scheduled and we start recording i'll be documenting that experience as well.

the rough stage is done!

2008-10-06T10:25:00.004-04:00

lots to update you on, but the rough recordings are hereby declared done.

last week i was going back and trying to clean up a few more vocal spots and adding harmonies (both my own and bethany's) and whatnot and my recording latency problems came back again....everything i tried to record came out a little off timing-wise and i couldn't get it figured out. it was frustrating, but then i thought "well, they're the rough recordings so maybe this just means i should let go of them as is and move on." so that's what i did. it was hard, but you have to cut them loose sometime.

so wednesday i went over to my buddy's place and he did a little mastering work on them - just to get them up to a good volume level for people to listen to, and i learned a little bit about that process and what's involved and how to correct a few things in my recording process next time around. for example, i was mixing like there was no mastering stage at all; i was trying to get everything as loud as possible in the mix. apparently that is not what you want when you get to mastering because you try to amplify things a bit and you end up getting clipping and distortion when it gets too loud. lesson learned. although i still would like to be able to master at home at some point, so maybe i'll have to learn more about it and get some good software tools to make that happen.

when you master the whole song it makes everything louder, which is good -- but that includes mistakes, so that was tough. it was hard in itself having to sit there and listen to everything on the studio monitors all loud when the mistake parts came on. but it really was a good experience, as hearing all the mistakes and things have helped me come to terms even more with the facts that, a) they're the rough home recorded versions after all and thus not professional, b) that that is okay, and c) that they aren't quite as bad as i've been thinking of them. all very helpful to take unfounded and unneeded pressure off myself. it's like going out to throw the baseball with a friend and expecting yourself to consistently throw 95 mph strikes. ridiculous.

so i sent them out on saturday to the circle of folks who are helping to give me feedback and pick out the strongest ones. it's scary even in that form to let something you made go out into the world...and this isn't even the world, only like 20 people or something. but i'm excited to be at this point and onto the next stage.

right now the plan is to pick the top 3 according to myself and the feedback i get in the next week or two and then record a more professional demo which i will use as my "shot in the dark" at getting a producer interested in working on the project. but more on that later. also from feedback i'll be deciding which songs make the cut for the final album and which don't.

so...in 2 weeks or so when the feedback is collected i'll be posting again with the final song set. and then....on we go!

busy few days

2008-09-26T16:53:00.004-04:00

the last few days have indeed been a flurry of all kinds of activity. started doing mixing of some of the songs. the first day was total dismay (as usual) because i keep subconsciously expecting perfection out of these things and that is not their purpose. if i could do them perfect at home i'd have no need to do any pro recordings, and i really just needed to let go of them to some extent and be okay mentally with the fact that i'm letting some people hear versions of songs that aren't perfect and are indeed rough in many ways. this is very difficult for me to do. it was bethany that sort of sat me down and said all this to me which has been very helpful in a change of mindset.

so round two with mixing, either due to the change of mindset or just songs i happened to like the sound of better, was very positive. i went through like 6 songs in a row and didn't think any changes needed to be made, which was very encouraging. then i went back and tweaked a few spots here and there and that was that.

and then of course, we had the technical issues.

the other day i realized that with all for god alone, every time i tried to record vocals it would sound fine during recording, but on playback it was delayed somehow - like the voice didn't match up with the rest of the instruments. this, like most computer issues, made no sense at all and there was no basis to even begin to know what might be going wrong. so i started guessing and kept coming up blank. it took me a couple days of thinking about it and trying stuff to get it figured out. eventually i realized it was only that song and no others, which probably meant it was a problem with that session specifically instead of any of my hardware, which was a relief. so i basically just rebuilt the song from its existing pieces in a new session and that seemed to fix it. still no idea as to the cause, but my best guess is that it had something to do with the bitrate conversions from 16 to 24 bit. who knows.

so after that fix i finally finished vocals for that song and we live, which were the last two i hadn't touched.

i've also mixed everything at least one time through on real speakers instead of headphones, and today took my first stab at self-harmony in great. seems to have come out pretty good for the first try.

so here is my optimist's schedule:
monday - check mix of all songs again, do more harmony
tuesday - harmony and mixdowns
wednesday - mastering
thursday - done

gotta see if mastering wednesday is an option. then i can start getting feedback and go from there.

boo yeah!

2008-09-22T16:59:00.005-04:00

well i mentioned my vocal recording quandry to my buddy at the well last night and he was telling me that as long as the whole thing isn't crap that i should just use the first take out of however many i've got as the base. i don't know why that small and simple of a thing didn't occur to me before, but it made sense and didn't make some of the songs seems like such a mess. so i started with some of the simpler or slower songs (which seem to generally be a little easier for me vocally) and took the first track, which in most cases turned out to be upwards of 80% good on it's own. then when i came to a part i didn't like i went to see if any of the other takes had a good version of that part, did some volume adjustment if it was needed...and wham bam thank you ma'am i had myself a decent set of vocals for the song.

so really i've finished up all but like 5 of the songs on that basis, which is great progress. it pretty much took all day but it was worth it.

a lot of the songs i've got left have a much bigger working range that i'm in throughout the song, or have a lot more instruments to try and mix things around or something. of those i got about halfway through king forever and are you here. so really only 3 songs remain untouched after today. with luck i can finish the rest of these tomorrow and then maybe track some harmony wednesday. i've got them mixed in headphones but still have to mix on speakers as well...but maybe this thursday deadline still has a chance of being met after all. i'm fortunate that most of my work at the moment is waiting on clients to get stuff to me, so i've got time to do this stuff -- we'll see how long that holds out.

oh i also redid the toy piano today. it wasn't working as it was but i think it works well now.

delay. and not the cool effect, either.

2008-09-19T17:03:00.003-04:00

the bad kind. like stuff taking longer than expected.

i keep forgetting that it's one thing to get a vocal take done; it's another entirely to listen to it and be satisfied. i maintain this is the hardest part of recording, the vocals, i mean. maybe that's common knowledge and studio folks the world over are laughing. but it's news to me.

as it turns out, my method for recording vocals doesn't work for me at all. i figured i'd do a few takes of every song then go back through one at a time and listen to them and splice the best bits together. well not only is it time consuming, it's just difficult to decide which bits are best -- almost like there are too many options. it feels disorganized and i have no basis of which one is a good starting point. so i was dismayed and decided to rethink my approach.

i've known for some time now that for me to do my best vocally, i generally have to be loud. maybe i had the voice too loud in the headphones to (the point) where i was being quiet to compensate, or maybe it was not loud enough to be inspiring or something; but when i listened back it didn't sound like i was giving it all i had the whole time. a few of the songs i'm still kind of new to singing and they are a little tricky, so some of it is just taking time to practice singing some of those. so a change in the headphone mix was in order - a mix fix, if you will. ok that was lame.

what i decided on was to tackle each song's vocals individually and keep going until it is done - the whole song, i mean. and if that means adding another instrument part that i think it needs, so be it. then vocally i make sure the mix is plenty loud and i go through it once the best i can and use that for a base because it's the only option. then i listen and only redo the parts that need it.

so i started with you are never really gone since it's a simple track with only vocals and guitar. i scrapped what i had vocally and started it over. and it came out great. i mean, i'm really satisfied with it. it would probably be good for me to listen to all of them on another day to be sure, but i'm labeling it done for now, mix, eq, and everything.

if it hadn't come out well it may have ruined my day. but there was light at the end of the tunnel and though some songs will certainly be much harder than that one, there is hope. :)

warmup!

2008-09-18T15:49:00.003-04:00

the warmup helped infinitely. things were coming out much smoother even from the first attempt. i started where i left off yesterday and finished the rest of the songs, then did another take on the first half. so i've got at least two takes (sometimes 3 or 4 counting the stray vocal done here and there awhile back) on every song now. so tomorrow i should be able to start piecing them together and see where that leaves me. i've also started hearing a few things that need changing instrument wise....mostly a few parts that need something else to fill them out. i'm going to bank on my memory (ha) to remember them when the time comes.

gonna double check on sunday with my mastering buddy but i think we're on for next thursday....so i gotta try to have all this finished by them. seems kinda daunting. i don't suppose it's the end of the world if i miss the deadline but i want to focus on meeting it anyway so that mentally i keep my head in the game.

vocals....are hard work.

2008-09-17T15:39:00.004-04:00

i probably did one take for about half the songs today. they're listed in alphabetical order on the computron so i just went in that order. i got through all of them until the bridge of king forever and then i felt my voice start to go a bit south. i didn't warm up much or anything first, which was probably stupid. i think i should at least sing through a few of them as a warmup before i start next time.

there is also the question of when your voice is best for vocal recording. i would have always said for myself that i sing best at night and have heard that a lot...but it's harder to make a racket in an apartment complex at night without feeling bad for the ol' neighbors. although the neighbor i share a wall with i think has a baby and they probably hate me as it is. :)

so...warmups next time for sure. then i thought i'd probably try recording at different times of day to see if that helps. optimistically, i' might try to go for 3 takes of the vocals for each song and hopefully i can piece those together enough to have something worth keeping. i got (sort of) busy monday and tuesday and couldn't do much of anything on the music front, but i need to make sure i'm doing some of these every day for the next 6 days or so, cause this takes awhile.

the toy piano: child's plaything or bona fide professional instrument? you decide.

2008-09-12T14:54:00.010-04:00

behold!

i mean, really, does it get any more awesome than this thing?

the mic blocks some of the writing in the second picture, but it reads as follows:

"I've got the buck buck fever....and the cool car blues."

awesome. note the detailing work on the keys. amazing. honestly i think every grand piano should say "grand piano" on the front just to alleviate any possible shadow of doubt.

so i mic'd it up and gave it a shot. i had to simplify the melody i had in my head for it since complicated patterns didn't seem to work as well. plus it loses something if you can't hear each note ring in it's own creepy way. so i figured out something simple i liked and added a bunch of big hall type of reverb to it. the keys make a noise when you hit them so originally after each note the key strike sounded like a small clap or cap gun or something echoing in the hall. it was pretty funny...but i was able to filter it out for the most part.

so all in all -- success! i think it works. thank you, ricky.

in slightly less interesting but no less important news i finished up the strings for bring it back and changed the shaker so it cuts out and the song finishes with just acoustic and light strings, which i think is a nice touch.

also, my cold seems to be on the outs....at least it doesn't seem as bad today as it was yesterday. so i think i should be good for vocals next week.

got it

2008-09-10T15:43:00.002-04:00

well i started off the day recording a bass track for the new version of bring it back- just something simple to help round out the low end, which worked pretty well. i also realized that i only ever finished strings for half the song.....so it looks like i need to finish the strings at some point.

then i did some consolidating of songs that were still in garageband and got them into pro tools. i haven't looked at all the songs yet to be sure i got 'em all, but i think they're all in pro tools now.

then i tackled all for god alone again and finally came up with some good guitar stuff. it is the first and probably only song that will use the phaser pedal, but i like it that way. it's also the first one i've done some panning on, and since this track is electric heavy i think it really helps separate all the different sounds out. now it's got like 5 electric tracks: a clean rhythm track, a distorted rhythm track for the choruses and bridge, the track with the phaser, and two clean picking tracks set at different volumes. it's come together quite well, i think. i had decided awhile back this would be an electric-only song and it was challenging and (sometimes) fun to have to make that work.

i have got some kind of minor cold right now so vocals are out of the question until that goes away. i was hoping to spend the majority of next week on that so i'll be drinking a lot of orange juice or something and hoping it goes away by then. :)

other than that....toy piano and finish the strings on friday, vocals next week (and hopefully some if not all the mixing), then the week after finish mixing and do the mastering and presto -- we have met our deadline people.

bugger

2008-09-08T16:26:00.004-04:00

finally remembered the bass. re-tracked bass for all for god alone, which seems to have worked fine. i recorded a clean electric rhythm track also but don't know where to go with it now. i experimented with a few effects but nothing really came out to my liking. i'll have to think about it more and see if i can come up with something. if not i might track vocals first and see if that helps.

i just finished converting all my sessions to 24 bit today rather than 16. it was tedious but not too bad. it reminded me how much of a learning experience this process has been. i imagine when it's all finished i'll realize how much i learned about what worked and what didn't and what to do differently the next time i record. i've mentioned feeling disorganized with it before and that's one of the hardest things, seeing as how i'm a fairly organized person -- to feel in such disarray during this process. going ahead and taking the time to get everything converted helped, but there are still a few songs who's latest versions exist in garageband and they need to be moved over. it's remembering which ones that could be challenging.

i'm getting the toy piano thursday so hopefully i can see if it works on friday and if so get it tracked in. that should really only leave vocals and the odd guitar part that remains undone. then mastering....and BAM! done.

...with the home versions....

finally!

2008-09-05T16:24:00.004-04:00

think i've finally found a good ambient sound for questions. it's creepy and it creates some dissonance. and i'm loving it right now.

on another note, apparently you should record at 24 bit rather than 16 bit if you can for mastering and effects purposes. i recorded at 16. live and learn for the future.

what's been up

2008-09-03T16:20:00.005-04:00

well let's see....i've been doing some refining on some of the songs. part of it has been going through and actually practicing some of them repeatedly. the ones that i've done at church and stuff come really easy when i record because i'm used to singing them and hit the notes fairly easily, and i pretty much know how i want to sing them or have already refined them. but when i started doing vocals i ran into a few songs that i really don't play much and, though i know the basic melody of each, found myself trying to figure out the specifics while recording - which quite obviously doesn't work too well. so i've been playing through a lot of the songs again and figuring that stuff out. some of that has resulted in a few small changes to melody here and there, and some lyric changes as well. most have been minor except for give glory, whose name should be changed to like "the great name-changing song" or something because this is the 3rd or 4th time the name has been changed and parts have been rewritten. i think it's on it's final leg now, and is now called all for god alone. so there you have that.

in other news, my friend rich who is the owner of many and varied guitar effects pedals brought me a goody bag of some of them to borrow at church this sunday, which i was quite excited about. i found myself wanting a few different guitar sounds (distorted ones specifically) just to give some of the songs a bit more variety, and so i asked if i could borrow some. there were 3 main ones i borrowed from him:

the red one is like this amp modeler thing that gives you different types of amp sounds. it easily does the most of the 3 and has a lot of potential but i haven't messed with it tons yet. the yellow is a fancier distortion pedal than mine and has a good tone so far. the orange one is what's called a phaser and it makes your notes do this kinda wah sounding thing at whatever speed you set. it's kinda weird and i don't know if i'll use it. but Jonny Buckland uses it and therefore i thought it was worth looking into. so those should give me enough to finish the unrecorded bits i've got.

also the plan is set to borrow the toy piano next thursday from adam - creepy piano part here i come! i hope it works with the song...it would be a bummer for it to not work after all my talk about it.

keep forgetting to bring the bass home from church again. if i can remember it this sunday i can track the last 2 bass parts too and be done with that.

i've also gone ahead and compiled my list of people who are going to help me narrow down the songs from 15 to either 10 or 11, and given them fair warning of what i expect and that they should see some music in the next 3 weeks hopefully. we're closing in, people. we're closing in.

tough stuff.

2008-08-14T17:13:00.003-04:00

well i've done a host of small things this week - a new part here or there in a bunch of songs, a first vocal try for a song - stuff like that. i rerecorded the acoustic on you are never really gone again last week, then redid it again today because i did the strum pattern wrong. dumb! also i keep forgetting to bring the bass back from church to redo it on give glory - that song is the least developed and has no guitars yet - and it won't until i remember the friggin bass. today's biggest achievement was redoing bring it back like i talked about - featuring some strings and a picked pattern instead - and its coming out really well so far i think. in fact i got it from 0 to about 80% done today, which isn't bad at all for a day's work. the redo is being done entirely in garageband - no pro tools yet. i took at stab at you are never really gone's vocals too in garageband and tried to export it to see how the levels stacked up against pro tools - not really any better - which, in perfect segue, brings me to my next topic.

my lack of recording knowledge is proving to be one of the hardest things in this whole process for me to deal with. i've got basic knowledge of how it all works, but i still have so many questions and no distinct answers. sometimes, like today, the questions pile up so much that it drives me crazy and almost freezes me to where i can't do anything. i've got half my stuff in one program, half in another, and no capability to turn out what i want without help - very frustrating when you're working independently. i just wish i could carry it from start to finish myself and get something that was good - not perfect - but good to be sure. it's times like these when i wish i could just focus on the music and had someone pro around to handle all the technical stuff...there is so much to know and i just don't know it.

so that's been the biggest challenge. i'm about to write an email with some questions to a buddy of mine so hopefully that will help put my mind at ease about some of it. i'm trying to just focus on the songs themselves and not worry as much about the tech side, but it's difficult.

2008-07-29T16:43:00.006-04:00

not a ton to report: redid the acoustic part for you are never really gone, cut out the first chorus in questions (but haven't smoothed over the cut yet), redid the piano for not the end, and actually reorganized all my files onto the hard drive. half of them were on the computer, half on the hard drive, so that is all in one place now.

also got bethany to remind me about her advice for fixing we live's bridge, and i successfully (i think) rewrote it today. it seems to be much, much better -- much less repetitive, and more interesting. just have to work out the nuances of the melody there and i should be all set with that one. will let you know how i like it more when i start working through the whole song on the acoustic.

a friend of mine also used a rough version of bring it back in a video for a mission trip they did with their church. it (along with some other things) has made me think about reworking that song's feel. even when i got most of the rough version done even basic, scaled down drums and bass seemed like too much for the song. now i hear fingerpicking, light shaker and, ideally, strings.

garage band's newest version shows good recording promise.....since i had to start over with you are never really gone and it's a simple song anyway it was a good chance to try it start to finish in garageband instead of moving. not totally sure how it will come out yet but i am optimistic....

today's tomfoolery

2008-07-25T16:29:00.011-04:00

i had a go at some vocals today. my suspicions that i would hear missing parts more easily with vocals in the mix were partially confirmed, and so i forged ahead. i didn't really listen to everything that i did but they all felt good going in, and the bits i heard seemed to be pretty clean, on key and at a good level, which was encouraging. i covered cannot escape, make me whole, are you here, consume, and rise. (as you can see i've started highlighting the song titles; i don't know why, it just seemed like a good idea).

i was going to get questions and you are never really gone as well but noticed a few issues. the former needs to lose the first jump to the chorus, so i have to redo the guitar and synth (though i might just be able to cut it out, which would be considerably easier). and the latter i recorded without a click track (since it's just guitar and vocals); but it seems i need one since the acoustic is really too fast for the song.

bethany helped me brainstorm the rewrite for we live's bridge last week...but when i sat down to work on it today i couldn't remember everything she said, and she's not here. so i'll have to tackle that later on.

i also made a new song-by-song list of all the songs and what i need to do apart from the obvious stuff*. it's not as long as you might think, so that was good to see. there are 17 songs total but since my next goal is to get feedback on the main ones there are only 15 that i need to finish first. the other two are i know, which was written for someone else (and apart from some kind of miracle will never make it on the album), and bethany's song, who's inclusion doesn't depend on anyone's opinion but bethany's. :)

*by obvious stuff i mean re-listening to all the recorded vocals to see if they work and redoing any parts, adding any extra fill bits to anything that needs it, EQing everything and getting the mix right so they can be ready for mastering. i'll do all that after i finish my list and have all the songs fixed and with vocals.

intros

2008-07-18T16:16:00.006-04:00

i've wanted to change the intro to 'king forever' ever since i realized it will likely be the leadoff track. before i had this thing where it faded into a high electric chord and then kicked in to all instruments. the lead part has changed a lot; at one point the intro lead followed the melody of the chorus. then i pulled away from that and played this other part instead that was a little echoey but didn't love it either.

so i've been thinking about it for awhile and finally worked out a new idea in my head. i wanted to start with a sort of driving clean electric part alone that fades in by itself first for about 4 bars. then two bars in i thought of adding a lower swell that i might accomplish with the ebow. then into all the instruments again, only this time the lead part is based more off of the verse melody instead of the chorus.

it took some doing, but it's come together fairly nicely. the lead part sounded like butt first off, and i didn't know why, but it was slightly out of tune and messed it up. (yes, i tune before recording. no, i don't know what happened). once the tune was fixed i liked it. the ebow took several tries and it still swells rather sharply at one point but i think it works. i like the lead effect as well.

then i recorded the acoustic intro to 'rise' that i'd already figured out. i kept messing up different parts just slightly each time so it took many, many takes to get one to keep. odds are i'll hear it tomorrow and think it needs to be redone (same with the other song...who knows) but it's there.

i was planning on adding a complementary capoed rhythm acoustic part to 'rise' but when i tried it it didn't work out like i thought...it was kind of too busy. then i tried moving the capo up a bunch further and tried to just pick as accents intead and that seemed to work much better. played around with it to come up with something then recorded it and mixed it below everything else. i think it adds the accent i was looking for and could well be all that's needed for this one.so those two should be about ready for vocals, which is marvelous.

oh, and then there was one not so great discovery. when i wrote 'give glory' i had it in C; but the range gets pretty big between the verses and chorus. the verses were low so i liked them better in C but the prechorus and chorus were getting up there a good ways, so i had changed the song to B instead. well, long story short, i never really got it straight in my head which key i wanted it in (which is B) and when i did the bass part awhile back i did it in C. oops. dumb.

so after a brief look into pro tools LE's pitch shifting capability -- total crap -- i'll have to rerecord the bass. no big deal, but......dumb.

lyric work

2008-07-16T13:25:00.004-04:00

i'm reworking some bits of lyrics here and there.

'give glory' was finally reworked to match its new title, and it seems a better song now in terms of 1) my own liking of the song and 2) less use of conventional phrases. the idea remains but the whole "glory to your name" lyric has been used a lot before and i wanted to steer off of it.

'questions' struggled with the opening line since i wrote it. in reality it was probably fine but i wasn't able to convey what i wanted in the right way. but now it has come together and i think it paints the picture i want.

'we live' is what's needing the most work. i realize a lot of it is in the way i sing it that i need to work on, but some lyrics need work too. i swapped one single word out of one part, almost by accident, and ended up with what might be one of my favorite lyrical images thus far. (i'll leave you to wonder if you will what lyric that might have been. this will be a fun game that i'm sure not many will play). now i'm really just looking at the bridge; rewriting it entirely is probably what it will come down to. it is too repetitive at the moment and i think needs to be one that knocks you over lyrically, or at least gives you a rich image. i don't have any great ideas for it yet, but that's what i'm spending time on at the moment.

other than that, i got the legal pad back out today to jot down a few lines and phrases that i like, so i don't forget for future writings. i think since i've been out of writing mode for awhile that i haven't been diligent about capturing bits of ideas, and i need to do that. so the yellow pad is now back out and accessible. look out.

i have assessed

2008-07-10T16:31:00.004-04:00

and found the following regarding the rest of the songs:

not the end - as it turns out, when i listened to it yesterday, i somehow had the piano muted. turns out the guitar only would need to be redone if it was by itself; when coupled with the piano it is all good. i might change a few piano parts but other than that -- done! the vocals in it seem fine but i might give them one more shot as well for posterity. whatever that means.

nothing else - this one is pretty good so far too. i'd say it needs a little something in it but it's just about there.

questions - the synth bass sounds better than i thought. eq'd the acoustic a little, so its sitting pretty well. need the creepy piano part in there still. and i would still like to find some kind of other ambient sound to go along...but not as set on it now since the synth is better than expected. weird song.

rise - love the simple feel of this also. this one is one of the all-acoustic ones. i have a lead part that i worked on some today for the beginning, then i'm going to try out a complementary light rhythm or pick track along with it and this one should be ready for vocals. i still left the synth string part in there; instead of erasing it entirely i think i'll understate it instead -- leave it in but more as background than a focal point.

we live - my vocals need work. i am not satisfied with the way i sing this song at all. the instrumentation is quite peppy, though, to say the least. it might even "rock out." there may also be a few lyrical changes in the works as well. some work needs to be done on the levels throughout the song also, especially on the various electric rhythm parts. some parts of it are just the way i want them though.

you are never really gone - only acoustic here. i think it will only be that and vocals. since this was written later than most i don't know about including it or not...we'll see. might add some synth bits or something but not much -- i think it will ruin the feel if i do too much to it.

so there you have it; i sort of know where i stand on everything. pretty soon i'll start vocals and then i can start crossing some off the list as "done except for mastering".

this deserves a hearty "woot."

woot.

2008-07-09T16:00:00.007-04:00

mastering a recording....sucks. :)

i suppose with the proper tools (or something close anyway) it would be nice and almost rewarding to tweak everything at the end. i thought i had the tools but apparently i don't, so it's difficult for me to bring a recording up to commercial volume when it's all said and done. i have a friend who will help me master everything, so its not a huge deal, but i'm anxious to learn how to do it myself so i can churn decent quality recordings out of the home for the rest of my natural life.

anyway; moving on!

i picked the banjo back up again yesterday and got that part recorded again. the banjo is hard to record...it sounds fine but it also sounds a little uneven, which i'm sure my lack of playing skill contributes to. but i think it's workable for now anyway.

today i started listening track by track to what i have so far and deciding what the next thing to record is. (aside from vocals). i got through listening to most of the songs, and added some things as well. did a lot of minor level and EQ tweaks, especially on snare drums. so here's the update, song by song:

are you here? - this one seems fine as-is and seems to be ready for vocals.

beautiful - listened again to the unsatisfying ebow part i had thought would work here. spent the better part of an hour and a half experimenting with other electric sounds i could use. i ended up settling on this volume swell echo type part that seems to fit really well. i recorded the part in pieces and it seem to fit beautifully. this one should be ready for vocals now.

bring it back - added a light picking electric part to fill it out. tried to make it a little reverb heavy...seems to add a nice touch.

cannot escape - listened, but i don't really know where to go next with this one. i find myself wanting some other distortion effects for some of these.

consume - added some reverb to the acoustic. i think this will be an acoustic only song so this could very well be ready for vocals.

give glory - wasn't sure where to take this one next either. i had experimented with a low-res guitar delay thing that i still might use.

great - this sounded much better than i remember and even has a vocal part already. very, very close to being done.

i know - needs more electric, but same problem again with wanting a new sound. this one probably won't make the album in any case, but i still intend to finish it.

king forever - sounds a little better than i thought it did. i am going to record a new electric lead part that i've been working out for a few weeks and see how that works. this one is close to done as well. i think because of its popularity at church this may be the flagship song.

make me whole - i still love the acoustic conga feel this has. did some eq, but this sucker is ready for vocals.

not the end - i thought this was about done, but i may end up re-recording the acoustic. its close to done in any case, though. no more instruments i dont' think.

that's all i got through. still have 5 more to assess, but things are moving along nicely again.

onward we go...

learning.

2008-06-30T15:21:00.004-04:00

i spent some time reading about recording techniques and whatnot today...a lot of is specifically centered around garageband and was interesting. it's possible i might try to do as much as possible there and maybe take the whole mix to pro tools at the end instead of doing most of the recording through there. i feel like there is a reason i switched; but, as my memory typically goes, i can't remember what that reason may have been. :)

i also looked more for the perfect synth sound for the background of 'questions' but still haven't found the perfect one. the hunt continues.

i really do hope to be able to dive back into this more fully soon...

whew

2008-06-18T14:00:00.005-04:00

my dad says the reason he doesn't like going on vacation is a) he cant' stop thinking about all the work he has to do while he's there and b) there is a veritable mountain of work to be buried under when he returns.

while i cannot identify with the first, i certainly can the second. it is quite a mountain i've been under.

right now marks the first "free" time i've had since i got back, which could change at any moment. needless to say, my deadline to get home recordings done that once seemed easily attainable now seems like it will be a little tighter. so i really need to get back into it. it's hard though, when you're out of the groove to get back in it; seems like there is extra work involved in re-familiarizing myself with what i've done and where i'm at with each song. it's probably true but that's all the more reason to get back in there.

i am going to work on the banjo part again. also there is a possible lyric/title change i've been thinking about for one of the songs. more on that later.

what a day.

2008-05-21T16:22:00.005-04:00

lots going down in the ol' home studio today.

mission accomplished on the bass parts! recorded bass for everything else that needed it, so i should be completely done with bass now in all the songs. one song i put on the list i decided didn't need bass, and when i opened another one i realized i'd already done bass and just forgot, so those were nice surprises. also i mic'd the bass with the AKG mic this time instead of the 57, which, besides being more sensitive, seems to yield a better sound. i think i'll try that with the electric too when it comes to that.

anyway, just for kicks, here's the bass i've been using:

it's a Squier Jazz Bass. it is the property of southwest christian church if i am not mistaken. it's not exactly a high quality instrument, but it gets the job done surprisingly well. when i first brought it home the action was really bad, so i had to adjust the truss rod*, but now it actually plays pretty well.

then after two days of figuring out how to play the banjo part for 'bethany's song' and practicing it multiple times, i took a first stab at recording the part today. when you don't play the banjo and you don't know the chords, it is not easy...to play the banjo**. and play it in such a way that fits the bluegrass style. but i hacked through it.

mics were another challenge. where do you mic a banjo? there isn't a hole. so i fooled around with it for awhile. i mic'd it with the AKG also originally but then got paranoid because the mic is so small. so i ended up switching back to the large diaphragm Shure and that seemed to come out better.

so what we have at the end of the day is a banjo part made up of 5 takes that i will likely have to redo, at least in places, because it's not quite there yet. but we're making progress, people.

as promised, here is the banjo:

it is a fender. yes, that is a capo on the banjo. yes, i am aware that it is terribly unfashionable to capo a banjo***. no, i do not care.

*guitar 101, for anyone who cares: the truss rod is a metal rod that goes through the length of the neck of a guitar or bass. usually there is a hole at one end or another where you can see the end of the rod, and it's adjustable with an allen wrench. most guitars seem to come with one such wrench. anyway the truss rod controls tension in the neck; so if your action is really bad (strings are really high off of the fretboard) one way to adjust that is to adjust the truss rod, because it's likely that your neck is bowed like a valley from humidity or reckless tomfoolery or something of that nature. necks can also be bowed the other way like a hill and it can cause string buzzing. over-adjustment of the rod can snap the neck, so the first time you adjust it is a terrifying experience. but as with most things, once you do it, you realize it's not so bad. you'd pretty much have to go to town on it to break it in that way. so there you go. guitar 101: the truss rod. :)

**my friend angie had a dog named Banjo. greatest dog name i've ever heard.

***i also have been known to capo an electric guitar, which i'm certain is equally unfashionable. i'm also certain that i don't care in this case either. :)

acoustics: 96% done.

2008-05-19T12:39:00.002-04:00

i worked like mad last week on this stuff, it was fantastic. i finished acoustic rhythm tracks on everything that needed it; there may only be one i might have to redo. then there's an acoustic lead part i have to learn and record for 'rise' but then we should be about done with those, which is great. this also means that all of the songs are basically set up in pro tools files now, so i'm probably most of the way done with garageband, but you never know.

i also worked on some synth parts for 'questions.' originally i just wanted some kind of constant background texture but i haven't been able to find one yet. instead for the moment i've replaced that with a really deep synth thing that sort of carries the bass line in the song. i think it works....but i'm not totally sure yet.

i brought the bass home yesterday, so getting bass done for everything is this week's goal. also i totally got the BANJO yesterday! thank you, joanna. i will take a picture of it later on when i start trying to figure out how to play the part that i'm thinking of on it. so twangy. so nice.

onward and upward...!

...and more.

2008-05-09T17:19:00.004-04:00

yesterday and today i thought more about 'bring it back' and what to do with it. i ended up just sitting down and playing with some drums and did a real basic type of beat that i think will work, and recorded the rough track to be sure. it seems to work okay. still not sure what else i'll add, but this at least can get me started. worked on 'make me whole' also, another that i wasn't planning on doing drums for, but i brought it into garageband for the tempo and the rough track, and to play around with some things that might work. right now i've got a few options that i like; a few heavy-reverb conga beats that work, and one beat that's a simple tambourine driving it. so i'll have to give those another listen next week and see which jumps out as the best anchor. needs to be subtle though...i love the tambourine one but it's just not subtle enough. maybe i can EQ it some and fix that in pro tools.

so that gives a basic idea and/0r basic percussion for just about all the songs, which is nice. i feel like i've hit another milestone, and that feels good. i was planning on going for bass next but i think i'll put that off; i think it will be easier to track bass when there is some more to the song, so i may try to focus on tracking acoustics next week and see how that goes. should get the banjo sunday if all goes well, so i can track that too.

it's been interesting so far at how much thought has to go into where to take the song from the version i wrote with just an acoustic. a vision of what some of them can be pops into my head really easily, or it was just there right away when i wrote it. others seem to almost lend themselves to a specific set of instruments and a specific feel. others still are like riddles i have to figure out. i feel like i'm walking the line between being okay with the ideas i've got and working and reworking an idea until i feel like it's the perfect fit for the song. you could really drive yourself nuts thinking about it, to be honest. i also want them all to feel different in some way besides the chords and lyrics...musically i don't want you to hear a song, then hear another later and go "oh, this is kinda like that other one before." it's a little trickier than it sounds.

i think, though, that once they get a little further along it will be easier to see how different they all sound. i'm also starting to think about things like the order of songs, even though they're not narrowed down yet. there are a few that i feel like will make the cut no matter what, mostly ones i've played out and gotten good response to.

but there is still the big lingering question:

what track goes in the 1 spot?

so important, the 1 spot....i've been thinking about it a lot lately and don't have an answer yet. it may end up being obvious once the songs are closer to finished; but who really knows? still, i gotta admit it's exciting.

forgot to mention this

2008-05-07T17:58:00.002-04:00

but i did worship for a company's prayer day last thursday, which was fun -- just me and the ol' acoustic. the monitor they gave me on the stage was absolutely enormous, i.e. totally awesome. everything was crystal clear and quite loud, in a room with nice wood ceiling stuff, which makes for some inspiring circumstances in which to play. i was quite pleased with it. i snuck "nothing else" into the mix; i really doubt anyone knew that it was my song but it was fun to sneak it in anyway.

rise

2008-05-07T17:47:00.002-04:00

that's what i worked on today -- 'rise'. one of the last two that needed some kind of drums or something. i thought a lot about what i wanted to do with it and today decided that it would be an acoustic driven song. i used to have much love for the acoustic duo type of songs. (as a point of fact, i actually used to only have love for that type of song. :) so i've decided that is more or less what this one will be.

started as usual with the tempo and figured i wanted shaker as the only back beat. i was able to find a premade loop that worked so that was nice. i actually tried combining two shaker loops together but it made it too much; too intense of shaker for what the song needs, i think.

then i recorded the rough track. but since it was done in the middle of the day instead of first thing, it doesn't sound as horrendous as some others i've done. :) then i started hearing lead. ...aaaand then i had to figure out how to play it. so i spent forever figuring out how i wanted the beginning part to sound, since that's the most important part, and then recorded it with many, many screw-ups in it and just noodled through the rest of the track. that gave me a pretty good idea of what types of things i like and want to avoid. also this one repeating thing i came up with works really well for the bridge. so i'm honing it in...just slowly.

speaking of the bridge; i wanted to add strings. i think i've spoken of the garageband strings before being a bit lackluster; it is true. they are. but i put them in there anyway. i think i'll end up cutting them out and doing something else there instead due to high cheese factor, but i'm gonna leave them in so i can hear the final product with them and see what i think then.

so i was basically done setting this one up after that. then i re-listened again just now and am starting to see more of the lead take shape. i also heard a really, really simple percussive beat in the background, which i added, and i think it really helps the feel of the song. pretty happy with it now.

so now just one more to go drum-wise; gotta figure out what the crap i'm going to do with 'bring it back.' i'm thinking once i move on to stuff like bass and acoustic that it will go much faster and that i'll be able to knock a good number of those out each day....exciting. :)

OH and joanna is totally lending me her banjo...! it won't make a widespread appearance on the songs, since i don't really want it in lots of them and then mostly because i've never played a banjo before. but how hard can it be, right? :) but i got the one song with a banjo part in mind.....so good. country and/or western, here i come.

so organized...!

2008-05-05T15:44:00.003-04:00

i did some organizing of what's left to do. since i like organizing things i used this program i've got called OmniFocus which i won't bore you with the details of...but anyway i basically divided songs up by what they need added to them so i can see where i stand. so i've got a list for drums, bass, acoustic, etc, and on each one of those i've got the songs that still need that instrument.

this really helps to see where each song is, and sort of gives me stages to work with. so i'm trying to finish drums for everything first, then bass, and so on. then i can bring home the bass for like a week and do bass tracks for everything that one time and not have to keep bringing it back. it will also help to only have the mics set up for the one thing i'm working on at the time instead of having a bunch set up at once or whatever.

so i realized that between the songs i've already done drums for, and songs that aren't going to have any, that i only really had 4 more songs to do drums for. so i just finished knocking a couple of them out.

i did drums for 'i know' which is a rather poppy little diddy that is currently the number one most likely song to not make it on the album at all, mostly due to it's slight cheesiness in nature. you may say to yourself, "dude, you are writing worship/hopeful/inspirational music anyway -- you're already too high on the cheese meter to worry about that." and to that i say, au contraire, mon frere -- the cheese must still be monitored. not exactly going for typical christian radio fodder here. no offense, but they just make it seem like if you're a christian that everything is great and sunny and safe all the time and it's just not true.

getting back on track.....also did drums for 'are you here?' today, which is an odd little song that only has drums in half of it. it's basically an acoustic song but then all of a sudden it gets all driving and crazy for a bit toward the end. i think i like it but i'm not totally sure how i feel about it.

so all that's left drum wise (i think) are 'bring it back' and one called 'rise.' i'm not sure what i'll do with either one. i have a vague idea for each but these are tricky, especially the former. i think over-production on 'bring it back' could detract from the words, which i don't want, but i could see more behind it than an acoustic, so i don't really know what i'll do there yet. 'rise' i haven't played much at all, so i'll have to fool with it.

this is AWESOME.

2008-04-30T15:21:00.004-04:00

remember that mic i said i'd borrow from the church? the one that was smaller but might be good for acoustics?

it is AWESOME. but let me explain.

the difference is probably not something most would notice, especially in with other instruments. and it is something that you in fact will never notice because you can't hear them side by side. but i did. i recorded the same track for "nothing else" and listened to it next to the one i did with the large diaphragm Shure and the difference is definitely enough to notice. it didn't sound bad before but now....so clean....so crispy.....so warm. mmmm. though it may sound like i'm speaking of some kind of apple pie desert, these are in fact musical terms. ...not real sure about 'crispy' to be honest, but if it's not it should be.

SO. nothing else's guitar is fixed many times over now, which is good. might keep this one simple, so i might only need to redo vocals and that one may be all set.

gonna go do acoustic tracks now for some of the other ones. so excited to have a good sound....!

oh the mic is an AKG C 451 E in case you wanted to know.

drums at the dentist

2008-04-25T11:29:00.001-04:00

my dad needed a wisdom tooth pulled so i took him to the dentist cause i hear you're kinda out of it when you're done and might need someone to drive you home. so here i sit in the surgeon's office. i was going to do work but i have no internet and didn't think to print off what i needed to do from my email. so.....time to work on some drums!

i went ahead and finalized and exported the drums for 'cannot escape' and 'glory to your name', so those two are ready to start building. also i went and redid the drums for 'nothing else' which needed some work; that was the one with the great rim shot sound but i kept it through the whole song and it ended up not being punchy enough. so i fixed that stuff and got it exported too, so its ready to go as well. need to retrack the acoustic in that song also; i don't really know what i was thinking the first time....no dynamics at all.

also worked out a drum idea i had for adding drums to 'bethany's song'. i love how it came out so far and how it sounds in my head with the instruments....i have some great ideas. has a little bit of a country feel. :)

then i messed with some synth sounds for 'questions'. that's the one that's hopefully gonna have the creepy toy piano in it. (i'm making such a big deal out of the piano...watch it doesn't end up being half as cool as i think it will. or worse that it won't fit at all. :) anyway i don't think that song will have any percussion to speak of; i'm thinking it will just be acoustic and possibly have some ambient sounds in the back of it....some kinda noise i think is what will work. so i found a couple that might be okay and saved them in there for later.

i'd really like to do a song with a conga type sound in it....but i'm not sure what song that would fit with. ...not really sure why i brought that up.

also this week i am hoping to borrow a different dynamic mic from the church and try that out on the acoustic to see how it sounds instead of my large diaphragm one. i just have to remember to get it.

also been thinking about the new song (the death one) and how i might go about recording that one. i think i'll just do it acoustic initially and see how that feels. it seems right given its context so we'll see how that turns out.

i forgot.

2008-04-24T13:22:00.002-04:00

big surprise, right? most common phrase in my life.

i'm usually pretty good about writing the same day i do stuff, but i forgot the other day. so here's the other day and today all wrapped up in a nice little package.

drum tracks. now that the mood has struck me once or twice to work on some of this stuff late at night, i've realized there are limitations. obviously i can't track any instruments or vocals at 1 a.m. so i'm limited to either mixing or sequencing instruments. i can work on drums for any song as long as i've figured out the tempo in advance and maybe recorded a placement track...so i figure that maybe from here on out i'll try to go ahead and get the tempo and maybe hats and placers done for every song first so i have them all started. that way i can crank out drums during the quiet hours and not spend the loud hours doing quiet stuff. make sense? brilliant. also we're going on vacation for a week this summer, and if the mood strikes i could sequence some stuff there since all i'd need for that is a pair of headphones.*

anyhoo, with that in mind, between the other day and today i've done the majority of the drums for two new pieces, 'glory to your name' and 'cannot escape'. both are instances (especially the latter) where i've become more excited about the song while i started building them; which is good, as it creates more motivation to work on them further. i am starting to hear some of the electric parts come out now, which is nice. there's nothing worse than not hearing anything and just messing around to find a part.

okay, to be honest there are plenty of things worse than that. and i suppose most of the time it's fun; it's only now and then that it is frustrating.

the whole process seems to be going well overall and moving forward. but the project is so large that it seems to move very slowly since i can't work on it all the time. it occurred to me the other day that i might do well to impose some kind of deadline upon myself -- one more specific than "sometime this year." so here goes thinking out loud till i can come up with one.

i'd really like to have all the home recordings done by early fall so i can get them out and start getting feedback to narrow them down to the final 11 ish. so maybe i'm looking at like late august to mid september. i don't really know when fall starts. but that seems pretty reasonable at the moment.

so there we have it. a deadline. let's see how that works for me.

*through my experience sequencing in garageband on a laptop i have learned this: i cannot build a track without headphones or speakers. i tried it once, building a track just using the small speakers on my computer. it sounded fine. then i put the headphones on and it sounded completely different. the computer speakers just aren't loud enough to hear what everything actually sounds like, so you really can't sequence that way. i bought a pair of nice sony headphones in college on a gift card and its been one of the most useful purchases i've ever made. i would recommend getting a similar pair if you're going to do this stuff.

writing, and uno is almost there

2008-04-18T00:31:00.002-04:00

so i finished up the life after death song today. i had most of the first verse done yesterday and a big chunk of the second that i hated. but today i reworked how the first verse was sung and tweaked some words and i had it. the second verse was scrapped and replaced entirely with much improvement. anyway, it is called 'You Are Never Really Gone' and i believe it is in the key of B. it feels good to have written something new, not to mention finished it. wrote the tab and everything. she's done. *dusts off hands*.

also i just finished redoing the piano part for 'not the end'. i thought i was going to have to redo the whole thing but then i remembered a). i really liked the end pat i already came up with and b). there was really only one or two parts that were really on my nerves. so nothing big, just got rid of the annoying parts and changed a few others for fun.

but do you know what this means?

when i re-import the new piano track to pro tools and effect it a bit, all i have to do is mix down the whole thing (and maybe tweak the final mix some). and if there are no unforseen snags, i will have officially finished the first home recording version of a song! hooray many times. if i am ambitious enough with getting my work done in the morning i could possibly finish it and have some family listen to it tomorrow night. first feedback on a home recording. fantastic. let's hope that can happen. i'll sure try. anxious to give one track the car test.

yep

2008-04-15T17:02:00.003-04:00

worked out some stuff for 'king forever' today; re-tracked vocals, redid one guitar part, deleted another, and added two more. its much closer to where i want it now. it will have to pass the "go back and listen again another day" test but its getting there.

also did vocals for 'beautiful' and re-checked my ebow tracks. i'm actually playing it pretty close to how i want it -- meaning the problem isn't my ability with the slide or the ebow. the problem is that the tone of it is awful, which i'm not sure is a fixable problem outside of buying a new guitar or something. but i haven't played around with redoing it yet and i do have some ideas so we'll see what happens. anyway, the vocals came out pretty well and i toyed with some string sounds for the first time...not sure they really strike me but it's cool that it's there in some capacity. i could possibly hear some toward the end of the song someplace.

then all of a sudden i found myself writing again. i've got a few friends who have lost loved ones this week and one sent an email about it with thoughts which inspired me to take pen in hand. stared at that friggin legal pad for what felt like forever (probably something like an hour and a half plus in reality) and got most of it worked out. tune of the verses and nuances of the chorus and bridge aren't worked out yet, but i don't think it's bad. still toying with first or second person on the chorus part...thinking 2nd, though. which would make the chorus this:

you are never really gone
when your time on earth is done
though it seems like life is over
it has really just begun
for death is not the end
and the sun will shine again
forever wrapped in light
until we meet again

vocal day. kinda.

2008-04-02T16:36:00.008-04:00

decided to bite the bullet and go for some vocals today.

my first discovery was that in pro tools it doesn't seem to matter when you add the compressor into the loop; if you run it while you record or after (on my basic LE system, anyway) it seems to be all the same. i think on the higher end ones you can run that software stuff while you record (so you could hear the compressor or reverb or something while you record) but my mbox gets a lot of latency on it (delay between what you play and what you hear) if i try to do that, so it doesn't work. now i am certain that you're bored. so let's move on.

the first couple attempts weren't too stellar, both with my voice and the compression settings. so i spent some time doing some research online about vocal recording techniques and changed my compression settings a little. but the biggest thing was that i think i was standing way too close to the mic, which was causing it to peak much more quickly. so once i backed off like 3-5 more inches.....magic.

the sound is much better. i had to remix most everything since the instruments were mixed to themselves and not the vocal, so their levels were all too high. but i'm definitely pretty pleased with the results i've gotten now.....feeling pretty good about doing vocals now. not that they are perfect or anything...but i'm feeling good.

with that said, i did vocals for great, we live, nothing else, not the end, and king forever, all at one time or another today. some of them might even be keepers. in fact 'not the end' came out so well that that song might almost be finished....! making it the first recording to be completed. i have to mix it down and listen to it against some other stuff to see how the level is....but i think its almost there and that's terribly exciting!

on a side note i figured i'd take a few pictures of the makeshift studio for your enjoyment:

here it is, in all it's glory. bad lighting, i know. its better in real life.

here is where i do vocals. you might remember it from such other pictures as the one above. note the hi-tech use of the chip clip to hold the lyrics on the stand. nice.

the dreaded Ebow: totally awesome but totally hard to get the tone you want. i think the guitar's crappy pickups are more to blame, but i didn't want to take a picture of those.

so there you have it. i really do try to include pictures whenever i can because it makes things more interesting....but lots of times there really just isn't much to take a picture of. but i tell you what: from this point on i will try to have at least one picture in at least every other post. kind of a "picture of the day" or "picture of the whenever i feel like it". how's that strike ya? good? good. me too. me too.

bass. no, not the fish.

2008-03-31T16:03:00.003-04:00

i added bass to the following songs: we live, great, nothing else. all came out fine after a few takes. bass really isn't that hard to play basically if you can play the guitar. playing interesting and/or innovative bass is of course hard. but most of the time i'd rather have a simple bass player than an overplayer if you know what i'm sayin. which is good cause i'm only a simple one.

'we live' sounds fantastic with the bass in it...as suspected it really fills out the feel of it. there may be a few spot parts i need to redo in it, but its basically there. since i did that one first and it is so fast everything else sounded so slow afterward. 'great' is in need of overhaul on the electric parts...but now i've got something in mind that should work much better.

oh....and i listened to the ebow part on 'beautiful' again and i was right with my prediction: upon second listening, it sounds like absolute crap and isn't even close to what was in my head. that could end up being really tricky to pull off.

so what's next? i think i've decided vocal day needs to come sooner rather than later. it's a mixture of just wanting some of these to be close to finished and the fact that i think it might be easier to see what goes with the song lead/fill wise more easily if vocals are done first. since the vocals basically are what they are and the leads are something i have to come up with, it makes sense to have the vocals in there first, cause you don't want leads that clash with what the singers are singing. make sense?

i've been figuring out as i go what the best order is for me to record in, and it's been tweaked a bunch already. but this is how it will look after today:

- drums
- synth
- bass or rhythm guitar
- vocals
- lead parts

i think that makes the most sense.

oh, also

2008-03-28T16:37:00.003-04:00

there is this one part in a song i have called 'questions' where i hear a really specific instrument: a toy piano. its kind of a haunting song and there is this one part that is just screaming for a creepy toy piano sound. so....does anyone have a toy piano? not that anyone really reads this....but i'm going to start asking around. i don't think garage band has a good toy piano sound.

its all happening

2008-03-28T16:28:00.003-04:00

things moved along nicely again today. finished up the drums for 'nothing else', got it into pro tools, and tracked the acoustic. then i ignored it for the rest of the day and worked on 'we live' instead. i just listened to it again though and i think i need to redo the acoustic....i don't think i played it right toward the beginning.

now 'we live' was an interesting experience, and is what i spent the majority of the day on. this is definitely the fastest song i've written and so it was my first attempt at building a pretty intense drum track. it clocks in at a speedy 158 bpm, which is pretty darn fast. this is also the first song i'm doing that has no acoustic guitar in it at all, which is also different. i still recorded the rough placement track with the acoustic which was weird, and it took while to figure out what sort of feel i wanted in each section. the bridge part slows down to this half-time thing and i think there can be some cool fill stuff in there. but anyway, i tracked electric rhythm and even worked out a lead part after several attempts. i'll say this: when you don't play lead all the time, coming up with something and then getting good enough record it without making any mistakes involves a lot of takes. but i think i've got it where i want it now.

there's still more work to do on it; more lead stuff, some fills in the bridge and vocals of course. but i'm pretty excited about this one now. also since i didn't have the bass at home this week none of these songs have bass yet; and this one i'm particularly excited to work out a bass part because i think it will really fill this one out. i'm going to get it sunday and hopefully do bass for all these next week.

don't look now - but i'm doing stuff.

2008-03-26T16:34:00.003-04:00

so yeah, i'm on the move again.

a little while back i had started the drums for 'great' and got them mostly finished. so yesterday i took all that into pro tools and started building that one out instrumentally. i have this great synthy-thing that i put in it that i really like. now the whole thing is basically done except for bass (which i have to get from church again) and vocals, and maybe another lead track.

i also built the base garage band file for 'beautiful' but forgot i really don't want any drums or synth in it, so it was kind of dumb to do that to begin with. so i went to pro tools and tracked the acoustic today and took my first few takes of the infamous ebow part. it seems to have come out pretty well; i combined it with my delay pedal and got pretty freaking close to the sound in my head, which is pretty amazing i feel like; i mean how often can you really match what's in your head? so i took a few takes and tweaked them a little and i think i'm happy with them for now. it could easily be something i listen to tomorrow or whenever and go "how did i think that sounded good" but we'll see.

after those two i think its ready for vocals; i'm not sure about adding any more instruments to that one. i've toyed with the idea of adding some organ to it but that might be too much. might do light bass but not much else.

then to top it off i started building the drums for 'nothing else', which is the next one i'll tackle. i ended up making a really good reverby rim-shot sound for the snare which i'm terribly excited about. is that weird? that those are the things i get excited about? cool sound effects?

as far as vocals go i think i've decided to try and do several at once and have sort of a vocal recording day. that might be a huge mistake. but this is live and learn, people. i'm no kinda expert.

moments

2008-03-06T16:15:00.003-05:00

writing has not happened in quite some time. maybe its just that i'm busy with work, and what little time i spend doing music i am working out these arrangements and recordings and not thinking about writing. but its not happening. its not bad per se, it just got me thinking.

its as if most writing happens in a moment. sure there are some ideas that have to be worked and reworked to gain their final form, but they all seem to start back at one moment -- with an idea. something that jumps out or inspires or what have you.

i'm still learning how i myself process and harness these moments but it seems like my mind does something specific that i can't put my finger on. its like i know when i hear something that in there, somewhere, is something that i need to draw out. and with my memory being what it is, i have to draw it out right there or i miss it. and then i forget it.

there are some ideas i've captured in the moment that, when i have time to come back and revisit them, have lost something. its like whatever strong connection i had with that word or idea or phrase was lost when i left the moment and i can't seem to recover it. some of the sticky notes or napkins i've come back to are this way.

today in the car i had one but i was distracted by something else, so i let it go. and now its gone and i'm here trying to put my finger on the urgency that comes with inspiration. i think in this writing i'm figuring out that i need to be purposefully vigilant about these moments and not let them pass.

i am certain i'm being slightly more dramatic than i need to be, but that makes the blog more interesting, no? :) besides, i really do think i'm onto something here.

almost like i have to drop everything and try to work out enough pieces that i can come back to it later and still see how they fit together; that i can return to what i felt in the moment. i've done this before somehow to be sure, but maybe it was luck or an accident.

i'm sure like anything there are some people for whom all this comes very naturally. but that is rare; for most of us you gotta work at something to get better at it. experiment. hone your craft. embrace inspiration when it comes.

light week! ...so far.

2008-02-26T17:29:00.003-05:00

should be a light work week...and that means musical progress.

i didn't get a ton done today but here's what i did:

- relistened to my recordings of 'king forever' and 'not the end' to see how i felt about them after it had been awhile. the former is still missing something and needs parts of the vocals redone. the latter needs vocal work too, but it is just about where i want it musically. its pretty minimalist as far as arrangement goes, but i was thinking when i listened to it today that i really like the song -- and that is rare.

- figured out tempo and did placement tracks for the next two songs i'm tackling, which are 'beautiful' and 'great', not necessarily in that order. its been nice to jump between a couple if i get stuck on one.

- figured out/practiced the ebow part that got stuck in my head for 'beautiful'. as if the ebow wasn't tricky enough it also requires the use of a slide, which i have zero experience playing. if my head hears increasingly complicated parts that i have to figure out it might drive me nuts. :)

- did some reading about vocal recording and the use of a compressor. interesting reading. on vocal takes so far i had set the input gain on the mic based on what i thought the loudest note in the song was and went from there. not bad except the rest of the song is much quieter and really only the loud part is in the ideal decibel range. then i added compression stuff afterward which comes out okay but you can tell something was done to the vocals. so what i think i can do is run the compressor while i'm recording instead of afterward; which hopefully will let the vocals stay in the ideal range most of the time and then only compress when i hit the high stuff. i'm sure i'll have to play around with it awhile before it works, but i'm hoping it will yield better results than my other tries.

so anyway, not bad for a day's work. hope to get much more done this week.

if you put a cow on a professional sound system

2008-02-18T16:03:00.007-05:00

it would still sound like a cow; only it would be a really loud, bassy, awesome cow.

i got to play at a college conference in gatlinburg tennessee this past weekend and it was the most pro sound setup i've ever played on. i played at some kind of festival in downtown douglasville georgia once also, but their equipment didn't seem quite as good as the stuff here. maybe the difference between indoors and outdoors, who knows.

the guys who ran the setup were really friendly and they made us sound great. i'd played with most of the band guys before, but some i hadn't, and we lived all over the place so basically had to come together and practice for like a day and a half before the conference. it was stressful but it came together quite well.

anyway stuff sounds loads better on a nice system like that. it was quite a treat to play there. i played 'king forever' there and what little response there was seemed to be okay. they must have liked us because we got invited back to do it again next year.

my voice hasn't often been subjected to that amount of stress between all the practicing and singing we did from thursday to sunday...so it got kinda hoarse in there a few times. i think i should start looking into how to treat my voice the best in those situations...vocal warmups and stuff like that. i have a few friends who are voice coaches so i'm going to ask them what their advice is for the future.

anyway we head to mexico tomorrow and are going to play a little bit down there too so i hope my voice is back up to snuff by wednesday or so.

then when i'm back hopefully after a few more work projects get finished i can get back into recording again. also i really would like to write some more but haven't had the inspiration hit hard yet. so maybe some of that can happen too.

here's a picture for you from gatlinburg. i'm the white glow in the middle.

** as you can see i added a 'playing live' category on the right there; that way it will be easier for you to keep track of my thoughts when i play some of this stuff live. **

i am so productive

2008-02-06T17:07:00.000-05:00

today at least. i had a light work day and i actually spent 75% of the day on music. those two usually don't line up. but today my friend, the stars (sun?) aligned perfectly.

this morning i tweaked 'king forever' some more to where i'd say i'm about 87% satisfied. i am ranking on a scale of 0% to 95%, as i doubt i'll ever be 100% satisfied with a home recording. but alas.

the remaining 8% will likely consist of redoing the vocals and adding another electric track or two to fill it out.

after that i started 'not the end'. i built a new shaker loop for it in garage band, and it was considerably easier than last time to get it to loop right. maybe i just had more rhythm today or something, who knows. then i decided that this song would be the first to feature piano. so i built that in garageband too.

i won't lie to you, i really like how it came out. of course again the vocals could be redone to be better, but like king forever they're decent. maybe i'll have a day where i just redo vocals for everything.

either way, that means i basically finished a whole song in one day, which is awesome. i'm not sure which one i'll tackle next, but i'll let you know. in fact i might even begin to post some snippets up here....

onward

2008-02-05T19:40:00.000-05:00

i basically retracked everything i'd done in 'king forever' today. sometimes the obsessive perfectionism that i have with this stuff drives me nuts. to be sure it sounds better now...but probably not enough for anyone but me to notice.

also had a first try at tracking vocals today. i did 3 takes and they all sound pretty good considering my inexperience with it. its kinda frustrating not to know all the ins and outs of how to make everything sound the best it could (like all the tricks the studio monkeys know) but i was pretty satisfied. i generally always add a little bit of reverb, but then today i was also trying to EQ my voice also to give it a little better presence.

all in all i was fairly satisfied but i wasn't knocked over about it; which was a little bit depressing. but then later when bethany heard it she reminded me that this is the song we've both heard the most; we've both done it with a band many times now and so really it doesn't sound a whole lot different than that as a whole. so it will be more interesting when i take a song we haven't done live yet and work on that....so i'm looking forward to the next song now. :) but there's still a few more things i want to add to this one before i'll call it 'worthy of letting people hear it.' man, that part will be tough for sure.