[4/3] Taking a break from my own stuff; did some work producing "My Bravest Smile", a song by Dan Pelletier. This weekend I recorded bass, guitar and drums, and did a rough mix.
[3/10] Ok, I declare the Anatomy bass part finished. I started playing with acoustic guitar for this track, got some ideas, but I can see that in order to play simple parts that don't step on the other tracks I'm going to have to compose it section by section (like I did with the bass). I'll come back to this later; I get tired of working on the same song forever. Started to play with revising the bass on "Truest Kind of Lie", to make the song sound lighter.
[2/2 to 2/14] Continued composing and recording "Anatomy of Love" bass parts, whenever I can find the time. More to do, still working on getting the right feel.
[1/23] Played the new songs last night at the BeanRunner, including "Five Foot Four Girl in a Ten Foot U-Haul Truck" Our friend J. had sent us a change-of-address email; she was down-sizing, and signed it as "Five foot four person in a ten foot U-Haul truck". I replied, "Sounds like a great song title ... but what rhymes with truck"? She responded, "Luck". So I wrote the song, didn't tell her, and we surprised her with it at the concert. And now the story can be told.
[1/16] Finished writing a new song, "Now That I Have You", and recorded a guitar/vocal demo so that Barbara can learn it. (Barbara didn't like the verses, and actually I wasn't too happy with them either, so I re-wrote the words and music, and now we both like them.) We'll be playing at the BeanRunner Cafe on 1/22, and I like to have new songs - which often means a last-minute rush to finish something I've been working on and then teach it and rehearse it. Unfortunately, now Barbara is sick and can barely speak. When we're rehearsing, she has to whisper the lyrics.
[1/10 - 1/15/2012] Sick... watched a lot of TV.
[12/29 - 12/30] Started composing the bass part for "Anatomy of Love". Recorded a new lead vocal for "Truest Kind of Lie" and recorded the lead vocal for "Doctor Bones". We're struggling with demo-itis on "Truest Lie"... the demo version sounded better than the final version, which seemed plodding and heavy. That's why we went back and re-recorded the lead vocal; I think we're on the right track now. Also, thanks to Bill's custom pre-amp, the sound quality is much better, beautiful and clean.
[12/17] Recorded the 2nd acoustic guitar for "Five Foot Four Girl in a Ten Foot U-Haul Truck".
[12/11] Excellent session with keyboardist Cary Brown! We laid down tracks for "Doctor Bones" (organ), "Loch Ness Cafe" (organ and piano) and "Ten Rooms" (organ and piano).
[12/4 - 12/6] Things are moving along again. I finished editing the lead vocal and two acoustic guitar tracks for "Ten Rooms" and started composing the bass part. Also, we're tracking the lead vocal for "Doctor Bones". It's a hard song to sing, and Barbara hasn't performed in a while, so we've been laying down several takes each day, and it keeps getting better, but it's not there yet. It reminds me of something I read about the Beatles' "Abbey Road" sessions: McCartney wanted a knock-your-socks-off screaming vocal for "Oh, Darling!" and he couldn't seem to get it to his satisfaction, so he showed up early to each recording session and laid down a couple of takes. Eventually he got the one he was happy with. Well done, Paul!
Also, Bill Philbrick (who engineered our first CD and co-wrote "She's Cool") was kind enough to loan us a high-end microphone and pre-amp to play with, so we've been doing various recording tests. The pre-amp sounds great so we're trying to squeeze in some real tracking before we have to return the equipment.
[11/7] I wanted to post three more songs from the archives on our Free Songs page; I couldn't find a mix of "I Don't Understand Boys", so I went back to the original tracks (from ADAT) and remixed it - sounds cool! And I was also able to improve a really old recording of "Cowboy Song", but lead vocals, guitar and two fiddles had all been bounced to one track so I couldn't really balance or EQ the song properly.
[10/29 - 10/31] Storm - no power!
[10/27] Final mixing of "Monty's Room" and "Guilty (With An Explanation)", with Rob. Hooray! - it's only been five years (!) since we started mixing these. I think they sound really nice.
[9/25] Finished "Monty" recording. Now I'm preparing the tracks for mixing, doing the final editing and setting levels etc. so I won't have to spend time doing this in Rob Morsberger's studio when we mix in a couple of weeks.
[9/5] More "Monty" faux pedal steel guitar. Finished 3rd verse; still need to do the outro.
[8/30] More work on "Monty" faux pedal steel guitar. It will probably take one more session to complete this part.
[8/13] Finished "Monty" MIDI piano tweaking (which made a big difference). Started working on the final touch: by playing my stratocaster with a volume pedal, sometimes blending two tracks of this, I'm getting a sound that's very close to a pedal steel. It's really sounding nice.
[8/2] Mostly finished "Monty's Room" piano; need to tweak the MIDI file a bit on account of all thumbs.
[7/21] Editing lead vocals for "Ten Rooms" and re-recording piano for "Monty's Room". (The original piano track was recorded a long time ago using a really awful-sounding sample and a non-velocity-sensitive keyboard.) Finished the melody for the new song and started recording a demo.
[7/11] Comp'd the acoustic guitar for "Waiting On You" - there will be two acoustic guitars, one hard left and the other hard right. Met with Rob Morsberger to prepare for final mix of two songs, "Monty's Room" and "Guilty (With an Explanation)". Met with keyboardist Cary Brown to plan piano and organ parts for three songs, "Ten Rooms", "Doctor Bones" and "Fullness of Time". Mostly finished the music for "Five Foot Four Girl in a Ten Foot U-Haul Truck", will need to finalize the melody. Recorded lead vocals for "Ten Rooms".
[6/26] Recorded acoustic guitar for "Waiting On You" (see 5/11 below). The rest of the song is sketched out with scratch tracks. Parts of the song sound to me like Steely Dan meets "Brandy You're a Fine Girl".
[6/16] Finished the lyrics to another new song, "Five Foot Four Girl in a Ten Foot U-Haul Truck"... no music yet.
[5/11] Just finished a new song, inspired by overhearing a guy on 34th street on his cell phone saying, "What the f#ck you doing while I'm standing here waiting on you?" Clearly destined to be a hit. The process was pretty much as usual: I started with some words and an idea of the melody/feel in my head, fleshed out the words and got some feedback from songwriters Joe Giacoio and Dan Pelletier, made a few revisions, ignored some advice, then worked on finalizing the melody and chords.
The music for the bridge was not happening, but I returned to it on a different day and a very nice one came to me. (This is always a challenge, but a bridge that's as tuneful and hooky as the chorus is a delight...as any Beatles fan knows.)
Fired up the studio (had not used it for a while) and started to record scratch tracks, to work out the parts. My goal once again is to try to get this thing tracked without taking forever - good luck! And I believe it's time to put the air conditioner in the studio window.
* * *
Since we came up with the idea of posting songs from our archives, I've been going back through my tapes again, to identify what's been digitized as opposed to what's decaying on reel tapes or cassettes. My current resolution is to spend some time on a regular basis transferring songs from reel tape to the computer.
Does anyone actually want to hear this stuff? I don't know. Maybe my descendents. But someone will have to reconvert the recordings so they play on the quantum computer.
