April 2008
1 post
"Official" Kentucky Release Date...
“Kentucky” will be “officially” released on Tuesday, June 3rd and will be available digitally at all major download stores (iTunes, eMusic, Amazon MP3, etc) and physically through the Collar City Records Store. Stay tuned for some fun ways of procuring the record…. Oh, also, I launched Kentucky Deluxe for those who pre-ordered the record in April. I’m slowly...
March 2008
3 posts
Official
According to the RPM folks, “Kentucky” was received on 3/3! Excellent, certainly. This week has been tied up in trying to figure out release ideas, artwork, and general recording decompressing. I think one more pass at mastering will be in order and then this thing should be ready for sharing online. The artwork is turning out excellent! I am using an image from Jason...
Thanks for listening...
… and paying attention to this journal! The whole project was a great exercise and to be able to look back at this journal is (and will be) invaluable in the future. The plan is to keep writing here as I continue to work on more recording projects I have lined up for the next few months. Stay tuned for that, and more information about “Kentucky” as I dot all the...
February 2008
25 posts
Finished.
It’s done… stick a fork, plug the meter, rope the chain, bathe the baby, etc. A few mastering fixes may be in order before it is unleashed upon the world, but.. stay tuned right here… more “Kentucky” teases on the way…
Sighing...
I don’t want to jump ahead, but it feels like the record is finished. Mastering scheduled for later today… I feel very done with it. Ready to move forward. I purchased a few new toys for the “studio” today. Seems like this journal will continue once the challenge is over.
Thirteenth Hour
Thirteen hours at the helm yesterday. Pretty sure it’s time to start mixing. I’ve been “mixing” as I went along as far as tightening up entrances and exits of parts, but finally pulling up the songs on borrowed monitors was quite a shock. Apparently those headphones I love to listen to (pre-recorded) music on are a bit lacking in the bass and super high end regions. I...
Your Only Memory
A twelve hour day down here comes to an end. The goal was to have all the music recorded so that tomorrow would be strictly mixing and tweaking things. Unfortunately, two of the newer songs need some more work so tomorrow is an extra long work day. This record will be finished soon.
Break / First
Taking a break from the “real” Marathon Day #1 (tomorrow being Marathon Day #2)… feels like another song was dropped from the final list due to general quality issues and my inability to bandaid it to a place where it would fit. Spent the first few hours of today working on a new piece that will most definitely work as the first track. It’s the thirteenth ProTools folder...
Cuts
Two “ideas” (/songs) were cut from the list today. One was to be an instrumental piece based on a looped chord pattern drenched in reverb. Sparked from the desire to commemorate a recent birth in our close “family”, I realize now that I cannot put such an event into music at this time. Replacing it is a different instrumental piece that was conceived today. This piece...
You have the face of a man spread thin over three...
Despite being so close to finishing the goal (well, at least the recording part of it…), I am feeling like I need to try a few new song ideas. Any reasonable human would stop now and start mixing, but am I reasonable?
Fever Pitch
Eight days, thirteen hours remain! All is moving along fine. Tons of edits, vocal layers, scrapping, starting over, yawning in front of the mic, fear, thinking, not thinking, hoping, enjoying. Goal: mix everything by Monday. ”Mastering” early next week… All the while trying to come up with packaging and promotion ideas… I hope you will be surprised by this record. I...
Laughing at Myself
I spent a good part of the end of my session today laughing at the stuff I was coming up with. On one of the earlier-ly conceived songs, tentatively “Threadbare”, I ended up writing a few ridiculous lines — lines and meters I’d never messed with before. Not sure if I will have the guts to include the song or even finish it at this point, but I wondered if I sounded...
Productive Day
How I was able to start, complete and record two songs’ worth of lyrics today I’ll never know. Today also marked the day where I can claim that there are now 10 different ProTools folders on my laptop. With 13 days left to finish recording, mix and master I can only hope that these ten ideas will prove themselves to be worthy of bring included on the record. Some shows to attend this...
An exercise
Among the challenges in this challenge is the exercise of harnessing moments of inspiration. As Philip Pullman says here (on writing), “…if you’re going to write anything that will last - you have to realise that a lot of the time, you’re ging to be writing without inspiration. The trick is to write just as well without it as with.” For this recording project...
Tunnel
The “juggling ten spinning plates” analogy is appropriate at this point. Looks like we are nearing the halfway mark! (Friday?) I am confident that I will finish, but I am unsure as to how many sleepless nights I will need to get this where I’d like it to be. Ideas keep coming, so all is not lost — just busy.
Tools
There hasn’t been any “technical” talk here. Not on purpose, I suppose? Besides the challenge of writing, recording, mixing, and mastering this record, I am also faced with the challenge of learning ProTools on my own for the first time. An MBox2 has been sitting in my house for just over a year now and it has simply collected dust. There was a brief brush with PT at the end...
Finishing the Unfinished
It’s this overwhelming feeling that nothing is finished. There are six song ideas going and going and it’s difficult to move forward for any new ideas until at least one or two of them have their parts completely committed. What does #1 need? Should I put more vocals on #2? What’s wrong with #5? More lyrics! More lyrics! There’s still progress though… some...
Re-thinking thinking
What a severely obsessive project this is turning out to be. When I am not able to be locked in the first floor room working on the record, I am constantly thinking about it. I am a little concerned that I have not met my goal of three completed songs per week - however, there are two that are nearly finished, two with decent starts and one that needs a ton of work. So in some ways I am a...
Some inspirations:
Since music was not recorded today, perhaps a sharing of some recent listenings: Bon Iver: witness “For Emma, Forever Ago” (out 2/19)… a huge inspiration for this recording. Why?: some songs from “Alopecia” (out 3/11) have made their way to my ears. Wild, and excellent. Subtle: revisiting “A New White” and some songs from the subsequent releases....
Wednesday
A productive day! I was ready to throw in the towel on the previously mentioned “restrictions” I have challenged myself to… but, again, solutions keep revealing themselves. Found a sincere ballad where there wasn’t one. Wild octave bass was laid. Still some words to find and some overdubs in order to meet my “3 song a week” quota.
Guilty
I feel a little guilty having taken yesterday completely off from recording. Probably for the best, being two intense days in. So many ideas as to what to do with everything once it is finished — need to finish first. Today is a “real life” work day and a voting day… hopefully more later tonight…
The Censor
The biggest challenge of the challenge (for me) is to battle that inner censor that is telling me “that lyric is awful”. I’m finding that starting with a completely blank slate (all new music, loops, beds) and focusing (squeezing) on the task at hand I am able to get further (about a verse and a half in) than in my past attempts at writing. The songs (so far) are drastically...
Day Two
Decent night’s rest - I am procrastinating. Trying to conjure some lyrics, some sounds, some ideas. The biggest battle is overcoming that “safety net” I have so permanently attached.
'Night
And day one of writing / recording comes to a close… Song #2 was an old theme that came to mind when seeking some more bed stuffing. Passed through a pitch shifter, it became a watery, clunky lament. Adding a few more harmelodies and an alternate chord structure, it feels like it will either become some sort of instrumental, or simply die out and become unfinished. Feels as if the...
4:09 PM
Mid-way through song #1 —- need a break, perhaps just some food. Spent a few hours laying beds and some edits. I am hearing some loud things entering somewhere. Will need to address that. Need that octave pedal, too. A trip to Parkway is in order.
Day One Start
After reading a few more pages of “His Dark Materials” and a bowl of oatmeal I’m ready to go!
1 tag
An "Album" Begins...
A nice way to kick off the inspiration wheel for 29 28 days of recording an album is to witness an excellent Neko Case & Eric Bachmann show. Despite the reviewer’s poo-pooing their looseness and lack of uptempo pseudo country numbers, the show was amazing, endearing and perfectly human. The 4 or 5 new songs the band played were a good sign for a great follow-up to “Fox Confessor...