Well… the project is taking off in a whole new direction.  Just when you thought it was safe… 

The songs that we were working with before, including those I posted here a bit ago, have been put on the back burner for now.  Instead…and I’m

REALLY EXCITED

about this…were going to take three or four of Michael’s favorites and record them from the ground up.

Michael is such a great player and has written a ton of great material, but is also (and I hope he’ll forgive me for letting this particular cat out of the bag) a crazy perfectionist…which puts him in a tough spot when he has to split his attention between the technical side of recording, and the great performances he’s creating.  In the end, in the words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, “It’s always something…”.   Mic placement, EQ, a little tuning thing here, a little mixing thing there…not enough one guy to go around to take care of every detail in his big ol’ perfectionist heart.  

So what really excites me is the prospect of being able to collaborate with him from the beginning to end of the process…take away all the technical issues and leave him in a place full of right-brain. In fact, if I really offer anything unique at my place in this day and age of “everyone has a home recording studio”, it’s the ability and the willingness to put the artist in the right space to create something special…to take meticulous care of all the technical details in a relaxed way, so that it just feels like sittin’ around playin’ and singin’ (pickin’ and grinnin’).

We met on Thursday and, besides experimenting for a while to get just the right mics on his guitar (we settled on a matched pair of Rode NT5 s), we laid down the basic acoustic guitar groove for a tune called “Lovely and Wonderful”.

Now, I’m not sure that it is all that interesting to anyone but me, but I said earlier that I would try and show the development of each little part of the project so I’m posting a few tracks in an attempt to do that very thing…

…enjoy!   I know I am…

This is just an eight bar section from the top of the tune.  I’ve already comped together the various takes into a pair of tracks panned hard right and left.  No treatment other than that…just Mike and the mics.

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Now, the same eight bars with a little EQ, courtesy of TC Electronics’ EQSat plug-in.

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Now a little double delay from a stereo bus and panned toward the center.

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And here’s the whole tune, incorporating all the stuff from above, and adding a little Tumba and a couple of shaker tracks (played by yours truly…probably will end up being placeholder tracks…if not, I’ll need to do a little more work on ‘em)

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We work again on Tuesday, and are looking to get the electric guitar and bass guitar laid in…

…cool.

Having a meeting tonight with Michael to set up a game plan for the next few weeks. We’ll hopefully start to pin down a song list for the album and take stock of where we are with each tune.

We will be having beer while we talk, so who knows how far we will get.

One thing that we have talked about that seems like it might be a go, is reworking the groove in a tune called I’ll Be on the synth as opposed to the electric guitar. I thought I would put up a little snippet of the top the tune as it stands right now (with the guitar figure), then put up the synth thing next to it (when I get the synth thing done, of course)…

…then you make the call…

…I think it’s gonna be kinda happenin’

Well…what the hell? I’m sure I’ve lost my way with this whole website thing. I’ve been working at getting the site itself up for weeks. Now, don’t get me wrong…I like how it’s turning out, but the problem is undoubtedly obvious if you have been to the site.

A website is supposed to have some sort of content…yes, I’m sure I read that somewhere. Now, maybe…and I’m just spitballing here…maybe me, as the site designer, has an obligation to ACTUALLY PUT SOMETHING ON THE SITE AND NOT JUST PRETTY PICTURES AND GRAPHICS.

How do people have time for all this…?

I promise to at least put some contact information on the “Contact Us” page, for *&#*^@#$% sake!!

HEEEeeeelllpp!

Hey, hey, HEY!!!

We’re finally starting to get some stuff going on around here that is “blog-worthy”!!  The other project that is currently in the works is the re-vamping of Rock of Frontrange Church as they move into their new space at the old Avalon in Boulder…another post to follow soon (with pics, I hope).

But…right now the big news is that a good friend and extremely talented artist has hooked up with The RECreation Center to develop his latest work.  We haven’t even had our first official meeting yet…but he did send over a few of the tracks he would like to develop for this soon-to-be-happenin’ album.

He gave me the thumbs up for posting some of this stuff on the blog about…oh…five minutes ago…so I’m postin!

I thought maybe folks would like to follow the development, so I will try to post at least once a week with a progress report.

This tune is titled “Frozen”, and is kinda foremost in my mind right up front.  Love the hook, and the elec. guitar solo stuff…of course, there’s lots to come…vocals, drums, maybe doubling the rhythm guitar….  The breakdown thing about 2/3 thru makes me think Pink Floyd a little.  We’re gonna talk about developing that bit to stand a little more on it’s own and then cutting it in kinda like the AM radio effect in “Wish You Were Here”…we’ll see.

Anyway, check it out…RSS us…enjoy the ride!

…well…here I go.  This little blog category is really just for my own amusement, or something like that.  I have been working on getting this website up for what seems like a year, and I thought I would list things that I have discovered in the process.

I’ve learned that…

1. …WYSIWYG is bullshit…What I see is my ineptitude as a graphic artist and web designer…what I get is tired and frustrated.
2. …only idiots try to make an animated logo from scratch when they have no idea what they are doing.
3. …if you spend all your time making a website…you’ll never get your business started.
4. ..the moment you write support…you’ll figure out how to do whatever you wrote them about.
5. …when you just lost 32 files that you forgot to backup…you should immediately have a beer.

And my favorite lesson so far…

• NetObjects 9 will occasionally, and for no particular reason, give you the error message “Damaged objects have been found on page and will be deleted”.  At which point, just to be thorough I guess, NetObjects will erase your entire site.  At this point…see #5 above.

Well…off to do more research…bring me an IPA.