Pre-Studio (Part 1)

Mark and I met with Mike last night at his studio. Mike has been a friend of ours since college (OOOOH so long ago) and his talent knows no bounds. I remember meeting him in college and listening to him play guitar; being blown away by his great playing. THEN I come to find out that he's actually a drummer, not a guitar player, and he's apparently better at drums than guitar. I wanted to defenestrate myself right there. And yet here we are, many moons later, and Mike is playing drums for us.

We went through all of the songs with Mike, giving him our ideas on what we were looking for. Most importantly, we told Mike that we wanted him to put his own signature on the music. Neither Mark nor I can wait to hear what he comes up with.

At first, Mike was a little skeptical at how difficult the music was going to be. He remembers the music Mark and I wrote in Ransomed Soul and Amsterdam respectively. Especially with Amsterdam the music was very progressive and laden with time and tempo changes. As Mike was the engineer and co-producer for those demos, he was expecting quite a bit of technical chaos. Much to his surprise, however, the music was not as bad as he thought, and he didn't think it would take very long to come up with some great parts. Needless to say we're very excited to hear what he comes up with.

So in the meantime, Mark and I have the task of finishing Awaken The Man. Wish us luck!

Rockin' and Rollin'

Last night was a good session. I feel like we're definitely getting back on track after so many computer problems. Mark is still having the computer problems, so for the time-being we're working at my pad.

We worked on the song Awaken the Man to start things off. There was a problem with the mellotron track; I believe that whatever is causing Mark's 'puter woes was the cause for this blunder. It took me over two hours to get the track fixed, just in time for Mark to arrive. We didn't get too much new stuff done with ATM, but it was nice to get re-acquainted with the song after some time away from it. Mark came up with a very nice idea for the chorus, so we put down some guide vocal tracks for that.

I recently purchased the new "Akoustik Piano" software synth from Native Instruments. This is a modeling synth that has samples of four great pianos. I let Mark play around with it a little bit to get an idea of how it sounds, and leave it to him to come up with a new song after farting around on it for three minutes. While he was playing around with the chord progression, I came up with a very dark lyrical concept. I even came up with a few good lines and melodies as well. (Go figure...) Mark seemed to like it, so we ran with it. I'm not sure if this is going to make the CD or not, but it will certainly make some CD in the future.

We're also meeting with Mike about the drum tracks on Sunday... stay tuned.

Yes, We're Still Alive

I realize it's been a while since we've updated our loyal fans (both of you) as to what is going on. We've been having a lot of trouble with Mark's recording computer; one thing after another keeps going screwy, and needless to say it's been quite frustrating and creatively-stifling. Mark is going to try another Sonar reinstall to see if that helps. In the meantime...

We've been creating click tracks for our completed songs, to give to Mike (our resident drummer) for recording. Mark and I are very much looking forward to Mike's amazing drum work. We will hopefully be handing them off to him soon. The time he'll be taking to work on the drum parts should give us enough time to fix Mark's computer, finish up Awaken The Man and some other loose ends for a few songs, and then head into the studio for Mike's drum recording.

Be patient with us, folks... we're getting there slowly but surely.

More of the same

Did some more work on "ATM" on Thursday; shuffled some parts around, wrote some lyrics, made a few cuts, replacements, re-arrangements... not a whole lot to report, but progress continues.

Man, this is gonna be a long song.

We Continue to Awaken the Man…

Worked some more on our newest song last night. As we were arranging, we added a few new parts as they came to us - most notably a really groovy hard rock guitar part that materialized out of thin air while Josh was jamming on my Toronado. It has a bit of a King's X vibe to it (which I'm all about, being a huge fan). Some new chord changes also were written to reprise and expand upon some from earlier in the song; they're in the midst of being fully arranged.

We're already closing in fast on 11 minutes of music, and no end is in sight. There's still "a bit left to say" and we're just working out how to say it. The long form songs are fun, but they can be a bit daunting. Plus, it's real easy to go "over the top" when you don't limit yourself to a "radio-friendly" song format.

But I think that Josh and I are continuing to work quite well together, making enough concessions on both sides to ensure that both of our visions are represented. It's a good arrangement, and I'm very proud of the music. I look forward to getting it completed and released!