Happy Holidays

Happy holidays to everyone!  I can hardly believe that it's the holiday season again, and that it's almost over already.  Time moves so fast these days that I shudder when I think about it.

2021 has been an interesting year filled with a retinal detachment, a new album, new gear, and so on.  I feel reasonably accomplished (I admittedly could have done w/o the eye issues) but I do wish things had gone a bit better and more smoothly.  I can't say that I had bargained for yet another year of COVID hiding but it also doesn't really surprise me.

It's been a slow wind up but I just started kicking the dust off of the ideas that I have for the next Jazz Machine album.  As of right now, the next album is to be called "Sorry, I Forgot to Mention This..." but that could certainly change a million times over.  The background...when I was trying to come up with the last track for "I Miss You Most at Nighttime", which ended up being "Didn't I Tell You?", I accidentally wrote 3 other new songs that will be making their way to this new album, and those are the ones that I'm starting to work on.  I also think this album might have 1-2 cover tunes; I'm simply not sure yet.

I'm still getting used to my new gear setup which has also been giving me some issues here and there.  This is exactly why I don't like to upgrade software versions since you suddenly feel like you've never used the software before since things are moved around, labeled differently, etc.  I wish I could have stayed on my old version of ProTools but unfortunately it wasn't approved to run on the Mac Mini that I purchased so I basically had no choice but to upgrade.  I will say that I so far prefer the old version.

Like everything computer related, though, it's just a matter of working through it, getting comfortable, and so on.  The next JM album will be considerably more upbeat and "louder" than the previous, and that's sort of intentional.  It'll have a bit of a different sound overall, I think, while still remaining true to the groundwork that I've already laid.  I'm targeting to have this album done and possibly released exactly a year from now.  Apart from it, the only other "new" music I'm working on is the last few tracks for the upcoming "The Beautiful Silence" vocal album which has been in the writing phase for quite some time.  It's basically my follow-up to the still unofficially released "Theories for the Opsimath" and would be my first album of it's kind in quite awhile.  I'm extremely excited about it since I think I have some of the best vocal material I've written in a very long time waiting in the wings.  These are the only two "new" works I'll be working on for quite some time, though, and everything else is a project that's been half in progress for who knows how long.  It's simply time to finish up all these other ones sitting around, collecting dusts.

I'll be writing a lot about the new JM tracks as I record them so you'll hear about it here first.  Wishing everyone a very happy New Year with hopefully nothing but good vibes awaiting us...

The Parade Goes On

It's been awhile since I've made a post, mainly because I simply took a much needed break from everything.  I was more or less planning on working on new music last week during my Thanksgiving break but it never really happened, partially due to exhaustion and also in part because I inadvertently messed up my EZDrummer 2 program on my Mac which required reaching out to tech support and what not.  I may write up a separate post just on remedying that, just in case anyone else ever has the same issue and somehow stumbles upon my blog.

I need to get my head back into mixing as well.  I've just more or less ducked out lately, trying to gather my thoughts and such.  The only thing I did manage last week was playing around with yet another jazz based cover tune that I had in my head.  I like what I have so we'll see where it goes from here.

In other news, it looks like I might be making a necessary change to "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" that's a bit out of my control.  It's rather unfortunate but it's my own naive idiocy that got me into this so, like most things, I simply need to dig my way out of it as quickly and efficiently as possible.  This is going to bump back the release date for the CD version, though, which is rather unfortunate.  The good news is that it is able to be fixed and it's just a matter of figuring out what to do and then ultimately take care of it.  It's really a drag, though, since I had just finished putting the artwork together and was ready to submit it.  I guess it's better to have it caught now versus later, though.

That's really all the news I've got.  I finally received my new Danelectro Back Talk pedal in the mail yesterday which has been on backorder for months.  I'll be plugging it in tonight to see what it can do.

Peeking My Head Out Again

I'm finally peeking my head out again after releasing the "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" album on 10/26.  Let's just say that I'm a bit underwhelmed by the downloads and sales, enough so that it made me a bit on the depressed side.  It hurts a bit more considering that I think this is probably the best thing I've recorded yet.  The comments I have received have been very positive, though, so that's at least something.  It's just been rather hard to be motivated to start working on the next Jazz Machine album when this one's not exactly tearing up the charts and doesn't seem to be on most people's radar.

Nevertheless, I'm almost over it (keyword = "almost").  I have a week off coming up during Thanksgiving and I'm hoping to be over it enough to be fairly productive.  In short, I can't really afford to NOT be productive since I have so little time off to work on these things so I'm doing what I can to shake things off.

I've also begun playing around with the "Mirror Land" EP mixes.  Strangely, the new upgraded recording gear threw off 90% of my levels in the existing mixes so I'm kind of starting over now.  This was an unexpected side effect of the upgrade, mind you, but I'm dealing with it thus far.  The new system also changed the tone of vocals only, for some odd reason, and I can't quite get my head around that one as of yet or figure out why it occurred.  I hadn't really planned on anything of the sort.

I have my work cut out for me for the remainder of the year, though, with mixing, a bit of band-aid recording, and then staring to flesh out the new Jazz Machine tracks which are almost all written in rough form in my head already.  I also still need to complete the digipack layout for the "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" CD version which I've just not had the heart to work on over the past 2+ weeks.  Alas, it just needs to be done so...

The Deed is Done

Well, I'm overjoyed to report that "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" is done, mixed, and mastered, and overall I'm quite pleased with how it came out.  It's by far my favorite album to listen to that I've done and I think it'll have a good longevity in my playlist, and that's even after having listened to it probably 40+ times just trying to get the mix down.  The mastering process ended up being fairly painless and there was really no real reason for paranoia or anxiety.  This is normal for me, and I just have to go through the process at least once to understand that there really is nothing to fear.

I still need to nail down the artwork and such and then it's ready to be sent off for printing.  For this one, I believe I'm only going to be offering CD's in digipack form and digital downloads.  I have yet to know where exactly the downloads will be but that's certainly on my agenda to figure out over the next 30 days.  I'd expect the album to available in all forms within 30-60 days.

I also spent the weekend setting up the new studio gear, getting everything connected, installed, and so on, and then taking down the old rig.  I'm now on studio gear version 4.0.  The Mac Mini so far is blowing my mind a bit with how fast it is and how much it can do.  Even ProTools itself loads in about 1/3 the time than it did on my old system.

For now, I'm doing a decent amount of patting myself on the back, internal celebrations, etc.  It's been a long time coming and I'm very proud of this album.  Believe it or not, I think I'm going to begin recording the next Jazz Machine album over the holidays, with a potential late 2022 release date.  I'm busy, I tell ya...busy.

Deadline

My 'date' with the mastering lab is this Thursday and so I've been scrambling to make any finishing touches and so on with "I Miss You Most at Nighttime".  I had one track in particular that was really giving me grief and I think I found out last night, by pure spur of the moment bright idea and accident, that it was a self induced issue.  It seems that I followed some advice that I read about online and it actually created an issue where there was none originally.  The solution was simply turning off the EQ plugin.  Duh.  I'm learning new stuff every day.

I also did my "mono check" yesterday in which I found at long last a true blue phase problem!  Phase used to boggle my mind when I'd read about it, and this particular part on a song was something that I kept turning up in volume but it never really seemed to get much louder.  Well, that's where the phase issue came in :)  As soon as I fixed it, I found I could drop the volume by many dB and the passage was now louder than ever.  I do give great credence to the mono check!  It's no joke.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that all goes well with the mastering process.  I've never done this before in this manner so this is all new to me.  I also learned about ISRC's, licensing, and so on.  It's a lot to take in but I think I'm getting it down...I hope.

On the plus side, the album's mix is sounding better than ever.  It DID take me way longer than I had hoped but I think I've got a good result which ultimately is all that matters in the end.

Changes

It's been a fairly busy 6 weeks of mixing but I believe the end is officially on the horizon since I booked space on the calendar for mastering the album on October 14th.  This means I essentially HAVE to be done by then, which I don't think will be an issue since most of the tracks sound pretty good at this point.  I have a few nitpicky details I'm still playing around with and maybe one or two tracks that still need a small amount of love but overall its fairly together at this point.  It's been an interesting experience and I have learned quite a bit.  My hope is that the next mixed album will only take about 4 weeks max.

I also took the plunge and purchased/received my new recording gear.  My system is about 10 years old at this point and my Mac Pro has been chugging for quite some time, constantly running out of memory, starting up very slowly, and so on.  Due to that, I've been fairly limited on plug-in processing power and so my hope is that the new system provides me with a lot more bandwidth and versatility.  My Digi 003, which is what I've been using for an interface, has also shown definite signs of potential failure so it seemed like the right time to switch over to something new, in this instance an Apollo x8 paired with a new M1 chip Mac Mini.    The end result should be good...the bad news is the actual porting over to the new system.  It'll probably take me 2-3 weeks to get everything setup and ready to go.  It's amazing how much software and such needs to be loaded and the trick for me is usually remembering what it all is.

I'm kind of itchin' to get back to actual music creation.  It's hard to switch over to post production in this manner, and you start to forget about the more fun part of actually creating songs and such, which is really what its all about, in my opinion.

I'll hopefully have good news in my next post about the new instrumental album and I'll soon begin putting together the official artwork for the album.  I'm really excited to share this album with everyone and look forward to comments!

Another Birthday

It's been another year around the globe, and it's what most people consider one of the most significant birthday numbers post 21.  I won't say the actual number...I think you can guess.  Where DOES the time go?  I feel like it was just a couple of years ago that I was turning 30 and...well...

My mixing excursion is coming along but I'm still struggling a bit with 3 songs.  I would call the other 3 done, though, so I'm about halfway there.  I also just set the appointment with the mastering company for October 14th so it HAS to be done by then, not to mention that if I were to work on this album much longer that I'd probably go completely insane.  You can only tinker and listen to something so many times before madness creeps in.

In other news, I've been tinkering more with the next Jazz Machine album's ideas, trying to get a bit more form into what I think I'll be recording.  I'll probably open those sessions fairly soon, possibly during the holidays when I tend to take a decent amount of time off.

I also got my hands on a couple new pieces of gear, not to mention that I'm getting ready for a complete studio upgrade, so there are lots of things afoot.  The new studio upgrade should give me a lot more firepower when using effects and plugins but I'm also hoping the new improved audio interface will have some definite audible audio improvement.  I guess we'll see.

Closing In

I'm about a week overdue already on the mix for "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" but I'll simply blame it on the US Open since it completely distracted me from my work for over a week's worth of time.  I will say that I'm closing in on the final mix at long last, though.  I only really wanted to work on it for 3-4 weeks, and this is already week 5, but I think it's coming along nicely at this point AND I've learned a bit along the way, especially about bass and drums.

The songs have actually changed a bit from what I had over a month ago.  I've added quite a few subtle but noticeable details that have made certain things stand out more.  I can usually tell right away if I like a change, and whereas I did throw out a decent number of experimental changes, I'm pleased to see that more of them have stayed versus being thrown in the dumpster.  Overall, I really like this album, especially after listening to it repetitively for the past few weeks.  It's a pretty easy listen, I think, and I can't even really say that I'm sick of it yet, and you have to realize that I've heard it hundreds of times now since I also have to listen to it when I working on it.

This album has taken the majority of my time so I'm afraid that "Mirror Land" is still being neglected at this point.  I will get back to it soon, I think.  The wheels are already in motion in my head for the next Jazz Machine album which I really look forward to working on hopefully in the not too distant future.

That's it for now - more later in the week, perhaps.

Where Do Those Titles Come From??

Naming songs and albums is an interesting business, I think.  There are probably a billion ways to go about arriving at titles but I figured I'd share my approach and thinking on the topic.

This has more or less come up since one of my favorite bands, Marillion, just put out a "guess the new album title" mini contest for their fans by supplying us with the initials of the words in the title (in this case, it's "AHBID") and we get to guess the actual title.  As you can maybe imagine, I think I failed miserably.  I mean, I racked my brain for at least a couple of hours, and then I even combed through the Thesaurus.  It was pure hell AND my answers were still borderline ridiculous.

I don't know how Marillion comes up with their titles exactly but I will tell you this, and it may slightly be a shock:  I put almost no thought whatsoever into my titles.  Now, let me step that back just a bit...  It's not that I don't think about it at all, it's just that I usually let the title come to me rather than me going to the title.  In other words, the first thing that comes to my mind that makes sense - voila!  That's the title.

I know this seems a bit strange considering I'm someone who deeply weaves themes and songs together in an almost concept album sort of way but that's the truth of it...I probably spend the least amount of time on the actual song titles.  Album titles aren't much different for they usually just come to me without any real searching or struggle.  Even the band names I come up with have pretty much the same process, although I may spend months debating if I actually like the proposed name (that's a whole 'nother story).

I particularly like working with instrumental song titles since there's truly no boundary or expectation whatsoever.  If you want to call a song "Lemon Curd", well, you can since no one really knows what lemon curd should sound like and no one's going to be singing it as a refrain in the song.  Now that I think of it, I might need to write that title down...hmm.  

Time Flies

 Time is just flyin', I tell ya.  It's kind of amazing and always rather scary.  Week #2 of listening to "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" brought about 2 more mixes, and with this past weekend I added a whole bunch of spice and such, trying to make the various refrains stick out in a more unique fashion.  I have yet to do a full listen to this version so who knows if my changes will work/help or not.  It's always up in the air for a bit.  Most of these changes were notes that I had written down before I even completed the recording, and instead opted to try to leave the songs a bit more sparse, but I've apparently reversed course a bit on that.

I also discovered the "auto pan" plugin in the past week.  I didn't even know it was out there (duh!).  Initially, I thought, why the heck would I need that when I have automation?  But, I have already found a good use for it in 2-3 places and I'm just using the built-in plug-in that comes with Pro Tools.  Who knows what a paid for version would give you.

I'm entering week #3 of mixing/listening and I'm hoping that I'm fairly wrapped up by the end of the week.  I've basically given myself a month to mix this album, if necessary, but wouldn't mind being done beforehand.  I still need to do the dreaded mono mix check which is new to me and I'm a little paranoid of it, to be honest.  It kind of irks me that I even need to worry about mono in 2021.  Ugh.

Other than that, I've found myself missing guitar playing since I've been mainly focused on keyboards over the past 2 weeks.  We of course have a holiday weekend creeping up and the US Open begins today so it should be a fairly busy time period.  I'm sure I'll blink and it'll be Halloween.  Sigh.

PT Automation

 I had a decent week #1 of listening to "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" and made quite a few notes here and there upon each listen.  I spent the weekend fooling around with various computers, programs, and interfaces, trying to get some new items setup that I recently purchased.  It's not my favorite way to spend a weekend but it did have to get done.  I finally got around to working on mix #2 of the album yesterday and I actually made quite a few changes to it, more than I had initially planned on.  I won't know how it sounds per se until Tuesday when I once again listen to it on my stereo system.  Will it be closer to done or further?  One never knows but always hopes for the first option, of course, and this is why we save every rendition along the way...just in case.

I finally got around to doing a bigger deep dive into Pro Tools automation.  You'd think that after 10 years of using the program that I'd be close to an expert, no?  Well, a bit to my shock, I actually didn't really know anything about how to use it, and instead I was once again doing it the old fashioned hard way without even realizing it.  I mean, no wonder I found it ridiculously hard...(sigh).  Old habits die hard.

In the end, PT automation IS actually super simple and there's no reason for me to keep from doing my pans and such to the very end.  They also make auto panning plugin's which I wasn't at all aware of, although the verdict isn't quite in yet for the one I've got available to me, but it is amazing how simple most of these tasks are.  Doing it the old way, or quite frankly manual "player piano" way, is actually quite absurd when you have this functionality available to you.  There, I've said it...I'm a bit absurd.

I got all the pans and various buss send changes all automated and in place so it should be interesting to hear the difference this week.  I did a lot of tightening up of the bass which is pretty much always the biggest issue in any mix so the real question is how that sounds and if it threw everything else out of whack in the process.  I have high hopes; fingers crossed.

First Listen and a Bit of History

 I just got done giving "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" it's very first listen on my stereo, start to finish, and I must say that I think I've managed to impress myself.  I think this is the first time ever (no, I KNOW it is) that I've ever had a first mix sound like a ready to go mix.  I mean, I made a bunch of notes and all but it's all minor things.  I'm used to first mixes sounding so bad that I usually want to cry after.  This time...well, no tears, at least not of sadness.  Maybe I'm finally getting somewhere?  I can only hope since I'm slowly running out of time, as they say.

As soon as the album ended, I immediately reached for "This Land" by Bill Frisell, the very first album I ever heard by Frisell.  I should say that this is also the first time ever that I have listened to something of my own and then something professional and not wanted to sob hysterically because mine sounds so inferior.  Now, this mix certainly doesn't sound as good as a high budget jazz album, of course, but it doesn't sound bad either, and I'll take that as a win.

In all honesty, this whole thing started for me back around '94, back when I worked the overnight shift on a help desk, and I came in to work one evening at my usual 10pm start time to find a new guy working the swing shift named Scott.  He was a fairly tall guy, with dark hair and glasses, and seemed awfully friendly and chatty considering he was brand new and all, and I was amazed how everyone acted like he had been working there forever.  For some reason, he and I started chatting almost immediately since I think someone had told him beforehand that I played guitar (he played drums) and perhaps he was more or less waiting for me to arrive?  I don't know...it was something like that.

In any event, it wasn't long before I learned that he was a huge jazz fan, something I had a mild interest in but had yet to really even consider exploring.  I had dabbled more with the new age sound a bit so I had an interest but wasn't sure if jazz would really be my thing.  At that point, I was really into moody rock music so jazz was sort of in a different world.  I don't remember if it was that very first night or the next one, or the next one, but somewhere in the very beginning he brought in a small pile of CD's for me to take home and listen to.  One of them was Bill Frisell "This Land" and I distinctly recall how excited he was to introduce Frisell to me.  In fact, I remember him saying the night before he brought it in something like "...oh, you'll love Frisell...I'll bring it tomorrow..."

I still remember going home that next morning after work with this small mound of CD's kind of wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into.  I was already mentally preparing for how I'd break it to him that this wasn't really my thing but I did silently vow that I'd give each CD at least some sort of fair listen.  Putting "This Land" on for the first time was like entering a world I didn't know existed.  What the hell was this???  Looking back on it now as a mega Frisell fan, it's one of Frisell's albums just loaded to the gills with brass instruments, and I never ever liked brass at all, especially back then (I do now...but that's a different story).  I think I got one or two songs into the disc and recall thinking and perhaps even saying out loud that, whoah, this is some corny sh*t and really not my thing.  I mean, these were my biggest years of bands like Marillion, the Connells, a bit of Al Stewart, the Church, R.E.M. still, and my most recent fav at that time Talk Talk, the later years in particular (gorgeous, gorgeous albums).  My point is that it was a million miles away from this weird brass music where the guitar was sort of in the background and all the music sounded like some bizarre mixed up version of "The Music Man".

I think I even gave the CD's back to him a few days later and probably said something along the lines like they weren't my thing and so on.  But somehow, and I don't remember what or when it was, I think I asked for "This Land" again from Scott, and this time I really listened to it because that damn first song  had somehow gotten into my head.  And that, my friends, is all it took.  3 years later, I would venture out to L.A. completely alone for the first time ever to see Frisell play a solo show at the Skirball which was quite an adventure in itself.  Pretty much ever since then I've been a diehard Frisell fan and own everything pretty much that he's ever played on, which is a ton of recordings.

It was really the albums "Good Dog, Happy Man" and "The Sweetest Punch" that pushed me into mega fandom, and those both came out within months of one another.  I can't recommend those two enough, "The Sweetest Punch" having the added mystique around it of being the instrumental rendition of the album "Painted from Memory" that Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach were simultaneously working on in a completely different studio on the opposite coast, I believe.  "Painted from Memory" is one of my all time fav's as well but hearing both versions of those songs is beyond words.  Bacharach's work is amazing, if you ask me.

In any event, I haven't heard from Scott for years but I'd like to think that he'd be rather tickled by this new album of mine.  In fact, I might even dedicate it to him...who knows.  Without him and his influence, I seriously doubt any of this would be happening so cheers to you, wherever you are, and thanks!

Hard to Believe...

 I had a fairly busy and productive weekend and I'm happy to say (and it's hard to believe, I know) that the first complete mix of "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" has been completed.  With everything that's gone on for me in the past year, whether it's something eye related or dizziness or pet related or otherwise, it's kind of shocking that I still made my own personal deadline.  Yes, folks, it CAN be done...an entire album both written and recorded all within one year's worth of time, even for ME.  Wow.

I checked off the last few things that were on my list this weekend which included some drum changes/polishing, piano and keyboard parts, and a few other added tidbits for spice and a few minor corrections.  I did listen to the whole album last night but through my studio monitors.  The real test is to listen to it as a "listener" through my home stereo, my usual source of all music listening.  I did briefly fly through the tracks last night, though, just to get a feel for how close the mixes were and also to hear some of the fixes that I put into place, and overall it sounded pretty good to me with only a few minor mental notes about EQ on guitars, lowering of bass and drums, etc.  Needless to say, I'll know more by the end of the week after giving it multiple listens but I can tell you this...the last time I did a full mix on an album, it didn't sound anywhere near this good so progress IS being made.

What now?  Well, I need to get all the other tasks done and get through the red tape.  I've got permissions to get for 2 tracks, copyright info to submit, album artwork to complete, decisions to be made on format, and so on.  And, I've got to quickly switch over next weekend to the "Mirror Land" EP to try and iron out the couple of outstanding tasks I have on that one.  So, yeah, I've got my work cut out for me.  For now, though, there's reason to celebrate in my household!

Back to the Lyrics

 I had mentioned a few posts ago that I might start working on the long lost "Foreshadowing" instrumental album once "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" is completely wrapped up.  Well, I don't know what I was thinking.  I'm definitely going to be working on the Neil Young and Crazy Horse inspired "Wrecking Ball" album next, and in fact I've already begun.  It's an interesting shift in musical styles, to say the least.

Lyrics used to be really easy for me.  I remember back when I started how I wouldn't really spend more than 1-2 sessions on a lyric, maybe no more than an hour total.  About 10 years ago, that came crashing down, and I started taking 1-2 years on lyrics, sometimes way more than that.  I was so backed up on lyrics (and still am) that when the band I was in would play live, I would just make stuff up on the fly since I had yet to finish the actual lyrics.  It's kind of absurd, looking back on it.  I used to be a really good ad-libber and have used this technique for years.  Age has caught up with me, though, and I simply can't come up with words on the fly like I used to, and most of my ad libs today sound more like 2 words repeated over and over.

"Wrecking Ball" is one of maybe 7 albums that I have "in progress", accumulated over the past 20 years, and in what I call the 80% done state.  Given the fact that so many are in this status, my focus will definitely be on knocking a bunch of these albums out in the next 24 months and just putting them to bed.  I think I started on "Wrecking Ball" around 2013, though, and so it's one of the fairly newer albums in this category.  It's fairly done and what I've been waiting on is a) the lyrics and then b) the vocals, which obviously can't exist without (a).  I pulled up my lyric sheets last week and started tinkering.  3-4 of the songs are fairly laid out and further along than I thought so those are the first to tackle.  I had a bit of quiet time over the weekend so I pushed it out of me, getting two of them done and, unbelievably, recorded just shortly after.  To make it even better, I'm actually very pleased with the lyrics for both of them and it's been awhile since I really felt that way.

Again, it was all around ten years ago when lyrics got way too difficult for me.  I did finally finish the Defrost Nixon lyrics (another album yet to be released) but I've never been 100% happy with them.  A few are great, I think, but probably 2-4 are a bit below what I would have really liked.  Part of it came down to me trying new techniques, mainly due to the lyrical constipation I was experiencing, and so I tried writing more story based lyrics.  It worked for a couple songs and then kind of flopped for a couple more.  I think I walked away feeling like the story format really wasn't my forte.

These two "Wrecking Ball" lyrics, though, are precisely what I was hoping for, albeit a bit more snarky and intense maybe than some might prefer.  What do you expect, though, right?  These are difficult times we're living in.  Neil Young has always been political so it makes sense that I'd follow suit, no?

Also, I keep forgetting to mention that I picked up a group of 4 what I'll call "newer" Carly Simon CD's on Ebay, kind of with the intention that I'd just give them a quick whirl and then probably sell them.  I didn't think her 80's work would really appeal to me, which is maybe true for the post mid-80's stuff, but I have completely fallen head over heels in love with the album "Hello, Big Man".  I mean, even the title is a bit embarrassing to say, but I'd be a liar if I didn't admit how much pure joy this album brings me.  I've said it before but I'll say it again...I truly think Carly was one of the best female voices ever and so many of her songs are simply top notch.  I really wish I had seen her back in the day.

Okay, I'm done rambling for now.  I don't know if anyone reads this stuff, and in truth it doesn't matter because I really write this more as a sort of online diary for myself, but hopefully it'll provide some valuable insight on some level at some point.  Until next time...

Brutal, I Tell Ya...

 Say it with me:  manipulating midi data is brutal.  It's that short and simple.  It's actually beyond awful.  I think I'd prefer to record 25 individual guitar tracks rather than have to do hard manipulation on one midi file, and then imagine if you have to manipulate multiple files?  Brutal, I tell ya.

It was one of those very weekends for me with clocking in around 13 hours on midi manipulation data.  EZDrummer is a great product with great sounds, and if what you're looking for is there right in front of you in the GUI, you're golden...and EZDrummer is your hero.  If the pattern you're looking for is NOT in the GUI, however, prepare to want to slit your wrists.  Sometimes I actually think creating drumbeats the old way, on literal outboard gear and tappin' away on the keys, was a bit easier.  Sigh.  There simply must be a better way of doing this that I'm not aware of.

I thought it would be simple, thinking I'd just use EZDrummer's "Song Creator" function and the software would suggest all the appropriate parts that would go with my song, etc.  Yeah, well, no go...  50% of them didn't even sound like they were in the same time signature, with at least half of those sounding like something from another planet.  The other half I carefully tried placing into my track and, while some of it fit, way too much of it didn't, and the true pain of manipulating midi files is figuring out the WHAT and the WHERE of those issues, and so I tried yet a different approach.  Needless to say, I did quite a bit of swearing at EZDrummer and Pro Tools MIDI.

If the work I did sticks, I'll actually feel good about, pain included.  If it doesn't stick, though, I may start to sob hysterically.  Seriously, though, had I worked on this ten years ago, I would have been stuck on it for probably 2-3 years, trying desperately to solve an almost invisible problem.  I'm proud of myself to say that I located the issues pretty quickly and spent more time trying to solve it versus find it so progress has definitely been made on my behalf.

The funny thing about issues like I'm experiencing is how your ear deals with it.  It's probably impossible to explain to someone who has never done this sort of thing before but your ear basically has a zoom in it, not unlike how your eye can zoom in on small text, and then when you listen to something with your "zoom" turned on you're completely focused on that very small element.  The crazy part is trying to un-zoom your ear; it just doesn't work that way, and it normally involves walking away for a few hours and returning, or in my case I'll be giving my track multiple listens multiple days over multiple systems, just to make sure that I accomplished what I set out to do.  The ear is a funny organ, I tell you, and there seems to be a hidden and strange psychology within it that's almost beyond words.  It can be your best friend and also your worst enemy.  For example, I didn't even fully acknowledge some of the issues with the track I was working on for many months since my ears were playing games with me.  I wish I could describe it better but you'll have to take my word for it.

In other news, I actually now have a rough working front cover for the CD, and it's finally official...I'm going with "jazz machine" since I couldn't really come up with a better option over the past 10 months.  The title of the album is "I Miss You Most at Nighttime", something that came to me almost immediately a year ago when writing the original demos and it's simply stuck.  Post production work aside, the album should be ready for a full listen hopefully by the end of next weekend...if I don't slit my wrists due to midi files beforehand!

Ready to Move On

 I had yet another fairly productive weekend and I'm happy to report that I'm pretty much down to only 6 tasks left on my agenda for updates/fixes/additions to the "jazz machine" album.  Admittedly, one of those tasks is fairly large (redoing the drums on "Tonight...") but on the flipside another of those tasks is extremely small.  I'm thinking I'll have the album completely wrapped up next weekend but I can say, as of this moment, the album is "together", meaning that all the main melodies, lines, riffs, etc., have now been placed.  I'm basically now in repair and fix mode and quickly moving towards mixing mode.  I guess you could say the album is already finished since it now sounds like an actual album and it's what I'd call listenable.

I'm giving myself one month to mix it and then I'll hand it over to someone for mastering.  At the same time, I need to sit down and comb through who knows how many photos and try to piece together some sort of album artwork.  I usually do that long before this step but I just haven't stumbled upon anything up until now that really bowled me over or seemed appropriate.

Once the "jazz machine" fixes are complete, my next task is to finish/fix the last couple of items for the "Mirror Land" EP which has been greatly neglected once again for many months.  I pretty much know exactly what I need to do so it's just a matter of carving out the time.  Everything else for that EP is ready to go.

Here's my guess at what will be happening for the remainder of the year:  "Mirror Land" will actually be released first, probably only by a few weeks, and then "Jazz Machine" will be released.  I'm immediately going to start working on finishing up the "Wrecking Ball" album (my more or less Neil Young and Crazy Horse sounding album) and then trying to tinker once again with the "Elvis Fish Redux" album which also needs a bit more work here and there.  If life treats me well, all four of these products should be completed in 2021 and may even be released by EOY.  If I can somehow push myself and/or get really fortunate, I also need to get back to the long abandoned Defrost Nixon album which really needs to be completed and released within the next year as well.  I guess in short I have my work cut out for me but I'll do what I can.

In the meantime, if anyone has any photos that they've taken that speak to the words "evening" or "I miss you", please contact me!

In the Trenches

 Wrapping up an album is always a weird feeling.  You kind of get so attached to the work that it's sometimes hard to imagine NOT working on it anymore, and yet on the other hand it can also be a relief to not have to tinker with it any more.  I guess it depends upon the project, and for me specifically it tends to be about how long the project has been sitting in the computer, waiting for completion.

I will say up front that the "jazz machine" album has been the most satisfying and fun album that I've ever worked on.  This is partly due to some of the albums that I've recorded being complete disasters, though.  For example, the still officially unreleased "...Opsimath" album nearly killed me and even though I need to get back to doing more tinkering on that one, I shudder at the mere thought.  The recording of TFTO versus "jazz machine" have been pretty much night and day.  It occurred to me this weekend that recording didn't really become anywhere near "fun" until about 2012 when things started making more sense, I felt more confident about what I was doing, and so on.  Recording is a lot trickier than one would initially think.  It seems from afar that it would be all about the technical aspects; in reality, it's much more about the practical, although the technical certainly weighs in there as well.  It's more about HOW to put an album together versus the act of physically doing it.  You can physically record all you want and in the most perfect manner possible but if you don't know how to put the songs together on an album, you're still left with something not that great that barely resembles what we think of as "songs".  That's just one of the lessons I had to learn the hard way and very few articles about recording ever seem to address.  I believe it's basically putting your music producer's hat on...or finding one for yourself.

I'd say I'm about 2 weeks out from an official first listen of the album straight through.  I got a ton of odds and ends done this weekend which left me feeling very confident about meeting my August 8th deadline.  Then, upon re-listening to "Tonight, You Reached Me", I finally realized that the drum just isn't working and needs to be scrapped/redone.  This isn't a total shock to me but I guess I've been slightly in denial of it.  It's one of those weird things that each time I hear the track, initially I can't get my ear to follow the drum correctly with the rest of the music.  Then, if I listen to it a second or third time, it sounds more normal and so I blow it off, thinking it was just me the first time around.  Last night, though, it hit me that I simply need to fix it.  It's not the end of the world and I spent about an hour investigating it late last night but any time I'm working with drum patterns I get a little nervous since they tend to be the most resource intensive parts.

Other than that, I'm really liking what I've got on this record and once completely done, it'll be a bit sad to say goodbye to it.  The good news, though, is that the next one is already in progress in my head.  Funny how that is.

Getting Close

 I had a pretty productive weekend despite the distraction of Wimbledon.  It did help a bit that it was Djokovic in the Men's Final, someone that I don't have quite as much interest in watching win yet another major title, so I certainly wasn't glued to the television.

I dare say that the "jazz machine" album is getting really close at this point.  You'll notice I'm still putting that name in quotes and it's basically because I'm still toying with other names (I've got about 10 of them at this point).  My biggest task between last weekend and this weekend was to get the drums nailed down for the song "I Can't Bear to Look In Your Eyes", the last track I really have to work on, and I clocked in at least 8+ hours on that very task last weekend.  I did a bit more tweaking this weekend but probably only clocked another hour or so specifically on the drums.  9 hours on getting an EZDrummer track nailed down is anything but, well, "easy", as they say.

"...Can't Bear..." remained my focus this weekend, though, and I finally got around to flushing out the bridge portion which is basically a completely different minute and half of music wedged in between the two main parts of the track.  I'm pretty pleased with the result, and I even got to add acoustic guitar to it using the new Breedlove C25/W which is slowly but surely sounding a bit better after hanging out in a humidified room for 2+ weeks.  The song is really starting to take shape and it's clocking in right around 7 minutes total.

My official/unofficial personal "deadline", or 'year of working on it' marker for the "jazz machine" album, is August 7th.  At this point, I actually think I may make it and be done with the album since it leaves me about 4 more weekends total.  If I don't make it, it'll be extremely close either way and I guess it's not really something to kill myself over.  My real point was that I wanted to prove to myself that I COULD actually get an entire album written/recorded, etc., within one year's worth of time.  I've said it a thousand times but I'm pretty sure that, if I didn't have to work full time for a living, I could get most of my albums done within 1 month...but alas that's not my reality.

I'm entertaining the idea of revisiting my "Foreshadowing" instrumental album post this work being done.  "Foreshadowing" was the album that I started working on in 2000 right after "Lost Weekend" and simply abandoned because, like most things that I started back then, it was just a tad too ambitious at the time.  I definitely have the technology to work on it now so that may just become my next target project.  It would be great for that one to finally see the light of day since I think there's some really interesting experimental pieces on there.

I also listened to an episode of WTF with Danny Elfman about a week ago and was shocked to hear that he and I have more in common than I knew.  He mentioned how the worst thing in the world to him was playing the same song every night in his band Oingo Boingo, and that he basically can't even play the same songs over and over.  I've been saying this forever myself and it would drive me nuts when the band's I was in would want to rehearse the same song over and over.  It never failed but I would almost always play it worse and worse every time and it was never intentional.  I don't have ADD or anything like that but I just can't do things in this manner and it just bores my beyond words.  I can't even imagine being someone like Tom Petty who was basically forced to play the same 12 hits night after night, year after year.  It just sounds like pure torture me.

I'm slowly but surely getting closer to that "first listen" of the "jazz machine" album all the way through, from start to finish, burned onto a CD and played on my stereo system.  I can't deny that I'm incredibly curious to hear it and quite excited to share it with others.  I'm hoping it's my best work to date but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Them "Fuses..."

 I'm happy to report that I've been relatively productive thus far this weekend.  I have a long list of small tasks to accomplish on the "jazz machine" recording and I'm simply making my way down the list little by little.  The list entails tasks such as trying out small guitar parts, keyboard bits, momentary effects, drum beats, and so on.

One of the tasks was to record a sound sample from a film for a small bridge segment in the track "(He Was) Some Kind of a Man".  This is the only song on this album that has film samples on it, and it both begins and ends with one.  I knew I wanted to add something during a short break around the bridge section and I'd been putting it off since I wasn't exactly sure what sample I would actually want to use.

So, here's a great example how recording can become a whole different art form.  The first thing I did was grab the DVD of "Touch of Evil", plug in some speakers to my laptop, and then fast forward the film to the portion where Dennis Weaver is the Mirador Motel Night Manager.  Now, the first time I saw this film, these scenes completely boggled my mind for they are so completely outrageous that you simply don't know what the hell to make of them the first time 'round.  Then, after seeing the film a few times, these scenes quickly became for me the most classic comedic film scenes, all while not necessarily trying to be funny.  If you've seen the film, I think you know what I mean.

I narrowed the segments that I intended to use down to one short segment with Janet Leigh talking through the wall to some unknown person and then one rather long part that lasted nearly 8 minutes between Heston and Weaver.  I chose this latter one because it had some great lines from Weaver but also didn't have any background music in it, which I was saddened to see that most of Weaver's lines did have some supposed motel music going on in the background which would have been rather distracting, I think, hence I avoided those.  Next, I put my AT 4050 next to my computer speakers, pressed play and record, and simply recorded the whole segment into Pro Tools without having a clue of what I would use.  Then, I literally spent over 2 hours filtering through the dialog.  I basically cut the segments up in multiple ways, moved them around, pasted them together, and so on, and in the end created a simple Weaver/Leigh short no more than 10 second conversation for the bridge.  Yes, that's right - over 2 hours worth of work for merely 10 seconds of audio.  And, that's recording for ya, folks.  I will say, though, that every time I hear it, it simply makes me laugh out loud so hopefully it's worth it.

I also received the Breedlove C25.  The action is not what I was expecting so I'm a bit disappointed initially.  The guitar looks stunning but the top is rather dark, sometimes suggesting that it's been dried out (which is bad), and so I'm not sure what my intentions are with it as of yet.  I need to restring it and such and see what I think.  I have a feeling I'll be taking it in for a complete setup before I really know what state its in.  One never knows what they're getting when buying used acoustics.

Keep Your Mouth Shut

 I should apparently never make a comment like "...provided disaster doesn't happen...".  Besides the first week of June, the rest of the month became a complete wash due to some personal things that came up that wiped out all productivity.  I actually didn't even pick up a guitar for 3 weeks.  If there's one thing I've learned, it's that I've apparently gotten much better at the instrument for I can attest that 10 years ago, had I not played for 3 weeks, I pretty much wouldn't be able to play at all and it would have taken me more than a month to get back to sounding semi-decent.  These days I still sound pretty good overall even after not touching the instrument for 3 whole weeks.  I mean, wow.

I'm hoping to once again have a productive next couple of days.  It's a bit challenging with Wimbledon going on but I'll do my best to balance it.  Few people know this but I actually got into tennis due to recording since I used to always record over long holiday weekends, and most televised tennis tournaments take place on those weekends.  I'd take a break from recording, put the TV on, and then get sucked into 30 minutes of a match.  It was always a great distraction.

I also just pulled the trigger on yet another Breedlove C25, circa 2005-ish?  The person selling it was wanting to get rid of it asap and offered it to me at a price I simply couldn't refuse.  I have absolutely no need, room, etc. for this instrument, and it's not even the model I was looking for.  Sigh.  I get the feeling that I'm going to be doing a lot of buying and selling over the next couple of years, all in search of the perfect acoustic arsenal.

Speaking of, the guitar market is absolutely insane.  I mean, I thought with COVID hitting last year that everybody would be selling amazing instruments at rock bottom prices.  It's been the polar opposite overall with people jacking up prices to unbelievable amounts.  It used to be very rare that I'd see a guitar for sale for $4995; these days, I frequently see guitars for sale for $12995, and even weirder they sell right away.

Well, that's enough rambling for now.  Here's to a pleasant holiday weekend!

Back on It

 Finally!  A productive weekend!  I knew one of these days it would happen.  I lightly promised myself last year when I started working on the "jazz machine" album that I would get it done within one year's worth of time (which would be a first for me), and with the deadline now in the not too distant future, I was beginning to sweat a bit.  I have a rough list of what I need to get done on it and the list IS dwindling, however I still have one track that needs some serious work so all attention must turn to focus on that particular issue.

Work on "Didn't I Tell You?", my most recently composed track on the album, did commence this weekend and the track is sounding pretty good.  It's not exactly finished, per se, but it's in a spot where I feel comfortable with it.  My soloing went well this weekend and I completed it in a more true fashion, where I improvised the whole thing and then just did some polishing of it here and there.  That's the approach I want to be able to take more in the future but I still have some mountains to climb in order to get there.  The only other thing I'll say about it is that, while the solo and playing are great, I haven't yet found the right spot for it to sit in the mix so I'll need to tweak that a bit.  Apart from this task, I also finally fixed the intro lead guitar on the track "Tonight, You Reached Me" since there was just something about it that didn't sound quite right to me.  I had thought it was the drum; I think in the end it was that the guitar part was too complex that early in the song, and so I simply kept dumbing it down until it sounded right.  Weird, and once again, I had to pull back on how much I'm playing.

Besides music related news, I'm also now fully vaxxed!  The second vax hit me semi-hard and kept me off my feet on Friday so I of course was concerned that it would screw up yet another weekend of mine.  It didn't so all was good in the nd.  I will add that I still can't believe how much my arm hurt once the sick feeling was pulsing through my body.  It literally felt like someone had put a bullet into my arm and it made me check more than once, just in case.

Per checking my notes yesterday, it looks like I started the "jazz machine" sessions around 8/9/2020 so I actually have more time than I thought.  For some reason, I thought I started recording last July but maybe I did the writing sessions then?  Who knows.  The answer's probably in this very blog somewhere and I'm simply too lazy to go look for it.

Scratch It

 Today's small recording tip, of which I've only just recently completely embraced as well, is fully utilizing the concept of scratch tracks when recording new material.  I don't know why I haven't been doing this myself all of these years but my best answer is that I simply got into a habit of worrying about space on tape (back in the old days, that is) and hadn't really given it much thought since then.  I sometimes tend to get into these ruts with doing things and can't always 'unthink' my way out of them easily.  Since no one is really using tape anymore, well, wasting space on tape has completely gone the way of the dodo, and the idea of using scratch tracks is something I picked up from someone a couple years back.

I've been using this concept largely on my current "jazz machine" album and it's been quite helpful.  I even use scratch drums, if you will, in order to get an overall layout and feel for the track with the drums included.  I usually find or create the main pattern for the drums up front (I use EZDrummer) but I just use it as is, with little to no mods, embellishments, etc., and loop it across the entire song.  I then go back later and work on making the drums more interesting, adding fills and what not, and since these are all what they call virtual instruments, it's as simple as can be and no harm is done at all to the track.  In short, it's pretty slick.  I also usually commit the looped scratch track to dedicated audio, just to free up memory in my Mac since running too many virtual instruments gets rather resource intensive, and then I'll delete it later on once I have my final track created.  It's simply a great way to get a feel for the drums on the song right up front.

For guitars, I purchased a Digidesign Eleven a few years back when they were pretty much giving them away brand new and I use this heavily for all of my scratch guitar tracks.  The unit has a fairly decent amp simulated sound right out of the box and since the unit is already connected to Pro Tools via the interface, it's super simple to just plug in a guitar, choose a setting, and hit record.  Once that's complete, and maybe it's not the best approach but is certainly easy and quick, I then tend to use a keyboard based bass synth patch to help me work out a rough bass track, and the end result is a fairly good representation of what the song will sound like with guitars, bass, and drums.  I then give this rough version of the song quite a few listens.

Another wonderful advantage of using scratch tracks in this manner is that I sometimes decide to move whole sections of the song around after being able to listen to it a bit, and sometimes I might add, say, a second or third bridge, and I'd personally rather do this with the scratch track versus the real track.  You can do it on the real track, mind you, but sometimes getting the pieces to meld together can be slightly tricky.  My overall goal lately, though, is to get my scratch track laid out on the Pro Tools grid as close as possible to how I want the real track to be, and only then do I start working on recording the real parts.  It also allows me to spend more time and focus on microphone selection, placement, preamp settings, and what not when recording the real parts since I already have all the other stuff worked out.

Just thought I'd share that tidbit.  Scratch tracks are definitely your friend so have no fear of them!

A Note About Rickenbackers

 I've been meaning to write this post for quite some time and I'm just now getting around to it.  It's on my mind again since I just switched Rickenbacker guitars for the hundredth time.  Per my rough count, I've owned somewhere around 12-16 Rickenbackers in my lifetime, most being a variety of newer models and reissues, etc.  I've now owned at least 3-4 Rick 330/360's in Jetglo, and each and every time I end up getting rid of them.  Why?  Purely aesthetics, the dumbest reason possible, I know.  There's just something about the Rick 360 Jetglo look that I don't identify with, and my hunch is that it's so identifiable in my head with Peter Buck of R.E.M. that I simply never feel comfortable with it as my own.  I'll also say that black Rick's (well, all Rick's) have a finish on them that, if you even breath near it, needs to be wiped (in my viewpoint, at least) so I simply never want to touch them let alone actually play them.  And so, my 2012 Rick 360 Jetglo just got sold/traded for a brand new Rick 360 in Mapleglo, and again I know how ridiculous this sounds...but it was destined to happen.

I've always had a thing for Mapleglo 360's.  As much as they are incredibly identifiable with Roger McGuinn of the Byrds and Tom Petty, for some reason these just seem more at home with me and don't put me off like the Jetglo association with Peter Buck.  Again, I realize this doesn't make a ton of sense but...  Aesthetically, though, Mapleglo Rick's are not all equal.  Most look decent albeit fairly plain; some are downright kind of ugly due to the wood grain, and then every once in awhile you see one that's rather stunning.  I finally got my hands on one of the latter after searching for many years, hence the switch.  Of course, it's all personal opinion and preference, and one person's ugly is another person's beautiful, and so on.

Rickenbackers get a bad wrap overall, though, in my opinion, especially the newer one's with what they call "Hi-Gain" pickups.  Personally, I think Rickenbackers are the most attractive guitars out there AND are also the most consistently quality made electric guitar ever.  They've always been made in CA at pretty much the same factory and still deliver a highly superior product, and even though they're a bit more expensive than some guitars, I think you get a lot more for the money.  Overall, they're actually quite a good value given the quality and Rickenbacker Int'l doesn't tend to do many price increases either.  So, why not only play Rickenbackers then?  It's simple - they're not easy to play.

Most Rickenbackers are fairly heavy and have rather narrow necks with a larger than most C styled bulbous shape.  For someone like myself, it's just not preferable.  Fender Telecasters have narrower necks as well but they feel way larger than a Rick's.  Even worse, get your hands on a vintage Rick...I mean, it's absurd.  The vintage necks are so narrow that I can barely even play the damn guitars due to my arthritis and trigger finger issues.  So, that alone puts Rick's at a disadvantage.  Also, the 12 string versions have incredibly narrow necks for the amount of strings, so much so that Rickenbacker finally addressed the issue by creating the larger necked 660/12 model.  This proved popular enough that the neck was also put on the newer 1993Plus model, and upon playing that one, I immediately sold my 360/12C63 which was gorgeous to look at but a real pain in the you know what to play, especially if you were to switch from normally playing a 6 string electric.  I did a recording session once on the 360/12C63 and it took me 2-3 days just to get used to the narrowness, and then it still wasn't pretty.  Needless to say, I'm a huge fan of the 1993Plus guitar with the larger neck for the 12 string layout, and I personally think all of the 360/12's should have that same neck...but that's just me.

Strangely, the thing you read about most in regards to Rickenbackers is not what I've written above:  it's instead all about the sound and pickups.  Many players repetitively comment how the guitar has such a "jangle" and that it's a one trick pony, etc.  Other players say that you can't get enough power out of them.  Well, I think this is completely absurd.  A Rickenbacker with Hi-Gain's has a ton of power, so much so that when I plugged my new 360 in with the same settings that I used for my Tele, it sounded like the perfect rock guitar right out of the box without any tweaks to my pedals.  I mean, the guitar is one of the most powerful and full sounding guitars I own, second only to the Stratocaster.  If you need to do some power chording on your recordings, say, in stereo, mainly for accent during refrains and such, this is a fantastic guitar to use and that's where I tend to reach for it most.  It's not for death metal and that sort of thing, of course, but hopefully you already knew that.  If you're trying for even a vintage punk styled sound, the Hi-Gain's pull it off wonderfully.  It doesn't have the same sound as, say, my Gibson SG, but then again I have had a very hard time getting the SG's tone to record well.  The Rick, however, is a breeze to record and sounds on recordings pretty much how it sounds in the room.

VP's, or vintage styled pickups...that's a whole different story.  These are replica's of what Rickenbacker used back in the vintage days, and they are a bit more one trick pony, in my opinion.  Hi-Gain's are great, though, and if you only own one 6 string Rick, you want the Hi-Gain's on it, in my opinion at least.  They're incredibly versatile, being able to "jangle" but also have that hard rock tone that I already mentioned, and they even do a jazz tone, as evidenced from my tooling around with the guitar last weekend.  I should say that literal vintage Rickenbacker pickups do not behave like these newly made VP's.  They're close in sound and tone but the output of the pickup for VP's is probably 3x the amount of an actual vintage pickup (another thing that initially really threw me off about the vintage guitars).

If anyone is buying their first Rickenbacker and seeking advice, here's mine in a nutshell:  if you're buying a 12 string, do yourself a favor and try out the wider neck on the 660/12 and the 1993Plus BEFORE you purchase and compare it to the standard 12 string neck.  See what you think and which you prefer.  Also, I think VP's are probably the better choice for 12 string guitars since a 12 string IS sort of a one trick pony, and most of us don't really want a harder edged sound for that anyway.  If you're buying a 6 string, though, I'd opt for the Hi-Gain's because I just think they're better overall and way more versatile.  Again, it's just my opinion and I'm sure countless guitarists will highly disagree with me, but that's how I see it.

As for color, well, good luck.  If you're like me, you'll keep flipping through them until you're comfortable, and there's really nothing wrong with that either.

Found and then Some

  It was a nice weekend overall although I wish I had had more time to spend on music (once again).  The weather here hit 80 degrees which is quite warm for this time of year, and the downside is that it prompts the dreaded idea of yard work, hence some of my time getting hijacked.  I can tell you this, however.  The elusive last track for the jazz machine album has been uncovered and, not only that, I basically now have half of the next album as well, at least in rough idea form.

It's funny how this happens.  I actually "jammed" (if you can call it that, seeing as I'm completely alone.  Maybe brainstormed instead?) out around 7 new song ideas within seven days worth of time which is quite a lot, really.  One of them is pretty much what I was looking for; three others I'm engrossed with and therefore refuse to throw out so they'll be on the next album.  In fact, I even have them named and also working titled the next album title as well!  It's been a productive but strange week and I never cease to shake my head when this sort of thing happens.  It seems apparent now that I should have been working on instrumental work all along since I apparently have a plethora of ideas rattling around in my head.

The new track is called "Didn't I Tell You?" and has sort of an "Us and Them" vibe to it.  I'm also swapping the track numbering a bit, with this new track initially going in the 5th slot but it seems to make more sense in slot #4.  I pretty much blueprinted the entire track on Saturday and now I just need to listen to it back a few times, make notes, write down any necessary changes, and then prepare for the real recording.  I'll hopefully get it down on tape (er, disk) in the next couple of weeks.

I think I also finally made the decision to just stick with the "jazz machine" naming.  I wrote down a logo and such for the alt. named "Mystery Machine" and stared at it for a couple weeks but it just didn't flow as much for me so I'm sticking with the original naming idea.  I even have a couple loose ideas for the album cover which I'll have to start playing around with soon.

I also have about 3-4 other posts rolling around in my head so hopefully I'll get them typed out in the next couple of days.  As usual, my fingers can't keep up with my rambling brain.

Still Searching

 I spent some time this weekend toying around with different drum patterns in search of the last track for the "jazz machine" album.  This is sort of my process usually, especially for someone that 99% of the time writes completely alone.  I went through multiple drum patterns and an almost annoying thing happened in response...I didn't find really what I was looking for and instead came up with 2-3 new track ideas that I now have nowhere to place!

This isn't altogether unusual for me but it is different when it comes to instrumental work.  I'm going to listen to these samples over the next few days and see what I think.  Two of them are really great, I think, and I immediately was drawn to them since they're a bit unique.  The downside is that if I were to use one of them on this album, it'll completely change the tone of this record, which is exactly what I don't want.  If I use both of the tracks, then I have to cut the one that I'm already working on, or even worse abandon it altogether, AND change the tone of the record.  I'm just not a fan of these options on the surface.  So, I have a strong feeling that I already have 2 loosely structured songs ready to go for the next "jazz machine" album.  Ugh.  This is how this vicious cycle keeps happening to me, folks.

I'm giving myself through this week to keep looking for the elusive 5th track on the album and then I'll just have to make a decision in order to stay on track with the progress of the recording.  I also worked on learning some new jazz chords, and I also went through some videos on playing the Gershwin classic "How Long Has This Been Going On", one of my all time fav's in regards to the version from "Funny Face", and then lastly started working on an instrumental rendition of "Poor Unfortunate Souls" from "The Little Mermaid".  The latter is really quite fun and I could see playing this live someday.  I think it would be a hoot (yes, I said 'hoot').

Coming Along

  I spent a good part of the weekend, a long holiday weekend, mind you, working on the "jazz machine" album, putting the finishing touches on the first couple songs.  I must say that I'm really quite pleased so far with this album and I really think that it might be one of my favorites so far.  The opening track, "As Evening Brings Tears", has quickly become one of my favorite songs that I've ever written, even in it's simplicity.  I just feel like the mood of the track is there and it's pretty much what I was hoping it would be on paper which so far in my recording experience has been a rarity.

I've recently been having an internal argument about what this "band" or brand should be called.  The issue with calling it "...with the Jazz Machine" or "...and the Jazz Machine" is that it kind of sets up a high expectation that I don't think it'll really live up to.  I'm just not sure that I confidently call anything that I've written instrumentally as "jazz" as of yet, and in truth that wasn't really the idea behind that branding anyway.  So, I've been toying around with different names and such.  Who knows what it'll actually end up being called.  One thing that I DO know is that I'm hoping to do more than one album under this brand so it's rather important that I choose wisely.

In other news, the Spirit Awards movie watching experience is winding down for 2020.  I think I'm down to only 5 movies left.  After a fairly rocky start, I must confess that this may have been one of the best years yet with nearly every film being of fairly high quality.  I think there were really only 2 films that I took issue with and both were right in the beginning of my watching.  On the flip side, though, this year doesn't have as many mind blowing/out of this world/"you've gotta see it" content.  Instead, everything has been very good to maybe great.  I guess take your pick on which you prefer.  I'll hopefully be posting my top film picks for 2020 in the next couple of weeks.

Of Jazzmasters and Locking Tuners

 Where DOES the time go?  The rate of speed that time passes for me these days is beyond frightening.  I always heard that time seems to "speed" up as we get older but I seriously never imagined this.  I sometimes feel like I woke up and then went to bed about an hour later.  Maybe I'm just losing my mind.

I was hoping to do a lot of tinkering with the "jazz machine" tracks this weekend but, like most weekends, time got way from me so I only managed a small bit of tinkering.  I mainly played around with "As Evening Brings Tears", one of my favorite tracks on the album.  Have I mentioned here (opposed to in my head) how I composed 90% of this album literally in one "jam" idea session, lasting about 1 hour?  I don't think I've ever written the blueprints for an entire album in one sitting, let alone the FIRST sitting.  It's kind of weird, and it almost seemed like this album wanted to live and be real, and therefore I made the decision to start working on it mid-last year even though I had countless other things to work on.

I'm trying to put this album together in a true band manner, meaning not doing a ton of overdubs of guitars, etc.  Instead, I'm trying to lay it out as if a small quartet was actually playing it, and again this is new for me.  The idea behind this album is for it to be fairly close to the kind of music that I actually listen to, and it's what I frequently think of as "night" or "rainy day" instrumental music.  These sorts of songs aren't terribly heavy on frantic fretboard burning up or getting paid by the amount of notes played, etc., and instead it's fairly relaxing music overall, in my opinion at least.  I'll be very curious to hear comments on this one.

Other than that, I've been playing around with a drop D tuning on a used Breedlove Celtic A25 guitar that I recently picked up.  I kind of want to dive into alternate tunings and used that as an excuse for acquiring another acoustic.  I'm liking the tuning so far but it has yet to open up the world of possibility that I was hoping for, and instead it feels more restricted, but it's probably because I don't know the chord variations and such.  The guitar is quite nice but needs a serious adjustment on the neck which I'm currently putting off since I have yet to decide on the final tuning.  I'm interested in checking out Fripp's NST in the near future as well but I'm not sure what guitar to do that on either.

I also want to say a couple words about my Fender Jazzmaster Ultra which I pulled out this weekend.  I think Fender released this line of guitars about 1-2 years ago and I was so impressed by what I had heard and read that I opted to go into my local Guitar Center and try one out.  This is no easy feat during COVID, and I had to elicit the help of a clerk since the guitar was on the row closest to the ceiling.  Before agreeing to pull it down, the clerk asked, "Um, are you intending to buy it?"  I said I don't know...I haven't yet even played or touched it.  Seemed like a fair response to me, although I do get their point.  I only had the guitar in my hand unplugged for about 1 minute and could already tell how much better the quality was versus my American Special Jazzmaster which I picked up a few years back and hardly ever play.  I opted to take the plunge (not from Guitar Center, mind you) and ordered an Ultra; I've had an American Special Jazzmaster in mint condition for sale ever since.  Yes, I must say that the changes that Fender made to the Jazzmaster Ultra are quite incredible over the other one and it's almost like it's not even remotely the same guitar, except for the overall shape.  If you're looking for a Jazzmaster, I highly recommend the Ultra, and I'm quite taken by the Mocha Burst color as well which looks way better in person than online.

It's also the first guitar I own with so called "locking tuners".  I've avoided any instrument my whole life with those and, as it turns out, I guess I never understood exactly what they were and therefore my aversion to them was completely in vain.  It just shows what happens when you think you understand something and, well, don't.  I guess that could be said about a lot of things (sigh).

"Tonight..." Leads

  I spent this weekend finally putting down the main guitar melodies/leads for a song called "Tonight, You Reached Me" which will be on the "jazz machine" album.  I was supposed to do it back in early January but it was put off since I wasn't feeling well, etc.  The recording went really well this weekend and I'm pretty pleased with my results.  I also had to re-record the solo on "As Evening Brings Tears", the opening track on the same album, since the previous solo was basically a compiled mix of many different takes all sewn together, and because of it, I just didn't feel like it had a nice cohesive feel.  Therefore, I listened to the compiled solo quite a few times, wrote down what pieces I liked the best from it, and then tried to recreate it in a more listenable fashion that flowed in a better manner.  I think it worked and was a good choice.

The solos on "Tonight..." were interesting since I took the approach of doing it much more slowly, deliberately, and doing a lot of listening in the process.  The rest of this album so far has been done in more of improv vein, trying to preserve anything unexpected wherever possible.  "Tonight..." feels much more deliberate and then also has a more proper melody line flowing through it.  It was also the first time I've recorded with my Les Paul Std.

I decided to use my old Electro Harmonix Micro QTron pedal for the third verse of "Tonight...".  I had an idea in my head that using a strong effect like this would create an interesting alteration to just having another standard verse sound, and I think I was correct.  I don't know why people don't like the Micro Qtron; in fact, I believe it's now discontinued and I frequently see them for sale for around $60.  I think it's a great pedal, personally, but it's something you only really use in short bursts, and maybe that's what throws people about it.  I personally can't imagine trying to run the pedal continuously through an entire song since it would get fatiguing very fast.  They still make the full size QTron, which I personally find odd since EH full size pedals are kind of big and clunky, and I don't know what more you could need that the micro version doesn't do.  Who knows.

It should also be noted that the entire "jazz machine" album so far has been recorded exclusively on the Benson Vinny with the 10" cabinet.  This little sucker is pretty phenomenal, in my opinion, and it's worked really well for this style of music.  Sure, you lose the low end with the 10" cabinet but I probably would have just EQ'd it out anyhow so in essence the cabinet saves me some work.  The crazy thing is the whole amp and cabinet are about the size of 2 boxes of cereal.  I can't recommend this thing enough so far and I'm sure it'll become my goto going forward.

Lessons Learned (Guitar): Take Time to Breathe

 Continuing on with my "lessons learned" comments in regards to songwriting and recording/mixing, I must say that one of the more recent lessons that I've really learned (the hard way, of course) is to, well, not play so much.  I don't mean practice, of course, but I mean don't play constantly when you're playing. In fact, music needs to breathe more often than you'd think, and a quality of a good recording that I never really thought about before was allowing the song to have some space.

This also seems to be a fairly common stumbling block for most musicians, I think.  I know in my last band that this ran rampant between us and, now going through the recording sessions that we did, it's a bit tricky trying to meld everything together because no one ever seems to take a break.  Doing this creates ear fatigue; it also sometimes masks a good performance because you can't actually tell where the good performance is.

For example, when a song starts, don't feel like you have to play at a level of 100%.  Again, I'm not talking about precision or accuracy...I mean don't be strumming or soloing like your life depends upon it.  Instead, work up to it, change it up, and don't be afraid to do simple downward strums as an accent rather than playing each track like a punk rock tune at 180 bpm.  Just like fine wine and cheese need to breathe, I think music does as well.

I've particularly been learning this while working on the new instrumental album, where I'm basically soloing jazz style for quite some time.  I have a terrible tendency to play at 100% right from the start, meaning speed, number of notes, etc.  When I'm doing it, I think it sounds great.  When I play it back later, it sounds like complete garbage because there's just no build-up to anything since I'm already built up from the get go.  It's like a story with no build-up...just an ongoing climax that ends up being anti-climatic since it never actually changes or builds.

You'd think playing less would be easy, right?  It is in technique but trying to get your head around actually doing it for real is much harder than you'd imagine.  It's almost like my brain feels judged by playing too little, and I think that's part of the problem.

So, remember...don't feel ashamed to play an easier riff or simpler strum and instead work up to a more climatic style of playing.  Your recording will thank you later on.

Taking Shape, and Yet Another End of an Era

 Recording has been basically off the table for the past month or so due to health issues as well as working on the artwork for "Mirror Land".  I'm happy to say that the artwork is almost done and I have probably only a few tweaks to make to it in general.  I still have a couple more tasks that I'm trying to do to the mixes so I'm expecting it to be another couple of weeks, depending upon how I'm feeling.  I'm pretty pleased with the artwork so far, though, so that's great, and Photoshop hasn't abused me too terribly in the process.

My health has been rather suspect lately.  The worst part is that I have no idea what's going on with me, and so far the doctors don't either.  I had a brain MRI last week and the results showed everything as normal (which I *think* is good, right?).  It's really hard to counter something when you don't know what you're trying counter.  When the fatigue and headaches come on, though, it's like being hit by a train, and I'm rendered fairly useless until it passes, hence why I'm desperately trying to find out how to make it pass quicker.

In other news, I read something last week that sort of floored me a bit.  I guess Fender announced that the Fender Twin amp, one of the most iconic amps ever, will no longer be made with tubes!  I mean...um...?  Needless to say, I'm pretty skeptical on this point.  I know that supposed tube replication has progressed somewhat but I'm a bit of a purist and still feel, no matter what the technology and such, that the original way of doing it is best...but who knows.  I long ago sold my Fender Twin back around 2005 or 2006, I think, and after going through countless amps, have happily settled on Savage Amps and the more recent newcomer for me, the Benson Vinny, a 1 watt giant that has pretty much blown my mind since getting it.  I've actually recorded the entire new "jazz machine" album using only this amp so far and the results have been very pleasing.  As for the Twin, well, maybe I'll plug into one the next time I'm in a music store.  I must say that I am a bit curious.

Revisiting Photoshop

  It's been quite awhile since I've had to fiddle about in Photoshop.  I think it's been over 16 years, to be fairly precise, and that's more than enough time to completely forget everything about a program, not that I was that good with it to begin with.  I used this weekend to start work at very long last (6+ months overdue) on the cover art for the "Mirror Land" EP and let's just say that it was a bit brutal.

Like I said, I've never been that knowledgeable about Photoshop to begin with but I found trying to use it now a bit more annoying than I recall it being in the past.  I did get a decent start on it, though, and at least I already knew what pictures I was going to use for the front and back cover.  It's usually not the pictures that are the issue, though.  I find combining text onto the sleeves to be the hardest.  90% of the available fonts never look right, at least not to my eyes, and trying to nail down the positioning and such is a royal pain in the you know where.  It's not hard to see why people who are very knowledgeable at these things get highly paid for it.

I also had a chance to start going through some of my old files that I've had stashed in the garage for the past 20 years and it was an interesting walk down memory lane.  I found the "Lost Weekend" artwork which I'll be needing soon due to the re-release, although it's looking like I'll have to start completely over on it due to incorrect resolution and such.  I also found 2 prototype covers for the never released (or finished) "Foreshadowing" album which I barely even remember doing.  There were also quite a few photos that I sort of recall but I have absolutely no memory of where I got them from or who gave them to me.  If I ever end up deciding to use them, I have absolutely no clue who to credit for them.

I had meant to fiddle with mixing drums on the "Mirror Land" EP this weekend but never got around to it.  I figured I should try to polish them up just a bit before I finally lock down the mix.  I've been learning a lot lately about drum mixing, finally getting over my fear of touching them since I'm of course not a drummer, but I rarely have the time to focus on it.  I also learned an amazing new trick in the past couple of days for mixing in general that I had never used nor heard of before...applying EQ to your reverbs.  I must say that it was rather impressive and quickly got written down into my notes for mixing.  It's all a journey, after all.

If anyone out there has an interest in putting together cover art for me, by all means let me know.  Until then, I'm going to keep fiddling.  As for right now, I probably have 2-3 more covers I have to come up with in the next 4 months so I'm going to be rather busy in that department.