A Couple More LW Notes

I thought of a couple more stories about the "Lost Weekend" recording process to more or less go along with my previous post.  The song "Ruin" was an interesting one, and I think it was the third song that I recorded, right after "Across the Desert" and "Interstate Blind", and there are a few stories there to tell.

The idea for the song was very old, something I more or less dreamt up years earlier while lying in bed.  I have always been a fan of the volume pedal swell thing on guitars, the best examples probably being from the "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" album by Genesis and the classic ending to "The Gates of Delirium" by Yes from the "Relayer" album, still a personal favorite of mine to this very day.  I came up with the volume pedal swell melody only in my head and somehow lodged it away in my memory.  Upon deciding to finally commit to working on the "Lost Weekend" album, I somehow remembered that idea and decided to finally give it a shot.

"Ruin" is one of the few tracks on this remix which got a heavier polishing.  I've always been unhappy with my horrid piano playing, and if I'm correct, I believe I played it without a click track, a terrible decision looking back on it.  I knew before even thinking about doing a remix of this album that I'd be replacing that with a newly updated version via MIDI and worked on that about 1-2 years ago, painstakingly having to move all the other recorded bits around, shortening them slightly and so on, in order to make it fit a consistent tempo and click track.  It was a ton of work but the end result is that you can't even tell that I did any of that...which means success, of course.

"Ruin" actually started with a very different ending that I still have a blueprint of on the recorded song, only muted so it's not heard.  It actually ended with a very heavy drum track and a haunting, doom sounding keyboard layover, and we experimented with doing different voices where someone would say "...you're ruined..."  I played with it a bit and simply didn't like it, feeling it was a bit on the silly side, and so I scrapped it, completely went in a different direction, and instead picked up my nylon string guitar, pressed record, and played a very simply outro piece which is what I ended up using.  The fadeout of that guitar bit ended up bookending very nicely with the short and fade in/out of the title track "Lost Weekend".

Of course, the real standout on "Ruin" is the child's voice intro of "...Daddy, why have you forsaken us?"  I had an idea of doing this short spoken word bit and my friend Terry (Terry #1, if you're keeping track) had a stepdaughter who seemed really outgoing.  He came over one day with her and her slightly older brother who was incredibly quiet, and after multiple attempts at trying to get the stepdaughter to do the bit, we realized it just wasn't working since the microphone was apparently making her really nervous.  At a loss, we then realized we had another child present in the room and sheepishly asked if he would be interested in giving it a shot, and much to our surprise he knocked it out in about 2 minutes with the perfect sad, melancholy tone that it required.  We were both quite ecstatic with the outcome and could hardly believe our luck.

The very last song that I wrote and recorded for the album was "After the Rain", a title that I believe I arrived at via a film that I watched at the time but then changed the words around slightly (and hence I can't figure out now what movie it actually was).  It's based on a very simple bossa nova beat on the drum machine, something I had never worked with before, and I believe I loosely got the idea for it from some instrumental album that I was listening to at the time, possibly something by Acoustic Alchemy.  It ended up being one of my favorite tunes and I think I recorded it a bit better than the rest of the album since I think I had a bit more confidence by that point.  I've always seen that song as one of the "singles" from "Lost Weekend", if you could imagine such a thing.

You may notice that film influences my musical endeavors quite a bit and that is no understatement.  Being a lover of cinema definitely has its advantages and no shortage of inspiration.

That's all for now.  If I think of anything else, I'll post it here as well.

Looking for a "Lost Weekend"

I'm off for the next 12 or so days and so I have entered mixing heaven, hopefully not mixing hell.  But seriously, it's going pretty well so far although I do have a few challenges that I'm tackling.  I've reentered the halls of what is known as "Lost Weekend", my first fully recorded album back from 2000 that's now getting a full remix and a bit of touch up without going too terribly 'George Lucas' on it.

A bit of history...  I started recording this album back in 1997, back when I had just purchased at very long last my first Alesis ADAT recorder, something I had been wanting for about 5+ years and couldn't afford.  I had been waiting to do any real recording for that exact moment since my explored excursions into recording on cassette multi-tracks seemed a complete waste of time, regardless of what some people back then said.  Cassettes had awful quality in general, let alone dividing up the thin tape into 8 segments for multi-tracking.  The end result was usually less than impressive (just listen to my "Halloween" music tape, for example.  Ugh).

Strangely, after already composing about 6 albums worth of material at the time, all vocal albums, mind you, I opted instead to record something completely new and foreign to me versus recording something already written.  Mistake?  Possibly.  It kind of all came about with a new song idea that I had that eventually became "Across the Desert", with this very heavy played strum on the acoustic guitar, and I decided to try "practice" recording that rhythm.  I liked it enough that I kept going with it.  Then, I blinked and had written and recorded "Interstate Blind", at least in its infant state, and I liked both tracks enough that I said to hell with it and moved forward with doing an instrumental album, something I knew absolutely nothing about.

It should be noted that I had not played a single lead EVER on guitar up until this point.  In fact, I commonly called myself a rhythm guitarist and had no aspirations to ever play leads, although I'm not entirely sure why.  I remember the anxiety that composing leads for this album gave me back then for I really was a pretty awful guitar player in general, looking back on it now.  I really didn't even know if I could do it or pull it off, hence the experiment.  And then, in very typical 'me' form, I upped the ante even more to make the album a sort of concept album with some very odd arty bits thrown in here and there.  It was all rather ambitious and I'm shocked that anything listenable even came out of it.

Listening to these songs today, I kind of marvel at them.  I'm actually impressed with the things I came up with back then, having no experience whatsoever with instrumental work or in recording albums in general.  I was about a year into the recording of the album when I realized that there was no way I could possibly get everything I wanted into 8 tracks, at least not without doing a bunch of bouncing of which I really didn't want to do (in hindsight, that was a good idea for I think remixing that would have been a total nightmare, if not impossible).  This meant that I had to table recording for awhile as I saved up cash, or really opened up credit on some credit card, to purchase a second ADAT machine that would then sync up to the first.  This gave me 16 tracks in total to work with and was exactly what I needed.  Some songs did have what I call "work" tracks where multiple things were recorded on the same track but used more or less just as effects, in other words not playing all the way through the song continuously.  These tidbits all had to be broken out in Pro Tools in order to do the remix.

Later on, "Lost Weekend" got transferred over to a Mackie MDR unit somewhere between 2002 - 2007 once that was my main recorder, and then it got transferred once more time to Pro Tools around 2011.  It's been sitting on my hard drive ever since, just waiting for the right moment to be remixed.

Other stories I can tell about "Lost Weekend" have to do with some of the oddities on the album.  For example, for the bird noises and such, I literally hung my AT4050 microphone out of my condo's sliding glass door and simply recorded the various noise in the neighborhood.  I was listening to that at a louder volume today and I was shocked at some of the weird things I could hear such as a couple yelling at one another, a parent yelling towards their child, various cars, and of course countless birds.  My friend Terry at the time was kind enough to help me out with the car noises and I recall using the same mic, hanging out the doorway, and I basically pressed the 'record' button, motioned to his wife to 'go', and then she motioned to Terry down the street who was sitting in his car, revving it and such.  He then drove the car by my condo as loud as he could, and thus that's how the moving car noise was done.

A different friend named Terry did the speaking parts on "Pleasure Oasis" and "Cantina".  I wrote out the various spoken parts for "Pleasure Oasis" and I recall her telling me that she went over the lines while sitting at home with her husband, who after hearing the gist of the dialogue promptly referred to it as "the porno song".  This still makes me laugh.  My friend Travis did the spoken word bits on "Interstate Blind" and I remember us laughing hysterically as we were doing the takes.  He seriously knocked it out of the park, and strangely I cannot remember for the life of me how I got that amazing distorted sound on his voice.  I wish I knew because it's perfect.

A girl I worked with named Tina did "...the grass is greener..." line on "Lost Highway" and also did some spoken bits on "Interstate Blind" that ended up not working, hence the bits recorded with Travis.  My friend Tim did some French speaking bits on "Parasite" but that didn't pan out either, and I instead recorded my own voice, most likely with that same mysterious distortion, saying "devour the parasite" (I would later on return to the French spoken word idea on the Defrost Nixon album) .  And then lastly, Terry #2's friend Saundra, who had done some professional singing, I believe, came over and did the singing part on "Pleasure Oasis".  I think she was beyond nervous for whatever reason and it more or less came through in the recorded takes.  I've since worked very heavily on trying to make that sound better for its one of the things on the album that I've never been super pleased with, and I blame myself because I wasn't very good at directing anyone back then.  I think I was just so grateful to have someone participate that I completely forgot that I needed to guide them.

What other tidbits can I share?  The title obviously comes a little bit from the movie of the same name but actually got into my head more from the David Lynch film "Lost Highway" which I had recently watched for the first time and loved.  The recurring driving theme in the film is what got the concept in my head, sort of mixed with some of the themes from the Marillion album "Afraid of Sunlight".  I think every single electric guitar part on the album was recorded directly through a Digitech 2112 unit that I had recently acquired and actually still own, although I haven't turned it on in probably 2 decades.  I was so nervous when "releasing" this album that I almost didn't do it for I was convinced that it was awful and that everyone would hate it.  Luckily, Travis talked me off the ledge and much to my surprise most people seemed to really like it.

Once the remix is fairly complete, I'm also going to dig out some old pics and start working on a new version of the CD packaging.  The "Mirror Land" EP will be released next and therefore I would think "Lost Weekend" may be out around mid to late summer.  It'll be interesting to see what it sounds like once I've got it all complete.

Decent

I had a pretty decent and productive weekend.  Mixing continues to get better, and I tried out another new plug-in earlier this week that I felt was a bit of a game changer.  Immediately after the trial of it, I was completely won over and promptly plunked down my money to buy the plug-in.  I'm doing everything I can to keep learning more and more about how to make things sound better.

I dare say that "Mirror Land" is basically ready to go now.  I worked all three tracks this weekend, adding the new plugin's and making various busses, etc., and I think they all sound pretty good.  I'm sure I'll tweak them a little here and there but I think they're done for the most part.  I cannot say enough about how "Optimism", the track that I like the most but sounded the worst, has turned around in the past weeks.  It sounded pretty bad still a few weeks ago but my re-working the mix and adding some plug-in's has really pulled it together.

I do have some release news at long last.  The new version of "(He Was) Some Kind of a Man" is being mastered this coming Friday, and provided I have all the artwork proofed and such, I should be able to submit the order for the CD's almost immediately.  It looks like the turnaround time right now on CD duplication is about 3 weeks so that means they should be in hand around June 15th.

I suspect that I'll be submitting the "Mirror Land" EP for mastering probably within the next 2-3 weeks as well.  Due to lack of funds, though, I probably won't get the CD's made until a few weeks after that.  I think we're looking at a mid to late July release for that one, and I do intend to post the digital downloads basically at the same time that I have the CD's so that there's no lag time.

In other news, I'm taking a week off in 2 weeks which will be nothing but mixing and some minor touch up recording.  My focus will solely be on the Defrost Nixon band album, which is already in progress really, and the long planned remix of "Lost Weekend".  Judging by how mixing is going for me in general these days, I actually think I'll have that one wrapped up by the end of June as well if not almost done by the end of my time off.  It would then be able to be released as soon as I have the funds to master and duplicate it.  For Defrost Nixon, I think we're looking at probably a September-ish release date for that one but it is a bit more up in the air due to the amount of work involved.  If I can stick to this schedule, though, I think I can easily manage to get the Wrecking Ball album done this year as well, and possibly a bit more, so things are progressing really well.

The bad news is that I haven't even picked up a guitar in like 2 weeks but that should be remedied fairly soon.  It's been a bit on the crazy side but I dare say that it's been rather enjoyable, and I'm greatly looking forward to getting these releases out there.

At Least Something is Getting Better

Mixing is going really well, I must say, and I'm quite excited by the material that should soon be released.  I had quite an amazing moment last night.  I literally was so excited that I almost started firing off emails to friends and such, wanting to say, "I FINALLY have an album that sounds professional!"  I mean, I was pretty damn ecstatic.  I even nearly danced.

I'm talking about the "Wrecking Ball" album.  Right now, I'm mainly focused on Defrost Nixon and finishing up the final touches for the "Mirror Land" EP, the latter which might finally be good to go (after a series of checks, double checks, various listens, etc.).  And so, that brought me to the next one on my agenda which is "Wrecking Ball".  I decided that I should pull up one of these tracks, one in particular that I've not been happy with the mix the entire time, and figured I should try some of the new techniques that I've recently learned and have been using to decent success.  This is what brought about my sudden joy, for with a few tweaks of some knobs, repositioning, and adding a new plug-in that I recently acquired, voila.  I mean, I nearly fell out of my chair.  At long last, THERE it is!  And so, then I went to another track, and another, and before you know it, at 11pm at night, I went through at least half the album and was beyond tickled with what I heard.  I had even forgotten that I had recorded some of this stuff, ironically, and even my playing and soloing brought a huge smile to my face.  I found it hard to go to sleep afterward, quite frankly.  I swear...if people don't like this album once it's released, I might just give up since it's easily my best vocal album to date, and it literally rocks (and I don't use that term really ever).

I know I've said it before but I'll say it again:  every guitarist needs a Fender Strat in their arsenal.  Shame on me for down talking about them for at least a decade or two for I did not know what I was talking about.  My Strat is my utility guitar for so much that it's ridiculous and almost everything I throw at it sounds amazing.  I also tend to use it for soloing, especially when I'm trying to get that Steve Rothery/David Gilmour haunting/echo and reverb filled tone.  There's just no better guitar for it, in my opinion, and the thing is just so damn versatile.  And, just to clarify...you need an American made Strat.  I don't say this out of some sort of American snobbery but more due to the fact that I first owned one from Japan and hence my misaligning of the guitar began.  I now simply have a Fender American Standard Strat and it cost me a whole $750 brand new at the time (my timing was great because they promptly went up right afterward).  Today, it would be the equivalent of what I believe is called the American Professional series, and while you won't get it for that amount any more, they're still rather reasonable and well worth the money.

I'll also make a shout out to a recent plug-in that I purchased from UA, the Thermionic Culture Vulture.  I have been using this thing all over the place and, while what it adds is certainly subtle, it's definitely a great plugin that I'm glad that I plunked the money down for when it was on sale last month.  Who knew that vocals, drums, and guitars needed this added distortion?!  Not me but now I'm a believer.

Mixing is certainly an interesting but often frustrating task to take on and I can't say enough how glad I am that I'm finally getting to a point where the whole process is coming together.  I guess 'better late than never', said the opsimath.

Names, EZDrummer 3, and TFF

One of the things that I wrestle with the most is how to name the different projects that I'm working on and/or plan to work on at some point.  I more or less refuse to fall "in line" with something that can really be branded, not because I'm stubborn but simply because my interest in music is fairly wide open.  I do instrumental music and vocal music, pop music and experimental, ballads and harder rock, some electronic, and even light jazzy stuff.  I'm pretty much all over the place.

So, how do you get fans when no one can ever get their head around what it is that you do?  That's exactly the question that I can't seem to answer.  Now, there are many artists out there who seem to do just fine with dabbling all over the place but then again they have a record label, promotions behind them, and so on.  When you have none of that, you tend to try to give people music that you think they might enjoy, and when your sound is all over the place, it just ventures into weird territory when you say something like "...listen to this one...no, not that one..."

As it is, I'm fairly convinced that using the "...the Jazz Machine" name was a bad idea.  Everyone automatically assumes and expects some jazz powerhouse playing and music, and then they hear me with my moody ambient instrumental stuff.  It would be funny if it wasn't for the weird looks it sometimes garners.

Oh well.  I guess if anyone has any bright ideas, feel free to float them my way.  In the meantime, I finally got around to a first listen of one of my most anticipated albums of this year, the new Tears for Fears album "The Tipping Point".  I'm fairly pleased overall and feel like 'they're back'.  In particular, the song "Rivers of Mercy" knocked my socks off a bit and took me right back to the very first time I ever heard Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes".  The whole thing brought a tear to my eye.  Brilliant stuff on both accounts.

In other news, "(He Was) Some Kind of a Man" is finally nailed down and will probably be submitted for mastering at the end of this week.  I must say that after hearing this revamped version quite a few times I may actually prefer it in the end.  Why?  I think the lack of the movie bits actually allows the listener to focus more on the actual song, and the new talkie bits, which aren't quite as overpowering, still have a quirky/funny aspect that makes me smile every time I hear it.  So, it may have taken forever but I think it worked itself out in the end.

Today also brought the release of Toontrack's EZDrummer 3 software release.  I opted in from the get go, simply because I use the software so much.  I didn't have a ton of time to play with it but my first dabbles seemed positive.  It looks like they put a lot more thought into how the product is organized, and that's good because the last version made my head spin sometimes and often left me mumbling obscenities under my breath.  I also saw some new features that made me rather excited.  I guess we'll see how it goes.

But of course...and Momix

I was really on a productive swing and it all came to a crashing halt this past week due to some useless/senseless drama in the workplace.  Sigh.  I'm trying to get myself put together again but it's amazing how these things can really affect your life.  I knew it was only a matter of time that something would knock me off of my productivity pedestal but this was about the last thing I saw coming.

I was trekking away at drum mixes, etc., though, and I was making pretty great headway.  I'll get back to it hopefully in the next couple of days, once I get a few things in order.  I absolutely have to get this "Mirror Land" EP out or I think I might just go insane.  Luckily, the artwork and all of that is pretty much ready to go.

In other news, I found someone who is willing to help me put out a video together for one of the "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" tracks which is really exciting.  I've been wanting to dabble in video anyhow but simply haven't had the time.  He's been really wonderful to work with and has literally ran with it so I'm thinking it'll be done fairly soon.  Once that occurs, I need to setup a YouTube account, etc., and then I'll forward on the link.

On the enjoyable side, we got to see the dance troupe Momix last night up in Long Beach for their latest creation of "Alice", loosely based on the story of "Alice in Wonderland".  I love Momix; I mean, I really love Momix, and I frequently refer to them as my "favorite dance troupe" which always seems to get a giggle from people.  I won't say that "Alice" was their best work but it was still quite fascinating and compelling, and I definitely recommend Momix to anyone who has the opportunity to see them perform.

We're also getting ready to start a fairly large home remodeling project.  It remains to be seen how much this will disrupt my productivity as well but I'm going to do the best I can to stay on target.  These sorts of projects always make me very nervous for a variety of reasons, especially given the scope of the work.  It looks like it'll be a 3-4 week project and I can already imagine how much noise and dust there will be.

That's it for me.  CD's for "I Miss You Most at Nighttime" will hopefully be sent out for printing fairly soon and I'll certainly keep everyone posted here once that happens.