To start this blog, I am republishing 7 posts about the new record that were published originally in the Non Alignment Pact group blog.
I am trying something new. It makes me a little nervous, but what the hell, I’ve done way stupider stuff that makes me nervous too. What I’m going to do is to start using this forum to present and hopefully discuss work in progress. After 30 weeks of writing mostly about music, and getting extremely addicted to writing and reading every word posted on this blog. I now need to switch the focus to making music instead of writing about it. Of course I will still do my weekly posts, but mostly they will be about the music I’m working on, with samples of recorded material in progress.
Since having a child, the way music plays a part in my life has changed. For the time being I can't sit in someone’s house playing and making up songs ‘til the sun comes up. For the time being I can’t go spend 3 days locked up in a studio out in the country recording all day and night. For the time being my musical output is mostly confined to recording music on garageband and playing songs at home with my wife, for my baby or to myself.
I am treading through musical waters previously unknown to me. These are the waters where I record songs that have never been played live; the waters where I record songs that are created track by track instead of using a live band to lay down the basics from where to build; these are the waters where I am arranging all the parts of the song. These are the waters of the lone wolf working from home.
But I’m not really much of a lone wolf type of person. So while one part of my natural instinct tells me to work alone (and of course, by alone I mean with Diane) on the material until it’s done, the other part of my instinct tells me that I need to work out this music with some kind of more general public. Also, this blog has been very good at getting me to write. Having that weekly deadline and having the support of the group has been instrumental in me writing a few things I had been meaning to write for a long time. So now I’m going to see if it can similarly work for recording music.
Not that I haven’t been recording. I’ve been working on a record for a few months now. And I have a vision of it that get a bit sharper every day, though it is still fairly open ended. So I’ve started to work out sketches of songs and bits of music and putting them together in various ways. The goal at present is to complete a blueprint that can then be used to create the final recording. But I can't say that I know exactly how that final recording will take shape.
For the blueprint at least, I am using a collage technique which makes it possible to create super fast sketches of ideas on record. I’m not recording songs all the way through. Instead I am recording little bits and pieces and then I am cutting and pasting them at various spots of a song or even in other songs as they might seem to fit. This way the whole record is slowly being built. However I am also trying to work within the basic rules of a traditional song album, structured with cohesive short statments that can stand on their own as individual pieces.
It is possible that some of the material I am recording now will end up as it is in the final recording, but for now I am still seeing everything as a blueprint. And by that I mean in the way that a blueprint is a two dimensional, skeletal projection of a three dimensional construction. The way I hear them in my head, the recordings I am making still seem to be in one dimension less than the final dimension. In my mind the missing dimension is other musicians playing the music all the way through, ideally as a group. But I might be ok if the recording can convey that certain freedom and intra-instrumental communcation that is what makes band music so cool for me.
So for now, I am using only a few very basic instruments to create the whole thing. Some basic live instruments such as my guitar, Diane’s voice, natural sounds, and other various instruments I have around the house (toy instruments, other guitars, percussion instruments, etc). I am also using a few canned instruments that come with garageband, mainly drums, bass, piano, trumpet and organ. Piano, trumpet and organ are being used as placeholders and could be easily substituted by other instruments in the final recording. In some cases I hear in my head a pedal steel, trombone, accordion, flute, etc, but since garageband either doesn’t have these sounds or has crappy versions of them, I’m not using them. Also, since I am recording at home, you will hear the sounds of my baby daughter, since I can’t ask her to be quiet while I do a take. And as cute as it may sound, her input has affected the direction of certain parts of the recording.
What I am hoping is that by me sharing the various sketches of the work as it progresses, that you will offer some criticism in return. Any and all responses would be appreciated, verbal abuse of course is not my preferred way, but if that’s what you feel, I will listen quietly to that too and try not to get defensive. My greater hope, however, is that you will get involved at that very basic level of creative input that band members share, to the point where you want to add instruments or pieces of your own to the record. However, I’ll be very happy if you just offer a critical perspective and maybe some suggestions and/or questions. I can't think of any place where I could find a group with the range of interests and skills available here so I imagine the criticism would be broad in spectrum and concern with many aspects of the music.
Ok, that being said, I’ll give you a couple of very general starting points about the work as a whole, sort of as if you were looking at it in a store.
The working title at present is “The Ballad of Stayed and Gone”.
And if I could have it my way, I would be able to use this beautiful image by artist Toba Khedoori as the cover.For now this is all. Next time I will start posting some of the actual recorded sketches so you can see what it's beginning to sound like.
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