journal

"Problems are the price you pay for progress" - Branch Rickey

I tracked the bass and guitar parts on Know Again last week but have spent the evenings this week re-tracking (and re-tracking and re-tracking) a few sections with different variations -- switching guitars, pickup selection, amp settings and performance nuances to try to get things sounding just right. Sometimes when I start being fussy like this it is hard to tell if I'm doing more harm than good but in this case I'm fairly certain it is paying off.

Hope to have that off to Ian for the electric violin work by the start of next week. At that point there will be 4 musicians (including me) working on 4 different pieces on 2 different continents. Which makes my mono-tasking brain sort of hurt a little.

Bass is done on Skating on Europa so I'll start tracking guitars on that as soon as Know Again is complete.

Still not sure about a title for the record or an artwork concept but I've got a couple of ideas kicking around in my head.

Also been taking some time to see some old friends perform with their bands. High School band mate Brian Litchfield is now performing with a terrific trio, The George Brown Band. And a guy I used to work with about 10 years ago is playing in town with his band on Saturday so I'm looking forward to checking that out as well.

In between the holiday cooking, shopping, and wrapping I've been getting some work done on the record. After having some emergency surgery done on my bass over at Michael Charles Music to alleviate a buzzy A string, I tracked bass parts for Know Again last week. I've gotten back some much anticipated preview vocals tracks from the singer for the epic piece, Poet's Talespin. I'm real excited about how that piece is shaping up.

I'm on vacation for another week so next I'm going to track bass guitar on Skating on Europa. Then I'll start tracking guitars and keys on that piece and Know Again.

Below is a slideshow of my Neighbor's rather elaborate Halloween display. The night shots came out half decent.

Just upgraded b2evolution to the latest version so I'm doing a quick post to make sure all is well. So what has been going on then....

I've nearly completed all the tracks for the big long epic piece (working title "Talespin"). Just some acoustic guitar parts left to track. I've been having intermittent numbness in my left hand finger tips and that is slowing things down. Pretty sure it is actually a wrist problem due to trying to ramp up into long recording sessions without properly easing into it after the layoff in July/August. So that has been frustrating. Seems like on the nights when my hands are cooperating the equipment fails me, and when those things are working there is too much ambient noise to record with open microphones. Sigh.

Yesterday I put down the acoustic and I tracked the final electric guitar solo in "Talespin" which was a lot of fun for a change. Pumped a bit of life back into the project.

The months of July and August got a bit bogged down in a home remodel that is now winding down. I'm hoping that September will be productive. I made good use of the long weekend, so, so far so good on that front.

At this stage I have all the drum tracks for the 30 minute piece (now called "Talespin" - more on that in another post) and two other songs from Frank. Friday and Saturday I finished tracking the bass guitar parts for "Talespin". Then Sunday and Monday I relearned and tracked most of the piano parts. Wow was I out of playing shape on piano.... my left thumb is killing me.

Tonight I practiced the last couple of piano parts, so I should be able to track those tomorrow and get started on guitars. With any luck next week I can send "Talespin" off to the vocalist so she can start working on that while I begin tracking the other songs.