journal

Hello... er... is this thing on?

Well, ok then.

I guess the first thing to do is bring you up to date on this whole solo album thing. The impetus for this project started back in early 2001 as I was waiting for Gino and Joe to finish up their rhythm tracks for Standard Deviation. While I was waiting I wrote and recorded a piece called "Pleiades" to test out some new home studio gear I had bought in anticipation of tracking guitars for the aforementioned Electrum record. Since I had intended the melody to be vocal it wasn't going to fit with what the band was doing so I set it aside for later use. Then Gino and Joe came through with the rhythm tracks so I spent the rest of 2001 on that project.


In 2002 the band took a breather (largely due to Gino being out of commission after a serious car accident and Joe having tendonitis problems in his elbow). In the hiatus I just kept writing music. The early pieces included a short fun piece called "Internal Combustion", a 15 minute piece that I haven't come up with a title for yet, and a bizarre little grunge-jazz piece called "Picnic at the Slag Heap". In a lot of ways these pieces were studies in instrumental composition for me. I worked at trying to write pieces that used fewer musical ideas while developing those ideas with different variations. I also started to focus a whole lot more on melody than I have in the past because I figure it doesn't matter how many crazy rhythms I bang out in 13/8 if there isn't something melodically for the listener to grab onto and take away from the piece. Though I admit I still can't seem to lay off playing in crazy time signatures most of the time.

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So I left off in 2003 with some preliminary work on ideas for a new Electrum record. While we were making decent progress from the fall of 03 through mid 04 it did become clear to me that I would have time to continue to work on my own material as well. Much of this new material are leftover bits of things that were not used on any of the Electrum songs.


Now back to this percussionist who had so foolishly bravely volunteered for this most un-prestigious gig. His name incidentally is Bryan Powers. As I mentioned in part 1 we were introduced by our mutual friend Lenny who is the IT/Networking guru at the software shop I work at. Just from talking to him a couple of times it was clear we shared a lot of the same influences and he enjoys the playing of a lot of the same drummers I do. So it seemed like a good fit. But since I was still short on material for a full release and had work to do with Electrum I didn't want him to spend a lot of time cranking out drum tracks till I had a full CD of material and was sure I would publish it.

So in 03 and 04 some new pieces came together. The first is a song tentatively titled "The Water Discipline" (see Dune novels). It is based on what was originally a big chunk of the middle section of "Seven Falls, Eight Rises" from the Second Electrum CD. I elected to cut it out of that piece to make it a tad more concise. Its got a hypnotic groove and a gentle melody and I'm thinking it might make a nice closer for the record.

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As 2005 began a collection of demos was in place. Bryan had a CD of my material and was working on drum parts for the first couple of pieces. In the meantime I had 2 other projects to work on. In January I recorded a couple songs Gino had asked me to play on for his solo CD. Gino has become very much interested in World Fusion over the last few years. As a guitarist my right hand technique sucks often leaves a lot to be desired, so in order to get my chops up for the nimble jazzy soloing much woodshedding was required before pressing the record button. In the end though I think the pieces came out pretty well.

The next project on my plate was a request from my mother. A couple of years ago my wife, who plays flute, and I surprised my parents with a CD of holiday music for Christmas. Well she wanted a follow up CD for her 60th birthday. This little EP titled "Simple Gifts" took most of the Spring to complete. Below are a couple of pieces off it. Most of the material isn't my usual fair but Mom really likes it. Had we had done Rush's "La Villa Strangiato" and Yes' "Heart of the Sunrise" arranged for flute and acoustic guitar it wouldn't have made anyone happy.
Canon in D (Johnann Pachelbel)
Rhymes or Reasons (John Denver)

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In search of bass....

I play guitars that are hand made by a Canadian Luthier named Neil Bryan. He is a super nice guy, a great craftsman, and his prices are very reasonable. Back in the Spring of 04 he asked me to help him beef up his web presence to try to bring in more business. The tough economy in the US, the bad exchange rate, increases in material costs, and the competitive nature of his business were taking a financial toll despite the fine work he does.

Since cash was tight for him we agreed that a trade was in order. A new site in exchange for a basic bass. Just a plain alder body with a simple finish and pau ferro neck. He sent me a picture of his template for a sort of modern version of a "Jazz" bass. Looked cool to me so I went to work on the site.

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mp3: Don't Mind Me (very rough mix) Update: See the mp3s page for selected tracks and a sampler of Abstract Expression.

And so it begins...

Tuesday, June 28th, 2005 we began tracking drums for the album. I came home from work a little early to get the acoustic treatment setup and attempted to get some AC pumped into the sweltering temporary studio. About 5PM Bryan came over and we hauled in his drums. We had reserved this day solely to setup and get some drums sounds and make sure that I could get a click track and headphone mix to him to play along to. The following day we would track the drums for "Don't Mind Me". Setup went pretty smoothly and by 7:30 we ran some test tracks.

After Bryan went home I spent some time making a rough mix and found our snare drum sound lacking. We had elected to go with a piccolo snare but for some reason it was lacking that "crack" that a good snare drum sound should have.

Bryan returned the following evening and we spent a lot longer than planned dealing with this snare drum issue. New mics were tried, we swapped out drums, and eventually ended up right back where we started with only some minor tuning changing from the previous day.

Once the sound was all sorted out it took all of 3 quick takes to finish the session.

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So I finally broke down and picked up the Sonic Implants Symphonic Strings. Yeesh these samples sound really really good. I picked up the "mini" version which is a mere 7 CD roms worth of string samples. Sonar with VSampler was able to deal with the large files without much trouble. Though I did work on the string parts in their own file and then imported just the resulting audio into the song I'm using them in. I'd like to do more strings arrangements in the future.

I've completed the guitar parts and just about everything else for "Internal Combustion" so I should have a demo of that posted soon, and then you can hear how good these strings sound.

Oh by the way if you have been thinking about picking the sonic implants stuff up, do a little shopping around. You can save at least 100 bucks by getting them through a third party vendor. I got mine from Midi-Classics.