journal

Best wishes for 2008 and all that.

Since I'm not one to go out on a drinking binge, I'm home working on some new music. I've been spending most of December coming up with new ideas for a piece that is turning out to be quite lengthy and will in all likelihood include vocals [gasp!]. Which I suppose means I'll have to change the banner up at the top to say Mostly Instrumental Progressive Rock.

Anyway the new piece isn't ready for sharing yet but I've got roughly the first 12 minutes arranged and several more ideas left to incorporate. Most of the writing has been done on piano and a little on bass. For lyrics I've been playing around with the idea of adapting some Anne Sexton poetry. I'm no expert on literature but it appears she is best known for tackling controversial topics. Personally I just like the way she arranges words in ways that are unusual and grammatically strange but evoke strong images. I found a poem called "Young" that I really like some of the imagery in and I like some of the rhythmic structures.

Read more below the fold...

The Lunar Eclipse tonight was the last one we will see till 2010. I tried to take some long exposure shots of it but only this one came out at all well. The clouds rolled in not long after I got out there, which made for a nice effect in this photo but soon eclipsed the eclipse.

click for bigger version

Made some progress over the long weekend on the new piece of music. Guess I'd better start thinking about a title for the thing and some sort of concept for the artwork.

If I can leave well enough alone the new piece of music is now complete. I was hung up on the introduction for at least a couple of weeks. After several rewrites I finally came to my senses and shortened and simplified the opening to a solo piano that introduces a couple of reoccurring themes.

I've settled on the working title "Counting Stars". The piece is about 26 minutes in length, includes vocals, and as I've written before I'd like to release it as an EP in late spring/early summer. The song is a lot more piano oriented than Abstract Expression - In fact most of the first 6 minutes or so has very little guitar.

The one snag is that I discovered the poems that the lyrics are adapted from are not, as I originally thought, in the public domain. So I'm going to need to get permission from the publisher. What I've read on the subject makes it sound like it is a fairly straight forward procedure but who knows when it comes to intellectual property issues.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll get that process rolling and get drum tracking underway.

Check back soon for some samples of the new piece.

Haven't written in a bit so I thought I put up a quick update. I've scrapped the EP idea in favor of doing a second full length CD. Why? Cause I've got 3 more tunes under construction in addition to the big long epic.

Anyway I'm looking forward to getting much more aggressive on the recording front in the very near future.

Finally, as promised, a new demo for you to check out. I started this piece back in the late Spring. I was angry about something so in order to vent I programed a heavy rock beat, cranked up the distortion and banged on the guitar for awhile. The 3 basic parts of this all came from that and within a day or two I had a rough arrangement.

I relearned the bass and guitar parts and refined the arrangement over the last couple of days. The title just seemed to fit, though the inspiration for the song had nothing to do with kids or lawn care.

Listen: Get the Hell Off My Lawn (Demo: rough mix) [update 6/10/2010: file removed but you can check out some mp3s from the new album here]

[update 12/30/08: corrected the file - I had posted the wrong one initially. Kinda horrifying really. The file I accidentally posted yesterday was the very very rough demo I recorded just to get the ideas down. Not intended for public consumption. Doh!]

Natalie tries to help Dan with his writers block.

Sigh. My 2 weeks+ of vacation have ended. I basically spent it writing music full time. I got a lot done though not as much as I was hoping. In addition to wrapping up work on Get the Hell off My Lawn I've been focused on my lengthy multi-part composition "Counting Stars". The first draft I did of this piece needed some considerable refinement and a couple of whole sections needed to be scrapped and rewritten. The first 4 movements are in good shape now. For the last few days I've been hung up on the final part suffering from a lot of writers block, self-doubt and going through a lot of trial and error.

And once I get the Demo version in good condition I've still got to:
A. Find a vocalist and record the vocal parts
B. Get the drum parts recorded
C. Get the rights to use the poems (Anne Sexton) the lyrics are based on

I'm going to use Frank Basile (www.livestudiodrums.com) again for the drum parts. As I think I wrote about before, the poems the lyrics are based on are copywritten despite my original belief that they were public domain. My initial investigation on what it will take to obtain permission resulted in as many questions as answers. So at this stage I think I might hire a lawyer to deal with it. I have found via the internet one vocalist willing to work on the project with me but I'm hoping I can find someone local so that there can be a bit of give and take with regard to the vocal melodies.

Ok, I have to get back to work now.