Painstakingly mixing songs for the next album, in final preparation for mastering.

This is the first song on the album, and in the intervening months since I last posted it (click here for previous version) it has gone through a lot of changes. In the live rehearsal version I posted nearly a year ago, Morgan and I are wailing on acoustic guitars. We also sing the “aaa-na-na-na” part a lot.

I’ve learned that it often takes time to see what’s really necessary in a song, and to filter away everything else. So the album version below is a long time coming, and has lots of new stuff. For one thing I chopped out all of the “aaa-na-na-na”s, except for at the end of the song. I now think that having that part throughout the whole piece robs the end of its power, so I whacked it and kept only the end. Different, I think, and better. And it fits the mood of the album as a whole.

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I’ll be releasing these album songs once a week, up until the project is mastered and the CD itself comes into existence.

Happy New Year! Keeping my promise, here’s another post – and it hasn’t even been a month! This is an old song from the blue book which has undergone a pretty odd transformation since I decided to put it in the album. I grew up with LPs and cassettes, see, and when I’m putting together my own I sort of tend to think in terms of album sides. Basically I’m a dinosaur. Anyway, even though this is a digital, online-and-CD project, I gave this song a position in the middle of the list. I wanted it to serve as a break of sorts in between sides A and B, even though there aren’t any sides, and this project is more of a collection of songs through the years, rather than a concept album. But I still feel it’s good to give your ear a break.

Anyway, I wasn’t really happy with the lyric, so I took it out and noodled around on the guitar instead. Here’s what I came up with:

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Another song in the can. This song really came together for me with Morgan’s contributions, not the least of which was singing backup. A lot of differences from the last attempt: I redid the main guitar line because I didn’t like the sound of the earlier recording, even though the playing was fine. The bass is also Morgan, and it just fills out the song for me. I added some little solo acoustic licks here and there, but I particularly enjoy the line over the second part of the chorus, where we sing “It’s alriiiiight, everything’s alriiiiieeiiyaiyaiaiighhht…” (and that is the correct spelling, incidentally). There are also subtle synthesizer bits scattered throughout.

So much fun to restructure a song. Remember that this used to be a very hard driving electric piece, but with the help of friends it was able to find itself.

I’m moving again this coming week, so I’m taking another break. Sad but true. But I’ll be back recording another song soon enough, hopefully, in a brand new studio in a brand new house.

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This song has undergone a pretty substantial transformation since I wrote it. Originally it was a much harder-driving song, very electric and groovy (click here for the first post). Then, after playing around with Morgan and Nando, the song grew into a much steadier, kind of gentler thing.

The kernel for this song first appeared in the New Mexico desert many years ago in a song I wrote called “Sow the Seeds”. Unfortunately, the song didn’t hold up over the years, but in it was the line: “You can run around the world but you can’t escape your death,” which I culled and used in this one. I also grabbed the first line (”One thing I know is you’ve got to be strong”) from a song I wrote in college and used to holler from the loggia outside my dorm room window. No word yet on whether that song has held up over time. In any case I thought it interesting to note how much of this song is “recycled”, and how appropriately that fits with the general theme of wisdom passed down.

This cut is pretty raw, with only very basic instrumentation. I’m trying to block out where I want the different parts to go. The best part of the song, I think, will be when I get Nando and Morgan to sing backup. In my eyes, they really make the song.

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Another song in the can. The most notable part of this one is the chorus of voices at my traditional grand ending fadeout, which was probably the most fun I’ve had in the studio. Recording like I do can be a lonely endeavor, so it was utterly refreshing to have a group of friends in my room, all happy and singing. A lovely moment.

4 songs down, 8 to go.

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