Skip to main content

Day Five (Year Two)

J. uploaded the files with the quicker tempo tonight.  We got one with the tracks we just recorded (slightly sped up, due to the tempo change), and then one with just the drums and bass for recording over.  Just in listening to it a couple of times, I'm already happy with the pace.  It's just enough of a bump up from the original tempo that it feels like there's a bit more drive to the song, but not so fast that the feel goes away.  At least so far.  Haven't tried recording the guitar parts yet.  He wants 3 of them.  A rhythm acoustic part, a rhythm electric part (this is new), and an electric part with the lead lines in it.  My only worry at this point is that there is a 29 second time difference between the new demo version and the drum & bass track.  If he pulled a few bars in the middle with the idea of shortening the solo, I'm already happy.  As much as B. loves it, the solo was entirely too long in the original demo.

I'm starting to think about what I need to take with me when I head home, from a musical perspective.  Obviously, my notebooks with the ideas for the record are on that list.  As is an acoustic.  The other thing I'm bringing with me is a few CDs.  One will have the old demos on it, just in case, and the other is going to have what looks like about 10 tracks that I found tonight on the recording gear.  I had burned a CD with the new track J. sent tonight, and was going to record acoustic tracks tonight, when it dawned on me that before I added anything new, I should take stock of what was already there.  I went through everything that was on there (80 some odd ideas), listened to it all, got rid of some things, and jotted down the ones that I thought needed to be brought along as options.  None of them are full songs, mind you.  In fact, most of them are either just a riff, or a short chord progression that sounds like it might work for the band.  Still, it gives us a few more options, and makes me feel a bit less like we're in danger of running out of songs in the middle of the week.

All in all, a good day.  Corey Taylor at work tomorrow.  People calling from Texas today, wondering when we're opening.  Sounds like it's going to be an adventure.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Two Hundred Twenty Seven (Year Two)

So, the new Springsteen disc is amazing.  There's enough of a mixture of his upbeat rockers, his ballads, and his message songs to make this his best record since The Rising .  And speaking of that record... Buying The Boss the day it comes out always takes me back to a specific moment in life.  It was July 30th, 2002, the year after 9/11, the year after someone on the streets of New York told Springsteen "we need you now."  I had driven to Oshkosh, WI to visit some friends, when I remembered that Springsteen's disc was scheduled to come out that day.  I drove downtown to The Exclusive Company, but had to park a few blocks back.  At the time, there wasn't much going on downtown, but when I got out of the car, I could hear this music coming from up the block somewhere.  The closer I got to Exclusive, the more it began to dawn on me, they had set up a giant set of speakers in their upstairs windows, and were blasting the new album out into the streets....
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Two Hundred Twenty Six (Year Four)

So I dove back into 100 Riffs tonight, going into it with the hope that the hand written tabs I did last night would help me unlock the issue I was having transitioning from the first half of the riff to the second half.  It worked.  With both halves clearly written in front of me, I was able to work through the transition that had been tripping me up when the screen cut off was happening on SoundSlice.  That's going to be a nice thing to have in my bag of tricks for the times when I get stumped figuring these things out. I played a little bit of acoustic tonight as well, trying to be better about finding the balance between both instruments.  Late 90's-early 2000's rock has come up a lot in conversations at work of late, so in that spirit, I picked a song from that time period out of my set list notebook ("Your Winter" by Sister Hazel), and took a quick look at it.  Admittedly, it's a song I had mostly learned a long time ago, so the essential parts of it w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day Two Hundred Thirteen (Year Five)

Finally!  A really good day.  And one that I really needed after the frustration with the rest of the weekend. I took a step back from a few things today, and got what I hope will be a bit of clarity in the process.  Instead of worrying about the progress I really haven't been making on the EP, I told myself that I needed to be happy with the few bits of lyric I stumbled across today, and that maybe I needed to focus my attention elsewhere, at least for today. I had picked up a really cool book on music theory as it applies to guitar last Tuesday when I was out and about, and having spent a little bit of time paging through it over the last few days, I focused in on it tonight and started reading, taking notes, and reinforcing some things.  It felt like progress.  It was great. When I had worked through some of that, I moved on to the whole "100 Riffs" thing, and got myself moving on that again.  It's astounding how much I can get inside my own head a...
Post a Comment
Read more