My muse visited this morning, between sleep & wakefulness – as is its wont. Trying to get all the thoughts down before they evaporate
Listened to my latest sketch of “Pop Start” in the car and I was really happy with the bass and drum sound – the vocals? Not so much.
Potential added instrumentation: Ideally vibraphone, but may substitute.
Idea to add “Pop Start” vocally – twice at the end of a section/verse. Something like the “buhm, buhm” in The Association’s “Cherish.”
I also heard this minor, MTV (novelty?) from Adrian Belew and thought I wouldn’t mind being in this spectrum. Fun stuff!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY7kXn-VssM
Ideas for the album title floated in my brain as well:
“I’m in”
“In” (Like the 2-word Peter Gabriel titles -“So”, Us”, “Up”)
“Self-ish” or Self (ish)
Then I thought I had it: “Self Player” A play on Long Player. But then I thought it was alluding to a Bobby McFerrin type work or even worse, an innuendo.
Mind changed it to “Self Record” and I think I have a working title. I like the many possible meanings and picture myself on the cover at a microphone, wearing an athlete’s number/pinny (maybe too close to Olympics right now).
Studio Time: I tried an early morning session that may have some decent pieces. I recorded some box drum for what I though might be the vibraphone part & I thought I could re-use the bass, but I think it went along to closely with what I sang in the last version. I tried 2 new vocals tracks with some phrasing ideas & I ended up with the below (Sketch 2).
Pop Starting with the idea of a beat somewhere between Philadelphia’s own Toni Basil’s “Mickey” & Peter Gabriel’s “Intruder” – I set out to play this morning. Maybe I could get Phil Collins to produce this one and do something like he did for ABBA’s Frida:
I managed to get one iteration of the drum beat down (using the computer keyboard). I then recorded two vocal tracks. I think some of the vocal phrasing sounds a little in the Depeche “Mode,” but I thought of all sorts of songs while recording this: Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up”, The Go-Gos’ “We Got the Beat”, The Knack’s “My Sharona” are the ones that come to mind. I meandered through various bass ideas and put them to disk as well.
Below is my sketch – slightly over the 3-minute mark.
As I near the completion of my raw material, I thought that when I start working on these tracks “for real,” I may work on more than one track at once. I feel if that may lead to a more consistent sound for the tracks as opposed to working on one at a time.
I think this next song started, just this morning, as “Pop Song Wannabee” then morphed into “Pop Star Wannabee with a Pop Song Reject” and, finally, stealing a title from a mix CD I made for friends a couple of years back, “Pop Start.” Here are the initial lyrics and a link to just me singing the initial idea:
Pop Start
I may be too old
To get my pop start
If I play a pop song
And there aren’t any listeners
Will it still hit?
Nobody’s spinning it
Not a one
It has no number
On the jukebox or chart
Does it have to be Popular
To pop?
3 minutes or less
With a sha la la
Or an ooh, ooh wheee
If this/that isn’t pop
What is?
I have put Demo number 10 (All My Flaws) in the fermentation chamber (link below – to the song, not the chamber). I’m satisfied with what I have for now and will let my subconscious work on it – perhaps I’ll give a listen here and there with the thought of nudging further ideas for lyrics and whatnot.
I played acoustic guitar over the foundation. Then sang over it all and took the best, or at least my favorite, piece of it and adjusted the individual volumes and applied compression, equalization and reverb to the vocal track.
I used the gain information for the “sweet spot” level from the article I mentioned in a previous post during creation of the song, but I do find that the volume level, in general, is very low. I need to play around with that as it was difficult to get a good mix in my headphones while “playing along” to the previously recorded tracks.
Note: I cut and pasted to create the intro and “outro” which is a little rough.
Played some midi percussion (from Ableton’s Kit-Core Percussion – Bongo, high & low, and Conga low) and “Old School Roads” organ and set both to loop. I used the quantize feature on both rather than try to edit the midi to correct these particular flaws. Played bass over them – about 6 & a 1/2 minutes worth, a minute & a 1/2 of which can be heard via the link below. I am confident that I’m a beginning to get the feel I want for “All My Flaws” and am hopeful that this is the foundation for the demo.
Have an idea to write “(What’s So Great ‘Bout) Hate, Fear and…” – not sure of the last word of the title yet (“indifference” is not quite correct. A blatant reversal/negative of Nick Lowe’s (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding. Brought on by the hatred and fear being fomented these days.
First thoughts this morning about proceeding with “All My Flaws” were how the feel/rhythm I want is like that of Rickie Lee Jones’ “Weasel & the White Boys Cool”:
I’m sensing some shades of Van Morrison may be seeping in as well as I posted to Facebook about Van’s “Wild Night” a week or so ago (actually June 24th – yeesh) and have recently read of his influence on both Elvis Costello (from his memoir) & Bruce Springsteen (from an email from my good friend Bill O’Driscoll).
Of course “Gain Staging” made me think of gainsaying from Monty Python’s “The Argument Clinic” sketch (“Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.”)
I played bass & snare drums, using the 110 bpm that I figured out from the Rickie Lee song above (I even played along with it for a bit), then added a cymbal part. I had a minor victory with the looping of those percussion parts – it allowed me to play just a few phrases & fix them (mostly).
I played guitar, getting used to the slower groove, but forgetting some of my earlier phrasing n the process – and then practiced singing over it.
What I implemented from the above-mentioned article is adjusting the gain on the guitar and vocals to get them into the referenced “sweet spot.”
You can hear the results of all this via the SoundCloud link below.
The other thing that my wife, Liz, suggested when I asked her for suggestions and possible future constructive criticism of my vocal efforts is that I should just sing for an hour weekly. I have not yet implemented, but certainly plan to do so.
A quick hit this morning. The Drawing the Line idea got pushed as I went back to my idea for the “bluesy” All My Flaws. I had Kansas’ “Lonely Street” (from the “Song for America” LP) in my head as I headed up to my studio/office to work the track.
I just wanted to get the initial feel down with the lyrical bits I had so I picked up my knock-around Mitchell acoustic and figured a few chord changes and phrasings and recorded on my phone as evidenced below.
I corrected a few of the midi problems from my last session’s technical battle with the recording of “Saving Our Lives” and then I added the organ & piano for the bridge/ending.
Then it was time to go all analog on it. I strapped on my acoustic guitar – just loving the warmth of the sound – even with the uneven playing. I switched to bass guitar and noodled a part which I deemed pleasant. I did one take of vocals which while christening it as the demo version inspired me to append “Wild ‘n’ Wooly” to the track’s title. Available for your auditory perusal below.
While discussing politics with a friend, I came up with the inspiration for my next track – working title: “Drawing the Line.” I will attempt to explore and wring out many of the possible meanings/connotations – in-the-sand, artistically/physically/manually drawing, etc.
Looking to get Saving Our Lives to demo version, I figured I’d take sketch 3 & extend the drums, then add the organ & piano for the bridge/ending, record some guitar & bass, then re-sing.
One of the issues I have with my recording software is that I can’t seem to “jump” to a point in the song when midi is involved. If I go to the window where the non-midi is, and start it in the middle of a song, I just get the non-midi, in the case of this most recent endeavor, vocals only. I think I need to “make” some time to learn the DAW, Ableton Live, more thoroughly through tutorials & the like. This is a challenge because it’s not in my nature – I’m definitely more of a hands-on, get-’em-dirty type of learner.
I was able to extend the drum part fairly easily – a pretty basic copy & paste. Trying to weed out errant piano notes was a bit more challenging, but I manage to delete the “blips” (the blue items in the picture below – which, in total, is the midi, grand piano part in the Ableton Live interface).
Grand Piano Midi information in Ableton Live interface
On attempting to implement my next planned step (bridge/ending piano), I discovered that the delay (between pressing a keyboard key & hearing the note) was back. Aaarrgggghhhh!!! I saved (an important step), closed the program and rebooted. Still there. As I was getting ready to change plans and move to recording guitar, bass & vocals, I had an idea ( a rare good one). I opened a new, fresh song file (a “set” as it is called in Ableton Live). Yay! No delay. However, that would kind of trash my plans of using sketch 3 as the base for the demo. Unless… (& thanks for those that are still hanging in there with this rambling post)… I could copy/paste or export/import the midi files from sketch 3 into a new, fresh set!
I initially found my non-midi audio, saved as .wav files in sub-folder (‘Samples\Recorded’) within the Ableton Live project. (“Filed” that info. away for future use.) Next I saw “Export Midi Clip” as an option in the File drop-down menu. I was able to export the piano, organ and drum clips. Let me see if I can import them into a new set. Upon opening the new set, I verified that there was still no delay. I did not, readily, find a way to import the clip. Searching… Using ixquick.com, I searched for “Ableton live import midi clip.” Many YouTube items came up, but, for the most part, I tend to shy-away from video tutorials. I like a quick, text-with-pics fix (found the info. I needed on the Ableton site – Exporting and handling Audio and MIDI Clips). No import, but access to Clip folder through User Library in the Ableton Live interface. When I first attempted to play one of the clips I got a basic old-school midi sound. I quickly realized that I needed to define the “instrument” that the midi information would “play.” I set up a midi track for Grand Piano and dragged my saved Grand Piano clip to it. Success! Repeated for organ & drums (for some reason I didn’t get extended drums to add bridge/ending -oh well) and I now have a base for my demo. I’m wondering if the delay happens when I add non-midi tracks. Next session I will attempt to complete the midi portion before recording the other tracks and see how it goes.
Midi Only: Piano, organ and drums below. (After listening to the midi-only, I’m not sure any of my fixes are there – I thought I saved!).
Not sure whether it was my attendance last Saturday at Moogfest (which I was previously pronouncing wrong – from the Moogfest FAQ: What is the correct way to pronounce Moogfest? Moog like “rogue.”) or just the natural progression, but after a few, somewhat non-technological sessions I found myself working with midi again.
Moogfest moved from it’s most recent home of Asheville, NC to a couldn’t-resist, less-than-an-hour drive in Durham. One of the acts my fellow-fester, Paul, and I happened open was Gwenno at the First Presbyterian Church (pictured above). Interesting to see people dancing in the aisles to some pulsing indie-electronic music. Some of the other artists we caught were Laurie Anderson, Gary Numan, Ben Frost (who just about blew us out of the Carolina theater with his explosive soundscapes) and Explosions in the Sky. As it was a successful first dip into Moogfest waters, I purchased an early-bird festival pass for next year.
Back to my album: After a couple of bumps I was able to record a simple beat (bass & snare drums) and organ & grand piano parts using my midi set-up.
I sang over that, listened and helped myself to a 2nd vocal track for support. The sketchy results can be heard via the link below. I am still looking to add guitar and bass and revisit the bridge/ending which us absent from this version.
