Now with more lyrics – more is better, right?

Trying to stretch the meaning of the song.

Did a quick record – vocal & guitar together. Decided vocal was a little low. Recorded a 2nd vocal track. All very “sketch-y,” but coming along.

After a very productive weekend for The Get-Up (3/4 of which are pictured above, in their somewhat natural habitat – you’ve seen enough of me), I was ready to continue with my soloing.

The weekend was highlighted by a Saturday evening audience-less concert which was recorded, but is only currently approved for band-member listens. I feel that a good portion of it is shareable, but will have to get concurrence of those pictured above.

I need to get a DAW tutorial from band member Dave Husted as he ‘“mastered” lightly.’ – saying: “Mainly I pushed the volume up with a limiter to “radio” level.  A little bit of eq work to clear out some mid band mud but not much as I did not spend a lot of time on it.” IMHO, it significantly improved the sound. Most importantly, the vocals are are much clearer – mostly a good thing. 😉

I took a step forward in my solo work by figuring out a few chords for Saving Our Lives and getting the 2 verses and the bridge(?) recorded (linked below).

-Get-Up Bass

I’ve mentioned the band, The Get-Up, of which I am a 4th. It is time to take up our annual, weekend-long residency for the 9th time (2nd at it’s current location – The Spring House at Fox Haven Learning Center). We will hone our originals – which include some of our individually composed efforts like Get-Up (David Husted),Down Too (Bill O’Driscoll), Ben Franklin’s Grave (Alan Schwartz), Set You Straight ([Yours Truly]) and also more collaborative efforts like We’re Getting Older, Trusting Soul, Color You In & Same Old Lines. (I provided links – green text – as available.) We throw in some covers: Please Please Me (The Beatles), Begin the Begin (R.E.M.) & (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding (Nick Lowe’s composition, but we mimic, somewhat, the Elvis Costello version). We plan to work on a few new ones this year: Life During Wartime (Talking Heads), I Want You to Want Me (Cheap Trick) & Heroes (David Bowie). The birds and squirrels to whom we have played have made no formal complaints.

As for my solo work, I have 3 tracks in varying degrees of sketchiness running around in my brain & vying to be the next one on which I work. Working titles are: Saving Our Lives (which I posted the lyrical idea for in my Reasoned Writing post) & which I’m thinking of as a bit of a sweeping, almost-progressive track a la Genesis’ “Your Own Special Way” or Caravan’s “The Show of Our Lives”, All My Flaws (blues feel), and the newest idea, Working the System (thinking funk – ooh, that would be a good title for a song or an album).

I am planning to have 13 “personal” demos before I start work on the “final” versions. Currently I have 8 complete – available for listening at https://soundcloud.com/getupbass/sets/ed-bejzak-demos.

I think I’ll work on Saving Our Lives next. Here’s an approximation of what I’m hearing in my head (vocal only) with the initial lyrics below:

Saving Our Lives

I can’t save your soul
I can only save your place
And that just may be
My saving grace

Who will come to the rescue
be our hero
Saving our lives

When we worry about
saving face
When we worry about
Saving time

If we’re saving the living for later
What’s the quality of life

Okay, it’s more than take two, but I’m a sucker for a play on words/phrases. It is time to put “What Say You” away for a while.

This morning, using the bass & drum from the previous attempt, I set out to redo the vocals with additional lyrics and a bit less staccato (which my daughter noted that I seem to like – perhaps a hint).

There is a bit of silliness at tune’s end, but I feel it is a solid demo.

Celebrated a birthday, mine – in fact, this week which brought my first ukulele and a yodeling pickle – at least one of which will be featured in an upcoming song.

Here’s the What Say You demo:

-Eddie Wan

My next lyrical adventure, with the working title Saving Our Lives, was inspired partially by the terrible story of a 51-year-old man who texted that he was okay after the explosion at the airport in Brussels, only to be killed in the metro bombing. I happen to be turning 51 this week. I know that inspiration from thinking about one’s mortality has been just about done to well…

For what am I waiting? This is really nothing new for me. Every so often something happens that inspires me to strive to live “better.” That of course means different things for all of us. For me it’s partially to love better. Pastor Charlie – who married my wife & I many years ago and unfortunately passed from this world not too many years after that – impressed me as being someone who truly lived his life to serve others. While I don’t claim to be attempting to achieve that level of selflessness, I would like to step in that direction.

It also includes not being afraid of doing, and taking the time to do, things like making my album. Which may very well be selfish.

The proposed song initially plays with all types of saving (see the first “notes” below).

More than likely, I’ll slide back into the day-to-day. Maybe, together, we can give each other the support to do better. Unless, of course, you’re already at the level you want to be at – then kudos & send some positive vibes.

-Edventually

“Saving Our Lives”

I want to save your life

Saving the living for later
Quality (of) life

Life saving
Life savings

I can’t save your soul
I can only save your place
And that may be
My saving grace

Who will come to the rescue
Who will be our hero
Saving our lives

Worried about 

saving face
Saving time

Most of my recording sessions occur in the morning hours and are usually aided by a cup of “high-octane” coffee. Get-Up band-mate, & fellow home recording enthusiast, David Husted once recommended a craft beer as a recording studio tool and a Sierra Nevada Torpedo seemed to fit the bill nicely. (“Friend” me on Untappd – I’m GetUpBass – if you are so inclined.)

I toyed with the idea of taking the previous sketch of “What Say You” and copying and pasting the existing instrumental tracks for other verses and adding items for breaks/bridges and/or other segments, but I decided that I had “heard” something a little different so I decided to bake from scratch. Started with the slit drum, then a new (and improved?) bass part. Sang my song over it and experimented, to varying degrees of success, with background vocals. I even threw in a nod to Mary Poppins. Listen to the results via below, Soundcloud link.

Another eye-catcher this week was E-Home Recording Studio’s Tweet on the Fletcher Munson Curve my takeaway being that they recommend making your mix sound best at greater volumes. Kinda like hooking a fish, a listener hears something of interest and turns up the volume – reel ’em in – making sure you don’t lose them.

-LubricatEd

Spent time I hoped to be recording fighting with the setup of the  DAW Remote (Humatic TouchDAW) which I blogged of yesterday – some of the struggle was admittedly exacerbated by my barging ahead without fully reading the instructions.

Step 1: I purchased the TouchDAW app ($4.99) instead of going with the FREE version.

Step 2: Found out that I needed to install Tobias Erichson’s rptMidi Network Midi driver (software) on my laptop. Installed without that nasty Apple Bonjour software it had pre-checked.

Step 3: Fought with the setup and failed. Repaired the software so that it installed said “nasty” Apple Bonjour software.

Step 4: Still getting “connection failed” – re-read instructions & completed the steps I had skipped over.

Step 5: Still getting “connection failed” – being as I am an avid Android & Windows user, I realized restarting computer, phone & software one last time, before considering the dark, Apple side, might be a good idea.

Step 6: I have an app that remotely controls my DAW (Ableton Live 9 Lite)!

-Still AndrEd User

I spent a lazy Saturday morning on Twitter (@MasterEdTC)  & enjoying Obie’s company. Ran across a few interesting items: @diymusicbiz‘s Not Your Standard Quantize (2/25) & @ehrstudio‘s How to Set Up Your Room for Solo Recording

The thing that stood out for me from the latter was the idea of a DAW remote. Similar to my excellent investment in a headphone extension cord, the idea of an app for my smartphone that would allow me to start, pause & stop recording while away from the laptop is just, well, a bit liberating (These apps seemingly do more . Yay!). The one mentioned in the article, DAW Remote by EUMLab, is apparently not available for Android. The one I think I’ll try 1st is TouchDAW by Humatic.

The appeal, to me, of the 1st article is the idea of finding my own groove outside of standard quantizing – the author reinforces the importance of practice to accomplish this goal. There clearly is a difference between a loose, organic feel & just “poor timing.”

Looking to record tomorrow morning – more work on “What Say You?“.

NOTE: This is the 1st post done from my phone which has it’s limitations in this regard.

-Tech Ed

What a difference a day makes. Woke up with the new sound and title for “What Say You” in my head & was actually pretty much able to get down what I “heard.” With inspiration from Michael Franti’s “positivity” and a sound that’s, hopefully, reminiscent of early Joe Jackson (I could hear it being Blur-Ed as well), I punched out a bass part (starting in A) grooving with that keen metronome sound.

Then I used a wooden box drum from the Timber Drum Co. – a Christmas gift from my wonderful wife to supply some beat.

The vocalizations were pulled from my not-far-from-sleep memory of earlier morning with a few tracks of background added. I’m pretty happy with the snippet/sketch – here it is:

Positive Waves.

-Eddball

Earlier in the week I was struck by the New York Times – Politics (@nytpolitics)  continually tweeting that it was near impossible for Bernie Sanders to catch Hillary Clinton because of the delegate lead she has. Up until then, I though it was pretty much even. Ah, but that’s if you don’t consider “super” delegates. I had forgotten about their existence and it angered me as an example of how our elections and elected officials don’t really seem to be representative of the people. I know we’ve got a lot of differences in this country (wow, understated?), but, whatever your position on a given issue, decisions seem to be made without truly representing the views of those that are supposed to have a say.

Let talk/sing about it.

I sketched what I initially was calling “No Say” into “What Say.” Quick and dirty using the FourTracks Lite app on my old HTC Android phone. (Hear below). Lyrical ideas & chords are also available via downward scroll.

-Ed

What Say

D A C G

B A G

B A
No Say
Me Say
Here say
You Don’t say

Our non-representatives
Veto our vote

Super-delegates-false-ish
Seem something quite atrocious

go about with your business
go about with your life

Primary cause
Official

No se

Democra-say
Say-nator
Say-tan
Say-tiate

Elect
Caucus
Right