A Christmas Single

I like the 'old' practice of releasing singles with A sides and B sides and the special artwork that was featured on the covers. Not all singles had such artwork. Some just came in plain white sleeves or such. But some releases--such as the Beatles' singles--had unique artwork/photographs on the sleeves.

That was a pretty cool practice but who releases singles anymore? I know they used to release cd singles before but those things usually featured 4 to 6 songs on them and were aptly called 'maxi-singles' or something to that effect. And most of the songs were always different versions or mixes of the same one song. The radio version would be on there along with a remix by "DJ Kool" and another remix by "DJ Badass" among others. Pretty superfluous in my opinion. I realize a cd can hold about 80 minutes worth of music and it may be considered a waste to only have 2 songs on there. But then at least have a few other songs that the artist/band worked on themselves instead of the outsourced-to-dj versions.

The neat thing about the Beatles' singles was that all the ones they ever released were not part of any albums. So you had to buy both the singles and albums if you wanted to have all their music. Their reasoning was that they didn't want to sell the fans the same music twice. But I can only imagine how much better the already great "Revolver" album would have been with the "Paperback Writer" and "Rain" single on there!

Anyway my whole point in mentioning all this is that since I recorded 2 songs for this past Christmas it could be considered a single and I made a cover design for it. That is, were I to officially release it. Perhaps I actually will for Christmas 2014 in the early part of November. Well here is the official cover art for it:

There it is. I wish all the readers of this blog a most blessed and prosperous new year. And stay tuned for more music and updates!

Fixing Up Bass

Well, I thought I was done with "It's Christmas" but I'm just not satisfied with it. Two days ago I rerecorded a portion of the guitar solo to overlay on the existing solo. There were some muffled notes so I recorded a crisper sounding part. And last night I decided to take the bass track and do some bass boosting on the weaker sounding notes with the help of the Audacity program. It's such a painstaking process but if you want something to sound professionally done than you must put in the time and effort. If it comes out sounding great it will be worth it. I have yet to take this new and improved bass track and add it to the song. I will work on that tonight.

One new technique that I will be implementing in future recordings is to record the drums on 2 separate tracks. I usually record drums with only 2 mic's--I have very limited space where I record--even though I have a 4-piece drum mic set. In the past I've used that mic set along with an overhead when I recorded elsewhere, before I had a drum set. Now at home I record exclusively with only 2 mic's; one for the bass drum and one overhead. Not only do I not have the space to set up 5 or 6 mic's on the drums but I also only have 4 mic stands at this time. But I have found that I can get a really good overall drum set sound with only 2 mic's, and my proof for that is the drum track on "(Doesn't That) Blow Your Mind." The drums on that song sound excellent IMO and has been the best recorded drum sound I ever achieved up to this point. But of course there's always room for improvement. So by recording the drums onto 2 separate tracks--bass mic on one, overhead on the other--I can tweak each individually and then blend the 2 onto a single track. By isolating the bass onto one track I can boost the high's a bit in order to hear the snap better. And with the overhead I can cut the mid's and high's without affecting the bass drum. There may even be other tweaks I can do to get the overall drum set sound better. And then combine the 2 tracks onto one great sounding track!

Doing this adds more work to the project of course. And I guess the reason I've never really done this is due to fear of a loss of valuable tracks being available. But that's really not a real problem because as I have already written, I can bounce the multiple tracks onto a single one. I will start doing this with my next song which will be........not sure at this point.

I hope to be able to post the new and improved FINAL version of "It's Christmas" sometime tomorrow. I know Christmas 2013 is behind us but to me it's still Christmas and I continue to listen to holiday music and am actually in the mood to create some more original tunes for the season. Not only is Christmas music awesome but one great song alone can set you up for financial freedom. Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" earns him between $400,000 and $600,000 each year! Which means that since the song is from 1979 he's possibly as much as $15,000,000 over the years from it. I may in fact start off 2014 with a seasonal song I wrote some years ago and never recorded. I just want to set the tone for this coming year in terms of  devoting a lot more time to creating and recording new music and creating some sort of financial stability at the very least as a result of it.

And on a final note, today is the 29th and I still have not finished up "Call On Me." It's still possible for me to finish it up and release the album within the next few days. However I may be scrapping my plans to put out the album this year. It's really late in the year to release anything more than a song. But I do believe I will release it very early in 2014 and it will feature 10 tracks with perhaps a bonus track of my Christmas song.

Christmas Songs - Final Versions

Merry Christmas, readers!

Yes, it's Christmas and here I am blogging. The reason being that I have made some better mixes and masters of my Christmas tunes and I want to get them up here before the day is up because many people will not want to hear holiday music anymore after Christmas. Funny though, because I continue to play Christmas music well into February. I don't like winter very much so playing Christmas music throughout the winter months makes the season more tolerable for me. Besides, many classic songs labelled as Christmas music make no mention of the holiday and are really just winter songs. That's my story. Well, let me get on with this because depending on where you're reading this it may not even be Christmas anymore!

I made a few tweaks here and there on both songs. Most of it will not be noticeable. But comparing my finished products to what I hear on albums just makes me yearn for better equipment and/or funding to have my music professionally polished up.

So here they are.





Hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them. Now off to working on my other goals for the remaining week of the year.

It's Christmas!

One of the hardest things about recording under not-so-ideal conditions and with not-so-ideal gear is coming up with a mixdown of the song which sounds satisfactory.That's the trouble I'm having once again. I usually end up making several mixdowns because after mastering each one they usually all end up sounding bad on one playback source or another.

I've already made a couple of mixes/masters of my new holiday song, "It's Christmas," and have not been pleased. I will try once again tonight. Have I mentioned how difficult it is to get a good recorded drum sound? Of course I have. But it's also pretty hard getting a solid recording of an upright bass. On a whim I decided to play my upright for this song to give it a little more of an acoustic sound and feel--a kind of 60's folk/jazz vibe if you will. I'm more of an electric bass player so playing this huge acoustic bass is completely different and physically demanding. This is the first song with vocals that I played upright bass on.

The bass track came out sounding pretty nice but quite weak on some notes. Even going back to some 60's tunes such as Roger Miller's "King of the Road" and Ian & Sylvia's "Rocks & Gravel" which both begin with upright bass intros and continue throughout, I don't hear any weak notes but rather solid consistency throughout. On the other hand, I did listen to "Stay" by Astrud Gilberto which also features upright bass and noticed some less audible bass notes being played. And when I say less audible what I mean is that there are certain notes that don't have that deep, booming quality. And the bass playing on "Stay" is a lot busier than on "King of the Road" and "Rocks & Gravel," so perhaps there are a lot more weaker bass notes being played. I just don't know what it is. I'm going to try working on tweaking that track a little more and see what I come up with. Not only for that reason but also because the bass overall is a bit too booming compared to those older recordings.

There are a few more things I'm going to play around with the attempt to come up with a final version that is most sonically pleasing to my musical ear. That will be later on tonight. For the time being, I have uploaded the 2nd version to Soundcloud and YouTube and it happens to be the version that will be featured on the "Justin Sane Show Christmas Special" tonight at 7pm CT on CNEU Radio; Christmas Eve on Insane Realm Radio at 5pm CT; day after Christmas at 10am CT on Digital Mayhem Radio; Friday at 3pm CT on Digital Revolution Radio; and a few other places after that.

Here it is on Soundcloud:



And here it is on YouTube:



Hoping I will have the final, best-sounding version ready tonight.

The Christmas Songs

OK, definitely waited too long to do this. Should have started back in October. I guess that's why some recording artists start making their Christmas albums in the summertime. But then again, they have the best of everything--the best equipment, the best singers, the best musicians, etc. They could roll out a full length album in a week start to end. I'm doing everything by myself with my limited skills and gear (and I'm very grateful for what skills and gear I do have). And the idea to do this didn't come to me until Thanksgiving which was rather late on the calendar this year.

Anyway, I tried recording the drum tracks for both "Silent Night" and "It's Christmas" last night and they just came out horrible sounding! I don't know what happened from the time I recorded drums for "Blow Your Mind" and "Call On Me" to now. I was very disappointed and don't have much time left to work on this before I send the songs off to "The Basement Tapes" show with Nick and Bootsy for their Christmas show tomorrow (Sunday) evening.

The drum track for Silent Night came out a lot worse sounding than the one for It's Christmas. I went back and listened to the drums on It's Christmas and I was able to tweak it to where it sounds okay. Plus I'm considering adding hand-clapping in rhythm to the song in order to give it somewhat of a live feel and cover up the weak drum sound. Also planning to add a few other sounds on top of the 6 and 12 string acoustics, upright bass and vocal that are already there. Maybe some harmony vocals here and there. I'm actually really excited about this song and the way it's turning out. I wrote it pretty quick and the arrangement is just kind of falling into place.

As I mentioned, I may have to settle for my Yamaha S90 keyboard drum sounds for the drum track to Silent Night. I tried tweaking the drum track that I did record for it but I made adjustments to the snare drum at the time and it just turned out worse. There is no hope for this track. If I had all day today to work on it I would try again. But my time is limited and I'm going to devote most of it to finishing up my very own "It's Christmas." Once both songs are done I will have them here. Off I go....

Goals for the Remainder of the Year

So as the title implies I am going to discuss what plans I still have to fulfill within the few short weeks left before this year goes into the books.

I had announced on Facebook that I was going to record a Christmas album (or several songs at the very least). I made this announcement on November 29. From that day hence I've been working on the same 1 song. So I believe it's very unlikely I'll be able to do a whole album before Christmas. Thus I'm going to set some more realistic goals for the remaining 20 days.

Here they are in order of importance:

First, I am going to finish up recording "Silent Night." I have a funky little version I have been working on since November 29 and all I need to do is lay down a guitar track and the drum track. The drum track will be left for last so I can finish up 2 songs in the same session. Saves a lot of work setting up the drum set and doing several takes to get a good sound.

Second, I'm going to finish writing an original Christmas song and begin recording it soon. Nothing long or fancy. The simplest stuff works best for Christmas music. Look at all the classics that have stood the test of time. Mostly all short and simple.

Third, I'm going to finish up "Call On Me." Yes, the song that should have been completed months ago. I have yet to record the bass track, harmony/falsetto track and some electric guitar here and there. No if's, and's or but's about it--this song has to be finished within the month and after the Christmas tunes.

Fourth and finally, I've got to release my first full-length album which I announced in September. I originally planned for October or November but time has been flying by and it's just not ready. And it won't be ready until "Call On Me" is finished. I also have to go back and create a new mix of "Tomorrow" for the album, and possibly a new mix of "The Rain" and "Now and Then" also. And I'll also have to decide how many and which tracks will make it to the album. If I had anything resembling a fan base I could have them vote for which songs should be on there.

Sound feasible? I think so. But only time will tell.