'If I Told You' Recording Progress

Well, I am glad to say that recording of "If I Told You" has been well underway for the last several weeks. Yes, weeks. I wish I had what I needed to just spend hours at a time each day to record. I know for a fact that I would have a lot more recorded work and I would get my songs done a lot sooner. Like the Beatles, who would get songs done in day or 2. This business of recording 90 minutes today, 90 minutes tomorrow and then not the next day is just not cutting it. But that's what I have to work with now until things get better. And they will.

Regardless, I have some acoustic guitar tracks down, some electric guitar tracks finished and that's about it. Next on the agenda is bass and some piano. May add some synth later. Drums eventually. Vocals still need some tweaking. They were the first thing I started recording and still not satisfactory.

Today I will try to get the bass down. I'm hoping that goes smoothly. I don't have any special bass part planned out for this song. If I can get it done today I will revisit the vocals and try to redo some parts there. I need to get the vocals down as perfect as possible. When you're performing live it's OK if you sound out of pitch here and there but on studio recordings there is no real excuse for it. Of course, I have a real excuse and it's good, too. My excuse is that I'm just not a good singer and I struggle to stay on pitch. So I have to do take over take over take over days and weeks even to get not only the right pitch but the right delivery.

One thing I have noticed recently is that there are a lot of examples of some out-of-pitch vocal notes on professional recordings by big artists. I don't know if that's just a case of me looking out for bad notes or if I just have perfect pitch, which I know I do not have. It does make me wonder though whether I should leave some bad notes in my recordings or just keep doing hundreds of takes till I get them right. For the most part these out-of-tune notes I have heard by artists are minor and probably not noticeable to most listeners.

To give you an idea of what this new song I'm working on sounds like, here is a video I made of me playing a demo of it:




Inspiration for this song? As I wrote before, it is influenced by early Bee Gees material. I was just playing chords and singing some lines over them and it stuck. For a long time the song went largely unfinished. Just before I started recording it is when I wrote a second verse and settled on the chorus. It's not a very long song, but I managed to make the recording into about 3-and-a-half minutes. The recording itself will feature influences from the Bee Gees (again), U2, Phil Wickham, Charlie Rich & Gordon Lightfoot. Some people may be surprised at the idea that a song could be influenced by a pretty diverse selection of artists. Others may listen to the finished product and not hear any Charlie Rich or Phil Wickham (provided they are familiar with such artits). A long time ago someone asked me who I was influenced by and I answered The Beatles. He then told me my music sounded nothing like The Beatles. I guess there is a difference between being influenced by other artists and trying to copy other artists. I realize that in most of my music I never really tried copying anyone else. As much a fan as I am of The Beatles I do not like everything they put out there. I took the inspiration they gave me from their material that I did like and combined it with inspiration from other artists and put my own touch on it to create my own unique music. So I didn't mind that this person said my music sounded nothing like The Beatles. I never really tried to copy them. Then again some people have said some of my songs do sound like The Beatles. Again, it wasn't intentional. However, in the case of 'Paperback Writer' I may make a song which is heavily influenced by it and we'll see what people think!

Anyway it is time to go do some recording. Off I go!

Some Bruce Wisdom & Back To Recording

I've taken a bit of an interest in Bruce Springsteen and his music as of late. It all began with hearing one of his newer songs, "Wrecking Ball," on a local public radio station. Though it's from 2012 I never heard it before. I was immediately impressed with the song as I caught the song just before the part where he sings, "Hard times come, hard times go," over and over again. That part was followed by an anthemic chanting set to a very fast tempo and the song ended in this fashion. I checked out  the song in its entirety on YouTube and I also watched some of the live versions. Absolutely great song!

After that I starting checking out some of his older music and was doing some reading up on his career, songs and album. Today I watch an unauthorized biography on him and in spite of all the interesting history and detail of his pre-career and fame, there was one moment that I took away the most from. He was asked if there were any regrets and his answer was that he regretted not releasing more albums. He was so much of a perfectionist that it took so much time to record and release everything to his liking. As a result there were a lot of years where nothing was released. The reason I took so much from that is because I can fully relate to those sentiments. Needless to say, I am no Bruce Springsteen nor do I have a catalog of music anywhere near his, but I realize that my own sense of the need for musical perfection has led to a regret of not making and releasing more than I have up to this point. I know that it's a lot harder for me since I work alone and I face some unique challenges that he did not. But I should have done more. And that is why I have decided I'm releasing another album this year.

At the moment I'm nowhere near being close to having an album ready. But there's time, hopefully, and I am glad to say that I have started working on my first new song of the year. I have begun the recording process and I'm trying to get the hardest part done first--the main vocal. This is another one of my Bee Gees-inspired songs as was "Call On Me" from the Milestone album. I'm going to try to get this one completely recorded within a few weeks. The working title for this song is "If I Told You."

New Song Finally Finished! (Almost)

Started recording "Call On Me" back in December of 2012. I'm finally at the point (I believe so anyway) that I just have to mix and master the song now. I am considering re-recording a couple of guitar parts that feature the Leslie speaker sound. I'm not 100% sure if I will but it's pretty minor stuff regardless. So here is the mix/master I came up with as of last night:





I'm actually pretty happy with the sound. Everything can be clearly heard. Drums sound pretty good. I am however planning to move the background vocals during the choruses to either side instead of in the middle as they are in this version. And I may give the electric bass a little boost in volume.

For anyone who may be interested, I played an Epiphone Les Paul for all the electric guitar parts through a Fender Super Sonic stack, a Fender J-bass and a Yamaha S90 for the Rhodes sound.

My inspiration for this song was actually The Bee Gees. I was going through a time where I was listening to their early songs and checking out all their late 60's and early 70's videos on YouTube. I was just messing around on guitar and trying to come up with a melody over the guitar chords and some of the words just started flowing out. After I had the main theme of the song I started writing the lyrics to match. And then I spent way too long on recording it. Truth is I abandoned it for a long, long time and didn't finish it up. I had spent a lot of time on (Doesn't That) Blow Your Mind and you might say I was creatively exhausted. Excuses, excuses. I pretty much blew off 2013 but in all honesty I did some a pretty good reason. As I look through my recording log book--which I'm not very consistent with keeping up to date--I see that all of 2013 is blank except for nearly the very last month, which is when I managed to cut those 2 Christmas recordings. So it wasn't a complete waste. Pending all things possible, I promise myself to make 2014 a much more productive year. I Already have this song done. "Already". LOL. Album will be on the way as soon as I finish up recording one last song and go back and remix some of the others.

But for now I want to enjoy all the work I put into "Call On Me." If anyone should happen to give it a listen (Bootsy) I hope it sounds like music to your ears. I'll be back in the studio tonight tweaking and making adjustments.

New Song - If I Told You

Here is another video of me performing a new song I'm working on. Just another 1 minute or so clip:

I'm pretty excited about this song and the other one I posted a few days ago. I just have to finish writing them and then come up with arrangements for them. Both this song and the other one, "Call On Me," were inspired by early Bee Gee's music. These 2 songs just came to me as I was working on recording another song right around the time Robin Gibb was deathly ill. I had originally envisioned both this song and 'Call On Me' to be sung in my Robin Gibb-imitation voice even though I did not sing that way in the videos. I have not yet decided what tone I will use for the actual recording but that is still a long ways from now.

It is already mid-October and I absolutely need to finish the current project I'm working and get at least 1 more song recorded before the year is up. And that would make 4 songs I complete this year. But first I have to make a final mix & master of the song I've been working on for months now, "(Doesn't That) Blow Your Mind." I should be working on that right now. Off I go....

New Song - Call On Me

Here is a song that I've been working on. It's heavily influenced by the Bee Gees sound and I was particularly inspired by their song "Run To Me." I was just messing around with my camera so I decided to do a live pseudo-performance and uploaded it to YouTube.

It was an impromptu 'live' version so I didn't even sing all the right lyrics. And when I have the actual recorded version complete it will feature a full band arrangement.