Trooompets

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Brian and DocHey gang,

I’m chilling in DC, and just recorded some really cool trumpet parts with my bro-in-law, Brian MacDonald, a wizard trumpter with the Airmen of Note. I wrote this insane section for a new song, ‘Faster, Faster’ and while Brian dealt with the latency and memory issues of my crappy laptop, we managed to get a ton of good takes. He also added some cool Flugelhorn to ‘Swingy Memories’. I’ll take everything back to Big D next week and edit appropriately.

Speaking of the trip, I’ve seen lots of the US I’d never seen before. Memphis was incredible – tons of blues bars, a well-developed scene and great food. The people were almost too friendly. Of course we had to see Graceland. Two words – Shag carpeting.

Asheville NC is by far the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in the US (Banff is in Canada-still #1). Whitewater rafting was tons of fun even if the water levels were way down. The town is total granola, but again, very friendly. The drive in was like a car commercial – plenty of banked curves while leaves fell like rain.

Charlottesville VA – heh – very nice, very snooty. Bought a ton of Virgina wines just for the helluvit. Monticello was the exact opposite of Graceland.

I’m heading into the home strech of tracking – just keys, a coupla geetars and oh – those pesky vocals. (Slow and low that is the tempo Let it flow let yourself go)

Graceland pics soon.

Chris Holt wins again!

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Holt Wins Welp, Mr. Chris Holt did it again. He won Dallas Observer’s Musician of the Year!! He’s won 3 years in a row. Amazing versatile fellow. Congrats Chris!

Still working…

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Been having a blast recording the new cd at home. Joe and Eric have laid down a lot of groovy stuff. It is fun to hang out, chat, record a bit, drink, record some more. Punch-ins and edits on the fly really help streamline the process, especially after a few beers. I’ve also transplanted some of my demo takes and original programing into the current versions of the songs since trey did such a fine job sticking to the click; why try to recreate perfection? (wink) – I remember Andy Partridge did this with several demo parts for ‘Apple Venus’. Just a month or so more of recording, then I’ll spend alla my money on mixing.

I’ve decided to resurrect ‘Swingy Memories’ from an old demo cd I did many moons ago. Trey recorded the drums and I tweaked the bass and geetar parts to add a more ominous sound and left some space for a trumpet solo.

In other news, Eric and Chris are nominated for the DOMA musician of the year among other things. They’ve been playing with a ton of other bands, including Salim Nourallah and the Noise. Our former? manager and PR queen, Amanda is nominated for her bocatinta.com blog. I think voting is still available. Be sure to write-in ‘Sweet Simulacra’ as Best Album, cos sheesh, it’s just as good (or way better, in my slanted opinion) as many of the nominees.

Drooming Complete!

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Hey Kids,

Things are finally swingin’ again for me. Mister Trey laid down all the drums for the next cd last Friday and Saturday at Junius Recording Co. His brother Chris engineered the sessions. In a short 10 hours for an extremely reasonable price, we had completed all of the drum tracks. Amazing work by the Treyster. He said he was a bit rusty, since being forced out of Sorta last winter, but I sure as hell couldn’t tell.

We only had three rehearsals prior to recording and many of the songs had melodies but no words (ref. Aerosmith’s ‘Making of Pump’). Still, Trey was able to capture all my ideas and demo programs, giving each song some real soul. He recorded against all of the demos and a mean ol’ click track, something he’s not fond of doing. Hell, I could release the demos with the new drum tracks and it would sound pretty damn good!

I returned home on Saturday night after a wicked b-day party at dada for an old TNDC friend, Charlie (another story – oh boy), plugged in the external drive and drooled over the 25+gigs of 11-track drum wave files. This summer is gonna be a blast.

Next steps for July:

  • Write some words heh
  • Record bass (eric, joe or me)
  • Record some geetars (everyone)
  • Record some lead vocals
  • Record some piano parts played by real humans to replace my existing programmed arrangements.

In August, I’ll invite a cavalcade of musicians and singers to add final touches and embellishments. I hope to have everything tracked by Labor Day.
If you wanna participate, let me know! I chickened out of asking Freddie Jones to play a trumpet solo on a couple of the tunes the other night – What an honor that would be. I’m also looking for xylophone, percussion, strings (I’ve scored out all of those parts), theramin and backing/harmony vocals.

Look for more photos and updates as things progress. I’m very proud of the material I’ve written and can’t wait to share the final product with you!

Bitterballen

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Just a few little bar treats for you this month…

Drums are scheduled to be recorded on June 17th! We’ve begun drum rehearsals and I’m really thankful Trey has the ability to take my cheesy drum programs and ideas and make them official.

Harvey of Gentlemen Losers is lending me lots of equipment for the recordings, including a really sweet Fender Signature Precision Bass and some frighteningly expensive Paul Reed Smith guitars.

Joe and I will perform an acoustic show at City Tavern one Wednesday in June. Date and Time coming soon.
We’ll play about 45 minutes of oldies and newbies. I’ve never been a fan of the stripped-down versions of the songs, but I’ve been told the melodies are strong enough to stand on their own. Heh.

An unpaid advert for Cubase

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cubase 4 interfaceWelp, I done bought me one a them newfangled Cubase 4 software packages and am ready to start recording the next album with it. As previously mentioned, I’ve used Cubase SX for a few years to flesh out demos and arrangements. It took about that long to really get the hang of it, but I think I’m now proficient enough to use it for the real deal.

Part of me relished the creative and performance urgency that came with booking studio time and recording everything in a week, under budget. The other part hated paying for hours of time devoted to editing tom fades, tweaking tempo changes and re-arranging and combining multiple takes into one good one – things I could have done at home for free. So here’s the plan:

Since Trey’s brother Chris uses the same software in his studio, and is extremely competent with all things drummy, we’ll track all of Trey’s drums there.

We’ll then take those tracking files and record the rest of the instruments and vocals at my place. There we can take as much time as we like to get all of the parts right. We’ll probably use a mix of real and modeled amps for the guitars and bass.

After all tracking is complete, I’ll take everything back to Chris for mixing. I’ll enlist Paul Williams to help out as well.

So really, all I have to pay for is about 8-10 hours of drums and 15-20 hrs. for final mixing. I’m confident the results will be as good as the last cd.

I’m looking forward to having a wide assortment of folks over to record at house. It’ll be extremely laid-back. Cubase has some great scoring features so generating sheet music for pianos, violins and horns won’t be a problem. I’ve written some very difficult piano parts this time (writing is easy, performing is hard), so hopefully I can twist Mark Pittman’s arm to lay down some human versions.

Should be a helluva time. I’ll keep ya posted once this thing gets going.