The future is wind-powered, sort of

I have two new musical projects on my plate. Well, one new one and a revision to an old one. Today's post is about the old one.

Those of you who have taken the opportunity to listen to my album The February Project from last year undoubtedly heard a bunch of dodgy "saxophone" on three songs. That was actually recorded with a Roland GR-33 guitar synthesizer. Which turns out to be a terrible way to make fake sax parts. Too glitchy and unpredictable for solo work.

In the main, my next job is to replace those parts with better ones using my Yamaha WX-5 wind controller, as featured on my latest album.

Since my fingering skills on sax are still a "work in progress," I had to do a lot of digital trickery to be able to play horn parts on Hidden Element.

The primary goal of revising The February Project is obviously to make it sound better. However, my secondary goal is to use it as a learning tool for the WX-5, so that future fusion albums don't require such trickery.

Beyond that, I may revise the song "Cosmic Jazz Explosion" and revert back to a longer version of that piece that I shelved for the initial release. I will definitely give the entire album a remix and try to make it into something I can proudly press up and sell a few copies of.

I don't have a timetable for this, but I'm aiming for the next few months.

My next post will talk about my upcoming new project, which is a guitar jazz-rock album. No horns or keys. And maybe some metal moments creeping in.

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Post-album depression

Haven't posted for a couple weeks. Basically, I've been trying to get my head back together after finishing Hidden Element
.

I was shocked by the sudden depression that set in after finishing it. Not because it turned out badly. Quite the opposite. It was such a pleasure to make, that I felt bad not having any more work to do on it. It was as if my life suddenly became devoid of purpose.

I spent the last few weeks selling off some surplus guitars. One thing Hidden Element taught me is that I don't need 50 zillion different guitars to get the job done.

I'm over the blues now and firmly thinking about the future. First thing on the agenda is to complete CD cover art and have it pressed up. I haven't pressed anything since One Week In December, but this new album warrants it.

I've also got my next projects lined up, but more on that later.


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Album finished!

Well, another year of the RPM Challenge, another new album to show for it. Hidden Element is now finished and available for listening on my Bandcamp site.

It all came together nicely this weekend. I was able to add all of the guitar, synth, and wind solos to "Sati" on Saturday. It was so incredibly easy compared to the struggle I went through with the other 'big' song on the album, "The Shining Land." "Sati" is very funky, and I was almost sad when finished that I didn't have any more layers of stuff to add, because it was a total blast to record. I was groovin', baby!

Saturday night, however, I was listening to a mix of the album and was dissatisfied by how long both of these epic tunes seemed to drag on. My first instinct was just to mail it into RPM HQ as it stood at that point and then edit it and record additional material later. Sort of defeating the spirit of the Challenge, unfortunately.

However, on Sunday I was able to throw together a fun little jam called "Maharashtra Blues," featuring a frantic solo guitar performance using the string-splitting capabilities of my Roland VG-99 processor to split up the lead and accompaniment portions of my performance in the mix.

I now had enough material to be able to edit "Sati" and "The Shining Land" and still call Hidden Element a legitimate album. After editing down those pieces into something I was happy with (they're still quite long), I ended up with a nice 47-minute album. That is just about perfect for instrumental music. I'm not a big believer in throwing 70 minutes of abstract music at people all at once.

The final analysis: this album is, by far, the best work I have ever done. Last year's RPM album, The February Project, sounded a bit like something I rushed to completion. In fact, I have plans to do some tweaking to it soon. But this new album of mine is something I'm proud of accomplishing. It's truly a finished piece of work, which I never thought I could pull off in such a short time. It doesn't require any explanation or excuses, and that is always my goal as a musician.

The CD will be in the mail to RPM HQ this morning!

I will finish this effing album, somehow.

Just to make it a little more difficult for myself, I managed to catch a nasty cold this week. Boy, does that make the production process "interesting."

Despite my problems, I have managed to construct a nice Indo-funk jam called "Sati." It's a bit of a tribute to the groovy cosmic electric jazz of the early '70s. Not jazz-fusion, per se, but sort of its immediate, spacier predecessor.

I should be able to finish recording "Sati" this weekend, do a rough mix of it like I did for the other pieces, throw together a quickie album cover, and ship the bloody thing off to RPM HQ on Monday.

I think.


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Do you have 18 minutes to spare?

If you've got some time available, then take a listen to the new track I just posted, entitled "The Shining Land." It does go on a bit.

It's too long to post at SoundClick, but you can listen to it on the embedded music player at my RPM Challenge page.

It's a completely new thing for me. Not a single second of screaming, distorted guitar, and in fact only a relatively short jazz guitar solo towards the end. The rest of the lead work is all virtual woodwinds, courtesy of my Yamaha WX-5 electronic wind instrument and VX-70 processor. That thing is just way too much fun to play around with. I've got to get better at playing it, but I was able to create some decent fake saxophone, trumpet and flute with it. For future projects, I probably need to tweak the sounds a bit.

Also note the string trio playing the little antiphonal thingy starting at about 10:10 into it. That's pretty much the first real string writing I've ever done. Nothing too crazy.

Now, on to working on the last track for the album, another extended ditty I call "Sati." More about that later.

The difficulty of simplicity

A great local saxophone player named Kelly Shepherd has an album entitled "The Beauty of Simplicity." Which is undoubtedly a true statement when it comes to music. However, I also find simplicity to be a very difficult thing to achieve.

When you reach a certain level of technical ability on an instrument, the tendency is to play everything you know, all the time. Sometimes it's just to be a show-off. More often, it's simply taking the easy way out. If you play a zillion notes, the right one is bound to be in there somewhere, and you don't have to do any actual thinking while you play.

I bring this up because my penchant for overplaying almost caused me to give up on this year's RPM Challenge on Saturday. I had spent a whole bunch of time playing some hopefully groovy electric piano to go over the bed of tablas, acoustic guitar and bass on the piece "The Shining Land," which is 18-minutes long and intended to be the centerpiece of the album. Unfortunately, my "groovy" Rhodes part was too busy and turned the whole thing into mush, given the complex background created by the tablas.

There's nothing like realizing at 1am or so that you have spent hours just to create 20 minutes of pure crap.

Fortunately, I regrouped yesterday, worked to channel the spirit of Weather Report's Joe Zawinul, and laid down a much simpler, swingin' Rhodes part that caused to me to get a big ol' smile on my face. In fact, I ended up redoing the bass guitar to get even more swing into things. "The Shining Land" has gone from being a pale shadow of a sprawling Led Zeppelin acoustic stomper to being a very groovy (that word again), textured piece.

Since that breakthrough, I've been working almost nonstop on a huge musical buzz. I really believe this is turning into something special.

I have, however, arrived at the moment of truth. It is time to break out the electronic wind instrument and see if I can take "The Shining Land" into the stratosphere. And I still have another 15-20 minute epic waiting for the guitar/keys/winds trimmings. Yikes.

The sound a blister makes

Can a blister change the sound of an album? Quite possibly.

Last night, in preparation for this weekend, I picked up my fretless and practiced bass for pretty much the first time since I finished my last album in April. Guess what? If you don't play bass very much for 10 months, the calluses on your picking hand go away!

I now have a nasty blister on my index finger that makes it impossible for me to play fingerstyle. It will turn into a nice callus, but maybe not soon enough. I was planning to put some tasty fretless on my piece "The Shining Land," but that might be out the window. Fretless sounds like crap when played with a pick. I may end up substituting some trebly progtastic fretted bass in its place using a pick. Think Chris Squire. Will it work on such a languid, meditative piece? Guess we'll find out.


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