The Agenda!

On December 1st, Dave and I once again hit the studio to discuss the upcoming work left to do on What To Keep & Let Go. It was a highly productive session, spawning some great ideas for songs like Bicycle on the Ice, Stand and Circles to name a few. Upon revisiting some of the recordings so far, we realized certain things about each one...what to take out to make the song stronger or what we need to add in order make it shine. In other words...what to keep and let go in each song! har har.

We started with Circles and had a joint listen-through of the guitar work I recorded at home this last weekend. Dave had a few suggestions regarding more simple harmonics but other than that, he's very pleased with how it came out. We'll be re-recording it with a real electric guitar out of an amp as I simply used my Ovation acoustic plugged into garage band with a preset "electric" setting for the demo. Next we had a listen to Stand and realized the song sounded much stronger as a heavy bass/rhythm driven song with Chad's electric guitar parts in there as atmosphere. Chad's melodies are beautiful but the slide parts in the opening and chorus sections seemed to hide the feel I was originally going for. From this point on, we will focus primarily on percussion and bass, soft melodies from a variety of instruments, (including some of Chad's other guitar parts in the song that fit very well), and also some ambient female vocals in certain parts to create a soft and beautiful world that I had first envisioned. We'll also be re-recording the acoustic guitar part as we're in need of a much more full-bodied sound. My art director, David Ireland, is first in line for providing us with one of his custom made guitars which should work out really nicely.

With Electric Candle pretty much complete, I wanted to have another listen to see if there was anything to tweak before we sent it to the mixing stage. Both Dave and I agreed that the viola section we put in the finale of the song was too "squeaky" and needed to be taken out. We did just that and it felt more complete at that point. With Bicycle on the Ice, we did the same thing only with a piano part that we threw in on the off-beats to originally create an interesting echo effect. On the second listen, we realized it was mimicking a somewhat "R&B" feel and it had to go.

We concluded the session with more thoughts on back-up vocalists for Horizons, as my vocals are very difficult to achieve in this song and need the help of a more experienced, finer-tuned singer to fill in the imperfections. Brian Hourihan, my co-worker and vocal trainer, has agreed to come in to audition for the roll and if his tone fits the song, we'll be set to proceed! We may need to use this treatment for other songs such as Circles, In The End and City Lights as well. My vocal style and stamina, I'm afraid, has changed since I originally wrote these songs a few years ago and I need a bit of help to cut some corners.

All in all, it was an extremely great session in the sense that we have a lot on the agenda to chisel away at in the next few months. Here's to a great six (or maybe less) months of wrappin' this puppy up!