Tag: music
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Serendip
Made a last minute choice to swing up to Menlo Park after work to a little place called Bar Loretta, tucked inside a restaurant called Left Bank, apparently on the site Magoo’s Pizza Parlor, the site of the first proto-Grateful Dead show sixty years ago. Billed as the Warlocks still, the show featured the first…
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Wooosh
A good friend of mine talks about that feeling of creative flow in which it gets easier to make your ideas real. It comes and goes on its own but you can certainly invite and you can definitely chase it way. You can at the very least leave the door open and cultivate the habit…
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I wonder why I wonder
We managed to squeeze in a second mixing session last month (January 13, 2025). I wasn’t able to get to Oakland for this session, so I “phoned it in” (well, zoomed it in, I guess) and that seemed to work out just fine. (Produced by David Gans and Jeremy Goody. Recorded, engineered, and mixed by…
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The mixdown
Naturally, there is a learning curve to recording an album. Of course there are more than one way to do that as well, but the way I am doing mine has gone something like this so far: So anyhow, as noted above we started the preliminary mixing last November 13, getting two of the track…
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The new phonebook is here!
I was unwinding on Friday afternoon near the end of a long week and tuned into Human Music with Bill the Cat on Humboldt Hot Air, coming soon to actual airwaves near you (if you live near Humboldt, one would assume). As expected (disclosure: I am long time fan of Bill’s deejaying, mixtape, and playlist…
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We spent divine nights
Lyrics by Peter K. Hirsch, music by me. (This one recorded September 12, 2024.)
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Palette nearly full
At this point we may have recorded all of the instrumental parts. I mean, we reserve the right to add a trombone here or a french horn there, maybe a synth part, etc., but for now we have got all the instruments recorded according to the current plan. Next month we’ll work on backing and…
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Third time’s the charm
We squeezed one more studio session at Goody Sound into July, to do a little more work on two o the songs. The Long Haired Kings Working on “The Long Haired Kings” a week earlier we noticed there was bleed from my original scratch vocal onto the basic rhythm track David Gans had played, so…
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Down to the studio
This record recording process started a year ago in February and for twelve months through January of this year we recorded one song a month, getting the basic tracks down. Since then we’ve been working on the arrangements and recording overdubs. I feel like we’re building momentum here toward the finish. In the meantime, I’ve…
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Building the sound
In May, after a couple of grueling weeks at work, we got back into Goody Sound for a nice long session overdubbing four of the songs for my album. (As always, these are sneak peeks of rough mixes, works in progress.) Carnegie Hill Jeremy Goody is a fantastic engineer with razor-sharp ears, and Megasonic Sound…
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Can the drummer get some?
New job and all, excuses excuses, still playing catch-up, so anyhow back in April I was back at Megasonic with product David Gans and engineer/co-producer Jeremy Goody with magnificent drummer John Hanes (who already added impeccable parts to “Saint Lucifer” and “Dirty Ol’ Sunshine”) in the house again, this this time to add a little…
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Let’s pour one out
What a long, strange year it’s been, recording one song a month for twelve months running for my record, Layers of Meta. We started with a song I had just started writing, “The Long Haired Kings,” last February. That day in the studio was just my producer and friend, David Gans; our engineer and co-producer,…
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You’ll know when
This whole album project evolved somewhat naturally from my ongoing songwriting efforts. As far as I can tell, writing songs is the best writing medium for me. I’ve written short stories, novels, poetry, and plays, and in each case I feel that I was able to carve out something worthwhile from time to time, but…
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Dirty ol’ tune
In that same spirit of catching my breath toward the end of the year I find I never did share any of the rough mixes of the third song we recorded this year, which must have been back in April. This one benefited a lot from having John Hanes on drums, and I feel he…
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Nobody called it that
At least in my day, nobody called our neighborhood on the upper east side “Carnegie Hill,” although that’s what they call it today and maybe some folks, like realtors, even called it that back then. A bunch of things converged in 2020. I was getting a bit more intentional about songwriting. I read the wonderful…
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Why I use a chamois
So a lot have been going on. Usually I rush over here breathless with excitement about my latest recording session but now I’m in catch-up mode again. Back in October I took off a long weekend for my birthday, and on that Friday went to Megasonic to record “Sham Song” (also known as “Chanson”). After…
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Embiggening the fun
Recording in the studio has been just an amazing experience so far, but this most recent session took it all up to the next level for me, personally! This time, we recorded live in the studio, as a quartet: Javier Navarette on percussion, Robert Wade on bass, David Gans on guitar, and myself on uke…
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A fresh look at Moses
This song started off with one couplet and developed into something of its own. Having gotten the basic tracks down In the studio now, it has taken further shape, as hinted at in this rough mix (produced by David Gans and engineered by Jeremy Goody at Megasonic Sound, with David on guitar and Dan Brodnitz…
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Never been to Narnia
One sign of how busy I’ve been lately is it’s taken me weeks to share the latest rough mix from my “Pleasant Valley sessions,” something called “Finn’s Song” informally and “Stand Up, Mixer!” inexplicably:
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Seeing the hindsights
Got back to Megasonic Sound for my monthly recording session last weekend and laid down the basic tracks for a fifth song for my album, “Memory Lane,” with Bill Cassel on bass; myself on vocals, electric ukulele, and acoustic ukulele; David Gans producing and Jeremy Goody engineering.
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I don’t want majestic splendor
Back into the studio again to lay down basic tracks for a fourth song for my album. This one is “Down to the Mountain,” which started off kind of in the mode of a string-band or folk-rock tune in my mind but seems to be heading for a more ethereal church-y feel so far.