Tag: No One Does It Solo Only
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Back at the keyboard
Happy Easter to those who celebrate it today! I went to bed late last night and had a momentary diarist’s bout of conscience for not having added anything to the pile here yesterday. And yet I was writing all day. Have been, really, for at least a week now. I’m trying to get a bunch…
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Houston, we have a CD sleeve
Thanks to the amazing artwork of Dave Gray and the tasteful design choices and execution of Rowan Bishop, my group’s forthcoming record No One Does It Solo Only now has a design for the sleeve of the CD! Looks like the song order is on lock now too.
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First impressions
I’m back in the product business. As we get closer to the scheduled June release of No One Does It Solo Only, I have to think about packing, merchandising, distribution, website, and so on. I mean, I like thinking about things like that. I liked it when I was in book publishing, I like it…
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I love it when a plan comes together
I don’t want to jinx anything but it feels like we are on track for a June 11 release date for my album (in digital formats). We’re in the homes stretch now
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New order (movement)
The listening party was a blast! I don’t think we got any notes on the arrangements (though I have a handful of tweaks in mind for several of the songs), but we had a great discussion about the sequencing, the flow of the songs, the emotional highs and lows, where to start each “side” (even…
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Listening partly
This evening we’re having a listening party at the Rorke place. After some pizza and non-gluten food and mingling, we’ll listen to the 46 minutes or so of my record in the form of twelve preliminary mixes. Many of the core players, who are also, friends, will be there to give their feedback and notes.…
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Maps and legends
The record is starting to exist now in two digital senses, a sort of digital conception as they come together. First, it now has a commercial pointer in the universal pricing code namespace. This currently has no relevant data associated with it, but it soon will. It comes courtesy of the shop that will be…
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Sticking the landing
Hard to believe it’s been three weeks since the great 18F massacree. Hard to believe it’s only been three weeks. Hard to believe this administration has only been at it for eight weeks. Five more weeks to go of administrative leave. We keep meeting and making plans and helping each other stay organized and look…
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So much for the preliminaries
Got back down to Goody Sound Studio today and we wrapped up the preliminary mixes on all twelve songs for my record! Today we tuned up “Giving Zoo Wolves Lessons in Music” and David Gans added some ethereal backing vocals. This track also has David on guitar, Robert Wade on bass, Javier Navarrette on congas…
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Lessons for wolves
Heading up to Oakland today to work at Goody Sound Studio on one final preliminary mix, in this case for “Giving Zoo Wolves Lessons in Music.” After that it’s time to plan the listening party so we can make final decisions about the mixes and the sequence. It’s been a while since I did a…
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Pharaoh made Ra angry
Spent most of the day in the studio at Goody Sound, mixing two more songs from the record. I posted them both to Soundcloud last night and the first one has nine listens so far and the second has 137. Go figure. Moses Took Us to the Water “Moses Took Us to the Water” (I…
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Balm in Gilead
Presidents’ Day is a federal holiday and for me this means I am back in the studio with my producers (David and Jeremy), working right now on the preliminary mix for “Moses Took Us to the Water.”
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amanaplanacana
I hope to release my record, No One Does It Solo Only, later this year, maybe a little sooner if I suddenly have a lot of unstructured time on my hands, and anyhow true to the title of the record, the process of releasing it will be a team effort just as the songwriting, arranging,…
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It’s time to close
Almost caught up now. We managed two mixing sessions last month (produced by David Gans and recording and mixing engineer Jeremy Goody at Goody Sound Studio). The first was on Saturday, January 4, 2025. Dirty Ol’ Sunshine We revisited the rough mix of “Dirty Ol’ Sunshine” which we last touched in June of 2023 (!),…
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Ain’t so sure that I could tell you when
We managed to schedule one more studio date last year, on December 6, to mix down tracks for No One Does It Solo Only. I had my knee replacement in November. Did I mention that? Maybe that’s worth a blog post too at some point, but anyhow it wasn’t really possible for me to get…
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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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I surrender, I surrender!
We got back into the studio (at last!) on October 21, 2024, as “Down to the Mountain” completed its evolution from string-band ditty to secular gospel roof-raiser. Down to the Mountain We met for a rare evening recording session at Goody Sound to get these harmony vocals added to “Down to the Mountain.” Lorna Kollmeyer,…
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Hacking time
As I’ve gotten older like everyone else I have noticed how time speeds up. Each new days is a smaller fraction of your life than the previous one. A summer that lasted a lifetime when you were nine passes in the blink of an eye when you are 50. But there is a positive side!…
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And you can sing along
Because of a variety of scheduling vicissitudes (some good, some less so, but all’s well that ends well) we got back to Goody Sound last week with singer Lorna Kollmeyer, who added her voice to three of the songs on the record (with more to come, stay tuned). Side note: I sing all twelve tunes…
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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…