I've been down recently about my music. I can't believe
Smellicopter isn't ready yet. Thinking about it
at all has become a big burden, a drag on my soul. It is at least a year and a half overdue now. Soon, I'll need to inform the Kickstarter backers that it won't be ready in October, the most outlandish future date I could think of most of a year ago. And here we are. Nearly October and still nothing. Once again there are way too many years between releases. I am 49 years old now. I don't know how many more albums--despite the scores of great unreleased songs--will ever see the light of day at this pace. I'd have to live to be 150 to see them all out, or so it seems. Something needs to happen to quicken all this.
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| Early rejected cover art |
This continuing bummer has seeped into my new song topic ideas, which all center around dead friends and the hard lessons of life and how little some of us accomplish.
Anyway, it's been very hard to motivate myself to record much in the past few months. I did force myself this week to accomplish one small goal. Read on....
Music Session 13 Sept 2012
Finally made myself get back to music today.
After reading the booklet to recent Now Sounds
reissue of
Brewer and Shipley’s Down in LA, (I subsequently
sold the cd because it has too many minor key songs…not my kind of listening)
about how they’d practice in a large closet getting a great blend and big
sound, I cleaned out about half my studio closet this summer. There's a quaint cleared out corner now just big enough to be a partial phoney vocal booth. It took longer to
position the mic stand than you’d think. Since, I’ve been experimenting with
recording in it. I did vocals for a new version of “An Unexpected Perfect Day”
in there and a first pass at a guitar solo as well.
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| Not for the claustrophic |
I continued using that new space today, recording Section D
of the Self-Starter Suite using
Juliette’s tiny kid guitar, a piece of junk that is lots of fun to play. I’d
like to say I used it to get the near ukulele sound (if ukes had metal
strings!) I want for that section of the suite, but it’s really because it’s
the only guitar I can play that part on without serious pain after a few
minutes! First I needed to haul a suitable stool out of the basement and dust
it off. I can just about fit myself and the guitar in the closet.
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| Cluelss in the closet and clutter? |
I did three takes of the main track, did some editing and
copying for a master take. Did some relatively serious compression for the odd
instrument, which ended up working well after a few adjustments. The
double-track of it I did in one take. It sounds pretty unusual. Can hear a bass
line in my head for this brief passage. Saved for another day.
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| Giving credit where its due |
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Listened through some other songs and practiced “If You Buy
My Album.”
Also rehearsed an unrecorded vocal part for the chorus of
“AUPD” with just as much difficulty as I have had before. I think I’ll just get
it as good as I can for illustration purposes and then offer that part to Yani
to sing. The guitar solo still sounds okay to me.
The olde Power Mac really didn’t want to play all zillion
tracks of “Your Idiot Son” today. Some of the electric fru-fru picking sounds
out of the pocket to me now and the same bass issues that always plague me
haven’t gone away since the last time I heard these tracks. Other tracks still
sound good, however.
Who knows when I’ll get back to recording. Maybe next
Thursday.
