Missing Something

Stewing around in my mind since the listening party two weeks ago is the growing awareness that the Redline Project final album lacks a strong opener. Aside from that, the collection of tracks has everything: high energy selections, slow burns, a variety of textures, an array of emotions. As it continues to take shape, my excitement has continued to ramp upwards.

The song slated to be the opener is called Sidewalk, a mysterious track leaning towards the electronic domain of the aural spectrum. With its industrial beat and repid lyrics, I initially deemed it a strong foot forward for the project. The more I listen, the more I feel certain it will leave my listeners a little hollow and a touch morose - not exactly the strong opener the album needs to encourage further listening.

I am headed back to the blank canvas yet again; this time searching for a catchy, relatable tune that has enough hook and yet remains true to the overarching album concepts. While the task itself is daunting, I am eager to create from scratch after spending months on the technical side of editing and mixing existing music. And as always, I will keep the readers of this blog apprised of the results.

Shadows Reappear

Tonight I am chiseling away at a third attempt of the song "Sing Silently." As I record the final chorus, I am once again struck with a fierce flood of tears. Sitting on the fifth track of the project is my stuttering, trembling voice, complete with sniffles and gasps.

The story behind the song is the reason for the weeping. As mentioned in previous Redline Project posts, the lyrics are about my friend Jennifer. A middle school student, she experienced a deep trauma when someone broke into her family's house, stealing possessions and carrying out acts of violence. She still struggles to fall asleep, and especially while her mother is still out working the third shift.

I am faced with a fundamental musical question as a result. Does the crying stay or go? In some ways, the presence of this honest emotion reveals the weight of the story better than any of the lyrics ever could. In other ways, it detracts from the simplicity and pleasantness of the composition, which I am guessing will be a listeners' favorite from the final album.

Bit Backwards

I have romantic notions about how a song comes into existence. Perhaps the composer draws from the simplicity of childhood, the pain of the teenage years, the angst of a friend, the joy of a monumental success. Picking up a guitar, words flow out of her like warm honey and spill onto the page of a parchment journal. A melody descends from the sky, cloaking the meaningful stanzas in simple elegance. A song is born; divine.

My developing process of songwriting has absolutely nothing in common with this hypothetical approach. I trend toward a backwards approach, commencing with a musical idea or texture, humming a melody, and then frantically searching for halfway-meaningful words to accompany the musical environment.

Yesterday, I jaunted down the same old songwriting path with a bit of a twist. After laying down some sonic concepts and singing through a handful of potential melodies, my mind conjured exactly two lines of a verse; nothing more, nothing less.

Here they are:
Clock reads three; I can barely breathe.
Words a knife; pierce me in my sleep.

That's it... the whole banana. A confession: I already love this song. There is melody, harmony, chordal structure, and an array of musical ideas piled into my head and stacked onto tracks in Logic. The music even echoed off the shower walls as I wailed into the shampoo microphone this morning.

None of this is negative, except that a concept for the song's direction would be a pleasant development. If I am going to reverse-engineer a complete song from this tiny seed, some concept formulation is needed first. Look for the development of this idea tomorrow - same time, same channel.

Pile of Goodies

My buddy David loaded me up with an arsenal of cast-off equipment from his home studio. I rummaged through the red and white filing box to find microphones, cables, a simple USB recording interface, and (drumroll please...) a set of M-Audio Studiophile studio monitors. Every item on loan is useful, but I am especially delighted to have speakers through which I can playback and edit music. Until now I have been trapped inside a pair of Sennheiser earphones. Thanks David for the loan.

I spent the evening at David's house shooting the breeze and creating some midi loops. He asked about Redline Project's progress, specifically inquiring if I am paring the possibilities down and defining my sound.

Good question - pretty sure the answer is a resounding no. Short of the fact that I am enamored with delay effects, I seem to pull from an array of genres, instrumentation, textures, and rhythms as I compose the individual tracks for this project. The ability to chameleon through the sonic range has its merits, but my inability to settle into a defined sound reveals a whiff of musical immaturity.

As I slowly press towards the goal of the Redline Project album release, I must remind myself of its purposes. I am here to explore, to ideate, to loosen the chains and let the music out. As the recording is released and downloaded, I anxiously await listeners' opinions. Will the tracks have overarching coherence? Will the eclectic nature of each piece lend a pleasing mosaic effect? Or will the lack of homogeny jar the consumer's ear and land the audio files in the digital trash heap?

Bit of a Trance

I have no idea if the music I am sculpting tonight qualifies as actual Trance music, but its mesmerizing groove has all but hypnotized me. I intended to compose this cocktail for an hour and chase it with an hour of blogging. Both time slots are long gone and a few extra slid by with them. Woopsie daisy.

The bell tolls midnight, and my fluffy bed is looking mighty fine at this moment. Tomorrow I shall post definitions for the many sub-genres of electronica here, or at least as many as I can scrounge up. I look forward to seeing if my composition in progress actually qualifies as Trance music, or if it simply has that effect on my mind.

Thumping in the Rain

Sunday afternoons offer the idyllic backdrop for snoozes, and the gray blanket of rain sputtering from Atlanta's cloudy heavens sings a lullaby. But the studio wafts the aroma of that new keyboard smell in my direction, and it is going to win the day.

What might be the perfect genre of music to compose and record on this bleak January weekend? When all I want to do is drift off to dreamland, there are no sounds I crave more than the thump and bump of a solid club track.

Not even remotely true. The quiet storm outside most likely finds me huddled under a blanket cradling a mug of green tea and spinning discs by the likes of Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Norah Jones, Amos Lee, Damien Rice... Bonus points if the tracks lull me into a light sleep.

I am an acoustic instrumentalist who has never touched a piece of digital gear. So why trance music today, or even at all? Among several other chotchkies in my closet of surprises, I am enamored by the sounds and textures of club music; so much in fact that when I made an initial move towards a musical renaissance six months ago, I bought myself two second-hand turntables, a mixer, and a pile of used vinyl. Visions of Sugar Plum Fairies clad in Dolce Gabanna moonwalked through my head as I contemplated a switcheroo from the common man to DJ Redline.

Didn't work. I was pretty terrible. The remnants of that misadventure sat in a tangle of wires on the living room floor until three days ago when a pimply high school junior handed me $210 for the lot.

There is a confession in all of this: I love dance music and I love to dance, though I know virtually nothing about either one. You are invited to have a gander at my first experiment with creating this sort of sound. This is my second scratch recording to emerge from the Logic Express engine, and I am pleased to report that the software did not stump me for hours on end as it did the first time.

Here are some specs:
Total Composing/Recording Time: 2 Hours
Software: Logic Express 8
Midi Input: M-Audio KeyRig 49
Audio Interface: Alesis MultiMix12 Firewire
Microphone: Audio Technica AT4033a

Where's Waldo?
Though it is not instantly obvious, I actually sing in this scratch recording. Can you pick it out the textures?

Brainstorming in the Bath

Some of my greatest musical ideas emerge during the ten minutes of my daily shower. Why is that? I can barely crowbar my eyes open one minute, and then a little sprinkle of water atop my head has me singing, beat-boxing, hammering out jams on shampoo vials.

This morning was no exception. I had no less than four decent ideas for musical textures before the boiler ran out of hot water. And now, I can't remember a single one. If this project is going to get off of the ground, I am going to need to capture and solidify some of these ideas. Is there such a thing as a waterproof recording device?