First Contest Winner

Congratulations to Jan Fischer, my newly-found musical amigo from across the pond. He is the first (and only) entrant to the 'contest' I posted here a couple of weeks ago. Click below to hear our collaboration. I provided drums and bass, while he furnished everything else. Thank you Jan for entering the contest. For more of Jan's music, check his website.

If anyone else would like to win this 'contest', simply download the Logic files provided in that post, add your creative touches, and send me an mp3 file of your work. Your prize: I will post the collaboration here along with a link back to your website or blog.

Thanks for the music Jan, and thanks to everyone following this hectic and fulfilling journey.

Dark Fun

Tonight I am chiseling away at the meat of Thursday, a song I refer to in May 4th's post. After meandering through a couple of light verses, the composition takes what I hope will be a surprising turn into a dark, percussive alley with hollow metallic sounds and earthy, hypnotic drum patterns. Needless to say, it has been a fun night.

In the spirit of Found Sound, I swished a fork around a (dirty) cereal bowl and banged my metal bulletin board with mallets. Both rhythms were captured in one take and will indeed make their way onto the final recording.

The clock to the left tells me 176 days remain until the Redline Project album launch. You may have gathered by now that I am moving ahead with all the speed and gusto I can muster so I might wrap up much sooner. In around two months, I will travel with my wife to South Korea to receive our son and bring him home. How lovely it would be to share all of this final music before that day comes. I am not nearly confident enough to subtract from that clock's sum just yet. Stay tuned.

Stardom and Anonymity

I join the masses in loving the music of Norah Jones. I watched an interview she gave today on Billboard.com, and was far from impressed. For being such a brilliant songwriter, singer, and instrumentalist, she was a far cry from articulate. And I found her comments leaned toward the conceited side. What a let-down.

Famous musicians, the ones who become household names, seem to lead lives that are often disturbed and filled with angst. Strange how money and fame mangle the lives of those who have both, yet somehow hold strong appeal to those who have neither.

As the Redline Project album begins to take shape, I am convinced of two things:

1) The music I am producing is fairly good - compelling, varied, and gives the listener a good bit to think about.

2) The music I am producing is not nearly good enough to be an attention-getter or career-builder.

Somewhere inside of me lurks the evil desire to strike a chord with a world full of music listeners and piece together a career as a touring, recording, performing musician. The sensible part of me - a small but growing percentage of my being - inches closer each day to rejecting those thoughts. What a mess stardom would be; anonymity is far superior.

New Term

I learned a new term today. The word is sibilance, which refers to the unnaturally loud frequencies that appear on a recording when a vocalist sings certain consonant sounds. The most pronounced are the s-sounds and the p-pops, but t-sounds, k-sounds, sh-sounds, and others can pose similar decibel spikes.

As I let iTunes cycle through the Redline Project's completed tracks, certain problematic patterns have begun to emerge. Sharp consonant sounds abound in the recordings, even though I have always positioned a pop filter between my mouth and the microphones when singing.

Logic Pro ships with a plug-in called a De-esser, a little piece of software that purports to remove the troubled frequencies. One small problem: it fails to work. Initially, I assumed its yield was unsatisfactory due to incompetent user error. However, a Google search revealed that scores of other recordists have experienced similar woes.

What then is the antidote to this perplexing aural enigma? YouTube to the rescue...

I located a useful video tutorial that outlines the process of using a condenser plug-in to remove unwanted sibilance. A few clicks and loud hissy consonants seem to melt into a natural sonic spectrum. Looks like the old adage of, 'You learn something new every day,' applies to this one. Your ears will unknowingly thank me for unearthing this discovery.

Rerecord and Reminisce

As I opened up one of my earlier tracks, one desperately needing a complete vocal redo, I noticed the corners of my mouth forming a soft smile as I recalled the process of putting the initial recording together. Nearly a month has passed since the last time I chiseled away at the sound of this song, called Thursday.

The lyrics aim to capture the confusing emotions surrounding the gospel accounts of Jesus Christ and the disciples as they celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover. It is a story that even the decidedly irreligious have heard in some form, and yet its facets remain a foggy riddle. Why must the Christ die? For what crime is he being crucified? Why does one disciple hand him over to the authorities? Why does another pretend he never knew the man?

And why would Jesus sweat bullets in the Garden of Gethsemane as he prayed the night before his death sentence? Didn't he know the end of the story?

There are tidy, pious answers to all of these questions, but I must admit that most leave me feeling flat and unsatisfied. The song I am honing tonight speaks about this overwhelming story and the sobering emotions that are packaged with it.

A snippet:
Weeping lead, sweating drops of blood
Wielding piece, fear I caused the flood
The rain must fall
inside the garden wall

Some believe vehemently that the story is the gospel truth. Others claim it never happened. Hardly anyone is neutral on the matter - such a polarizing event and poignant story. I am honored to join thousands of artists throughout history that each tell the tale from a slightly different angle, and I can not wait until the day that everyone can hear my take.

Initial Car Test

Armed with six of my compositions loaded into the trusty iPod, I took the wheel of my Honda Element and headed down the highway. My buddy Peter, a fine musician and sound technician, advised me to do so every now and again to gain perspective on how the music sounds in consumer speakers.

Good advice. What is full and resonant in Studio Redline comes across as thin and whiny in the car. I compared my work to the mp3 files from a few favorite artists; their music is a quilt of balanced sound that fills every corner of the vehicle with their artwork.

How do they do that?

Admittedly, I am recording on subpar hobby gear. Add to that a complete lack of mixing knowledge and no clue how to master recordings, and you have a fair assessment of my capabilities. If I desire the result of the Redline Project to sound halfway decent when I finish with it, some outside help is definitely needed.

My goal for the week is to find a talented, local recordist and schedule a consultation or two. Bonus points if said recordist offers their time on the cheap. While a maneuver of this sort may blow my intended budget, it would be much worse to leave every aspect of the work to my shaky, unskilled hands.

Side Step

My wife and mother-in-law joined me for an afternoon outing to the High Museum of Art, where an exquisite temporary exhibit called, 'The Allure of the Automobile' is on display. A score of the rarest of automobiles from the 1930s to the 1960s are on view for a couple of months only, and the collection is nothing short of jaw-dropping.

What does any of this have to do with the Redline Project? Hardly anything, except that the trip took me away from music recording, mixing, and once again, blogging.

This project has become a fixture of daily life, and a weekend devoid of progress make me feel as my wife does without eyeliner - that something is missing. The habit of producing basement recordings is certainly a better one than biting nails or cracking knuckles, and I am glad to be hooked on this constructive and invigorating pastime.

I accomplished a skosh of composing and editing today; a twist of a knob here, a tweak of a dial there. That's all. With the house returning to its standard population, tomorrow will bring a grand return to the project's goals as I try to polish and shine the last few rough cuts.

If you have a moment to navigate to high.org, where you can peruse a sampling of the marvelous automobiles on display.