Cost of Living

Tuesday night had a full house: Glen, Sam, Martyr, Steve, and myself. I had worked up a song in MIDI and we used that as a launching point. What we ended up with was pretty close to where we started, but everyone added their little tweaks. We didn't get a solid recording, but we have another week to work on it. Sadly, we pushed our time limit playing after 11pm, but the neighbor knocked on the door and asked us to stop playing since she gets up at 4:30am. Lame.

Glen made a super sweet video for out current song, Your New Dress. Sam helped us write the parts, and Glen and I did the arranging/recording/editing/mixing. The song is in the current fight, so if you want to check out the other songs and vote, please do!

Here is a high resolution version:

http://www.vimeo.com/7882879

It is also on You Tube, but it sounds and looks horrible, we highly recommend the Vimeo version.

http://www.youtube.com/user/glenartrock

Enjoy!

One more thing

We won!! We edged out our nearest competitor by one vote in the "Monkeys On My Back" Song Fight! Thanks to special guest Lee for contributing to our victory.

Who Needs Sleep

Last week we had a big old jam at the space and got the meat of an entry done for the "Who Needs Sleep" Song Fight!. Ken drummed, Bryan played bass, and we actually had three guitar players. ROCK! Martin, Steve, and I all played guitar. (Glen was out of town.) We started out with a little riff I brought in then built the song up from there. Ken provided some lyrics which Martin sang. Due to a technical difficulty we didn't get a recording of Steve's guitar from that night but he was able to work with Ken to rerecord his tracks. Ken then worked his usual production magic on it (and sang some backing vocals, too, I think) and sent it in. Go check out the fight and vote for your favorites. It should be up till next Thursday morning.

A cover song

We also recently did a cover song for a Song Fight! participant. Occasionally Song Fight! people will get together for a "hxaro", which in the context of Song Fight! means a surprise gift to someone consisting of a bunch of covers of his/her songs. This time around the recipient is Paco del Stinko. You can read about the event at this thread on the Song Fight! bulletin board and find links to all the covers there. Here's ours, it's of Paco's winning entry for Nur Ein 2008 round 5.

Monkeys On My Back, Post Mortem

Our "Monkeys On My Back" entry is up in the current Song Fight! with 13 other songs. We wound up not doing any more recording for the song instrument wise. Special guest Lee came through with some great lyrics and vocals that Ken was able to mix in with his usual aplomb. I really like the song, it's got a nice stripped down sort of sound compared to our last song, but it's still pretty rocking. Go check out the fight and vote for your favorite songs!

Now the new title is up, "Who Needs Sleep", due Sunday Oct. 25th. That gives us 10 days, with only one Tuesday this time.

Monkeys on my Back, Part 2

I was worried our tracks from Tuesday night were distorted and clipped because the recording levels were hot. I checked them out last night and they are loud, but usable. I did a quick mix of the basic tracks and they sound okay. I think we got a little more bleed in the tracks than usual due to rocking out a bit more and cranking up the amps. I have to email out the mp3 to the rest of the guys to see what they think. Overall, it seems like a usable performance. Now we need some vocals...

Monkeys On My Back, Part 1

Tonight Glen and Ken and I were joined by Glen's friend Lee. Lee and Glen played guitar, Ken played drums, and I played synth bass. We jammed out for a bit then narrowed in on a couple of possible parts. Ultimately we managed to bang out a few takes of a song, in a fairly standard structure. We're not doing any odd time signatures this time but it's not as poppy as last week. It's kind of frenetic in a fun way. I'm curious to hear the how recordings sound once Ken has a chance to massage them. Hopefully we're on track to have another entry done, since we've got the music pretty much written and maybe even mostly recorded with nine days left till the deadline. At this point we need to get some lyrics written. We're going to try to have Lee continue collaborating with us from his home in a far away state, with the hope that he can sing on this track.

Ring Them Bells, Post Mortem

We finished "Ring Them Bells" and got it in the current Song Fight!! We've got some good competition this round. I'm enjoying the entries from Boltoph and Panna Cotta Army. Go check out the fight!

We wound up using our live tracks for our entry, though in a somewhat edited form. I managed to edit the song into a structure that people were OK with. I shortened the intro to the second verse, shortened the whole bridge, stuck in a verse with a solo over it between the bridge and the chorus, and kept the whole outro. Other than my solo (which is pretty sweet, if I do say so myself), Ken added some synth tracks, which I edited and supplemented a bit. I also put a few handclaps in the final chorus. (I mixed this one, too.) For the piece de resistance, though, Erin stepped in and did the vocals and wrote the lyrics. Glen and Martin and I had all been taken whacks at some vocals and lyrics but none of the ideas had really seemed fitting to the song to me yet, so I was really happy Erin came on board. She did a great job providing some more pop sound to the song, and I think her vocals in the outro are especially pretty.

Ken and Glen and I are still piecing together a cover song for a Song Fight! hxaro. In Song Fight! a "hxaro" is an event in which a bunch of folks secretly cover a particular Song Fight! participant's songs and present them on the SF! bulletin board all at once as a gift. Glen and I in particular are excited about this hxaro and this song, and we've done some fun guitar solos for it that we hope the recipient will appreciate. I think we've just got a few little vocals parts left to record, and then Ken's going to work his mixing magic on this one.

Otherwise, a new title is up: "Monkeys On My Back", due on the 15th, so we've got two Tuesday nights to work on this one again. I wonder what we'll come up with this time?

Ring Them Bells, Part 2

In the last few days we've been sending a lot of e-mails trying to hash out the final structure of the song. How long should the bridge be? How long should the outro be? Etc. etc. We've recorded some keys, some bells, a solo, and more. Erin's said she might want to sing, and she's got some lyrics. We're also trying to decide if we can just go with an edited version of our recording from Tuesday night or if we need to rerecord everything from scratch. I think at this point we're hoping to go with the recording from Tuesday night. The sound quality is pretty good, but there are some performance issues we're trying to fix.

"Ring Them Bells" Part 1

Yesterday the new title went up on Song Fight! along with the new deadline. Songs titled "Ring Them Bells" are due next Thursday morning. (I actually just noticed that the title is "Ring Them Bells", not just "Them Bells", whoops.)

After our epic prog odyssey entry into the now "Made To Be Played" fight that is up now, I wanted to switch gears and do something much simpler and poppier. I came up with fairly verse and chorus chord progressions in the morning.

Last night Ken, Glen, and Steve and I met up at BSS HQ (which, now that I think about it, is technically in Oakland, but anyway...) and got a demo of the song done. We collaborated to figure out the feel of the song and to build up the structure, with a bridge and transitions between the parts. We managed to get two takes of the song before we ran out of time. (Our neighbors like us to be done with our loud noise around 11pm.)

This morning I mixed and edited our live demo and sent that out. I'll see somehow if I can figure out a way to post that to the blog.