composition

Every year, February 22 is designated as “Cover Day.” People choose one of the other participant’s tracks to cover. In 2016, I didn’t know about Cover Day until it showed up, and was too timid to make the attempt. In 2017, I covered a song by Chris Greacen (the instigator of all this madness) and was pretty happy with my effort. My 2018 cover was a learning experience. I learned that I have no business trying to sing neo soul. I was traveling on the 22nd this year, so I had to put off my cover until today. Choosing which song … Continue reading

Another journey through the valley of production hell. I started late on this one, but couldn’t put it away, and ended up not only violating my 2:00 AM stop time rule (I think I finished around 3:00), but calling a mulligan the next morning. The opening pad sound got looped while I wrote the lyrics, but I didn’t have any melody in mind while writing. That’s not typical, and it came back to bite me during recording. The lyrics are maybe fourth or fifth revision, as I ended up shifting lines around while recording because they didn’t make sense, or … Continue reading

Back to the normal studio, huzzah! But also a travel day. I’m normally a bit drained mentally when I get home. Then there are all of the small things that follow a trip: unpack, empty the dishwasher, decide if you actually need to eat or if that airport dinner in St. Louis is going to be enough…. Mary and I sat and chatted for a bit, and before I knew it, it was “late.” It was actually only about 10:00, but it’s the final stretch of Song-A-Day, I’m grasping for ideas, and I was fairly sleepy. For the first time, … Continue reading

Another day with the mobile rig, but I was feeling a little more confident with the setup, and had a more time than the night before. As a result, I ended up experimenting a bit with Reason’s granular synthesis module. They’ve added a decent amount of functionality to the most recent upgrade. I don’t know if that had anything to do with the change of ownership or management at Propellerhead, but the surprise was a pleasant one. While browsing sounds, I came across a few presets that I know I’ve heard on various lounge and chill albums that I own, … Continue reading

It is amazing how reliant one can become on a normal working environment, certain tools, and software setup. I’m on a quick trip to attend a wedding this weekend, and brought a mini-rig with me to attempt road composition. My workstation consists of my normal DAW, Digital Performer, running on a MacBook pro and using a Novation LaunchKey Mini controller for input. I’ve tried two other rigs in the past. The first was similar to what I’m using on this trip, but using Propellerheads Reason software, and a larger Novation X25 controller. This was a great setup once in the … Continue reading