Steve, I still have your shaker egg. It's here in sunny Tucson, whenever you're ready to come back and get it. In the mean time, as it is an artifact imbued with great power, I will use it to crank out the hits.
Some complexity can't be built with track surgery. Over the summer, I was introduced to a plugin that listens to the notes you play and automatically generates ambient tones to accompany your track. That's pretty neat, but it almost feels like a challenge. Can your new fangled software generate backing vocals that are a little flat? Because I can do that all day. All day, son!
I don't really care about tools. New tools and old tools are all dandy with me as long as you do something interesting with them. My cohorts are very interesting. Both Dan and Wilson are adept at building frameworks of rules through which they navigate a particular project. Building a subset of limitations and pushing the possibilities of truncated toolsets always seems to yield interesting alchemy. Then again, I guess it makes sense. Game designers; so, everything's a game.
My new game (read: album) mandates that all sounds appearing on the tracks are collected via a single microphone. The first microphone I ever owned, to be exact. Dre dropped it once, and now it has a dent. I'm not mad. What was I- oh! The album. It's called The Gate, because everything has to enter through the same mic. Epic!
This first track is called Little Mason Jar. I intend for it to set the tone for what I'm trying to do; which, I think, is to blend Wagner-style cathedral complexity with Dylan-style folk simplicity. This is a warts-and-all endeavor, so do enjoy the snaps and pops of the recording equipment, the unintentional blue notes, and the tap, tap, tap of my converse sneaker on the hardwood floor.
Little Mason Jar
xoxo (CW) Alex
Posted Monday, Oct 7th 2013 @ 10:29