de cuatro días

Its been really tough for me to write lyrics and melody.  I have two more days in which to record this.  Drat.

Borrowed the bass from our church tonight and plan on laying down some bass tracks tomorrow.  Sweet!

later.

de cuatro días: recepción

Showed the initial recordings to a few friends and got generally positive reviews.  I'm already learning A LOT and I think this initial experience will greatly effect future songs.  I really like the song I chose to do first, and almost wish I would have saved it till the end so that I had a better knowledge base to work off of.  Oh well, these songs are just a first draft so I can get something down, better recordings will come in the future.

bendiciones

de tres días: el equipo: por una parte (The Equipment: Part One)

Just so were clear, I don't speak Spanish.  I use the google translator, and then post it directly as my title.  The reason? Everything sounds more epic in Spanish. 

I'd like to take a few posts to talk about the equipment that we're using in the blogrimage.  The first featured item is the Presonus FP10 Firewire Interface.  This is what we plug our instruments into in order for the computer to be able to record our music.  Neat! 

Here's a poorly shot video, filmed by an incredibly tired Joe Schmidt of an also tired Dominic Leon after recording drums:



As I said, we recorded drums last night.  We only had short amount of time to do it, and we didn't quite finish.  Dominic played for the verses and chorus's, then I took over for the bridge.  Even though Dominic is a much better drummer than I am, we determined he had too much soul to play the bridge.  Below is a pic of our set up. 

For those of you that are recording nerds, we used 6 mics: 1 kick, 1 snare, 2 Tom, 2 overhead.  We couldn't find any hardware to attach the cymbals to the stands, so we had to make do with whatever we could find, which included "Life" bracelets, tape, and hair ties.  Oh, and we recorded in our churches storage area.  Classy. 

cambio y fuera

dos días de: el equipo (the team)

I've assembed an all star team to help me with the blogrimage.  Here are the players:


El Equipo

Katelyn Schmidt

keyboard, glockenspiel, vocals, beauty

Dominic Leon

producer, percussion, soul

Jesse Mutzebaugh

drums, bass, charm

Joe Schmidt

guitar,  drums, glockenspiel, bass, vocals, detroit

Last night Dominic and I recorded all of the electric and acoustic guitar tracks for the first song.  After getting used to a metronome again, success was achieved.

hasta mañana

un día: la misión

The mission of my Blogrimage...hmmm, blogspot's spell check doesn't know the word blogrimage...that will have to change.  Ok, now then....hmmm, blogspot also thinks the word "blogspot" is a typo.  Interesting.

ENOUGH DISTRACTION!!!  The mission of my blogrimage is to record one original song a week.  At the end of the week, I'll post the song to my blog so we can all enjoy, hate, love, criticize, process, deconstruct, and talk about the life change the song has brought to us.  Just kidding, they won't be that deep.

The reason I chose this as my blogrimage is because I write a lot of music, but I have a very difficult time putting lyrics to the songs and essentially "finishing" them.  I'm mostly of the shoegazer persuasion that vocals are simply another instrument that shouldn't be given more importance than any other instrument, but I also understand the power of vocals and lyrics that appeal to us on a primal level.  The "living instrument" as it were.

How do these two view points reconcile themselves?  While I understand the very human amusement of vocals and lyrics, which we all enjoy and can connect with, I believe that the music industry has placed too high a value on vocals, thus resulting in people that can sing, but can't write music or think critically about music. Our music has become cheap because all that matters is who is singing, not even what they are singing about necessarily, just that they are beautiful and "on pitch".  A perfect example is American Idol, no one is judged based on music they write, or even the instruments they play.  For those American Idolites, I recognize that contestants do play instruments sometimes, my point is that they aren't judged on their instrumental skill or aptitude, just their voice, because that's whats important.

With all that said, I do believe that great vocals and thoughtful lyrics can connect us to a song and a band on a very deep level, and they can do this more easily and more often than music can.  I do believe that great music can touch us in a very deep, even intimate way, but its just harder for most people to connect and puts words to.  So with that said, lyrics and vocals are not my strong suit, but I am willing and ready for the challenge.  In the coming days I will introduce you to the crew, the equipment, the songs, and the inspirations.  Till then!

al final