The Album, A Primer

A Few Facts About the Album

My forthcoming album, “Eighty Two Feet of Water,” will contain 14 songs in all, with styles ranging from alternative rock to fusion, from country to what I call “psycho bass blues”.

A preliminary version of a potential cover

On the recording I sing and play bass. There are also drums of course, a Native American flute, percussion, banjo, guitar, Hammond organ, and synthesizers. There have been sessions with: A harmonica player, a violinist/violist, a cellist, and a fiddler in a pear tree. I still need to book a session with two or more different female vocalists and have a friend of mine back East track a guitar solo.

Without getting too technical (I’ll be doing that on either a different blog or my website) I record using my laptop and Cubase SX3 music production software and related plugins.

Because of the mobile nature of my ‘studio’, I have recorded in places like: my parent’s house and basement in upstate/central NY, hotel rooms in Milwaukee and Toronto. The bulk of the recording is being done in my apartment and my in-laws’ back house in Highland, CA.

My apartment studio

Here is a list of the songs in no particular order. I don’t expect them to mean anything yet beyond a reference. All the songs that have “₲” are certified guitar free!

Song title	Style	Description	Time	It needs…
Eighty Two Feet of Water ₲	Alternative Bass Rock	Haunted sole survivor of a shipwreck seeks peace	5:50	final vocals intro effects redone
The Barn ₲	Rock/ World	An old barn collapses in the wind, so will we.	4:37	final vocals backing vocals
Rice Crispies & Gin -sic	Ambient Country Folk	Troubled vagrant returns to scene of the crime?	10:03	final vocals track tweaking
Sugar on the Snow	Folk/ Pop	After row w/ wife, man   walks off mad on thin ice	6:36	final vocals, redo acoustic guitar tracks
Rain Don’t Follow the Plow ₲	Psycho Bass Blues	Government tells a tall tale. Farmer looses everything	4:49	final vocals, re-record bass/bass solo
RD2GO ₲	Bass Rock	Part I. A Man takes last lone look before leaving town	2:52	final vocals, tweak tracks
Breakdown ₲	Bass Rock	Part II. Man leaves town. How far will car make it?	3:26	final vocals, re-record bass
Clay Jones is Dead ₲	Country w/heavy rock feel	Jilted Clay Jones is dead but he sooo had it coming	3:31	final vocals, tweak tracks
Dronmonium	Eclectic Ballad	Reflecting on life and love. Saying goodbye	5:28	final vocals, backing vocals
Loser’s Treason	Bass  Ballad	“You are my friend, but I can’t see you anymore”	4:27	final vocals, JS record guitar solo
The Cider Miller’s Daughter ₲	Country/ Blue Grass –but slow	“Don’t stomp! Just put your arms and dance real slow with me”	4:00	final vocals, edit fiddle solo
What’d you Say To My Old Lady? ₲	Psycho Bass Blues	“You’ve gone and done it now, she locked the bedroom door”	4:45?	record drums, and bass. Temp vocals final vocals
Blood From A Stone ₲	Psycho Bass Blues	“Mister could you please spot me a loan?”	4:31	final vox, tweak tracks
Actually That Is A Banana In My Pocket	Rock-fusion Instrumental	Very fast, self-indulgent virtuosic bass piece rocks!	4:08	record bass/ bass solo re-record guitar tracks,

You may have noticed I have made up some of my own music subgenres. Hearing them is really the only way to understand and yet I will lamely attempt to describe them anyway:

Bass Rock and Bass Ballad simply means that bass, through non-tradition playing techniques and amplification, takes on the traditional role of the guitar in these genres as forefront.

Psycho Bass Blues is a completely unique style that borrows from Delta blues and early electric blues guitar except, of course, that it is all on bass with no guitar present at all. The bass is played in a hybrid of funk ‘thumb’ playing and chording while being amplified simultaneously by a modern bass amp and a tradition blues guitar amp.

This style is based on the work of the late “Reverend Alabascious T. Bartholomew”, the inventor of the “psycho country bass”. I will be dedicating a future blog to this colorful character.

The Late Great Alabascious T. Bartholomew

Ambient Country Folk is the only way I can think of to describe “Rice Crispies and Gin”, which is spelled as it is to avoid association with a certain cereal. It is a capella style Appellation Mountain singing over an evolving drone of textures; created with looped and heavily effected bass guitar of course.

“Actually That Is A Banana In My Pocket,” besides being a song title that exceeds the bounds of all previously known hilarity, is an instrumental piece that makes use of two handed fret board finger tapping technique that I put my own spin on. I will go into that detail later in my future tech blog.

Go Big or Go Real?

The largest question I face as I forge ahead is what the should album be? Is it a demo that will gain me gigs, fans and possibly investors so that I can redo the project in a studio and a proper budget? Is it a final project that I slowly invest my own time and money in until it becomes this incredible home-brew project that can compare to and compete with the rest of the market?

Remember, no record company, no record company deals. It’s bad enough I will be have to dirty my hands on a distribution deal one day.

At this point I am inclined to do a little of both. First, concentrate on getting a decent demo out in the form of 300-500 units perhaps with simple paper sleeve packaging. I may even sell them at gigs and such to help finance the overall project. Then use that demo to parlay myself into a slightly higher budget production of the same songs give or take one or two.

Journal

I have decided to dedicate a portion of each week’s blog to day-to-day goings on:

Friday, December 04, 2009: In the past month or so I have taken measures to loose weight but only in a nonchalant non-committal sort of way: Taking stairs instead of elevators at work and in my building, sort-of watching what I eat, thinking about exercising with such intensity that I can feel the pounds melting away. I even worked out and ran for 30 minutes two days before I got an email that would call my bluff.

Next weekend I am attending a Christmas/Hanukah party for a particular show that I work on. This is a party where an ‘action filled’ activity is offered in which a helmet and goggles are required. I had decided to sign up for this activity then I got the email that said that for my height the weight limit is 230 pounds.

I’m less than 230… I think? The scale says so-and-so but that scale sucks. Heck, I could weigh anything! I could be right on the borderline, right in that dangerous gray area. I’m also right on the borderline for the height requirement but…

There’s no way I’m going to be humiliated by being turned away for being too heavy. I’m not going to quietly slink away from the activity either with a burning “F” on my forehead. Now I have a pressing, red light, reason to stay away from the craft table, drink lots of water and remember my Resvaritrol and vitamins every morning. Now, I think I can manage to get up early enough to work out everyday this week and maybe throw one into an evening once or twice. This could be the perfect kick in the pants to start the process of dropping pounds that I have been putting off –and therefore putting on!

I know that quick weight loss is unhealthy and I assure you that I’m not going to go crazy with either the diet or the exercise. We’re just talking about a handful of pounds here over the next week or so.

If the guy about to hand me my helmet and goggles at the Christmas party tells me to take a hike after I step on his scale, at least I will know that I filled my clothes with as many helium balloons as I could.