The Decline of America, Part One

You mean the album's not done yet?

2010-01-25T21:44:00.000-08:00

Ummm, yeah, so I've been having a problem finishing things. Really, I can pretty much write off 2009 entirely as a wasted year. Not necessarily a bad year, but I can't really point to a single plan of something I was going to do that got done in 2009. I'm hoping 2010 is not similar.

It's been about 7 months since I last posted in my recording blog. In that time I had my CD release party, but I actually haven't finished the CD. In fact, I haven't done all that much on it since my last post. So, in an attempt to not be sitting here in 2011 writing "I can pretty much write off 2010 entirely as a wasted year" I started working on the album (and other stuff) again. I have some new band members (as you may have noticed at the "CD release party" a few weeks ago) that are getting added onto the album, including fab Camerounian guitar player, Didi, who I met when I played at a block party this past summer.

So he came by and did some tracks yesterday. And in fact, now that I think about it I have a lot of stuff that's been recorded but that I haven't done anything with. On my last New York trip I recorded some great background vocals by Robin Aigner and some terrific cello played by Serena Jost, so I'll probably be posting here more in the upcoming weeks. I plan to have the album finished and downloadable by April 7th.

I'm back! Hi!

Every Damn Light

2009-06-07T17:34:00.001-07:00

So, while I have been remiss about posting anything for a while, there are things being done, albeit slowly. My last odd musical encounter was a week ago with the fine folks at Sigma Alpha Iota, which apparently is some kind of international musical sorority. Who knew such a thing existed?

As part of a semi-comprehensive pay-my-bills-on-time plan, I've been recording end-of-the-year recitals at Northwestern University. But when presented with recording a recital from a whole multi-instrumental musical sorority, I quickly abandoned the bill-paying plan and hatched one for a trade -- I record their recital; they play on my album. I needed trumpets, saxes, trombones! Two weeks ago I recorded their end of the year recital, quickly wrote some horn charts that week, and dragged a bunch of mics and recording equipment to a sorority house in Evanston that Friday.

In one session, we ended up doing trumpets on Remember the Maine, a sax and horn section on Every Damn Light, and some background vocals on Greatest Generation (Yes, it's still called Greatest Generation! Thanks to those of you who convinced me to keep it. It's actually a much better title now that that line is gone.)

Who are these people who played? Besides Megan, who played trumpet, french horn, sang and set the whole thing up, they trooped in, played/sang the parts, chatted amongst themselves in-between takes about some upcoming dance, and then immediately dispersed after the last line was sung. I'm still sorting through what we recorded but here's Every Damn Light with a sax and horn quintette on it. Which , thanks to Megan sending me info after the fact, I can tell you has:
Ksjusha Povod, alto sax
Carla Budesinsky, tenor sax
Kate Nylander, baritone sax
Brittany Petersen, trombone
Megan Beugger, horn

With, of course, Aaron Zemelko on bass.

And yeah, I know I need to get the horns louder on this. I'm trying to figure out how I want them to sit in the mix. For now they're kind of quiet and off to the side...

Every Damn Light, which I don't think I've posted before, is a song about the New Orleans Failure.

The first entry in our cover contest!

2009-04-30T13:46:00.000-07:00

If you don't know, Piñataland is running a contest in which we challenge folks to cover our songs. Our first entry is from Alethea, who has clearly been indoctrinated into Piñataland by her father, Rob. Here is her version of an early tune from our Songs from Konijn Kok album (showing deep knowledge of our catalog for a three year old.)

Abraham Man Instrumental Version

2009-04-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

Hey folks-

The first thing I posted on this blog was a song called Abraham Man which has been sitting patiently waiting for me to get around to finishing it. Well, don't hold your breath little song... My progress is glacial, but I think for the most part I'm done tracking instruments. The song is, I fully admit, jam-packed with lots of notes. To hear everything better I got rid of my crappy scratch vocal. (If you don't know "scratch" means that's it's a place holder that should get rerecorded before anyone, god forbid, hears it -- a rule I've been breaking liberally in this blog.) The result is kind of interesting so I thought I'd post it and get some feedback before trying to do the final vocals and mix it.

It's kind of the opposite of a successful pop song, which tends to be very simple instrumentation with a strong melody and rhythm with, these days, layered percussion tracks to provide rhythmic interest. I have only two percussion tracks, with neither defining a simple beat. The melody is kind of anemic (especially in this version, which doesn't have it at all) and the harmonies and countermelodies are all working very hard to fight with one another and take over the song. I think it's interesting but it's quite possibly something that no one else wants to hear. I've even thinned this one out already a little bit, cutting some viola and accordion and it's still mayhem.

I do love mayhem...

If you have time, give it a few listens. I'm interested in hearing how people hear it on first listen and if that changes as you listen to it more. Let me know what your ear gravitates to and if those focus points change in subsequent listens. Please be unforgiving and passionate in your criticism and suggestions. Or at least helpful.

dave

p.s. yeah, I know there's a few sour notes in the strings. I have to make my way through the takes to see if I can pull in a couple notes from elsewhere but for the most part these takes were pretty good. The song's in D#m (6 sharps!), a key in which I gather from Maria (who played both parts on this one) violins and violas do not feel at home.

Remember the Maine!

2009-04-18T09:39:00.001-07:00

Ah, this is the first morning I've been able to sit out on my deck and have breakfast. Seems like spring is finally rolling around.

Been recording a lot but haven't had the chance to sort through it all. Recently did a violin session with Elizabeth Lindau of the band Canasta and a viola session with Maria McCullough who plays with Sones De Mexico and is currently in the House theater show Rose and the Rime. It's good stuff. We'll be doing a couple more sessions soon.

And, luckily, I may be having a real drummer play on some songs. One problem I've been having with this album is that I'm not a terribly good drum programmer and, as I'm planning on releasing this album for free, the idea of hiring a drummer and getting studio time to do it just doesn't make sense. So I've been cobbling together tracks from loops and added percussion. It's been OK, and in some cases works quite well, but I do miss having a real live drummer on some tunes. Luckily, my old drummer in the M.I.L.O. Collective ( a short-lived band of mine in Chicago who probably still has a myspace page though I haven't checked it or updated it in several years) who quit playing drums for a mysterious reason and who I lost touch with, has resurfaced and is playing drums again for some equally mysterious reason. Even better, he records in the same program I'm using and has a little studio set up so I can just send him tracks and he'll work his magic and send 'em back! Huzzah! (And if anyone out there does home recording and feels the urge to add tracks to a song, please do let me know and I'll send you stuff to add to. I can't promise I'll use it but I'm all for being surprised.)

Well, I suppose I should post some music this time around. Here's kind of an epic song about the Spanish American War which was written in response to us invading Iraq. There's quite a few similarities between the conflicts - the trumped up charges (evidence suggests that the Maine's boiler exploded, not that it was bombed), the complicity of the press in beating the war drum, the quick victory and the lengthy aftermath (though in the Spanish American War the aftermath largely played out in the Phillipines.)

This is one of those tracks that I cobbled together with drum loops both created and found. Some of it I like quite a bit and may keep in there in some form or another, but it does switch around in a confusing way. We'll see how Brad fares on replacing all/most this stuff with real drums.

Again, the usual disclaimers - not mixed, not final vocal probably, needs background vocals and some other stuff (like some real drums and real trumpets on there).

A Contest of Wits!

2009-04-07T14:40:00.001-07:00

Hey folks-

Recording this past weekend went well, with violin added to Call of the Waters and Raise a Glass, and bass added to a couple songs not yet posted. This Wednesday I'll be recording some viola for Raise a Glass and hopefully have all the tracking done ('cause my computer is running out of space and processing power to play this stuff.) I'll have more audio to post soon but for now I wanted folks to be aware of the new Piñataland contest. The rules are simple

1) Record a cover of a Piñataland song. Audio, video, whatever. Recording quality doesn't matter. It doesn't necessarily have to be from one of our albums. Could be you just heard it live. We'll provide chords/lyrics to any songs on request.
2) Send us a copy of your version by the end of May.
3) We'll post all the entries on our website and facebook page.
4) The maker of our favorite version of one of our songs gets to come into the studio with us to help produce a track on the upcoming album.

It's really that simple. So don't be shy. And don't be afraid to make the song your own. As people who regularly change chords and/or lyrics when we cover songs (in evidence here and here) we're all for hearing different takes on our stuff.

cheers,
dave

Another Astronaut Waltz

2009-04-02T19:54:00.000-07:00

Well, violin cancelled again today, but that's OK since now it's raining and we wouldn't be able to record anyway since the rain is so loud on the roof. Such are the hazards of home recording. For instance, I live in the flight path to the airport and it's harder to record without picking up airplane noises in the winter since sound travels farther in colder air. (On my last home recorded album there are a few times you can airplane noises in the background if you're listening on headphones, but I figured it was OK since it's an album about travel.)

Anyway, to today's post. Here's part 2 of the Astronaut Waltz series (part one, Velocity, was written in 1998 so we can expect part three by 2020.) Call of the Waters takes it's name from an affliction of sailors who would mysteriously cast themselves off their ships to drown. The same compulsion apparently also affects astronauts. Here's a description from the always handy Medical Emergencies in Space page from the Ohio chapter of the Mars Society.

In the days of sailing ships, physically sound young men would occasionally throw themselves from the boat and drown, overcome by fascination with the sea. This "Call of the Waters", as it was named, may have a latter-day equivalent in spaceflight. Just as some are compelled to stand on the edge of precipices or stare off bridges into the void below, some astronauts are fascinated by the free-falling view of space afforded by spacewalking. Valeri Ryumin's diary from his 1979 stay aboard Salyut-6 described his August 15 spacewalk: "You're out of your mind, I was telling myself - hanging on to a ship in space, and to your life, and getting ready to admire a sunset."

In fact, right from the start some spacewalkers have been reluctant to return to the safety of the ship. America's first spacewalker, Ed White, had to be ordered back into the capsule by Mission Control. When McDivitt had to tell him it was time to come back inside, White sighed, "It's the saddest moment of my life."

But this compulsion to stare into the void almost turned deadly for rookie cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko. During his 1977 stay on-board Salyut-6 with Georgi Grechko, a 20 December spacewalk was scheduled; Grechko would spacewalk, and Romanenko was to stay inside the airlock, monitoring medical readings. But Romanenko's curiosity got the better of him; he stuck his head out of the hatch, then drifted further and further out. When he started thrashing wildly, Grechko realized his friend's safety line wasn't attached, and Romanenko was drifting off into space! By leaning over as Romanenko drifted by, Grechko was able to grab hold of the safety line and pull him back in. Had Romanenko been further out, he would have drifted off and eventually suffocated.

Anyway, here's Call of the Waters. One day it'll have violin on it...

Delays in recording, advances in baking

2009-03-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

I realize I haven't posted much here in the past week+, but I was planning on having a violinist come in this past weekend and make songs that have bad synth violin parts on them more palatable to listen to. Sadly, it got pushed back to Thursday night. So what the hey. I'll post something that has bad synth violin on it. That way you can appreciate how much it improves when real violin replaces it.

This song is kind of a fun number inspired by a scene in a book called "The Dream of Scipio" by Iain Pears. In it, a character gives a long toast to civilization on the eve of WWII. "We must mourn its passing, and turn ourselves into beasts to survive what awaits us." he says. I read it when it came out in 2002 and the scene stuck with me perhaps because the world was seeming a bit savage that year, but more likely because a good chunk of the toast was about the wonders of cheese.

Anyway, here's "Raise a Glass" with bad synth violins which shall hopefully be replaced Thursday, when I can repost the song with much rejoicing.

You might find it surprising that I am going on about bad synth violins when by all accounts the track is layered with terrible sounding synth drums. Well, I don't know what to say besides I like 'em. (It might surprise you to know that they are, in fact, played live. An old drummer of mine put down these electronic drum tracks back in 2005 before a mysterious ailment forced him to give up drumming. I found the tracks on a CD and resurrected them for this recording, adding only a little bit of programming.) I played this for Robin from Piñataland a while back and she found my affection for the drums kind of baffling but was not able to talk me out of it. You may try to do so in the comments if you wish but you are fighting a losing battle.

And, since I haven't really thought of that book in a while, I looked up Iain Pears to see what he's up to. Looks like he's coming out with a new one in May!

And lastly, I had planned on writing about cookie baking in this post, but I never really got around to it. It shall have to suffice to say that time spent not recording has been time spent baking a lot of cookies.

cheers,
dave

'Til We Wake Up in Brooklyn - a comparison between drunk lyric writing vs sober lyric writing

2009-03-15T14:20:00.000-07:00

For your consideration this Sunday we have a song written several years ago (Sunday, June 25th 2006 if you care) and posted on my then blog "Tomorrow's History Today". Basically, that night I been sitting around on the web, had a few drinks of my favorite Czech liqueur, and had downloaded (legally) a copy of Okkervil River's "Don't Fall In Love with Everyone You See". After downloading I listened to approximately the first 15 seconds of the first song before deciding that was a nice chord progression and I should just write my own song. I didn't want to get corrupted by listening to the rest of their song so I turned Okkervil River off and continued to write and drink, drink and write, until I cranked out this little ditty. Here's some of the original blog post from that night-

As I write this I have actually yet to finish the song, but have continued the Becherovka drinking unabated. If you'd like to follow along with this blog entry authentically, go have a few drinks and come back in a few hours. Actually, to be more authentic, have a few drinks, then read the first part again, then have some more drinks. Play some guitar. Have some more drinks. Write some lyrics, cross out lyrics. Have some more drinks. Decide you need harmonica on the song. Change key of song to fit key of harmonica you have. Have some more drinks. Try to learn how to play harmonica. Have another drink why don't you?

The end result of which was this-

This turned out a good deal better than I expected it would given I had had quite a few shots by the end of the evening and it was the first time I had written and recorded a song in one sitting while drunk. (I realize this admission compromises my rock 'n' roll credentials.) In general, while the song was alright, I felt it had a few problems.

1) Though a passible performance, some slurred words.
2) I totally don't know how to play harmonica.
3) Good God, what maudlin lyrics!

Everything could be dealt with by just rerecording except of course changing the lyrics. I tried rewriting them in the next few days, but I just wasn't getting it so it sat on the backburner for a few years until I decided to record this new album, which is all songs written (or at least started) during the Bush administration. This seemed like a good one to finish and I went through a few months of trying to change the lyrics, which also wasn't working out too well. So finally last week I hit on some lyrics that I liked (except for one line, can you guess which one?) Anyway, here's a demo with the new lyrics.

As you can see, a couple lines stayed intact, some lyric ideas crossed over from version one to version two, and the general feel of the song, sans annoying self-pity, stuck around. The new one is less about me me me and more about charting a dreamstate relationship with the borough (and, apparently, some romance*) as kind of a metaphor for the real estate bubble (though, interestingly, the line about buying all the brownstones was written in the initial rewrite in the week after the post, well before I knew we had a real estate bubble). Yeah, sure, there's a few me me me moments in there still, but at least more entertaining and/or hidden.

But yeah, I'll probably embark on recording this for real for the album in the next week. I guess it'll be guitar, bass, drums, and, if I can find someone who plays, harmonica, or maybe pedal steel for the lead, unless anyone out there has better ideas.

cheers,
dave

* Here's something I never realized before, which gives you an idea of how many love songs I've written, but not many words rhyme with "love". For straight rhymes you basically have "of", "above", "shove", "dove" and "glove" as far as I can tell (though you could add .gov in there somewhere I guess.) I opted for the half rhyme of "up"

I need a title!

2009-03-06T16:09:00.000-08:00

This song was called "The Greatest Generation" but I took that line out. Any ideas on a new title? It's a song about the destruction of the WTC. (In fact, I dare say it's the most rockin'. danceable song about the destruction of the WTC ever written, unless someone has proof otherwise.)

And any other ideas of what else should go on here instrumentation-wise? I know I need a bunch of backing vocals but not sure what else the arrangement needs.

Over the cold

2009-03-01T10:58:00.000-08:00

Well, the last time I tried to record vocals it just wasn't working and the next day I came down with a cold. Cold's gone except for a lingering inability to clear my throat so still no more vocals. In the meantime I hope to get a piano track done on a song about New Orleans called "Every Damn Light". Setting small goals today as I have tons of other work to do which I've been avoiding with things like posting blog entries that contain no news...

Abraham Man

2009-02-24T15:48:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Decline of America album blog. The Decline of America Part One -- The Bush Years is the first album in a three part series. A collection of songs written from 2001-2008, this first section brings the political down to the personal, covering the major national events that happened during my 30s and looking at my reaction to them.

I welcome all feedback and at times I'd even like to try having folks so inclined to download tracks, do overdubs and send them back to me for possible inclusion on the final album. The final album will be a free download from the Piñataland site and I hope to be done with it this summer. I'll be sending out Twitter posts that either update what's going on at that moment or link back to this blog for listening. You can follow the twitter feed here.

As we get into final mixes I will be relying on you to help me, simply because I am recording this entire album on my laptop and have no stereo or good speakers in my house. Listen to stuff and let me know how it sounds. I can't promise I'll take everyone's advice (or, knowing me, anyone's advice) but I'll definitely read 'em and think about it.

The first song I'd like to share with y'all is Abraham Man. It's not mixed yet, with a scratch vocal track and bad synth strings which will be replaced by honest-to-goodness strings at some point. Any comments, suggestions welcome.

An Abraham Man, by the way, is a variety of thief in Victorian England. Much like Eskimos require several words for snow, Victorian England needed several terms to distinguish between different classes of thieves. An Abraham Man was someone who acted crazy, and when you went up to help him, he would rob you. There's something very quaint in the idea that you could act crazy to get someone close to you, but I suppose times were different then.