Go to the light…

Well, it looks like ATM is finally nearing the end. We've hit the last section of the song and came up with a great reprise for the ending. All in all we've decided to cut out one verse, so there will be four instead of five. I know you're all disappointed and heartbroken, but alas life must go on.

Mark did a nice job with the updates. There are a few things I want to hear again, but all in all I'm digging what he came up with. There was another small section that didn't quite port over to Mark's system from mine, so I spent a few minutes fixing that as well.

I'm pretty confident that we can finish the music next week. We still have two verses to finish writing, but we're pretty much at the end here. Total running time is about 14 minutes.

A little more work…

Had another minor issue with the computer software, but it turned out to be a PEBCAK* issue. I was able to cut a sloppy, nasty, grinding bass line for the groove section of "Awaken the Man" using my 12-string and a complicated network of cables, preamps, and bass-boosted distortion goodness. Now I need to write some lyrics and a kick-ass vocal line to accompany it.

(* Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard)

More ATM work

Hey, I'm back in the diary. Seemed like Josh was the only one with anything to say for a while, but I was so frustrated with my computer problems that I just didn't feel like talking about it.

Anyway, stuffed full of turkey last night, I ventured down to "Digital Din" to see about ironing out some of the quirks that were still left in ATM (going back and forth between my studio and Josh's occasionally causes some minor annoyances due to the variances in our gear collections).

So I got to work fixing all of the weirdness I could find. It only took a little while before I finished that tedious work, and I still had energy left to go - so I started cutting some bass. I pulled out my trusty "RickenFaker" and hashed out the tracks that still only had MIDI bass (or none at all). I was able to dial in my sound pretty quick on the MB-1 and made a lot of headway. This should be a nice head start to our next session, since it took some time to figure out some of the bass parts (Josh wanted some real Squire-like complication on several of them - and it works, so I went with it.) No point wasting that woodshed time when we're both there, so it was time well spent since I was "flying solo." I still need to work out a really heavy, skanky bass part on the heavy groove verse - I think I'll have to listen to some "Dogman" tracks to gain some inspiration from dUG. ;-)

I also dropped a quick guitar part into one of the section transitions that we've been a little uncomfortable with - the simple line introduces the upcoming section and really smoothes out the segue much better for me. I hope that it will "work" for Josh as well.

Altogether, my post-Thanksgiving solo session ended up being a productive evening for me, and it's REALLY nice having a studio that works again!

Back Home

We're back... at Mark's house, that is. He completely reinstalled his system and everything seems to be working fine now. There is a weird glitch in the production file for Awaken The Man. It's not affecting any of the actual recorded tracks, but sometimes the MIDI just stops working causing us to shut down SONAR and re-open the song. It's a pain in the ass, but at this point we don't know what's causing it so we just deal with it.

The third verse is proving to be a pain in the butt as well. We know what we want to say, but it's quite hard to put into the right words. We've thought about changing the third verse to a different idea, but I want to hang with it a little longer to see if we can get it right. At the moment it's not affecting the completion of the song, so we have time to work on it some more.

We added more music to ATM as well last night. We chopped out the end part and moved it over for "future use." In its place we continued with the previous music theme and expanded it some more (it is prog, after all).

It's nice to be back at Mark's place. Hopefully we can wrap the song up within a few weeks and give it to Mike for drums.

Almost There…

A very productive writing session last night. We continue to work our way towards the end of Awaken The Man. We have just under 13 minutes written and there is still a bit left to say.

It looks like we're going to have five verses. (Yes, folks; you read that correctly.) We have a very clear picture of exactly what we want to say; it's putting that message into well-thought lyrics that still has to be finished. We did manage to finish the second verse and chorus last night, which is a big step. It's going to be a very cool song lyrically.

As for the music, I'm very happy with what we've done so far, and I know that Mark is as well. Some parts fit very well into the DW soundscape (as if to say we've nailed down a "sound" already), but there are also quite a few parts that are musically suprising to us as well. We're branching out a little bit more on this song ... adding some harmonic and sonic elements that are more dissonant and ambient than our other songs. We're not quite in John Zorn territory, but we're throwing in a couple of interesting head-tilters here and there.

Mike continues to work on the drum parts. His last update to us said that he was coming up with some good ideas, and hopefully soon Mark and I will meet up with him again and hear what he's come up with.

We've also had some discussion about album title, cover art, etc... Nothing too serious at the moment, but we know we're going to have to start thinking about it more seriously in the near future.