Making "Division Street," Part Three: Delilah

"Delilah" is the sparest song on the album: acoustic guitar, ukulele, bass, and vocals. I added the ukulele at the very end of the recording process. I was actually in the mixing phase, and when I was working on this song, I felt like it could just use a little something. I tuned the ukulele slightly differently than usual, to get an interesting sound; I can't even recall where I tuned the strings, which reminds me of a story I once read about Joni Mitchell. Apparently she did a lot of "random" guitar tunings in her earlier songs. Some time more recently, she was going to re-record some of those old songs, and as she couldn't recall what the tunings were, she had to enlist the help of a musicologist or something to help her analyze the songs to determine how the guitars were tuned!

Musings on the Creative Process

Writing songs is a strange thing. With twelve notes, it's amazing we can continue to come up with novel melodies. And where do they come from? I don't think any composer can really answer that. Many of the songs I am proudest of having written really just dropped out of the ether, often almost fully formed. I wrote the lyrics to "Heart of the Lion" in the middle of the night. I woke up and wrote down the entire song. Weird. Of course, I did some re-writing and editing after that, but the basic idea was fully formed in a process I am incapable of really describing, because it is a process the mechanism of which I do not know or understand.

Making "Division Street," Part Two: The Winter Line

Before I got down to the business of recording "Division Street," I decided it was time to up my studio game. I spent hours and hours reading everything I could about recording and mixing. And I decided to upgrade some of my gear, along with doing some "on the cheap" acoustic work on my studio room.

A few years ago, after I switched from ProTools to Logic, I replaced my Digidesign 002 with an Apogee Ensemble. I've been very happy with it - it has very clean, very decent pre-amps, and it integrates wonderfully with my Mac. So I knew I was OK in that department. I still had the 002 sitting around, however, so I pulled it out, cleaned it up, and sold it on Craigslist. With the money from that, I first purchased a pair of small diaphragm condenser microphones. I went with the MXL603s Stereo Matched Pair, which was well reviewed for the price range. I was considering getting a new large diaphragm condenser to replace mine - a Studio Projects C1 LDC Microphone - but thankfully, I tested the waters by asking around over at Gearslutz.  It turns out, there's a company called JJ Audio that does microphone mods. For $150, I could get my C1 modded, instead of buying a new mic. After listening to the mic shoot-outs posted on his site, I opted for the mod, and I've been very happy with the results.

The Making of a New Album, Part One

Having a home studio has definitely changed my approach to writing songs. In many ways it’s been made easier, but you have to get past the distractions of infinite sound manipulation. When I first got my studio set up, I found myself doing an awful lot of creating, but I had a lot of trouble completing songs. It was just so easy to get sidetracked by all the options available. I’d come up with a great chord sequence, but then instead of buckling down and focusing on the task of hammering out a full song, I’d get distracted by the studio. Instead of working on the changes and the arrangement, I’d listen to the chord sequence, and hear a bass line in my head. Out comes the bass, and I’d record a bass line for that set of chords. Ooh, maybe some piano would sound good in there! Oh, and how about a banjo line?