Tag: Buzzy Tonic

New Recording: Now and Forever

Here’s a new recording of Now and Forever, a jazzy ballad. You may recall Michelle came up with the lyric and the tune a couple years back (she was in third grade at the time; she’s now in fifth) and I helped her put it into shape and work out the arrangement. We recorded it for Jeannie for mother’s day. I liked it so much I decided to do my own version. I ended up making it a duet, so Michelle is still singing on the track. It came out very nicely.

I’ve also been experimenting with EQ on the bass, since that’s one of the keys to a really good sounding mix. Been trying to get more power and definition in the low end while removing the mud. You can hear new mixes of Is It Safe? and Black Swan.

I think this set of tunes is pretty much done, except for final mixing and mastering. We’re up to five, which is a good album side. Now it’s onto the next batch of partly-written tunes that need to get fleshed out. I’ll let you know in a while how that’s coming along.

Music Site Update: Elixr

Back from xmas break. Had a brief trip upstate to visit family and friends. Heavy weather driving both ways. Great to see everyone and glad the everyone is doing well. My dad got eye surgery and for the first time in my life doesn’t need to wear glasses anymore. Discovered the Hamburg Brew Pub.

The new year is off to a cold and snowy start. Last night we had a foot of snow, canceling my band practice. Both the kids had no school today, extending our xmas break. Took a good hour and change to shovel out, even with Lizzy’s help. Luckily the snowblower started right up after not being used for almost a year.

I’ve been updating the music section of my web site at zingman.com/music. I’ve added a link for The Relix, and added links to the new tracks on the Buzzy Third page, Is It Safe to Go Outside? and Black Swan, which prettty much bring me up to an album side. I changed the working title of the third Buzzy Tonic record to Elixr. It’s an anagram of Relix and also a play on the whole Buzzy Tonic theme.

I also came up with a logo, which makes a much better place holder for the eventual album cover than what I had before. This particular task has been on my todo list for a whole year; indeed made a sketch last xmas vacation. Constructing something like this in the computer is extremely tedious for me, so instead I drew it by hand and traced over in sharpie to get the right combination of precision and looseness. This is a technique I used a lot in college when I was studying design and architecture. Then I scanned it and played around with filters in photoshop until I caem up with something I liked. It’s been a long time since I used photoshop this way. I was able to achieve a rich look buy building up lots of layers of effects with varying transparency, a lot you’d build up layers using paint.

Even though I like how it turned out the colors don’t particularly match what I had going on the BZ3 page. Like I said it’s a placeholder for the eventual album cover, so I’ll continue to play with it. Meanwhile enjoy!

New Recording: Is It Safe?

Just in time for winter, I finally finished a rough mix of Is It Safe to Go Outside?.

Musically it’s sort of a power-pop song, but with some clever interplay of parts and a bass line that seems to turn the time around. The song was written by Martin and my version is based on his demo. In fact I kept his original guitar and bass parts. The song has been mostly done for a while, but it took a long time to track the backing vocals and piano parts. My velocity on the recording project is down this year, because first I was finishing my book and then I joined a band was focused on learning new songs and upgrading my gear. Now that’s all done and hopefully progress will level out again. I have a few more mostly finished songs that I hope to polish off soon, and then a few halfway-written ones to dig into in the new year.

New Recording: Is It Safe?

Just in time for winter, I finally finished a rough mix of Is It Safe to Go Outside?.

Musically it’s sort of a power-pop song, but with some clever interplay of parts and a bass line that seems to turn the time around. The song was written by Martin and my version is based on his demo. In fact I kept his original guitar and bass parts. The song has been mostly done for a while, but it took a long time to track the backing vocals and piano parts. My velocity on the recording project is down this year, because first I was finishing my book and then I joined a band was focused on learning new songs and upgrading my gear. Now that’s all done and hopefully progress will level out again. I have a few more mostly finished songs that I hope to polish off soon, and then a few halfway-written ones to dig into in the new year.

New Recording: Black Swan

Here’s a rough mix of my new song, Black Swan.

I’m really happy with the way it turned out, a sort or Steely-Crimso vibe and pre-postapocalyptic sentiment. I realize it’s been over a year since I posted any new mixes because I’ve been busy with other things including finishing my book and joining a working band. Enough time has gone by that I need to take stock of the record as its shaping up. Some of the stuff I have is going to be moved into the bonus tracks stack. I still have a pretty big backlog of partially written songs, plus at least one all-new number I wrote just recently. In any event it’s good to be moving again. Look for updates soon to the BZ3 page.