Tag: Spellbound

Spellbound – New Mixes

Here are rough mixes of the first six songs of my upcoming album Spellbound: In the Dead of Winter. I’ve been listening back to them and making tweaks to the balance, effects, and compression. I’m ready to declare victory on these for now and put them aside until the last song is finished, then come back to them for final mastering. But that may take a while, since the last song is a doozy!

Anyway, here you go, enjoy!

The Call of the Muse
Strange to My Mind
The Slient Hour
Sandcastles
Flock of Fools
Frozen Ocean

New Song: Frozen Ocean

I finished tracking my new song Frozen Ocean a good while back, and have been honing the mixes to the point where I have a pretty satisfactory rough mix.  This was one of the few songs I’ve ever done where the main sound is built up out of layers of guitars, and I learned alot.

To rewind a bit, Frozen Ocean is the sixth song on my upcoming record Spellbound.  It’s one of two songs that was not on the original record Martin and I made back in January of 1990, but one that he wrote around the same time and was part of the live set of his band Shade.  I think it was Martin’s first really great song – great lyrics, great melody, great sound, imagery, tone, build and dynamics, everything.

This song took alot of practicing to get the guitar parts right, but along the way I definitely leveled up my guitar playing and mixing skills.  It opens with the guitar playing an arpeggiated pattern shifting among open and fretted strings. Martin was such a good guitarist, even early on, that I didn’t realize how subtle and complicated the part was.  Next up, lead guitar part was another major challenge. First I listened to his original recording and learned his riffs, then began to practice and memorize them. The song has three guitar solos, a light and airy one at the beginning and end, and a heavy one in the middle. There’s alot of nuance in the tone and phrasing I sought to capture, as well as some moments of intense shredding that really needed to woodshed.  Lastly, I decided to double the rhythm guitar with the twelve-string, since it worked so nicely in the two other guitar-oriented songs. I subtly changed some of the voicings and patterns to bring it more in line with Martin’s original, and to create more depth.  It took a while to make all the guitars sit well together in the mix.  They key was to put a bit of flange on the 12-string to make it blend with the original rhythm track.

Compared to the guitars, the other instruments all went down pretty quickly. There’s a piano part in the background, which I actually recorded first to serve as the spine of the track, and to retroactively insert myself into song to make it fit with the tone of the rest of the album. The drums, being midi, took some work because I was trying to replicate lots of open-sounding cymbal work and some jamming-style fills. My plan is retrack the drum part with real drums, as with all the songs on the record. The vocals went down surprising fast, since Martin’s vocal range and sense of phrasing was very similar to my own. I think I did three takes in less than twenty minutes and knew I’d nailed it.

So here you have it, enjoy!

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/spellbound25/FrozenOcean18a.mp3

…

Frozen Ocean

I’m going to fly away
Watch me on the run
Try to sail a frozen ocean
See the world but she won’t want me
See the stars they only haunt me
Sail this path until my life is done

You learn the waves you ride
They carry you to the other side
Wait for a springtime tide to bring you home

Here upon my frozen ocean
Watch the world drift by
Caught between the sea and leaden sky
See the life that’s moving under ground
Hear the death that rolls with thunder sound
See the place where all our spirits lie

You learn the waves you ride
They carry you to the other side
Wait for a springtime tide to bring you home

You’ll see the breaking of the day
Your spirit blowing you away
With nothing nothing left to say
The wind is calling you to stay yeah, stay yeah

You learn the waves you ride
They carry you to the other side
Wait for a springtime tide to bring you home

I see the sky is falling
I hear the wind is howling
I see the death that gathers ’round
Lost upon this frozen ocean
Watch the sun go down
Nevermore and never to be found

— Martin Szinger, 1990

It’s Snow Fun

The temperature has actually gotten above freezing the last few days.  Saturday it was up near fifty.  But there’s still plenty of snow on the ground, and trying to break up the snow piles is mostly futile since it’s all fused into a solid mass of ice.  On the plus side, Jeannie and took a day off from work Friday to go skiing.  We figured it was the last day before President’s Day weekend, and the last cold day before things start melting.  And, as I’d hoped, the mountain was not at all crowded and the conditions were great.  Not at all icy until the very end.  We left the house around 8:30 and were on the slopes by eleven.  We did eighteen runs in total, all over the mountain.  Stayed until after four.  It was the best day of skiing I’ve had in a long time, especially for a day trip.

Did some shopping over the weekend.  Got a backup hard drive for my new computer, as well as a mouse and some cables to connect various audio interfaces, and even a new desk chair.  Things are moving ahead. 

Last Thursday instead of normal band rehearsal for Spacecats, Ken and Rick came over to my studio to begin work on our new album (Josh being out of town).  This was basically a tech session to see what it will take to use my studio for recording.  It’s going to be a learning curve as I retire my old system which I know so well and move into the new one.  So far I got my 8-channel audio interface hooked up to my computer and some of the software installed, including multiple DAWs and drivers for the outboard box.  Rick played my drum kit, which I had mic’d up previously.  Ken brought his bass amp and a very nice AKG condenser mic so we could record both direct and the output of his amp.  I played sax into my trust Rode mic.  It took an hour or so to get everything set up.  We managed to get a great-sounding 8-track recording of the trio doing a handful of standards.

A few things we need to improve for next time.  First is that I only had one audio interface plugged in, so the meant just five channels of drums to make room for two bass channels (mic and direct) and one for sax.  Actually the kit sound pretty good that way.  The mics are on the kick, snare, hi-hat and two overheads which are meant for the cymbals but also capture alot of the toms.  The three mics are had to unplug were for close-mic’ing the toms. 

For next time I’m going to add another audio input box.  I have a space MBox, the same kind I use for my old studio, that has four inputs, including two XLR with nice peak limiters.  This will get us up to twelve channels, which will do for next week.  But the week after Josh is coming back and we’ll want another stereo pair for the keyboards and eventually mic’ing the piano.  Ken has an eight-channel audio box he’s going to bring next week, so we’ll see how that goes, and Rick has a 16-channel digital mixer too.  So we’re we’re trying it all to see what works best.

The other thing we need to work out is the arrangement of the musicians in the room for minimizing the bleedthru on the mics from the other instruments.  This is going to be a live jazz album with no overdubs, but better isolation will make it easier to mix.  For this session, Rick and I were fairly close together, but put Ken’s amp far away, and that worked out.  We might have to invest in some longer cables and acoustic baffles too.

Meanwhile, I’ve been continuing to work on my home studio project Spellbound.  I’ve been laying down a couple takes of the twelve-string guitar part every day, and I’ve finally gotten solid enough that I can cut together a take from tracks I laid down.  Woo-hoo!  This means I should be wrapping up this song soon.  I also went back and did new mixes of the first five songs.  All that remains is the big prog epic that fills up most of side two.

And lastly, there’s a bunch of origami events coming up.  I’ve been asked to be a special guest for the upcoming Origami USA convention in July.  I’m very flattered and honored, and now I have to level up my exhibit and teaching, plus submit a model the annual collection.  There’s also CFC (Conference for Creators) in Ann Arbor, Michigan in May, hosted by my friend Beth.  For that one I plan to give a talk on folding pentagonal symmetry, with examples from my own work including single-sheet polyhedra, and tessellations including fractals and Penrose quasicrystal tilings.

But the nearest one is CoCon in Chicago, just three weeks away.  For this one I’m mostly prepared, but it’s always nice to have something new to exhibit.  The most important one for me is to complete my single-sheet dodecahedron folded from a decagon.  I have it all worked out except that the lock doesn’t hold tight.  I’m thinking of folding it from a slightly larger sheet to have more paper left at the end for the lock.  I’m also thinking of making a “Star Man” a simple human figure folded from a pentagon.

Snow Days

Well first off, we got the biggest snowfall we’ve had in the last few years yesterday.  It snowed from Sunday morning to Monday morning, for a total of eighteen inches or so.  It was also very cold, so the snow was dry and powdery.  I went out Sunday evening with Jeannie to do the fist round of shoveling, and there was already over a foot.  I went out this morning with Michele to do round two, including re-clearing everything from the night before and cleaning off her car.  At lunchtime I went out a third time to finish off the apron of the driveway where the plow had passed, and to clean of my car and Jeannie’s.  We had ample warning the storm was coming, so Saturday I got out my snowblower to see if it still worked — happily it did; I haven’t used it in several years — and filled up my little portable gas can.  Now everything is cleared up and there’s no snow in the forecast but plenty of fresh snow on the ground.  I think I’m gonna play hooky and go skiing one day this week.

It’s been a very productive January so far.  On the Global Jukebox project, the style and UI redesign work is substantially completed.  This was a major piece of work that took me about six months to finish, and touched many areas of the code, user workflows, and practically all of the css.  Meanwhile Nick has made additions to the data architecture to let the app model taxonomy data for language families and peoples, as alternatives modes to the geographic taxonomy, and display them in the map and wheel.  Another big piece of work, and I just approved his PR and merged in his branch.  Still lots of stuff to do before the upcoming 4.0 release, but these are a couple important milestones.

The other thing going on these days is I’ve been practicing tons of guitar, learning Martin’s guitar solos for the song Frozen Ocean on the upcoming record Spellbound.  This is the first time I’ve really played lead guitar, and it’s a fun challenge.  The song actually has three guitar solos, a light atmospheric one in the beginning and ending, and a heavy one in the middle.  They all have some twisty phrasing, with bendy notes, hammer-ons and pull-offs, as well as long sustained notes.  So phrasing is very important, and so is tone.  At this point I’ve been woodshedding for a few weeks, and have laid down a number of takes, steadily improving.  I think I may actually be able to edit together an acceptable solo from what I have tracked, but I’m still trying to nail it consistently every take.  But there’s other stuff to do, it may be time to move on.

In the Dead of Winter

I spent alot of time over winter break working on the Spellbound songs, as befits the vibe.  I’ve been practicing the lead guitar parts for Frozen Ocean, and laying down a take every day even if I know it’s not a keeper.  There’s alot going on in Martin’s solos and I’m really trying to nail it all – shredding riffs, bendy notes, phrasing, tone, everything.  I’m starting to understand how much depth there can be to guitar playing.  But it’s all getting there.  I should have a take soon, and then it’s turning the corner to mixing the song. 

I also started in on the seventeen-minute prog epic that fills up most of side two.  I don’t recall what we originally called it but now I’ve named it The Sailor’s Saga.  It’s sort of an answer to the opening track in which the narrator is inspired to go out and experience the world.  In this song his fortunes turn tragic and his ship first becalmed in the heat and then beset by storms.  Eventually he perishes in a shipwreck, and there the voyage of his (perhaps ghostly) soul begins.  So far I’ve listened to it and figured out all the lyrics and chords and structure and parts, and created a sort of sort of midi framework consisting of a click track and piano part that outlines the chords, melody and groove. 

My recollection of this is Martin came up with the story line and most of the lyrics, and had the first section pretty much ready to go, but thought it was too short for a full song, so we kept adding to it.  We worked out the arrangement by jamming on it, and put in several extended solos and building moments.  Each section has a distinct mood, but they all relate together musically.

Our songwriting was ambitious but not super sophisticated, and we wrote and recorded this one pretty fast.  Each of the four main sections consists mostly of two to four chords repeated in a loop, with a few transitional passages connecting them up.  The first three are in the key of E minor.  The first part is upbeat and jaunty like a sea shanty.  The second part is very atmospheric and has some pretty cool chords with open jazzoid voicings.  I wonder if I came up with that part.  The third part is the longest, with a slow plodding tempo, a long labyrinthine chord progression, and six stanzas of lyrics which are repeated with harmonies after a long jam section.  The last part is an instrumental, three chords in a loop slowly building from nothing to the entire universe, with overlapping organ and guitar solos on top of it all.

Listening to it now, I’m thinking of ways I might enhance the arrangement, particularly to make some of the jam sections a bit more structured with textural and motivic ideas.  There’s certainly lots of possibilities to explore.

Drums in the Deep

We’re getting into the season of maximal darkness.  When Thanksgiving rolled around last week I was grateful to have a few days off to rest and get caught up on random tasks.  Lizzy and Josh came home for a visit, which was very nice.  As it was, I caught a cold on the Monday after Thanksgiving and am only starting to feel better today.

My day job has been busy with everyone trying to jam in as much as possible by the end of the year.  I’ve been updating the data sources for our AI app with the new data for the 2026 car model year.  Unfortunately, we don’t have a good workflow for this, so there’s synchronization issues, compounded by AI’s tendency to make stuff up and be just pain wrong. 

In the music realm, I’ve been working on a song called Frozen Ocean for the Spellbound project.  This was one written by Martin shortly after we did the original Spellbound EP, and I chose it for inclusion to bring the record up to full album length, as I did with my own Flock of Fools.  Frozen Ocean was probably the first really great song Martin wrote, great lyrics, melody, chords, and dynamics, with a haunting and evocative sounds.  The song opens with the guitar playing an arpeggiated pattern shifting among open and fretted strings, a little like Closer to the Heart.  Martin was such a good guitarist, even early on, that I didn’t realize how subtle and complicated the part was.  The basic pattern was clearly composed, but the variations, well he was probably just riffing off the top of his head. I wanted to do it justice and make it sparkle, so I spent a few weeks practicing and tracking the part and listening back and practicing some more.  I finally got it together and it sounds great. Next up is lead guitar part, sure to be another major challenge.

The other big music accomplishment over the break was with the drums.  Last Christmas I bought a microphone kit for the drums: mics, stands, clips and cables, with the mics being purpose-matched to the kick drum, snare, toms and overheads/cymbals.  I few months later I bought an 8-channel audio interface.  The whole project got delayed by the necessity of cleaning out and reorganizing my studio space, particularly my stockpiles of origami paper and supplies.  The end result of all that was I had a flat surface to set up my audio interface and plug in the mics, which I did earlier this fall.

Over the weekend I was able plug in the audio DAC box into my laptop and spend an evening setting up the software so it could accept input from the box.  Finally the magic moment when I hit record.  It worked great!  The sound was clear, the levels hot but not clipping, eight tracks of whacks, woo-hoo!  I spent a few minutes adjusting the mic placement and levels and pretty quickly got a balanced and good sounding kit.  It was actually quite revealing they way the different mics capture different POVS on the sound and all interact.  You really could do fine with just the overheads, kick and snare mics.  But I guess since I have the eight-channel version I might as well use it all (the others being for the toms and to close-mic the hi-hat).  I spent a little more time tuning my low drums, to give the floor tom a bit more tone and resonance, and the kick a little less.  My only remaining complaint is when you hit the kick drum in isolation it tends to make the snare rattle.  Don’t know what to do about this, but also it doesn’t matter when you’re playing the whole kit.

New Song: The Call of the Muse

Here’s a rough mix of the fifth song from the Spellbound project.  As mentioned previously, this is a two-part song that was a collaboration between Martin and myself.  This is reflected in the musical structure and instrumentation along with the lyric.  The first part is built on a rhythm guitar pattern providing the backbone, with a swoopy synth solo floating on top and a synth bass underpinning it all.  Martin’s original guitar track was a six-string electric with a flange effect.  I tried to emulate that, and also double-tracked it on twelve-string guitar.  When we wrote this song Martin only played six-string, but later on switched to twelve-string as his main sound.  I have one of his old twelve-string guitars and have been looking for opportunities to use it to make the music sound more like him. 

Martin originally sang the lead vocals on the first section, but on this recording I’m doing all the singing, so I added a bit of EQ to the vocal tracks, giving his parts a boost in the upper treble and mine a boost in the low treble to differentiate them a bit.  This is kind of funny because back then I used to be able to sing really high, and was the guy in my rock group to sing the Rush and Yes songs.

In the second section the instrumentation switches to a keyboard sound.  In the original I used my Roland Alpha Juno.  For this recording I have a stack of electric piano, clavinet and the Polysynth sound from the Juno blended together.  There’s also electric bass, which is an option not available to us in the original sessions.  This section has a really nice dynamic flow, coming down and building back up in the chorus. There’s a synth solo and an electric guitar solo.  I based my solo and guitar sound on Martin’s original, but back then it was just a couple Boss pedals, now it’s a whole universe of computerized effects to learn how to craft.  After the guitar solo I introduced a new section I call the big build, with guitars and synths and everybody going nuts in a coordinated fashion, climaxing in a dramatic pause.  There was a section in the original toward that I had considered cutting cuz it was kinda just there, but I filled it in with a bit more guitar and synth jamming and really brought it to a satisfying place. 

The outro is a long synth solo with a slow build, using the pattern of the first section.

I must say this came out much better than I expected when I first started tracking it.  At first I didn’t really think it was a super strong song, maybe kind of long and meandering, clocking in at over seven minutes.  But the new arrangement has lots of instrumental layers and dynamics, and of course the performance and recording are much better.  It really takes you on a journey!  Here is it is, enjoy!

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/spellbound25/TheCallOfTheMuse31.mp3

New Lyric: Spellbound (The Call of the Muse)

I bet you’ve been wondering how things are going with the recording project for Spellbound.  Well I’m glad you asked, since it’s been a while since I posted anything about it.  I spent the last few months working on a new song, called The Call of the Muse.  The first four songs were all pretty short, totaling just twelve minutes between the.  This one is seven and a half minutes long, so it took a little longer to record.  It also has lots of layers of guitars and synthesizers.

This song was truly a collaboration between Martin and myself.  It was a little bit ambitious, with two contrasting sections and a reprise of the first part as an outro jam.  My recollection of this one is pretty hazy, and in fact I’d totally forgotten all about it until I heard it again last year.  I think the initial impetus came from Martin.  He had a guitar riff and a fragment of a lyric, and was pushing me to write, and particularly to come up with lyrics.  The idea became to write a two part song, a sort of conversation, something like No Sugar Tonight / New Mother Nature by the Guess Who, or maybe Your Move / I Seen All Good People by Yes.  So Martin mainly wrote the first section, based on a rhythm guitar pattern, and I added a swoopy, sweeping synthesizer solo.  Martin sings lead and I sing harmony.  Then the groove shifts to a keyboard pattern and there’s a new melody and lyric, and I’m singing lead on this section with Martin doing harmony.

I feel like my parts were kind of a response to the initial themes and direction Martin established.  The imagery is bright and sunny and full of longing, the central metaphor being the call to adventure as a maiden made of sunshine. Back in those days I struggled with lyrics, just to make them fit the melody and rhyme, so there’s a fair amount of repetition and the images are all over the place (and it doesn’t always even actually rhyme).  Maybe Martin helped with the chorus in the second section too.  Ah well, you gotta start somewhere.  The lyrics still are better than alot of songs out there, and at least they’re earnest and heartfelt from a particular time and place.  Musically, the whole structure and chord progression and layers of sounds and instruments, and the whole dynamic journey is all pretty cool. And once I started working on it, the track has shaped up to far better than you’d expect, absolutely killer!

…

Spellbound (The Call of the Muse)

Part I: Look for the Girl

Look for for the girl with the sun in her hair
She dances in the morning light
Hear the song she’s singing everywhere
She’ll make everything be alright

Look for for the girl with the sun in her eye (and you’re gone)
Gone to the meadows in the sun (on the run)
Run with the sun to where the ocean lies (everyone)
Water flow for everyone
She takes you away out of the crowd
Sings you a song and shows you the sun

Look for the girl with the sun in her heart (heart of gold)
Golden glowing in the night (night is here)
Hear the song she’s singing everywhere (and you’re gone)
She’ll make everything be alright
Sings you a song and shows you the sun
She brings you along brings you on the run

Part II: Time I’m Leaving

I think it’s time I’m leaving now the world won’t wait forever
She takes me by the hand and says you know it’s now or never
I think it’s time I learned how to see and open up my eyes
She takes my hand and sets me free and opens up the skies

I am flying ‘cross the land
And she’s showing me the sun
As she takes me by the hand
And she’s singing me the song of light, mystifying sight
Angel in the night, glowing with delight
I see the world that is calling to me
She sets, sets my spirit free

I think it’s time I visit the world it’s a long long way to go
She says that if I never try I’m never gonna know
I think it’s time I’m leaving now it’s a long way to the sea
She sings the song and shows me the way and opens up the key

I am flying ‘cross the land
And she’s sailing in the sun
As she takes me by the hand
And she’s singing me the song of light, mystifying sight
Angel in the night, glowing with delight
I see the world that is calling to me
She sets, sets my spirit free

Part III: Outro Jam

(instrumental)

New Song:  Flock of Fools, Part I

Here’s a rough mix of the last song from the first batch of tunes for the upcoming Spellbound record.  This brings us up to twelve minutes of recorded music in six months, a blazing pace for me.  That’s less than a third of the total running time of the record, but more than half in terms of the number of songs.  Two of the remaining three songs are about another twelve minutes combined, and the last one is most of an album side.  This one did not appear on the original recording, but I added a couple of songs to bring up to the length of a full-length LP record.  I wrote it around the same time the Spellbound songs, and fits in thematically. 

Flock of Fools was a song idea I had for my prog rock band Infinigon, which was active from 1986 to 1988.  We mostly played covers of bands like Yes, King Crimson, Rush, ELP, Pink Floyd, Genesis and others.  We also had aspirations to write our own material, but little experience at it, so it was slow going and took up lots of rehearsal time.  Flock of Fools was long and complicated song with a lyric and all, but we never worked it up to be able to play it out.  I continued to work on it after the band split up, and at one point in the early 90’s must have made a midi demo, which is the basis of this track.  This is only part 1, a heavy drum and organ instrumental to serve as an extended intro to the main song.  I’ve subsequently taken pieces from some of the other sections and reworked them into other tunes including Angel or Alien, and King’s Hex.  I don’t think I’ve ever done the main section of the song, but may someday.

This is the shortest tune on the record, under two minutes.  I’m thinking of using it as an intro into another song now, possibly to the eighteen-minute epic that comprises most of side two.  It’s about the misfortunes of a sailor who goes off the sea the world and look for adventure, and is itself a continuation of the two-part suite that opens the record.  If I do this, I may rename the track Tempest Fugitive.

Like the other songs so far, this track uses patches from my venerable Roland Alpha-Juno, most notably the Rock Organ 42, layered in with sounds from my onboard SampleTank software synth.  There’s also a swoopy bloopy synth intro/outro that utilizes layered patches from the Roland as well as my rarely-usedMoog Phatty.  This was knob jam that cannot be created in midi. 

I added a lead guitar part that was not in original track in the spirit of “what would Martin do?” Inspired by his solo on Sandcastles, it turned to be fairly Frippy, with lots of compression and sustain for a heavy overdrive sound, mainly on long high notes.  It was good to be able to explore this kind of thing without having to cop a specific part.

I was hoping to one more mixdown after listening back, but unfortunately, my MBox, the heart and soul of my recording studio, bit the dust sometime last week.  (Maybe coincidentally, my garage door opener started glitching right around the same time.)  The lights light up and it communicates with the computer, but it doesn’t output any sound from my DAW.  Oh tragedy!  The thing is about fifteen years old, and connected to an equally old computer, running an equally old version of ProTools.  I’m hoping I can find a replacement MBox and be able to plug it in and it all just works, but if not the whole system may be kaput.  Too bad, I had it set up in a way that really works for me, with effects plugins and synthesizer sounds that I’ve gotten to know very well, and I think of as part of my sound, to say nothing of being able to pull up twenty years worth of recorded songs if I want to remix them or anything like that.  Ah well, all things must pass.

Indeed, I’ve been planning a replacement and major upgrade to my studio for some time now. I have modern-era computer that has Logic Pro and Reaper installed on it, and I have a new 8-channel audio interface I bought in the wintertime, along with a set of mics and stands to mic up my drum kit.  Only problem is I haven’t had the time to get it all wired up and configured. 

Last summer I was planning on producing an album of Martin’s songs, and I was going to use Reaper, since that’s his DAW software package of choice.  And he was gonna help me get to know his favorite effects and sounds and all that as part of the process.  Obviously that did not come to pass.  When I finally regrouped and decided the next record would be the Spellbound project, I decided to use my old rig one last time, at least to start with, just to get making music as fast as possible.  The plan to record live drums requires using the new rig, so that will get me a pathway there.  I’d figured I could compare the two ways of working and find comparable sounds in the new system.

The other thing holding me back was after last July’s origami convention, my studio, which a combination origami and music studio with a finite amount of space, was just plain full up.  There was no place to put away new paper or any more folded models.  There were no clear work surfaces.  It was upstairs all over the dining room too.  Around Thanksgiving I had to clear the dining room table, and the situation became clearly unsustainable. Around Xmastime I started reorganizing my studio, throwing things out to make more space, and all that.  It was a much bigger job than I anticipated, and I’m still not done yet.  Mostly there though.  And we have a long weekend coming up.  Soon, soon.

Anyway, after all that rambling, here is the track Flock of Fools, Part I.  Enjoy!

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/spellbound25/FlockOFools16a.mp3

New Song – The Silent Hour

Here is a rough mix of the third song for my forthcoming album Spellbound.  Unlike the others so far, this one was mainly written by Martin, and the original version of this song was just him singing and accompanying himself on a single electric guitar with no other instruments.  I didn’t sing or play anything, but I still get a songwriting co-credit because that’s what we agreed on for all the songs in the project.  So for this version, my main task was to learn the song and guitar part.  It’s not a particularly hard song, in fact it was probably the first song Martin ever wrote and the chords are very basic.  But there’s alot of nuance that I wanted to be sure to capture.

The vocal was pretty straightforward.  Martin and I have a similar vocal range and sense of phrasing, and this song was neither very high nor very low in my range.  The guitar on the other hand, well let’s just say I’m learning alot about how to record electric guitars.  Martin’s original take was just a six-string Ibanez thru whatever amp he had at the time.   I don’t believe there were any effects on it other than the tone of the amp.  So my first pass was using my PRS six string and my Roland Jazz Chorus amp, and it produced a warm and satisfying sound, definitely in the zone.  Being such a sparse arrangement I wanted the gutiar sound to really shine. But it was a little muddy and the low end was uneven, so I got in there with some EQ and compression, and even added an amp modeler as a sidechain effect.  Oh the joys of digital production and the endless tweaking it affords.

I added a second guitar track to give it some more depth.  (I often double track my keyboard parts.)  This one was a 12-string.  Martin switched mainly to twelve string sometime in the nineties, and the guitar I used was one that used to be one of his.  This time, however, I went direct inject and mixed it into the same sidechain amp effect.  All in all it sounds pretty good but I’ll probably continue to tweak it.  I might even try again using the 12-string as the main guitar.

But for the time being, here’s the song.  Enjoy!

https://zingman.com/music/mp3/spellbound25/TheSlientHour08c.mp3