And The Hits Just Keep Coming!

Yup, it's another one of them thar progress reports on the new CD as it's taking shape.

After a few false starts, I FINALLY wrapped up "A Brew for Elliot Spitzer and The Minutemen" and mixed it down for later mastering. During the "percussion ensemble" secton, I was almost happy with it (just having added some eeire distant guitar punctuations) but someting was still missing. After nearly an hour of running through keyboard patches (mainly organ ones), the answer finally revealed itself. A particularly overdriven organ patch found its niche (with a LOT of reverb to give it distance and an ethereal almost pastel effect. After two takes, it was a done deal. I also have to note that I've been EXCEEDINGLY happy with the lead guitar tones I've been able to get, simply by close mic-ing my Traynor YCV-40 amp with a Shure SM-57, gives it just the right amount of throatiness. The resulting tone comes out so much more present, throaty and punchy as opposed to using a digital amp modeler which, while gettting close, still sounds over-compressed and processed to my ears.

And a brand new piece, "WARDROBE!!!!!!" practically wrote itself in less than an hour, starting with an irresitible percussion groove and some VERY low bass (punctuated with snaps and slides), next add Mellotron flutes with a snaky melodic outline and some Dick Dale-like geeetarr with HEAVY reverb and VOILA! 'Twas a done deal. Mixdown was relatively painless too.

At this point, seven pieces done, three more to go!