Making plans for Painted Smiles remake

I wrote in February that I planned for my next recording project to be a remake of Painted Smiles, a song I wrote and originally recorded several years ago (see Goal for 2006).

The time has come to start moving this project forward. My target is to have this project completed by end of August. The first milestone to reach is creating a project budget. I have noticed from past experience (e.g. The Great Escape) that it costs me about $500 in studio fees to complete a recording project. This time around I am aiming for a budget that's twice that amount. I want to give myself lots of extra room because I plan to find and bring in a professional singer to perform the vocal track.

The outcome I want out of this endeavor is:

• I reintroduce vocals to my music in a way that their quality is significantly improved compared to past projects.
• I find creative ways to market my songs, e.g. find a film producer who will use one of my songs for a soundtrack.
• My enthusiasm for pursuing my dream positively influences people around me to live theirs.

Heart Like a River - quick and dirty demo

I've uploaded an MP3 version of the Heart Like a River arrangement. It's a quick and dirty demo I created by importing a MIDI file into a tool called Reason.

There is some kind of interaction happening in the fills layer that sounds a bit like a cymbal swell. It's really subtle. I hear it in a couple of areas, and I like it. Maybe next time I'll do something to bring out the effect.

Click on the play button below to hear this demo.


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Heart Like a River arrangement

The other night I was going through some of the files on my LifeDrive. One of them was a voice memo of a melody I captured last month (see Soul of a Poet). After hearing it again, the melody stuck in my head and has been running through my mind for several days.

I had a chance on the weekend to write an arrangement based on this melody, using a MIDI sequencing tool. I think it's a nice arrangement, but it doesn't synch up with the words that inspired it in the first place. In fact, I don't think the words as written will fit into a 4/4 time signature at all. I'd have to transform the original words into lyrics, or just use my arrangement for a different song entirely.

I'll look into a way to post an MP3 version of the arrangement this week.

Links:

• If my heart was a river - the post that inspired the music.

Projects reviewed

There are a few projects that I want to complete, yet I don't seem to be moving forward too quickly. Getting my will done, getting the pre-nup finalized, getting registered an accessory dwelling unit, making a remake of Painted Smiles, to name the big ones. So how am I doing with them?

Getting my will done - this one has been on my plate for over a year. I did meet with a lawyer last year, and he suggested that we do our pre-nup first, as that will lay the a lot of the groundwork for doing my will. So I've put this one on hold until the pre-nup is done.

The pre-nup - the same lawyer wrote up a draft co-hab agreement. It looked fine to me at the time, but there was this nagging thought, that I should have it reviewed by my own lawyer (the one I used to draft the agreement was J's lawyer). I found another lawyer through an independent referral; they reviewed the agreement and gave recommendations that could make this whole agreement 1000 times more complicated than it was to start with. Then I sat on those recommendations and did nothing about for a couple of months.

Accessory dwelling unit registration - I did actually get the first step done, which was to send in the application form and registration fee. The next two milestones are to get a letter from an architect or engineer indicating Building Code compliance, and a letter from the Electrical Safety Authority indicating compliance with safety regulations.

Painted Smiles remake - I made a commitment in front of the men's team I'm on to do this in the next three months.

Now, I've been reading in some discussion forums about a book called Getting Things Done, by David Allen. The book is subtitled The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Many of the postings I've read in the forums refer to the process of defining the next action, which is the next action that you can physically take on it. So with that in mind, I would be well served to come up with some well defined next actions for each of my projects.