Be Magnified

Lately I've been feeling a lot of discouragement with regard to my career and my business. Then on Thursday night, at worship team rehearsal, one of the songs we did was Be Magnified. The words spoke to me and I felt inspiration.

I felt prompted to record the service this morning, and this song is from that service.

One King video

I was at the Essential Skills Training event last week. My official role was Event Manager but I was also pressed into service as a trainer and as a videographer.

I had purchased new tapes to record the footage for the event but I forgot to check what was in the camcorder before I started recording. As a result I ended up taping over some of the footage that I shot at the Christmas Eve service. Fortunately I still had the footage of the song that we had learned, One King. After I watched that footage I felt motivated to produce a video out of it.

I shot that footage under low lighting conditions so I used the Night setting on the camcorder. The result is that the lighting and color looked low and dull. Furthermore, I had shot the entire sequence from a fixed location on a tripod with a fixed focal length. This means that there is little to no movement in the footage; it probably would make a dull video to watch as it was.

This called for experimentation with color correction and with some creative effects. I don't know if I've overdone the effects and made this look too cheesy but it looks much better than the raw footage.

Watch the video below.

Practice practice practice

I went to see Avalon at the Queensway Cathedral tonight.

The opening performance was by Jay Calder, a very talented guitarist. He played a very unique style, one in which he provided all of his own accompaniment - all with just one acoustic guitar.

Steve O was there too. During the break he said to me, "I'll have to step down from the worship team now that I've seen him play guitar."

To which I replied, "Forget that, you should just practice more."

Won bid for laptop

I found a laptop. A Dell Latitude D620. Found one in Alberta on eBay. There were zero bids on it (I counted twice to be sure) and the starting bid was US$300. Why the price was quoted in US$ when the seller is in Alberta I don't know.

I picked the Dell Latitude D620 because it's a model I've used before. I'm familiar with it and I'm comfortable with it and I like it.

Despite there being zero bids initially, I did get into a bidding skirmish. It was a minor scrap and I came out the winner. Yeah for me. I'm expecting to receive it within the next two weeks. Once I get it, I'm back in action for my recording project.

Cover concept for Let It Rain

This image depicts my concept for the CD compilation I am producing with my church worship team.



The recording project went into a bit of a stall in the summer; gas prices got so high and the musicians were reluctant to travel to the studio, which for some members of the team is quite a drive.

The solution - when musicians won't come to the studio it is time to bring the studio to the musicians. How? A Profire 2626 audio interface, a Firewire interface, a laptop, and some digital audio software should do the trick. In theory.

I've got the Profire interface, I rented one from Long & McQuade. I've got the Firewire interface - I bought one at Best Buy. What I don't have is the laptop. I'm looking for one on craigslist. Once I get one, I'm back in action again.

First mix of Thank You

I have four songs in the process of being recorded now. Make that five, if I count the Holy Spirit Rain Down/Let It Rain medley as two separate songs. At tonight's session I went back to the first song of the bunch, Thank You. The last time I worked on this song was when we added the vocals and guitar solo (see Recording vocals).

There are still some guitar parts I've thought of adding, but I've got a lot of tracks down already so I decided to do a "premix" using what was already there. I've come back to this song after letting it rest since July and I have to say that I really like how it sounds. I am proud of the work that the musicians have put into it. A few times I've heard them tell me Remember we're not professionals, and I just have to ask them to stop saying that. They are all experienced, skilled and talented people.

We made three different versions of the mix tonight. The differences between the three are minor though, and lie in how we handled the lead guitar on the ending. In the first version we kept it the way David originally performed it. In the second version we edited his performance so it sounds like he sustained the final note rather than repeatedly picking it. In the third version we edited his original performance so that it sounded like he repeatedly picked the final note longer than he actually did.

I considered making a couple of alternate mixes, one with more emphasis on the piano performance and one with more emphasis on the rhythm guitar - there are so many different things that I can do with this song that if I try out all my ideas I will never finish this project.

Started Let It Rain medley

I had a recording session tonight. I wasn't sure what I was going to record because some of the musicians I wanted to work with where not available (see Opening the floodgates).

A few weeks ago I had a session and started a new project - the remake of Magician's Plea that I'd been thinking of starting for some time now.

So it all came down to Steve O. If he was available tonight and confident enough to track on Let It Rain then I would focus on that, otherwise I would continue building Magician's Plea.

It turned out that Steve O was available and willing to come to the studio. I had envisioned him playing acoustic guitar but he said he was rusty on the acoustic and preferred to play bass tonight.

So it all came together. Three of us at the studio - the two Steves and myself.

I brought a lo-fi recording of the arrangement we played yesterday at church, a medley of Holy Spirit Rain Down and Let It Rain. We used that to chart the arrangement, which we tweaked a tiny little bit.

Steve O played bass and Steve S contributed acoustic guitar. So I now have four songs in progress, four songs being recorded. I've got a lot of balls up in the air now, which is fine with me. It suits my INTJ personality. Plus I have lots of options and flexibility for moving forward even when musicians are not available for a session.

...and the show's about to begin!

I've been trying to set up a recording session to start Let It Rain but have not yet coordinated everyone's schedule. I had a window available at the studio for tomorrow night but key members of the team were not available then.

So I decided to book the session anyway and start that project that I meant to start in 2007 but hadn't got around to it yet - a remake of Magician's Plea. (See Come, let me show you my tricks)

My original version of Magician's Plea is some eight minutes long and has some long instrumental passages. My thoughts for the remake are to shorten some of the long instrumentals to the more standard 8 bar instrumental. However, I think some of those instrumental passages that I wrote are interesting so I'm not throwing them away completely. Instead I'll spawn them off into a few side projects - stand alone instrumental-only songs, along the lines of the instrumental version I made of The Great Escape in 2006. (See Should I change the name?) So the result I am envisioning is a collection that I think of as Magician's Suite, featuring a redux of the original song plus a couple of new instrumentals.

Opening the floodgates

After taking a bit of a summer break from my recording project (see Recording vocals), I am starting to move the ball forward again.

I met with Steve O tonight in an offline rehearsal to work out an arrangement for Let It Rain. This song is both simple and complex. It is simple in that it uses only about four chords, has a simple melody, and has only four lines of lyrics and three of those four are the same line repeated. It is complex in that it has potential for rich harmonies and textures and dynamics.

Because the song is so repetitive I wasn't sure how to structure the arrangement. How many times to repeat the verse? Where should it build and where should it come down? How many times should the verse repeat before the instrumental break, and for how many cycles should the instrumental repeat?

Steve O found a chord chart on the CCLI website. I learned that the chord progression is not as repetitive as I thought - there are some minor variations from verse to verse.

So now I'm clear how I want to approach this in the studio. To put down bed tracks, I'd like to invite Steve O to play acoustic guitar, David (who played guitar on Thank You and How Can I Keep From Singing...) to play bass, and Cindy to play keyboard, and I will do guide vocals. Once the bed tracks are done, I will have a second session to add layers and textures and to build the dynamics.

In the meantime I ponder... could all the thunderstorms we've been having this summer have anything to do with all the times that I've been singing this song? Let it rain, let it rain, open the floodgates of heaven, let it rain.

Recording vocals

Tonight was the third session in this series.

One thing I learned after the first two sessions, when it comes to coordinating studio schedules where several musicians are involved, is to pick a focal person and coordinate everything around that person's schedule. The first session, the focal person was Cindy on keyboards. The second session, the focal person was Aaron on drums.

The focal people I wanted to bring to the third session were not available due to summer travel. However, David (guitar) suggested that he and his wife Diane (vocals) come in and do their parts in the same session so that they would only have to make one trip to the studio. Now logically I would not plan to do vocals and guitar solo in the same session, but the circumstances directed that this was my best option since I wanted to move forward and not wait until August. So David and Diane became my foci. Steve O and Vern were both available tonight as well, so I had four vocalists (including myself) plus one guitarist.

This was a challenge for me because it was the first time I'd done a session with multiple vocalists - in past projects I've always worked with one vocalist at a time.

It was particularly challenging syncing up the vocals on Thank You. There are many syllables and most lines are sung in unison, so it is very important to get the syncing bang on. We did a couple of run throughs and found we were most off on the verses; the chorus and tag were fine. A couple of run throughs of verse 1 and it just wasn't coming together. So we did it line by line and finally got it together the best we could. David then added his guitar solo to the instrumental and added some picking to the tag, and that was the evening.

There are still some guitar and vocal dubs I'd like to add, but those will wait; I'd like to move on and start recording some of the other songs.

Tale of Two Steves

Had a drum session at the studio on Friday night. Once again the session went well. It took an hour to set up the drum kit and mic it. Then we spent one hour on Thank You and one hour on How Can I Keep From Singing Your Praise. Aaron played the drums. He's probably the youngest member of the worship team, at 17. I had invited Preston to come in again to play bass and give Aaron someone to play off but Preston was unavailable. Steve O. came - I had thought to have him play acoustic rhythm guitar but we ended up having him play bass to accompany Aaron's drumming. So we now have two sets of bass tracks. Will we use Steve O's bass track or Preston's from last session? Steve Sherman recommends using Steve O's track because it was performed in sync with the drums.

What we did was a bit unusual, bringing in the drummer after we already had the bed tracks. Steve Sherman was concerned, given that we hadn't played to a click track, but it seems to have worked out and I think it was the right way to do it. Will I do it the same way when we do Let It Rain? I don't know yet, but it is the way I would prefer to do it. I prefer to treat the drums as an instrument rather than to require the drummer to be the timekeeper for the band - we can use a click track for that purpose.

How Can I Keep is finished from an instrumental point of view; it doesn't need anything else and is ready for vocals.

Aaron and Steve O. both said they had fun. Aaron got to make a lot more noise than he usually gets to at our Thursday night rehearsals! Steve said he hoped to be back to the studio do more work. Amen.

Let the sessions begin

The sessions have begun! Cindy, Preston, Dave, all traveled to the studio to put down some bed tracks. It was the Friday of a long weekend and I wasn't sure if they'd run into traffic on their way across town, but they showed up right at seven.

We played two songs, Thank You and How Can I Keep From Singing Your Praise. Cindy played the keyboard, Dave on rhythm guitar, Preston on bass. I sang guide vocals in the isolation booth and Cindy contributed secondary vocals.

We put down two takes for Thank You. Cindy suggested playing the instrumental break based on the tag but I hear it as being based on the chorus so that's how we did it in those two takes. I wanted to do a third take with the instrumental based on the tag as per Cindy's idea, to see where it could go, but we didn't have time for that. The chord structure for the tag is similar to the chords in the chorus so the end result may not have been that different from what we did anyway.

We also recorded three takes of How Can I Keep From Singing Your Praise. The third take felt the best. I really felt on, especially the last time through the chorus, and built it up through each repetition of the final take.

I listened to the session mix while driving home and got really excited about it. I was singing harmonies in my car and waving my arms around, playing air drums. I think the next step will be to focus on the percussion and rhythm on Thank You, especially on the tag. I'll want to bring in a drummer and I think a bass player too, so that drums and bass can play off each other.

Click on the play button below to hear an excerpt from the session.


powered by ODEO

Rolling the music ball

After my failed attempt to start the Come Now Is The Time To Worship remix (see Now is the time) I'm picking up this recording project again, with a different approach.

The archives still have not appeared so I've picked two other songs to start recording first. One is Thank You - no, it's not the Led Zeppelin song. It's a song the worship team learned last year. It's one of those songs that I get goosebumps when we perform it at a service. The other song I've picked is How Can I Keep From Singing Your Praise. The worship team learned it last year for Vern and Angie's 20th wedding anniversary (see Twenty Years).We practiced it a lot for the anniversary last year and if I do say so myself, we really did a good job of it.

I've got a session booked at the studio for next Friday. I've booked it around Cindy's schedule. Cindy is the worship team leader and keyboard player. The guys on the team describe her as the glue that binds together all the instrumentalists. Dave, one of the guitar players, won't feel confident to put down his tracks without having Cindy's cues to follow, so I've got them both booked to come to the studio with me to start putting down the bed tracks.

I am really excited about starting this project.

Now is the time

Several years ago I did a recording project - the only project I've done so far that I've brought my bandura into the studio. I recorded a cover of the worship song Come Now Is The Time To Worship. I performed all the bandura tracks and Jan sang the lead vocals. I was sick during the vocal sessions and my voice was about an octave lower than my usual range, so I put down a backing vocal track singing bass.

I've been wanting to revisit that project to remix it. That's one of my projects for 2008. I booked a session for last week thinking I'd kick off this project. Unfortunately Steve could not find an archive copy of the original project. I'm still in moving transition and most of my stuff is in a storage locker, so I have not had a chance to search my own archives. So this project will have to hold a bit longer.

On the plus side, this weekend is the date I'll be moving. Hooray. I'll finally get to start settling in, get my stuff unpacked, start to feel like I've got a home again, sleep in my bed again.

Twenty Years

8:03am Big day at church today. It's Vern and Angie's 20th wedding anniversary. It's also about 20 years since this church was started. Vern and Ange have been there since the beginning.

It's Mile time. My body is not to eager to be moving right now. It'll change its mind when I get outside.

9:22am Back from my Mile. It was - I struggled with it this morning. Felt like I was pushing it, even on the first two laps. The third lap - didn't make it all the way jogging. Did the first quarter, felt like I was just pushing too hard, so I walked the rest of the third lap. When I got home I did some Tai Chi moves in the backyard - what I remembered of the moves I learned in 21CL.

10:37am Breakfast time conversation with J, is a trip down memory lane for both of us. For J, visiting St. Joseph's yesterday was a trip back to her old neighborhood. She used to live their when she first came to Canada.

"I lived there too when I first came to Canada" I tell her.

"What do you mean when you first came to Canada, you were born here".

"Exactly," I reply. I was born in St. Joseph's hospital. I remember my parents saying they've lived on Pearson and on Westminster, though I don't remember those houses.

11:00am I'm going to have to learn the discipline of stretching when I exercise. My leg are feeling cramped up.

1:05pm This handsome bum is going to a wedding! I heard there is going to be dancing so I is wearing my dancing shoes. Better have a polka waiting for me!

2:28pm Traffic was starting to back up on the 401 just before I turned off at Guelph Line. Some people who arrived after I did said traffic was backed up even further now.

Steve, the sound guy was all frazzled. "I wish you'd gotten here two hours ago," he says when I arrive. I would have if he'd called me. Of course, I wouldn't have looked as beautiful if I had, but I'd have made the sacrifice.

The rest of the worship team has arrived. Dave is plugged in and is warming up by practicing his Rush repertoire. Distortion guitar, loud amplifier, outdoors, sounds great. Aaron jams with him on the drums. What a joyful noise!

Technology, music, physical challenges

The RA I have in my hands is making it difficult for me to learn to play keyboard or guitar or bass well. That's been getting me to thinking - there must be people out there in the world that have a passion for making music but are limited by severe physical challenges. So why not use technology, bring together all the necessary components (they already exist!) and put it all together in a way that a person who has physical challenges can overcome their limitations and be able to play a musical instrument? The way that hand and mouth artists are able to paint despite no limbs.

I know that hardware can be expensive so maybe there is some venture capitalist or philanthropist out there who would find it worth their while to finance such an undertaking.

I feel inspired by the story of Diane Dupuy, the founder of Famous People Players. She created a venue for people with mental and physical disabilities to express themselves in a theatrical context. She had a powerful vision.

So how about a similar vision, a vision of a world in which people with physical ability is not a handicap to being able to express oneself musically.

Thoughts on combining signal delay with pitch bend

So I'm familiar with the technique of using a Delay effect in audio production; this allows a signal to be played back after a slight delay from the original signal. This technique can be used, for example, to play quarter notes and have them sound like eighth notes.

What I'm thinking about is the possibility of running the delayed signal through something that will change its pitch. Reason does not have a pitch-bend device that I know of, but some devices do have a function that can change the pitch. The Subtractor is one that comes to mind. If I lowered the pitch by 4 or 5 semitones, then the delayed notes would actually be played back as a different note in the same chord as the original note. I would expect that this could produce an interesting arpeggiation effect.

Come, let me show you my tricks

I've decided that my recording project for 2007 will be a remake of a song I wrote called Magician's Plea. I originally recorded this song on my Cleverly Crafted CD; it was my first rock epic.

The words for Magician's Plea were inspired during a trip I took once with my parents to Disney World. This was back around 1987 or 1988 when I was still in school. I had a brutal exam schedule that term, five exams in the first four days of the exam period. They were all in the first four consecutive days of the exam schedule. It meant that I didn't have a lot of time over which to spread out my studying; I had to manage myself and pace my timing carefully. Fortunately, since all my exams had been crowded into that first week, it meant that after I wrote exam number five I had the entire rest of the summer off.

I used a couple of weeks of that summer to go to Florida with my parents, and one day we drove to Orlando, to see Disney World. I just wanted to be like a kid there and be wowed by everything. My dad was being cynical and pointing out how this part was done with mirrors and that part was a trick, and I was thinking like, yes, I know this is all illusion, but don't spoil it, let me enjoy the illusion. In thinking so, I got the idea that there was a song idea in this.

I decided to write the words from the magician's point of view and to write it in the first person. I was influenced by the song by Gowan, Criminal Mind. There's something about those lines being performed in the first person that make it so much more dramatic for me than if they'd been written in the third person.

I also used another writing device in constructing the lyrics to Magician's Plea, which is to describe a thing without using any words that are commonly used to describe that thing. So my aim in writing the words was to depict a scene that you know absolutely is about a magician, but I was careful not to use the word magic, or abracadabra, or hocus pocus, or even wand.

I picked Magician's Plea as my recording project because it clearly fits into the progressive rock genre. Last year I second guessed myself about what genre to submit Painted Smiles and Heart Like a River. The learning there for me was that I should know my genre better.

Painted Smiles reviews - Part 3

The best ranking that Painted Smiles attained on GarageBand.com was 242 of 394 in the Indie Rock genre, which is closer to the bottom of the list than to the top. I can't help but wonder how it would have done if I had submitted it to the Progressive Rock genre instead of Indie Rock. I'm tempted to re-submit, as a learning exercise, but I want to understand what is GarageBand.com's policy about submitting the same song twice to two different genres.

From Tacoma, Washington -

Very nice lead mix. Thick Santana guitar. The vocals and backing are sung well, but the mood does not match the beautiful guitar riffs very well. Santana with a Green Jello twist. Very original. Good work.

From Richmond, Virginia -

not too sure how to take this song. it has me thinking tenacious d.
is it serious or not?...I wish I knew.

From Pensacola, Florida -

I'm not sure about that guitar in the first part. But the melody is really nice. And the vocals are cool and really dig the lyrics. Sounds a bit like the 80's or 70's but it's all nice on ice!

From Nashville, Tennessee -

At least it's different. Creativity goes a long way. Not my particular taste, though. I can respect what you're doing, but I wouldn't buy the album. And the guitar solos are a little over the top. Trying too hard to sound dramatic.

From Mount Pleasant, Michigan -

So until the vocals came in this one really gave me a Eagles vibe. I'm not sure how i feel about the talk sing vocals here. They're pretty comanding of attention, but the cliche lyrics make them seem out of place. This one really leaves me wishing i could listen to hotel california instead.

From Bedroom, United Kingdom -

Intro sounded very 80's rock-style. When the voice came in too, it was very much an 80's rock ballad kinda sound. Which is not necessarily a bad thing...

Hmm. Not really that keen on this. Sorry. Sounds dated and the lyrics are trite, not much of a melody. Doesn't seem to go anywhere.

Bland, average sounding rock ballad stuff.

Some nice sounding Queen-esque guitaring.

Funny last line too which leads me to think it's slightly tongue-in-cheek. Still a bit boring though.

From Bournemouth, United Kingdom -

I found the guitar sound and style a bit dated and mixed too up front.

The vocalist has an interesting deep quality to his voice an the lyrics are quite interesting

The line 'Iwon't believe it' is repeated too many times in the middle of the song

Painted Smiles reviews - Part 2

The version of Painted Smiles that I recorded last year is the first song I have submitted to GarageBand.com on which I had someone else do the vocals. So I don't take the feedback about vocals personally here. I do notice though that there are at least two reviews that say the vocals are loud in the mix - I have had the same comments for Heart Like a River, so that is something I will want to pay attention to on my next recording project.

Cheese... what is that about? I had a few comments about cheese on Heart Like a River as well. Is that a musical term? There is an article on Wikipedia titled Cheese (cheesy music), which is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedia's deletion policy. One of its editors notes that the phrase "Cheese" is pretty well used in the UK. Sure enough, the reviewer who gave me that comment is from UK.

There is one particular review here, I just can't resist doing a little bit of psychoanalysis. He (or she) gives his location as Unspecified, and says my opinion here is not so important. Come on, you're writing reviews of other people's music, your review is your opinion, and I at least hope it's your honest opinion. But know this - I put my music out on GarageBand.com in order to get it reviewed, so your opinion is no more and no less important than anyone else's.

That's enough ado. Here are the reviews.

From Maryland -

Interesting mood and lyrics. Kind of a bland message. Vocals are way too up in the front. Should be mixed better with the music. Overall, a decent production. Sounds vampirish.

From Canada -

I like the musical ideas going on. the riff at the begining sets the tone. The lyrics might be a bit hoaky.

i like the solemn tone from the male lead singer. I think production did a good job here. i think it would be nice to hear some more work on the melody. I am reminded somewhat of pink floyd in a way.

From Eugene, Oregon -

Cool guitars, the synths are a bit 80's, but in a good way. The vocals are a bit loud in the mix.

From Leeds, Yorkshire, United Kingdom -

i really enjoyed the intro but when the vocals came in a couldn't believe the cheese....it is good for this type of song

From Brooklyn, New York -

I don't really know what you were going for with this song. I don't know what direction the rest of your songs could go in. It's recorded well, but the lyrics don't seem to mesh well with the music.

From Unspecified -

No... I don´t like it... sorry. But my opinion here is not so important. I don´t like this kind of mood. Guitar solos irritates me, you know... Well, the recording is very nice, which gives you points. That´s it.

From Australia -

intro sounds like Iron Maiden.. nicely produced song.. very different vocal in verse, contrasts with the music in an odd way. This song sounds really original... which is great. Perhaps needs a few listens for me to really to get into it but it is well written overall and its original sounding which i admire lots.