We pulled the album Fete from its digital distributor at the beginning of this year, if you were wondering what happened to it. All other HuHeartDrive albums are distributed by UnitedMasters and I wanted Fete to be grouped with them, rather than with the preceding SSRI albums. Fete remains on of my favorite albums and puts a smile on my face every time I give if a listen. The re-release will occur on 21 April.
I had this idea to play a melody to a rain recording, as if I was sitting in a room with the windows open, listening to rain hitting different surfaces on the porch. Just a guitar player creating a little rain melody, not composing a song.
I don’t know whether this is something anyone else would enjoy, but I quite love the unadorned quality of this. It’s not composed, the way I am considering and selecting these words, it’s simply a conversation with the rain, an improvisation born of a moment, in an, albeit imagined, environment.
I picked a rain recording I hadn’t yet listened to and set up the microphone. As before, I used the Earthworks SR40, plugged into the MixPre-6, which was connected to my laptop via USB-C. I am really pleased with the sound of the guitar. The mic was pointed at the end of the fretboard diagonally and from a little less than a foot a way.
Yesterday I mastered the first piece for the next album. I am happy with the sound and love how it came together, an accidental, no, unintentional blossom that grew into something lovely. Jon added upright bass last week. I took a first stab at a cover design. The title is just my working title and will become something else.
I was enjoying the Go-Link DAC, which I wrote about yesterday, and decided to put an upbeat playlist of my own music together.
Rainy day. Took some photos, thinking about the album. Made a little video. Nice way to end the year.
Today I worked on another piece of music for the next recording, the album with the working title Rain Music. The new piece is a solo guitar recording, over a bed of rain of course. I don’t have a title yet but it sounds like I am sitting in a hut, surrounded by trees, with rain all around, and water dripping from the branches and the roof.
Afterwards I took a walk. I have the best ideas while I’m walking and I like what I came up with this afternoon:
Since I no longer have to think in terms of songs and tracks and distribution and radio, because I decided not to distribute my stuff henceforth, I shall do an alternate version of the album that is just one long file/arrangement that contains all of the songs. The sequence will be arranged so that it starts with the most upbeat song and mellows out from there. There will be no pauses between songs, just rain fading into rain. Depending on the quality of the file it could end up being fairly large, but I don’t think that will be a problem. The file will be no bigger than an entire album would be. I can’t wait to experience this, myself!
