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!
Worked on this piece and created a rain rhythm background. Added a muted guitar and a reggae rhythm that accent the 6/8 against 4/4 feeling. It’s a rhythm I keep coming back to because I just love the forward motion of it. I have been playing with a few different melodies but haven’t commited to anything yet. Recorded with the HeartDrive Mobile Studio. :-)
This was intended to be a proof of concept only. After I finished setting up my laptop for recording, I set up the microphone I use on stage, connected it via the MixPre6-II, and recorded my guitar playing the bossa nova pattern you hear on that song. Since I live on a fairly noisy street I figured the noise would be too audible for a real recording. But the microphone did what it does so well on stage… concentrate on the guitar in front of it and reject all other sound. Even when I listen to the guitar without the rain, I don’t hear nose. Then I improvised a melody over the bossa rhythm. The music has a quality I love. It’s a sketch and love sketches. I never make demos, because in my experience the first go at an idea has something special that simply cannot be duplicated when one tries to replace the demo with a better recording.
Bare Wood 2 has been on Bandcamp since last November and as of today it is also available from all of the usual streaming services. I am really happy with the cover of the album. Starting with Fete I designed every cover on an iPad and really enjoyed the process. Bare Wood 2 is the last album that will be distributed or manufactured in any form. The next album, which doesn’t have a title yet and which I believe will be ready sometime next year, will only be available through this website and as an individually made and signed CD. It may be a Don Quixote-like move I am making – windmills, wave of progress etc. – but I feel good about it and will be okay with however the chips will fall.
The top image shows a CD that contains the music of the album Fete. I made it to see whether my software was up to date and whether the CD Burner worked with the new cable I got today. The second image shows the first and only existing CD of Bare Wood 2, complete with an error: I wrote Bare Woo2 and then changed the 2 to a D. I am listening to the CD now. “Uma Dança” just ended and I really enjoyed the last section of that song. I haven’t needed to actually burn a CD in a number of years. Files are uploaded and somebody in a factory somewhere manufactures a few thousand of them. It’s as soulless as any modern mass manufacturing. It was nice actually making this. Perhaps I should find some blank paper labels I can stick on the top of the CD…
Today I uploaded the fourth single from the album Bare Wood 2 to my digital distributor. It will be available on 2 September. Why am I releasing these singles, you might ask. It seems to me that, in this time of short attention spans, a single receives about the same attention as an album and this way I can stretch that attention out of over several months. People who follow a “new release playlist” will see multiple notices of a new single rather than just one notice of an album. And the second and frankly more important reason is that I enjoy making the cover art. :-)
I am not sure why, after playing with different ideas for several weeks, I chose this image. Among the different designs I was working on this was the one that grabbed my attention every time. It’s the color, of course, but it’s also the mysterious combination of a photo of the head of a conga with the drummer’s hand resting on it and a photo taken in a restaurant in Chinatown, San Francisco, probably the Great Eastern Restaurant on Jackson street–a long time favorite. In my mind the two images combine to create the performance of a Cuban band inside a Chinese restaurant. Big Trouble in Little China meets Bona Vista Social Club? Food and music… nothing better than that.
What do you think of when you look at this cover?
