This past week has been extremely significant to the progression of the new rock album. Here is a list of some of the things that have happened over the last seven days.(1) I added a bridge and a different ending to track #11, the worship song. This included writing additional lyrics, re-working the MIDI demo and recording new lead and background vocals. The demo for this song is basically complete now, which means I can start creating a Nashville number chart for this tune.
(2) I solidified the arrangement for track #12, the love song. I actually played this song with my church’s worship band yesterday morning at church (the topic was on marriage). It was quite helpful to hear this song played by a real band. A few of the band guys actually gave me some great ideas that will become part of the final arrangement (including some cut offs and rhythmic accents). I’ll be creating a Nashville number chart for this song in the near future, after I re-work the MIDI demo (as the arrangement has changed a little now that I’ve played the song with a real band).
(3) Last night, I met with guitarist Matt Meyer for about 3 hours to go over electric guitar parts. He will be joining co-producer Dave Bechtel and I at Darkhorse Recording in Nashville on June 18th as we record drums, bass, and rhythm guitar. He had some excellent ideas and his guitar tones were awesome (I really dig the sound of his Bad Cat amp)! His playing is going to make a great addition to this project! Thanks for being involved Matt!
(4) I received a rough string arrangement from Rich Barrett last night for track #2. This song may possibly be the album single. The string arrangement sounds great and takes this tune to a totally new level of intensity. (Rich also composed the string parts for Hurricane , After Everything, A Thousand Gods and By Now on my last rock album Backstage Pass.) It will be fun to replace the fake strings with real ones (this will happen at a later date, probably in the fall). It’s awesome to have Rich on board as part of this project’s creative team!
(5) I also made some headway on track #5 this past week. This song has undergone a lot of modification over the last couple months, but I’m really starting to like how the song is sounding. I will highlight some of the changes/challenges associated with this song in another blog.
On The Schedule This Week
This week, I hope to re-program the MIDI demo for track #12 (the love song I played in church yesterday) and I can plan to create Nashville number charts for this song and track #11 (the worship song). This will mark the completion of two of the three trouble songs mentioned in a previous blog (The Nashville Hustle, Chapter 9). I still need to do some significant work on track #5, the third trouble song. The Nashville number chart for this song will have to wait until the arrangement is completely ironed out (hopefully, this will happen in the next couple of weeks).
In addition, I need to create some alternate demo mixes for guitarist Matt Meyer. I will either raise the levels of all the fake guitar parts so Matt can better pick out what the guitars are doing, or I will create split tracks (with the fake guitars on one side, and the remaining instruments and vocals on the other side). I also need to notate some of these guitars parts on sheet music.
As a side note, all of the demos will need to be converted to Pro Tools sessions (all the demos were created in Logic Pro). I hope to start this process by the later part of May.
46 days until we head to Nashville!
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