Intermission

The first burst of euphoria and frenzied activity has passed. It was a good run, lasting several months filled with creative spirit and energy. But the time has come to take stock of what I've done so far and start to think about what needs to happen next.

I made some attempts at creating basic tracks for songs that I've had sitting around for awhile, but some of them just didn't feel right. They're good songs, but the process of putting them down felt forced to me. I've attempted to record ten songs so far. Of those ten, half were old and half were new. All of the new songs have made the cut so far, plus only two of the older ones. That makes seven songs so far, and my goal is twelve for the album.

Engineer Jack Petracek came to visit me last week. We sipped delicious tea and listened to the work I've done so far. Good musicians don't always make good recording engineers and Lord knows I'm not a hot-shot engineer. To my great relief, Jack said I had done a pretty good job so far. He pointed out a few problem areas and even showed me how to fix them. They were mostly minor EQ fixes that helped unclutter some of the mixes. I'm learning more every day.

His arrival couldn't have come at a better time. After several weeks, sometimes you're just not sure of what you're hearing anymore. Certain things that seemed so right can seem utterly wrong some days, and sonic weirdness can lead to self-doubt if left unchecked. That, plus the looming reality of having to write five more songs that are as good as the ones I already have was starting to bug me.

I've made a few attempts to come up with some ripping new stuff, but it just wasn't happening. I've done this long enough to know that dry well periods are normal and very temporary. I had hoped to put off doing vocals until later, but I really need to keep the project moving forward. One has to be flexible when making an album. Things don't always go the way you've planned them and you have to be willing to go wherever the road leads.

So this week I'll begin working on the vocals for the tracks I have. Some of the songs have complete sets of lyrics, most of them don't. In the past, some of my best lyrics came exactly when I needed them, often just outside the studio minutes before tracking. Now and then. I need some self-imposed pressure. I must admit, I begin vocal tracking for the album with some trepidation, but once I'm into it, I know I'll come around. I have to force myself to start things sometimes.

Wow, I feel better just having written all that. I really hope this blog is interesting to people, but the one who ultimately benefits from it is me. By dissecting my own process, I'm able to better understand what I'm doing and get a better insight into what I should do next.

The Process

Writing songs is much like the journey from infancy to adulthood. I start with a feeling and musical ideas to express that feeling, but at that stage, it's still a non-verbal process. That's when I am most childlike--a bundle of emotions without the language to express them. My cognitive and verbal skills grow until I can find the ideas and words to express what I really feel. By creating music, I learn how to speak and I discover what I'm trying to say.

The way I do it has changed over the years. I used to sit down with a guitar, pen and paper and write a song from beginning to end including the lyrics. I made a transition to writing music in my head and writing it down later for awhile. Now, almost invariably, it's music first and rarely do I ever finish a new song in one sitting. I'll come up with little ideas and write them down or record them for so I can expand them into songs.

This led to a problem for many years--I could never finish anything. Now, when reviewing notes and audio snippets looking for what to do next, I'll often pick one in the evening and earmark it for work the next day. In the morning, I'll generally turn the snippet into a song very quickly and begin tracking it as soon as possible so it remains fresh. Preserving the freshness of the demoing process while recording final versions for release is the goal of this project. The griddle-to-plate time has been reduced to ensure freshness.

My most productive time of day for recording is from about 2 o'clock in the afternoon until about 10 pm. By then I've either done what i needed to do or my ears are so shot that I can't work anymore anyway. I like to sleep at night, but I'm not above staying up late to lay down really quiet instrumental or vocal tracks. Sometimes I have to because the traffic outside my house can be very, very noisy during the day.

I begin each new song with the acoustic guitar and a click track. This forms the basis of most of the songs on the album. Once I have a decent guitar track that lays out the form of the song, I move next to the drums. After a small eternity devoted to drum tracking, I move on to the bass and keyboards. On a good day, I can get a decent guitar/drums/bass/keys thing recorded in an afternoon. I mix as I go because I want to have an idea of what the record will actually sound like. If it sounds good as it takes shape, it excites me and motivates me to keep going.

Some people find this a very difficult way to work and are aghast when I describe my working methods, but I usually have arrangement ideas worked out in my head before I even start. Multiple takes allow me to work out parts and I usually revise as I go along. Sometimes, it takes a few days before I go back in and change things, but aside from occasional complete remakes, I usually commit to workable versions early on. But if I encounter obvious problems as I'm layering more parts, I'll happily make changes or start again from scratch.

The very last thing I worry about is the vocals, including the lyrics. The melodies are all in my head so I don't even cut scratch vocals--one of the perks of not working with others! But as I track and mix, the song forms are constantly being reinforced in my head and I'll find myself humming along while I'm working. Sometimes, a repeated melody will suggest a phrase or a line here and there and I'll write it down. At some point, I'll take a couple of weeks to concentrate exclusively on writing lyrics.

In the next installment, I'll post some video for you so you can get a look at the space where I'm working and hear some of the sounds. Take good care until then.

About Ears

Ears are very eccentric sensory instruments--moody, easily influenced by the environment, emotional states, physiological factors and just plain fatigue. In my case, add to that a imbalance that affects my right ear and a touch of tinnitus, and making an album can be an even bigger challenge. In the insular environment of a recording studio, objectivity is easily the most prized and often the rarest of commodities.

This past week, I recorded the basic track for a song I wrote eighteen years ago but never "officially" released. It's a song I could play in my sleep and the tracking went well. This song was actually the first song I recorded for the new album back in September, but a remake was in order at a slightly slower tempo. I set up one of the small mics, recorded an acoustic track to a click track, doubled it and started to record the drums. The song calls for a sort of two-step beat using brushes. It's a time-keeping part intended to push the groove along. These repetitive parts are often the most difficult to play, but I was able to nail it in a few takes. Slowing it down was a good call and I was pleased with the result.

I went to bed that night secure in the knowledge that I had what I needed. But when I woke up the next morning, my ears told me something else. I had noticed a slight sag in tempo close to the beginning of the song. The previous night, my ears told me that it wasn't that noticeable and that it added a touch of humanity to the recording--the very aesthetic I've been going for with the whole project. But now my ears had changed their opinion and convinced me that the whole drum track needed replacing.

Kate was listening from her office as I got out the brushes and sat behind the kit once again. After a few passes, I had a take that sounded pretty good to me. But Kate stopped me in the hallway and suggested that the take I had just made didn't have the same feel as the one I had done the night before. She said it had an easygoing groove that was very appealing. The track I had just laid down didn't have that "something" that made it work, and her ears, and thus her whole body, missed it. She simply didn't feel the same way when she heard the new drums.

I had almost completely wiped the pervious night's work, but I dug out my backup drive to hear the difference. She was right. When I revisited the original version, I noticed that it was the guitar tracks that dipped in tempo and that the whole thing could be saved by cutting the first four bars of drums. There was something special there that had to be preserved. Kate's ears had succeeded where mine had failed because i had lost perspective. A good woman can help steer your ship and keep your tunes in the right groove. Had she not spoken up, the song would have been less than it could have been. Kate truly saved the day.

Working on this project alone has been very fruitful and satisfying. But without an outside pair of ears popping in now and then, the whole process can become myopic. Very few people have heard these tracks, but I value the input of those who have stopped in because sometimes their mouths say things my ears couldn't initially hear. My ears are pretty finely tuned despite their shortcomings, but they aren't perfect. Music is, after all, a form of communication. When all is said and done, I want to reach people. No wonder that an extra pair should bring such needed insight into how music is felt and experienced.

Every Note

Producing, engineering, writing and performing an album on your own can evoke the grave specter of self-indulgence. With no one to tell you "No!" you might go over the edge. It might just look like you're showing off. Either you really are that talented, which seems unlikely, or you're really talented and nobody wants to work with you because you're a miserable human being. Or you're a real nerd, which in my case is probably right on the money. I want to do this merely because I can. Or rather, because I can't help myself.

I learned about audio production in the age of analog tape. I worked at WPKN, a community radio station in Bridgeport, CT when I was a teenager in the early 80s. I learned how to edit audio tape with a razor blade and soaked in the basics from guys with lots of experience. I learned about overdubbing when the first cassette multi-trackers came on the market and later got to record my own music at Webster University's 16 track studio. I've made several records in both analog and digital since then and I'm glad that my experience straddles both the analog and digital eras.

I still haven't lost a sense of wonder about it all. I'm still easily moved by chord progressions, easily excited by sounds, even ordinary ones. I love the very idea of capturing sounds for posterity. But I'm a musician and songwriter first and foremost, and I've long considered the recording process to be a natural outgrowth of writing songs. I've worked with good engineers, looking over their shoulders and learning their craft as they helped me pursue my own. This is the first time I've taken on the responsibility of engineering my recordings past the demo stage. If I had known when I was a kid what amazingly powerful tools would be available in the future, I would have been astonished.

No matter what the medium, setting out to play every note on a collection of songs--including real drums--is a daunting, time-consuming process. I'm making an album under difficult conditions, in a cramped space, with bare-bones equipment, some self imposed restrictions and raw inspiration...God, I love a challenge! But how I achieve the goal is secondary to the fact that I'm trying to get some songs out--songs that I believe are solid enough to warrant all this fuss. And I'd go through fire to put a song across the way it should be. I'm just like that.

So here are the basic guidelines, some self-imposed, others determined by circumstances and resources:

1. Methods
For the instrumental tracks, I'm treating my computer like an old analog machine--set up the mic and play the part from beginning to end, just like the old days. I'm trying to avoid excessive punch-ins or comping, resorting to those methods only when any given take is at least 98% there. Needless to say, it's a very time consuming process, but the result is a sound that feels closer to a band performing. I wont be nearly so rigid when the time comes to record vocals, however. I'll comp and fly in to my heart's content. I'm using Logic 8 Express on my Mac. for all tracking and mixing.

2. Gear
I have all the instruments I need including several guitars and basses. The drums are on a permanent mic setup after much trail and error. My firewire interface has only two inputs, so I have to be creative when getting the drums to sound right. This worried me at first, but now I see it as a good thing. I'm using classic keyboard sounds inside my Mac controlled by a MIDI controller I bought for $20. It works just fine.

3. Discipline
The lack of multiple inputs and outboard processing gear means I have to be frugal and creative to get the sounds I'm looking for. I want a very clean, direct, up-front sound on this album, so the limitations are a blessing in disguise. These limitations keep me from going overboard and keep my focused. Apart from some guitar effects, I'm using nothing more than EQ and compression to sculpt the sounds, and even then only to carve out space for each part.

I want to limit laying down parts to what is absolutely necessary to make the songs work. The backing tracks generally have no more than five or six tracks. Ideally, I want to sub mix vocal backgrounds when the time comes so that when it comes to final mixdown there are no more than twelve faders or information to deal with--and that's at the absolute maximum. That's my goal and I'm sticking to it.


I don't want to put too fine a point on the fact that I have a visual impairment, and while it's way, way down on the list of things I think about when working on these tracks, I'd be lying if I said it didn't make things a bit more difficult. I'm using Logic because it's the most visually straightforward option out there that I've found. I use screen magnification software, which means I often don't see the whole picture. I'm often zeroed in on specific areas of the scree. It's a challenge, but I'm becoming pretty proficient.

So those are the parameters. So far, it sounds pretty good. I may not have the best equipped studio in the world, but what I lack in luxury I make up for in time and gumption. So far, limitations have brought out the best in me. This isn't merely a blog about the process of getting an album done, although it is certainly that. It's the inner processes which interest me.

Faced with adversity, I hope to grow and exceed my own expectations. That's what this blog is really about.

New Album Journal Begins Now!

The Ken Kase Group played it's last show in Chicago in April, partly because things really weren't jelling in quite the way I'd hoped, partly because the allure of playing the clubs again faded quickly. In the two years we worked together, we put out a good single, made a video, played in Chicago a couple of times and opened up for Chuck Berry. Not a bad run for the KKG's third act. But I've learned when to say when.

Ever since I heard Stevie Wonder's Music of My Mind when I was eight or nine years old, I've wanted to make an album where I played all the instruments myself. It took a while, but I guess I'm ready to do it now. Years of fiddling on different instruments, working as a hired hand in a variety of settings and my eternal musical curiosity are being put to the test.

Although I've made some recordings I'm proud of, more often than not a feeling of disappointment set in as my demos became finished products. There was a spark, a certain eccentricity and spontaneity present in many of my demos of new songs that I was never able to recreate, no matter how good the musicians were (and I've had the good fortune to work with some doozies!). Notes and arrangements are easy to communicate, but the nuances in my head are often non-transmittable. This difficult process is known as "chasing the demo".

This project represents an attempt to bypass the middleman and get straight to the meat of the songs. Many of the songs were completed the day of recording, mostly from hastily scribbled notes and scratch recordings I've made this year. Some ideas have been kicking around in my head for over a decade and have only seen the light of day with these new recordings. One or two are old songs I'm bringing back to life. So far, these recordings have come closest to replicating what's in my head. And if a certain feel or vibe happens when I'm recording, I don't have to worry about recreating it later.

I started this project in earnest in September, 2009. As of today, I have the basic tracks for six songs more or less completed. I'm having fun and I'm consistently surprised by how it's turning out. I'll use this blog to share my progress and observations with you, mostly about the new album, but sometimes about things that have nothing to do with it. Either way, I'll attempt to be entertaining while keeping you up to date on the album's progress.

So come with me as we take a deconstructive journey through an album that isn't finished yet...