Working Titles

At the end of last week, I reached a minor milestone. I managed to write thirty compositions in thirty days. This doesn't necessarily mean thirty completely fleshed out songs, although several titles have reached various states of completion. And it wasn't strictly every day, either. I took about ten days off from writing when three of the compositions demanded my immediate attention as they were incorporated into the album. But on some of the remaining days, I managed to produce three or four new pieces, so that made up for the missing days. It all came out even in the end.

The pieces range in style from pure incidental music to funk, lounge, pop songs, weird sonic experiments and just plain silliness. By allowing myself to see ideas through, no matter how bizarre, I've come up with three songs for the new album, about a half dozen tunes for an instrumental project and several solid ideas for stock commercial uses and further exploration. Funny how I decry censorship in practice, yet I've spent so many years subjecting myself to my own.

So, for the first time in my life, I have a surplus of ideas. I'm going to keep up the pace merely because I'm curious to see what happens next. When each composition is complete (or as complete as it's going to get on any given day), I do a quick mix, date it and give it a working title.

I'm told that my working titles are amusing. They reflect whatever I happen to be reading or watching or talking with Kate about at the time of creation. I'm including a list of them here:

Twink

Piano Piece Version 1

Molecule

Dark Signal

Petals

Pickles

Bleem

Ledge

Cottonesque

Station to Starlight

Mister Coffy

Green and Gorgeous

Begin the Begat

Jojo

What You See

Anything But

Second Time

Owlet

The Planet Eater

Sub Space Interference

Mid Tempo Number

Botany Bay

We All Ended Up Having to Eat Each Other

Buffering

Clokey

Dust on the Olive

Floating Cookies

I Can Smell the Rain

Grease on the Monkey

The New People

And I added a new one yesterday called "Vacate".

Last time, I mentioned that I planned on re-doing drums on some of the earlier tracks. This turned out to be unnecessary, since fiddling with the mixes seemed to take care of perceived problems. I'm putting the album down for a week or two to see what new compositions I come up with on the "One-a-Day" program.

Fait Accompli

Just a quick update.

I went to my friend Steve's house today to listen to my mixes on his monitors. Mine aren't the greatest in the world and I needed to listen to what I have thus far in a more objective environment.

Listening to those mixes tells me that I'm fairly on target so far. I made only a few adjustments. But I would like to attempt to replace the drum tracks on two of the songs from last fall. Back then, I was still learning to use Logic and still getting my drum chops back together. Now I have a much better drum sound and the mics have not moved since I last recorded drums. I think I would be remiss if I didn't at least try. That will be my job this weekend.

I'm back on my "composition a day" schedule again, dreaming up and slapping down sketches of different types of tunes. I'll probably do that for two weeks and see what i've got. Hopefully, I'll find a few more songs to begin building basic tracks.

I don't want to psych myself out or anything, but I do have a tentative schedule. I'd like to be done with basic tracks by the end of May and complete all recording by July 4th. that's a pretty arbitrary date, but it feels right. I try not to think about it too much. My heart skipped beat the other day when i considered that once I complete the basic tracks, then I have to write and perform all the vocals. This is a lot of work! But I'm in too deep now. It's a fait accompli.

I'm game.