Half Way Home

[Tom Elliott]

As I've posted before I've been working on a concept album for my solo project. Today I've gotten two more tracks finished bringing my total up to 5 tracks and time up to 17:42
I'm writing songs about/inspired by the movie "For a Few Dollars More" and so far have done a bunch of similar music style-wise. That is good and bad I think. At any rate, I'm feeling a little more confident about finishing now.

We are at the half way point and beginning the final stretch. How are ya'll doing?

--
Ad astra per alia porci - Steinbeck
(To the stars on the wings of a pig.)

[Cort Stratton]

Tom Elliott wrote:
> I'm writing songs about/inspired by the movie "For a Few Dollars More"
> and so far have done a bunch of similar music style-wise. That is good
> and bad I think.

...but not ugly? (Sorry -- given your subject matter, I couldn't resist!)

I've got one finished track (6:13), two mostly-finished tracks (5:12 and
5:43 respectively) and a just-started track (2:00), so that's about 19
minutes. I hope to have some time left over at the end of the month for
mixing other tweaks, but we'll see.

Speaking of which, not to kick off another philosophical debate about
the "rules" of this most bare-bones of "competitions", but I'm curious:
how much spit & polish you guys are planning to apply before the end of
the month? I ask because I caught myself spending most of last night
making absolutely no progress at all on the songwriting front, as I was
too busy twiddling knobs on a synthesizer, trying to get my pad patch to
sound just right. Part of me feels like I should've just said
"whatever, I can worry about this later", but where do we draw the
line? Is the goal of NaSoAlMo to create a *finished* album (whatever
that means), or just to paint in the broad strokes and worry about the
final production details (minor edits, tweaks, mixing, mastering, etc)
on our own time?

- cort

[Matthew Egbert]

I've written 9 songs, at a total of about 25 minutes of material. I may
well drop one or two of those songs, so I'm at roughly the same point as
the others that have posted their progress. I'm also feeling that I
will be able to finish...but it is kind of odd, isn't it -- the whole
"how polished should it be" question....At some level, I've got 30
minutes of material (I've thrown a few things away)...but my
interpretation of the rules is: Make the best album you can, of minimum
length 30 mins, within November. So really it's up to you where you
spend your time.

Matt

[Billy Sea]

I just signed up last night and so I think I'll have to settle for not
worrying about spit and polish until next month sometime. I did write
2 songs last night and with just me and my old guitar they will
probably be around 3 minutes each. Figure if I can write 10 more
songs, then record them all before the end of the month, I'll be doing
good.

Hey to everyone from FAWM, 5090, and FAWMERS and a special howdy to
anyone I don't know yet.

Billy

[Matt Searles]

I've landed myself sick in bed.. Tech Support from Native instruments still hasn't come through for me.. 

I'm worried that I might be to focused on getting an album done as a pose to making something great.. and feeling like if its not great enough, what's the point? I'm thinking the problem is just the attitude I find myself taking to it.. That if I stop worrying about getting it done, and get onto worrying about making something great, the getting it done part might just work its self out on its own. In any event.. I don't really know what I got yet.. as far as how good or bad it is or will turn out to be.

I've got like 4 or 5 tracks I'm working on at once.. So far all pretty much are under 3 minutes.

Everything is going off in a fairly ambient direction... a strange one at that. It has a kind of microtonally mutated modalism floating around harmonic minor some place.. In places it reminds me of Cage in the sense that it seems to be more about the "audition" then the interrelationships of sounds.. and the way I'm mixing stuff.. It almost seems like an audio play about audition... just in how the sounds move around the virtual sound stage.

I have bunch of synth patches I tried to program to function "like puppets." You have 8 strings.. or controls, that will effect various things related to the instruments sound... So they can sorta morph around. I guess its in part influenced by early electronic music.. how that music seems more expressive then a lot modern electronic music... because at the time.. doing anything was a pain in the but.. but now the tools have evolved so X set of thing's aren't a pain in the but... and so now that's X is how things are usually expressive.. Where as before, with everything being a pain, they'd be expressive in any old way.

yeah.. so n e who.. that's about where I'm at

Matt

--
www.asymmetricbizcult.com -- A New Philosophy or Art Mind and Business
www.mattsearles.com -- Blog and Podcast of Media Artist and Thinker...  me
http://www.last.fm/music/Matt+Searles-- ultra groovy art music.. and hey, its free, right?
http://mattsearles.com/podsafemusic

[rustingw...@gmail.com]

I have 3 songs kinda sorta-ish written (one of those is mostly
recorded), 3 or 4 short pieces of music that may or may not turn into
songs, and nothing finished. I haven't had any decent lyrics come to
me either.

My goal now is to just "throw some crap together." I hope to
embarrass myself horribly in the process.

[chrisaaa...@gmail.com]

I think the embarrassment thing is quite a big issue here. I'm worried
about embarassing myself by putting my name on something crap.
Unfortunately I've already attached my established act name to the
album rather than using a pseudonym or my real name. Silly idea.

I've got around 15 basic tracks but the problem I'm finding is that
I'm having difficulty developing them and moving them along
I think a month is a difficult time to write and release an album in
as tracks dont really have any breathing space to develop their own
life

[Matthew Egbert]

How have you unalterably attached your established name to the work in
progress? Have you publicized it somehow?

For me the main point of this whole thing is to abandon an inner critic
(and just get used to producing quantity rather than worrying about
quality)...but damn that's hard! (but that's also the point)

I have to say that it's been getting progressively harder as the weeks
go by. The first weekend, I had three half-songs done, and was all
excited. Now it's much more slow moving. I'm slowly getting to 29 mins
tho'.

-Matt

[alfonso....@gmail.com]

<Risking hubris by even posting ... >

I'm trying to edit down 1 hour, 20 minutes of material ... I may go
with a double CD like last year.

Dennis

--
Treat your ears, heart, and soul, listen:
http://88.198.48.138:9600 (web-stream)
http://audiozoloft.com
http://www.myspace.com/usrsbin (required?)

[Matthew Egbert]

How many people out there are recording with primarily instruments
rather than programmed synths, etc.?

[alfonso....@gmail.com]

I am ... using non-programmed synths (Roland GR-20 guitar synth and
soft-synth modules) and electric guitar (Godin xtSA).

Dennis

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 7:48 AM, Matthew Egbert

[Cort Stratton]

Don't worry about embarassment.  Nowhere in the NaSoAlMo rules does it say that you have to *release* your album.  In fact, nobody ever has to listen to it besides you, if you'd prefer.  That overly critical feeling of "this is crap, people are going to hate this!" is exactly what we're trying to avoid -- instead, take the opportunity to experiment with new instruments/techniques, or just honing your craft.  Nobody's judging anybody here!

[Evan Gilbert]

I'm mostly using a mandolin, two basses and my violin; I am thinking about using a midi keyboard to add to some of the tracks.

[Lala]

I'm only using electronic instruments for drums, which I don't play.
Otherwise it's guitar, banjo, lap steel guitar, upright bass... uh, I
have more but that's all I've played so far.
lala

On Nov 19, 4:48 am, Matthew Egbert <matthew.egb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> How many people out there are recording with primarily instruments
> rather than programmed synths, etc.?
>

> alfonso.el.sa...@gmail.com wrote:
> > <Risking hubris by even posting ... >
>
> > I'm trying to edit down 1 hour, 20 minutes of material ... I may go
> > with a double CD like last year.
>
> > Dennis
>
> > On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 6:49 AM, Matthew Egbert
> > <matthew.egb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> How have you unalterably attached your established name to the work in
> >> progress?  Have you publicized it somehow?
>
> >> For me the main point of this whole thing is to abandon an inner critic
> >> (and just get used to producing quantity rather than worrying about
> >> quality)...but damn that's hard! (but that's also the point)
>
> >> I have to say that it's been getting progressively harder as the weeks
> >> go by.  The first weekend, I had three half-songs done, and was all
> >> excited.  Now it's much more slow moving.  I'm slowly getting to 29 mins
> >> tho'.
>
> >> -Matt
>

[tyc...@mchsi.com]

Hello,

Strat
Paul
Resonator
Seagull parlor (i do like this guitar)
Jazz bass
Baldwin studio (out of pitch/tune)
Marine Band harmonicas
microKorg
Zoom 234 edrums
snare drum
various acoustic drums (no kit)
cymbals

I try to be as nondigital as I can, old I guess.

Best to you,
Randy


---------------------- Original Message: ---------------------
From: Lala <pest...@gmail.com>
To: NaSoAlMo <naso...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [nasoalmo] Re: Half Way Home
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:37:41 +0000

[Shabbyroad Media]

I'm doing this in Garageband.

The technique I'm trying is to use a different instrument when I'm
writing.
For example my first track I used one of my electric guitars and an
amp simulator in Garageband
This evening I wrote & recorded my second song using a piano preset
in Garageband.

Keeping the inner critic at bay is a killer. I'm happy with the first
song I did. The second song is an AOR ballad that I can imagine REO
Speedwagon would have rejected fora b-side !

Still. It's done. Hoping to get another song tomorrow and then one
more over the weekend.

I'd like to do a reggae song using my strat (well if a whiteboy like
Sting can get away with cod reggae then so can I)
There's a toy uke I'd like to use for another.
I'll come back to keyboard next week and use a fender rhodes sound to
write (another) ballad
I'm saving my Dylan acoustic+harmonica for that slog toward the end
of the 29 minutes target I've set myself.
I'd love to do something just using vocoder but I think that'll be a
short ( < 1 minute) track because it would be bloody annoying to
listen to a vocoder for longer than that I'm sure.

[Pigfarmer Jr]

So we have two days left... roughly 30 hours by my clock. Where we at?

I have 24 minutes and have another 3:00 + written, but am having
trouble recording it. I'm sure I can throw some more together in no
time, but I'm wanting decent quality. I work well under pressure
though, but have to work this weekend. So I have to get the time from
somewhere.

At any rate, I'll make it but it'll be a little rough if I can't get
the recording done. And it is only guitar/vox so far which shouldn't
be hard to do, eh?