I had a four-day weekend and went into the studio to work on a new bit of guitar music I’d been tinkering with for awhile. Then during a break from it, I was playing around and came upon something new I liked better, so I switched my focus to the new piece. I can only describe it as having an urgent, driving, surf-guitar sound, like something you might here as the soundtrack behind the car chase in a ’70s cop movie.
Our lead photographer suggested I do it as an instrumental, and I agree it can stand on its own. But I’d also like to come up with lyrics that work with the mood of the music. So I think I’m going to do both. Perhaps for the final cut of the What We Were Missing album, the instrumental can be a bonus track.
Meanwhile, I’m also dealing with web hosting issues. I like my current host’s tools for managing the site and email addresses, and their FTP access is reliable. But all too often, the site is served too slowly, and I have code that I can’t make live because the service isn’t fast enough. I’m trying to avoid the hassle and uncertainty of moving to another host, with no real guarantee of a speed increase, so for the moment I’m tracking the results of a trace route and noting where the lags and timeouts are. I’m hoping that my host will attend to at least the timeouts that are happening on their equipment.
There’ve been breakthroughs this week on the expedition. The first is with site design. Whenever I’m designing, I start off by brainstorming and experimenting, and at some point everything clicks, and I have a “yes!” moment.
I started off with a variety of background images, popping them into Photoshop and creating color variations and tiles. Then I worked on various banner treatments and content backgrounds, followed by finding what I felt was the right combo of foreground and background graphics. Lastly was the content layout. I knew what I wanted, but making it happen using CSS that works across different browsers is often challenging.
I also intended to have a live feed of my latest blog entry and tweet, with my own CSS treatments, so those were additional challenges. Surprisingly, it all came together more easily than I’d expected, and I now have a new design that I can begin to apply to all my content.
Another breakthrough came in looping. There are songs I’ve written with structures that don’t work with the standard live looping overdubs. I could record them using multi-tracking, but my goal is to create every song in a way that I can perform all the parts live and solo.
I first added footswitches to my loop station to simplify some of the controls, and I began testing ways to loop these more complex pieces. There was a lot of trial and error – mostly error, and I was just about to give up in frustration, when I hit upon the technique I needed. Now I just need to fine tune the process.
Today I’m uploading another track for the Mysterious Unions album entitled, “Depth Charge.” Faster tempo, driving rhythm, distorted guitar lead, so more toward the center of the album. I’ll use the remaining tracks to wind this baby down. Possibly. It’s an organic process, and I’m not sure how something is going to turn out until it turns out.
Listen to the song
It’s time once again for another installment of Mysterious Unions. This one’s got a quicker tempo, a funkier bass line, and more distorted guitar, so it earns a spot more towards the middle of the album. Drop the top and take a long and winding road somewhere fun.
Listen to the song
So the hectic job and life situations have continued since my last post two months ago. It sounds so long when I read that, but the time seemed to fly by. It wasn’t entirely without musical progress, though. I have a rock song in the works, and I started two downtempo pieces. One of those downtempo tracks I abandoned, but the other was just completed last night.
I’m calling it “Long Time Comin’,” because, well, it HAS been a long time coming, and the title works with the album theme. Hopefully you’ll enjoy it. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
Listen to the song