Unfinished Recordings
Posted on July 14, 2010
A couple of years ago, I began a recording project that consisted of 36 six songs--some new originals, some songs written by friends and acquaintances, and a few traditional folk songs re-written to suit my mindset.
I'm told that most people don't attempt to record 36 songs at one time.
In addition to lyrics, melody and guitar chords, each song had high and low counterpoint parts. The high parts were played by me on guitar and Regina Ketter on viola. The low parts were played on guitar and bass. Lori Hitt played some piano on a few songs. And each song had both arpeggio and strummed acoustic guitars. Basically, there was a ton of overdubbing, punching in, and cutting and pasting.
With no prospect of being able to make these songs available to the public in the foreseeable future, the songs remained unfinished, stored on the hard-drives of Cycling Troll Studios in Erie, PA.
Unfortunately, a systems-crash led to the disassembling of the many recorded parts. The music exists in the form of a jigsaw puzzle of data files.
I'm not particularly disappointed, though. Gina gave me a program that allows me to write the scores for the various instruments, and this will give me the opportunity to assemble a little orchestra to record the whole thing LIVE.
I also understand the songs more intimately now that I've had a couple of years to test and tinker with them.
So as soon as I finish this posting, I'm going back to writing the scores and hope to be ready to record these babies before the leaves fall off the trees.
I'm told that most people don't attempt to record 36 songs at one time.
In addition to lyrics, melody and guitar chords, each song had high and low counterpoint parts. The high parts were played by me on guitar and Regina Ketter on viola. The low parts were played on guitar and bass. Lori Hitt played some piano on a few songs. And each song had both arpeggio and strummed acoustic guitars. Basically, there was a ton of overdubbing, punching in, and cutting and pasting.
With no prospect of being able to make these songs available to the public in the foreseeable future, the songs remained unfinished, stored on the hard-drives of Cycling Troll Studios in Erie, PA.
Unfortunately, a systems-crash led to the disassembling of the many recorded parts. The music exists in the form of a jigsaw puzzle of data files.
I'm not particularly disappointed, though. Gina gave me a program that allows me to write the scores for the various instruments, and this will give me the opportunity to assemble a little orchestra to record the whole thing LIVE.
I also understand the songs more intimately now that I've had a couple of years to test and tinker with them.
So as soon as I finish this posting, I'm going back to writing the scores and hope to be ready to record these babies before the leaves fall off the trees.