Thursday, May 12, 2016

Desert Presence. I'm ready to get started.

Desert Presence

I'm ready to get this started.

Last night I sat in front of my laptop, hooked up my Scarlett 2i2 and launched Sony Acid Pro.



I get nervous for some reason as I start recording....I don't know what it is, but I recognized it last night and will be working on enjoying the process. Go figure, right?

This is the first time I have started building a song with two time signatures.

I was apprehensive at first, but then relieved that:

  • The application Help file is so helpful and easy to search.
  • The software makes it very easy to change time signatures.

So the song starts out in 7/4, just to make it interesting and set the mood.

After that we are going to 4/4 to make it interesting too.

The key? what else? E-freakin'-minor. Ha Ha


Like some of my recent songs, this is a distillation of an older song. Desert Presence was written in the 90's when Nick Phares and Cristine Nostrand and I were together as "The Kensingers," an acoustic vocal group in San Diego very much like Trilogy. It was written in 6/8, and was pretty straight Em,D, C with a flamenco kind of feel. It still is a good song, but I wanted to twist it a bit to make it more sinister. Em, Em7, Em69. Two tense notes waiting for resolution into a minor. Pretty tasty and fun to write with.


Tuesday, May 3, 2016

Interview - Upstage with Caitlin Johnson

A few months ago I ran into a friend of mine, Brad Hayes, who was hanging out watching the Mojo Bros (John Pratt and I) over at Ricky Bobby's on Pine St. As we were talking, he mentioned that he would like to interview us using an up and coming TV local personality, Caitlin Johnson. Well, we missed each other here and there, and with scheduling as it is, I ended up doing the interview solo. So, here it is in three parts!


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3