Latest Smaragd News

Monday, June 28, 2004

Things have moved forward a bit during the weekend. On Friday night I added electric guitars and bass to the end of "Sarah In the Garden."
On Sunday night, I just began work on the "The Decision." I plan to make this instrumental track the most definitively "prog rock" track of the project—or at least more genuinely "prog" than the tracks I've worked on so far. The beginnings of the track are coming from just improvising keyboard bits, and piecing together the stuff I like. So far I have only the first 28 seconds of the track, but it sounds like Hammond-driven prog. The infuences from both Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson seems pretty obvious so far, though it doesn't sound derivative. Hard to say much about just 28 seconds, especially given that it's entirely possible that the little bits I've pieced together may well be moved toward the middle or the end—or even discarded altogether—before "The Decision" is done.
Finally, in the wee hours of Monday morning I did a brand new mix of "Digital Jesus", adding a few more sound effects which I've been wanting to hear in it. The new mix sounds great! So the version of "Digital Jesus" on mythconception will be subtly different from the version on Suchness.

4:11 AM (0) comments

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Yesterday morning (Wed., June 23rd) FedEx delivered my iMic. I immediately set about recording some rough "guide vocals" for "Sarah In the Garden," "Palingensia" and "William Harvey."
This morning I recorded the guitars for "Stigma," then worked on the vocals. The result sounds very satisfactory, although I think I'll re-record one of the three guitar tracks. Aside from that, I'm really thrilled with how "Stigma" has turned out!
Tonight I plan to add electric guitars to "Sarah In the Garden."

4:23 PM (0) comments

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

This afternoon I laid down the basic drum pattern for "Stigma", another track for mythconception. Next, I added the mellotron choir, and a quieter, basic string part which will help fill out the sound. Finally I started messing around with the effects on a simple bass guitar sample, ultimately giving it just a slight bit of crunch and running it through an amp simulator. That bass will, I think, run quietly throughout the song to help "chunk up" the emphatic rhythm. It will not, however, replace the "real" bass which I'll eventually record. It then occurred to me that maybe the song could open with just the strings and that very simple, driving bass. Sounds like a good start, though I'm going to do a more complex orchestration for the opening if I decided to go with this idea.
Right now "Stigma" is just a short arrangement of those four tracks mixed together. There are no guitars yet, since I haven't got an iMic yet to allow me to work with "live" sounds—vocals, guitars, bass, etc. I can work on the arrangement of the piece, and develop the drum part more, but not much else until I get the iMic. And as for "Palingensia" and "The Apotheosis of William Harvey," both tracks are now at the point where I can't do anything more until I get that damn iMic. Both tracks sound really good already.
For quite a while, I've had the idea of maybe making "Palingensia" a part of mythconception. It would really describe Krist's spiritual condition, in contrast against the "William Harvey" world of others. Now I'm thinking I'll do that. It will probably appear between "Stigma" and "Sarah In the Garden."
Argh! If I don't get the iMic really soon, I'm going to move on and start work on "Sarah In the Garden." The momentum I've got going is excellent, and the results so far are just astonishing to me. As I said before, I think it's truly the best stuff I've ever done!

3:17 PM (0) comments

Monday, June 14, 2004

I've been making FANTASTIC progress lately! Here's the full update on what I've been up to...
Last week I reached the point where I feel I'm comfortable enough with my new digital recording set-up to use it to create my own sound, rather than having the digital system result in its own sound which isn't really "mine." (The latter is, I think, what some of my recent dabblings like "It's All So Hopeless" and "The Reverend's First Groove" have been—music driven by the tools, rather than tools being used to create my own music the way I want it to sound.)
As mentioned in the previous update, I started working on "Palingensia." I spent the next week fleshing the song out. It has turned out better than I had ever hoped or imagined, especially in the lush, thickly-orchestrated final chorus.
Work was interrupted on Thursday, June 10th as I had a little medical procedure on my heart. (No worries; it's all good now.)
As I recovered over the next several days, I put some more touches on "Palingensia"—most notably, some morning birdsongs. "Palingensia" is well on its way now. I'm ready to add guitar and vocals, but need to pick up an adaptor to allow analog sound to be put into the digital system I'm using.
Rather than let that stop me, I used the great momentum and started work this morning on a song from mythconception, "The Apotheosis of William Harvey." Originally I imagined it as being abstract and noisy, like something from Radiohead's OK Computer album. But I found myself being drawn instead to the wonderful sound of the vintage, early-1980s Oberheim synthesizers. I got quite a lot of work done on "William Harvey" in just a few short hours. In its present form, the song is driven by the combination of a heavily-echoed mandolin riff (much like the Canadian prog/art-rock band FM) and that vintage Oberheim sound (which many progheads with remember from Rush's Signals album).
Both "Palingensia" and "The Apotheosis of William Harvey" are just plain flooring me. Both sound better than I'd envisioned, and perhaps better than anything I've ever done before! I may have to post a few short clips of the songs.

7:35 AM (0) comments

Friday, June 04, 2004

Believe it or not, I'm actually working on some new music now! Lately I've been doing some musical experimenting, and even committing a few ideas to... well, not to tape, but to the hard drive since I'm working digitally now.
Last night I started messing around with adding various flanging, chorus, and panning effects to a Rhodes piano. Out of that came a new idea--a very nice little Rhodes sequence in 5/4 meter. I realized that it resembled my song "Palingensia" a bit, so after saving the new idea, I set about laying down a few basic parts for "Palingensia."
It looks like my new musical project will be to finally record that song properly!
As for mythconception, that project is not dead at all. I'm determined that I want to do it right, no matter how long it takes. I am in no hurry about it, and am spending my musical time just learning my new equipment, and exploring what comes out of that.

8:48 PM (0) comments

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