On Sunday, Lila (my fiancé) spent half of the day painting so that I could have an awesome album cover for Human Music. I’m really happy with how this turned out! The album has now been submitted for digital distribution. If everything goes well you’ll be able to purchase this on Saturday August 2. I’ll also be getting some physical CDs of this, which is going to take another 4-6 weeks to get all of the artwork assembled and CDs duplicated.
This album is acoustic versions of what I consider to be the best songs I’ve written to date. I had heard from some people that they liked the emotion from my live performances and that some of the fully produced tracks were missing that. The album is called “human music” because I decided to record it in a way that included the small imperfections that are often produced out through the use of computer software, which is a practice that many people feel is making our music less expressive and more contrived.
To listen, just use the player below. If you like it, please subscribe to my updates here.
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Like anyone else, I’ve had my ups and downs in life. I’ve lived though times where I had the best life I could imagine, and also through tough times where I’m not sure how I survived. At times I’ve felt like I’ve had good friends and at other times I’ve experienced extreme loneliness. Sometimes down periods and extreme loneliness seemed longer than they needed to be, mostly because of a combination of bad choices I had made. my behavior, my unique life circumstances, or just general social awkwardness/anxiety.
Now I don’t think just having tough times should be enough justification for anyone to buy my music, because I get it…everyone goes through tough times. I also don’t think that I deserve any pity for the tough times easier for the same reason, and because the tough times helped made me who I am today. If anything else, what I really learned about music is that when I listened to music I could identify with, it made the tough times seem not as tough. Listening to music helped me with the emotional release I needed at times just to keep going. And even in the good times, listening to music seemed to make it even better.
I figure that by working hard at making music, hopefully someone else in the world will find what I make, identify with it, and even maybe it will help them get through some tough times, just like other music did for me. And I think that’s a great way of making the world a better place. I certainly don’t expect that everyone or even the majority of people will experience my music in such a profound way. But strangely enough, I’ve seen it happen a few times. For me, that’s enough encouragement to keep going…
I’ve made my song “The Reasons Why” available as a free download! This is a song with a bouncy chord progression and bass line that is guaranteed to leave you in a better mood than before you listened. Provide your email in the form below, and then click on the link that’s emailed to you to get your free download. It’s that easy!
Over the past month or so, I’ve been meticulously recording acoustic versions of what I consider to be my best songs. To help improve the quality of my recordings, I made some strategic investments including new vocal and stereo mics (for the guitar) from Michael Joly Engineering, acoustic foam for my walls, new studio monitors and acoustic treatment shield behind my vocal microphone. As a result, I can honestly say that these recordings are by far the most balanced acoustic guitar and vocal recordings I’ve ever self-produced.
The goal with recordings was to prevent an alternative to something that I see as a problem with pretty much all commercial music today: that everything we hear on the radio is doctored up so much by computers to fix all of the little imperfections..it’s really rare to hear something that’s recorded well that was a continuous take of anything, and not chopped up into little bits and altered by some type of DAW or computer software for audio recording. I’ve decided to call this collection of songs (ok its an album) “Human Music” because I left in some of the little pops that made it through my pop shield, and didn’t go in and pitch correct anything, or slice up (and combine multiple tracks) to fix minor timing mistakes, etc. Essentially everything is continuous takes with guitar and vocals being recorded at the same time, which is how I perform my songs. What this means that is if you enjoy my live performances, you should love this album, imperfections and all!
I’m happy to announce that the tracks are all mixed now, and that I’ve submitted them for mastering to Sage Audio in Nashville. I should have the masters back in a week or so, which will help me determine a final release date. You can subscribe to my mailing list to get notified when the release date is finalized.
Here’s the track listing:
1. Spontaneity
2. Overwhelmed
3. Fragile
4. My Mind’s Already Made Up
5. This Time I Will Change
6. Hungover
7. The Unexplainable Funk
8. The Waves Come Crashing In
9. I Love the Way
10. Followed by a Falling Star
11. I am Floored
12. History Lesson
13. Drive into the Blue
14. Caff-fiend
15. The World is My Imaginary Drumset
In other news, for folks that live near Salt Lake City, I’ll be playing a backyard house concert on Saturday night next week with Jason Brown in the Holladay area. Between the Facebook event and meet-up invite, I’d say we’re expecting a good crowd of 30-40 people, so it should really be a fun time. If you want more info, you can call MacNichol Guitars at (800) 849-3305 for the location and more information. There is a $10 per person cover which is going directly to Jason and me 🙂
For those who typically watch me in Second Life, I’ve got a number of shows next week including Drunken Drow, Ecnad, Hotel Chelsea and Guthries. I’ll get the times and dates updated in the events section of this website in the next couple of days.