My Mind is Filled with Radio Cures

I have been pretty busy lately with music, and am learning a lot on my own and working with everyone else as well.

I started recording with both projects I have going, with two completely different apporaches towards the process and the music. The Human Fund has always been centered around our live playing, so that has been taken into the recording sessions as well. We pretty much just do a shitload of takes of the same song and will eventually go through each take and mix and match the best takes of everything. It gives us a couple new angles to work from, because we can edit everything individually, and Mike can mess around with things more on his lead parts. It definitely sounds better then what we have recorded in the past.

Chris and I have taken a different approach to everything which is largely due to his busy schedule as much as how we both are completely obsessed with making it sound perfect. Basically I will record myself playing and singing the basis of the song to a click track (or a metronome) and then hand over the MP3 file to Chris. I then give him my notes on what I think might sound good here and there, and he spends a few days recording various things. Then he sends each track back to me seperately and we will get together and mess around with things...add more tracks if need be...or even completely restructure the song. Of course this is all specualtion because we havent gotten past step one yet, but it should play out exactly like that. In the meantime I keep thinking of new ideas, and recording seperate guitar tracks on my freetime...so there will be a lot of work to do come mixing time.

All this work in general is giving me a better feel for arrangement, that plus I have been listening to even more music then ever before. It is helping me get ideas out of my head and to see my music in different lights. The cool thing about Chris is that he is obsessed with all sorts of music much like myself, and his knowledge of the keyboards and various noises it can make help me out a lot. I can tell him what I think I want to hear at certain parts, and he makes it happen so I can hear it, and then we both decide if it works or not. The only problem is his busy schedule, which doesnt really allow me to go completely at my own pace, but that is to be expected.

So I feel like I am growing as a 'studio' musician, and even as a songwriter. I am excited to see whats going to come of all this. And I have high expectations for this summer. I would like to have completed the recording and if I have the financial ability and whatnot, I would like to fund my own tour around this great country of ours and play shows wherever I can and hand out said albums. But again thats all hearsay in my head, and we will see what happens.