6 replies to this topic

[Greg P]

So, I'm outing myself again. I did this several years ago on the Writer's Block when a small group of us A&F'ers shared our working projects with one another and opened the door for constructive criticism. At the time I found it to be a healthy experiment, so I figure there's no real harm in taking another shot.

I play and write music, in some form, almost every day. This is a habit I've maintained for years. It's my form of prayer i suppose. I've really struggled over the years to find guys to connect with musically. I mean, I've played with a lot of talented dudes-- guys who clearly had chops and had developed their own "voice" thru years of playing. But I never felt like I was on the same page emotionally or artistically with any of these people. The consequence of these creative misfires and half-starts was me retreating back to my perpetually ongoing "solo" project.

All that changed about 9 or 10 months ago when I reconnected with some of my favorite musicians in the world-- a couple of guys I played with in my glorious teens and hadn't seen in 20 years. The instant creative reconnect was exhilarating. We recorded demos of five brand new tunes over the summer (in very primitive fashion) and we're pretty pumped. We're going into the studio in December to give these kids the proper treatment, hopefully with the assistance of a producer. The vibe clearly has some post-rock, instrumental leanings as well as the whole jazz/improv element. But my melodic influences are more structured and traditional pop-oriented stuff... so mix all that stuff together. The tunes all come from guys informed by jazz who don't actually get off on playing real jazz... if that makes any sense at all.

I'll be updating the myspace page over the next week. Once again these are JUST demos... Recorded with TWO MICS, and featuring minimal overdubs. The first one posted is actually the last tune we wrote this summer. It's a song called "The Tumbledown Epilogue" and serves as a wistful, instrumental bookend to the other four tunes. What made this song such a joy was the spontaneity in which it was birthed... a process of literally about ten minutes. So the sound you hear is a drummer, bass player, a guitarist (yours truly) and one loop box playing thru a song, properly, for the first time. I added a simple supportive rhythm track later and some ambient slide parts. That's it. The rest is a trio in a room, winging it through a heartfelt composition... groping.

Id like to hear how this strikes you guys! Feel free to deliver some payback for all my years of bitching and nitpicking on this forum. I have it coming!

http://www.myspace.com/stcloudredux

Edited by Greg P, 05 October 2009 - 06:45 PM.

[Joel]

Listening to it now. It sounds really nice.

[Greg P]

Thanks for listening Joel!

I've posted the other four demos. Of those, two were recorded in similar fashion to Tumbledown-- basically us just plummeting headlong thru the tune without much rehearsal. In these cases, we kept the take not because it was the cleanest version we could do, but because of an intrinsic energy going on in the room.

All of these tunes have vocals, with the exception of Tumbledown... I'll be posting the vocal versions soon. At the Bottom and Not So Bad are two very vocal-heavy tunes, which benefit greatly i think from the additional melodies. Interspersed between these five fairly straightforward songs are a handful of cool, misc. loops created in rehearsal, and a pair of frantic, free form improvisations. I might post those too at some point. Anyway, thanks for the good word!

[Peter T Chattaway]

I finally caught up with this last night, Greg. Loved it.

[Greg P]

Thanks Peter!

[M. Dale Prins]

Like a lot of that instrumental ambientish style of music, I have a hard time critiquing it in whole, but I can say that "The Tumbledown Epilogue" absolutely works for me. I don't know if you're planning on putting vocals with it, but I think one more layer of melody/countermelody (be it vocals or not) would make it even awesomer.

Dale

[Greg P]

Thanks Dale! Tumbledown was the last song of the bunch that I tackled vocally. It has lyrics and a lilting melody, but i'm still on the fence about it. Time will tell.