Sunday, February 28 2011 12:02am

Okay, so it's just after midnight and now officially Sunday. As I wrote down the date I realized that it was my sister's birthday Friday and I missed it. That's okay, I always miss it and send her a funny belated birthday card. So... I guess this won't be any different. But for the record, "Happy Birthday, Tammy!"

It might be the wee hours of the morning but I just had a great time with a dear friend and now I'm ready to do some blogging.

So Saturday morning I arrived at the studio knowing exactly what I was going to be working on. Being that it's really getting down to the last things to do on this CD that has taken so long to record that my "friends" have asked me if I'm going to call it "American Democracy". Yeah... very funny "friends!"

The only instrumental recording I have left to do is one acoustic guitar part on a song that I realized after recording it perfectly... that it was slightly out of tune. It MUST be re-recorded. But apart from that... all I have is vocals to do on like.... 4 more songs. But lyrics are written and Jeff and I seem to be on a roll and I'm getting in the studio enough to make a dent on it.

But today... or rather... Saturday morning... I arrived at the studio just before 9am. Jeff was gone. I opened up the studio, sat down and called Jeff. He was at an early appointment and on his way back. Not a problem, I just played my guitar until he got back. Jeff walked in and quickly fired everything up. I told him to pull up the song "Over and Over". This is a song that I stumbled across the music to one day when I came home from work and had just one of those days when I wanted to go straight to the bar after work. But... I came home instead. Fortunately my oldest daughter Megan was there watching the kids. I walked in and told her I needed just 20 minutes with my guitar. She has grown up with me and knows that my guitar is my release for so much. She just smiled and said, "No problem, dad". I went downstairs, fired up the gear and just started playing this chord progression that I never played before, just letting the release of all the stress go as I played. My first chord was a G, to a D-with the F#on the low E, and then an E to a C. And again... G, D, E then D to C. This song just literally came from nowhere. I grabbed a pen and started writing it down as some of the best songs I've ever came up with I've forgotten and are lost as I didn't write them down. Now I try to write everything down.

Anyway... the result was the music for "Over and Over". The lyrics came later as I re-hashed so many relationships that just seem to have went wrong for one reason or another. The 2nd verse pretty much sums it up:
"A change would be so welcomed and I.... wish it could be with you.
But when you hear a lie for so long... you start to think it's true.
But I feel that I'm alright and... and I guess it's just sad.
For this to be so familiar I find... that it's really not all that bad."

Yeah, that's the jist of the song. "Coming soon to iTunes and available to purchase on this website.:

So musically... the song was done. There was nothing left to record. And throughout the recording of the song I did a lot of thinking, double thinking, recording, changing my mind, re-recoding, then changing my mind again and re-recording still. The intro is simply the chord progression I just wrote about. And for the longest time I left it like that... just as is. Kind of along the lines of Rainbow's "Since You've Been Gone". Just a nice chord progression. But then... I thought.. no, it needs a little lead riff intro over it. So I put one down. And kept it, mind you. Then it was done. Well... almost. Then I kept hearing these harmonic notes at the end of the intro as the D chord hummed and the drums took it into the 1st verse. So I went back in and put these 4 harmonic notes down after the little lead riff intro. Ah! Now it's done! Well... wait, no. Not quite. Because for the next several weeks I kept hearing these SEVEN harmonic notes in my head during that part of the song. Finally I had to just give in and put them down. But.. I didn't really want to do them all at once and just hit 7 different harmonic notes one at a time in a 1,2,3... 4, 5.. 6, 7 pattern. Heaven's no. That would be less complicated and make things easy on Jeff. (God bless Jeff for being so patient). So on the first track I hit a harmonic note on the B string, let it ring until Dave struck the high hat for the 4th time which takes us into the 1st verse. At that time I hit the wammy bar and took the note out on a dive. Then on the next track I wait until the first note plays then hit the next note on the G string, wait for Dave to hit the high hat for the 4th time and then hit the wammy bar. I do this 7 times on 7 different tracks. When it was done we had to do some minor editing to make sure all 7 wammy bar dives all went down at the same time. I was happy with it. Then to make things easier on Ron (Gallagher who is mixing the project at his studio in California. "Go Team West Coast!") we mixed them all together, got the right volumes and then mixed all 7 down to one track. Seriously... Ron will love us for this. Then I fixed a couple of minor harmony leads at the end of the first verse that were driving me crazy. Then... I called it good and took my electric guitar off for what.... I really believe... is the final tracking to be done on electric. I've learned to never say never but... I think the electrics might officially be over.

Actually, I didn't realize that until I wrote this. Hmm... I'm not sure how I feel about that. After literally years of working on this... I'm done with the electrics. I remember when the drum tracking was done and Dave's job was done. Or when the basses were done and Bill and Jimi's parts were done. But electric guitar? This is me! Wow... interesting to think about. Wonder how I'll feel when I track that last acoustic guitar fix?

Moving on! The vocals were already done on this song and... well... I don't hate them. Singing lead vocals is still very new to me. And while I've grown quite comfortable singing with just me and Jeff in the studio and me in the iso booth by myself singing lyrics that I wrote to songs that I wrote.. I still continually question if the vocals will be up to the quality that I've put on myself to meet. I can say I'm very happy with the music. It's taken a LONG time to do but now that it's done.. I'm happy with it. Vocals, I'm not saying I'm not happy with it... I'm just saying I'm not sure. There are a couple that I'm okay with. As I've said, I have a softer David Gilmour of Pink Floyd type of voice and it works for the more laid back songs. But there are a couple that have some punch to them and I'm having a hard time finding that punch. In fact, I've went as far as to ask a singer friend of mine for some help on some background vocals. Just to give it the kick it needs.

So with all of the music and vocals done on "Over and Over"... Jeff and I started editing. This consists of going through each track: Each drum track, which there's usually about 5 of, the bass track, the abundance of guitar tracks... and taking out any noise on the track before or after the playing, finding spikes and running that track through some recording software that eliminates pops and spikes. Putting fades on the ends of tracks and what not. And actually.... we got through a lot of it. The only thing left to edit is the lead guitars and the vocals, which we'll do Tuesday night.

Once that's done... I'll be shipping off yet one more song to Ron in California to do his mixing magic on. At that time song #4 will be in California. The next song thing we'll be doing in the studio will be editing the title track "The Traceman Cometh" which is completely done and ready for editing. Once editing is down on that one it will be shipped to Ron as well. And that will of course be song #5. At that point half of the songs on the CD will be in the capable hands of Mr. Ron Gallagher who has been doing nothing short of magic.

As I've said so many times before.... one step closer.