Last night I pulled out my
Oxygen 61 Keyboard,
connected it to my
laptop,
and auditioned
MIDI
horn voices from
Logic Pro X,
for the R&B song's quartet "horn chart." I've picked
a "trumpet," a "trombone," a "tenor sax,"
and a "baritone sax." I chose the voices then adjusted the
settings for them and made note of each setting. Except for some
ideas in my head, no composing of the horn arrangement has happened
yet; that'll start today.
Last night I officially started working on the arrangement for the
MIDI
horn chart for the R&B song. I probably got about 75-90%, or so,
of the trumpet part composed. It'll be the main melody part of the
horn quartet. AT this point the plan still also includes two saxes
and a trombone voice.
STRANGER DANGER:
I've been purposefully avoiding Season V of
Stranger Things
because I'm rightfully afraid I'll drop straight down the rabbit
hole and binge every available episode at the sake of my music agenda.
But I've decided to risk it and attempt to temper my viewing. I'm
dropping back to the first four seasons first. The last few months,
I'd watched some of the episodes via YouTube
reactors, about the first two and-a-half seasons, but the jump cuts
to prevent copyright hits made watching them a little annoying. So,
I'm back on Netflix, where
I started back with S1:ep.1,
"Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers."
Fellow modern TV-watching bingers will get it that I want to be totally
immersed back in the ST universe with a refreshed experience
of the whole cannon before I dive into Season V. I confess that I
binged into from the start into season 2 on Thursday while I did a
lot of 2025/2026 switchover personal and business data documentation
work. That was necessary crossover work, so I wasn't slacking off
the music project(s). But now that business is out of the way, so
Stranger Things gets slide in where it fits from this point
onward. And it's been a real bitch avoiding Seasin V spoilers.
Technically, this artist's retreat spilled into the first few days
of the new year. It was productive, though I didn't get to a lot of
the things on the agenda list that were potential. I didn't even get
one song for Album 2.0 Project
totally competed. In fact, all I worked on, artistically, was that
project's R&B song. I recorded the rest of the piano work for
the song as well as the bass line and the start of the MIDI horn
chart. I also have finished off the lyrics for the song.
Early yesterday morning, just past midnight, in a session that started
Saturday evening, I began recording the
MIDI
horn chart, playing on my
M-Adio Oxygen 61.
I started with the first trumpet, recording from the horn intro at
the start of the song, up to the end of the first chorus section.
Yesterday, in two chunks, I finished off the first trumpet.
Beforehand, I'd gone on a hike at
the Narrows Reserve
in the early afternoon and did some composing in my head for the
instrumental section, which will feature the horn chart.
For the record, the instrumental section through Chorus 3 was done
in seven takes; the Outro in three. Then I migrated the
stem
from the
24-Track
into the song project in
Logic Pro X
on my laptop.
Only three more horn voices, two backing vocals, and a lead vocal to
go.
Also in the wee hours of yesterday morning I finished off the lyrics,
getting that third verse out of the way and tweaking the rest of
the lyrics just slightly. And, of course, I can guarantee that odds
are in favor of more tweaking being done.
Though I knew it wasn't likely, I had some hope that I'd get to at
least the first cut of this project during
Artist's Retreat ‐
Staycation
2025, but that didn't
Happen.
My plan with this one is to
mix
and master
each of the eight* tracks in the order they will appear on the album;
that order has been determined for decades, and to do so with each
track in between finishing songs for the
Album 2.0 Project.
With the Heart Walks opening track, I also am seriously considering
adding a bass line. It initially wasn't intended to have one, but
I'm rethinking that. So, after I'm finally done with the R&B song
for
Album 2.0,
I'll drop into to start this project with Track 1, which may or may
not begin by writing and recording a bass line.
*) There are also two extra tracks from the Heart Walks
sessions that won't be on the album , but I'll mix and master
those, too.
It would have been a shock if I'd managed to get to the first track
of the ambient music album project during the
Artist's Retreat.
This one is solely a
remastering
project. There are five tracks and technically I could get them all
remastered in the same session. So, this one could be attended to
at any point during my little critical-pathways musical endeavors of
2026. Though it could easily be completed first, I'm not sure I want
this one released before Heart Walks,
however.
Recently I've been twice invited to audition for a particular
theatre production that is coming up. I'm not sure where I stand on
this. I've not yet come to a final decision about my future relationship
with theatre, at least with the local
non-professional theatre
community. And I also don't know if I want to pull a lot of focus
from the current music project(s). The particular stage production
seems like a nice opportunity but I'm skittish about most stage-work
right now. The last thing I did, I only did because I'd committed
to it before I started having second thoughts about me and most
local theatre. I still am looking at the exit door. I haven't walked
through it because a few people I still trust have urged me to hold
off.
Continuing work on the
MIDI
horn chart for the R&B song, I started on the second horn voice,
a tenor sax voice, Monday night. I composed and recorded the part
from the start of the song, the horn chart intro, though the end of
the second verse. I was able to record that in one take, thankyouverymuch.
Tuesday night I wrote and recorded the sax's harmony part during
the instrumental break. Again: One take, but we're only talking
nine measures, so, there was limited room for a misstep. To be
honest, in the technical sense, it was really two takes, but each
of those was one half of the whole section, so I only played the
whole section once while the record light was on. Last night I finished
the song in eight total takes: Verse 3 ‐ one take; Choruses
2 & 3 ‐ five takes; Outro ‐ two takes. Now I move
onto the MIDI trombone. After that will be a second trumpet.
My original plan was to have two saxes, one trumpet, and the trombone
voice in the brass quartet. I've since realigned that to two trumpets
and one sax, keeping the trombone. That second trumpet is likely
to be in the "soprano" position of the quartet.
Having finished the sax part last night, it's now migrated into the
song's
Logic Pro X
project.
Over the weekend I finished the
MIDI
horn chart for the R&B song, employing, as I've detailed recently,
two trumpet voices, a sax voice, and a trombone, from the internal
Logic Pro X
MIDI voices, executed through my
Oxygen 61 Keyboard.
And, as is my practice, I ran a sound cord from my
laptop
into track channels on the
Tascam 24-Track recorder,
rather than recording the performances directly into the LPX project
for the song. Then, of course, I migrated from the 24-track into the
LPX project.
In a session from late Friday night through early Saturday morning,
I wrote, rehearsed, and recorded the trombone part, which is mostly
the low (or the "bass") part. Because I worked and recorded
each section separately, as I've done with all these "horn"
parts, I again didn't have a lot of takes for each section:
Horn Chart Intro ‐‐ one take
Verse 1-Chorus 1 ‐‐ two takes
Instrumental ‐‐ three takes
Verse 3-Chorus 3 ‐‐ three takes
Outro ‐‐ three takes
Then later in the day, Saturday, I turned to the fourth horn voice
in my little MIDI horn quartet, the second‐chair trumpet. For
the most part, this second trumpet has taken the high end of the
horn harmonies, the soprano chair, if you will. This one also was
ultimately done in very few takes, for the same reason as the
other horn voices.
Horn Chart Intro ‐‐ one take
Verse 1 & 2 ‐‐ two takes
Chorus 1 ‐‐ one take
Instrumental ‐‐ three takes
Verse 3 ‐‐ one take
Chorus 2 &3 ‐‐ four takes
Outro ‐‐ five takes
And, of course, I've tweaked the lyrics a bit. I've rewritten a
couple lines in Verse 3, as well as replacing words in other lines.
Some of it has to do with vowel and consonant combinations that I
think will sound better. Some of it is to get more precise meaning.
Last night, after having
mixed
and mastered
a new demo of, now, all the instrumentation, rendering what
can be called, "the karaoke demo," I started playing
around with the melody for the vocal. First of all, I've been hearing
a very
Sting-like
R&B vocal, but I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to pull that type
of vocal off, not in the register I've been hearing in my head. I
gave it a bit of a try, but my voice wasn't warmed up, and I am
again in another bout of a slight soar throat. I'll be back on it
this evening, maybe trying something in a slightly lower register.
I think I'll first remix and remaster this karaoke version
to take a lot of low-end (i.e.: bass frequencies) out of the
EQ.
Some of the song seems a bit bass-heavy and muddy. I might try
pulling some of the EQ gain down for various instruments, too.
There's also one instrument that can stand to have some
high-frequencies tamed down a bit.
A LITTLE ACTING, A LITTLE MONEY IN THE BANK:
I have booked an acting gig, since it's outside the regular
non-professional theatre
community, as well as a short-term commitment that won't demand loads
of my time and attention and it's a gig with a paycheck. I'll
be doing another
guided improv
gig for the U.D. Law School.
It's coming up in a couple weeks. I won't be buying a Lamborghini
off my earnings, but extra cash is extra cash. Meanwhile I'll still
be able to focus mostly on my 2026 music ventures.
FREELANCE DV WORK, A LITTLE MORE MONEY IN THE BANK:
Still won't be going to the Lamborghini dealership for this one,
but I've also picked up a gig shooting some
staged readings.
I don't know how much detail I can give out, so at the moment I'm
giving no specifics. Again, there will be a stipend, or an honorarium,
but it's not going to amount to much. But, I'll cash the check.
Because, you know: "extra cash is extra cash." I'll be
editing the footage into the DV movies, as well. This still
isn't a major, time-consuming veture, so I will still be able to give
that good time to this year's music projects.
Last night I began to earnestly work on the vocal melody line for
the R&B song. I was correct when I said in the last blog post
that I might not be able to pull off a
Sting-like
vocal in the register I'd been hearing in my head. I did have
to drop the register, take the notes down a few steps. Now, any
resemblance to a Sting vocal is lost; though there wasn't going to
be a great resemblance to begin with.
I also had to excise some words to get a good rhythm for the vocal.
I guess my thought here is that if I could cut words but not
compromise the meaning of the line, the lyrics are not suffering
the loss.
After I got a decent handle on the melody I'm composing and did the
lyric editing, I rehearsed for a while. I actually did at least one
lyrical edit during this phase. I didn't rehearse for long because
my throat still is a little sore and I didn't want to push it. That
seems to be my karma: that when I'm about to record a vocal, my
throat is at some level of sore. I'm starting to believe it's
some sort of psychological reaction. But, I'm also brought to mind
that a few years back an
otorhinolaryngologist
told me that one of my maintenance drugs dries out the back of my
throat, so I'm guessing that is a factor.
I did set up to record in the bedroom. There's not great sound-proofing
there, but it's better than the rest of the apartment. But I'm not
settled completely on the melody. It needs some fine-tuning. Plus,
because of the sore-throat issue I wouldn't have been ready, anyway.
During the setup, I did put my new
V3 Preamp
between my
Shure SM7B vocal mic
and the
Tascam 24-Track recorder,
but I was getting noise that I couldn't completely eliminate, so I
pulled it from the chain. I'm hoping I can solve the issue because
the main reason I bought that preamp is to push the volume of that
mic's signal, which I have found to be rather weak when plugged into
the recorder, unless I push the gain to a place where, again, there
is too much associated noise. My rank-amateur status as a sound
engineer clearly is a hindrance in these sorts of situations. I'm
confident a seasoned engineer could fix these issues in a few
minutes.
I've taken a break from the
Album 2.0 project,
even though I've not recorded the vocals for the R&B song because
my throat's not well enough to do the song justice. While I let my
voice recover for a good vocal, I've begun the next step in the
process of
mixing
and mastering
the opening Heart Walks album song. And, I'm still considering
adding a bass line, which originally wasn't part of the arrangement.
The general plan is to finish recording a song for
Album 2.0
then mix and master a song for the Heart Walks, then go back
to the next Album 2.0
song, etc., etc.; because of the sore throat I've altered the plan.
The Heart Walks album, as a small few of you may know, was
recorded from circa 1984 through circa 1987, all at my music partner,
Rich Hisey's home, in his music room, on his
Fostex
four-channel multi-track cassette recorder, which I think was an
X-15 model;
a few years back, I picked up a
Fostex X-28 four-track cassette recorder
and that's what I played the multi-track masters on to put them on
my Tascam 24-Track recorder
to digitize them by recording them in real-time from the cassette tape.
Of course, the stems
have been transferred onto my laptop;
and now the stems from the opening cut are in a
Logic Pro X
project.
With the original multi-track master being four-track, there are
multiple instruments
bounced
onto each track (stem), except the track with the vocal, which does
have instruments on the track, but either before or after the vocal,
and only one instrument on each end. It was suggested that I get
some modern software to separate each instrument out of each track
to create a single stem for each instrument, for more dynamic and
versatile mixing. This, ala Peter Jackson's work with
The Beatles'Get Back documentary
and the
"Now and Then"
single ‐‐ That being the proper and ethical use of AI,
unlike the prolific, unethical theft of intellectual property running
rampet,including the unethical, unauthorized reinterpretations of
artists' work and the uses of their voices and images without permission.
I wasn't able to get good separation with the app I acquired, so
there's fifteen bucks I've probably thrown away. Clearly I need to
get more robust software for the task, unless I find I've misunderstood
the process with this app I have; but it doesn't seem I'm missing
any procedure. I may also opt to just mix the four tracks into a
stereo track as they are. The mixes on the stereo demos I have from
80s aren't hateful. There might even be something charming about
such a retro mix.
I'd thought that maybe I could slide back into this project to lay
the vocals for the R&B song over this long weekend and get
that song wrapped, but my throat is still not well enough. I think
maybe I'm suffering from an attempted flu virus attack. But since
I have enough brains to not be a dumbassed, anti-vax fool but rather
someone who knows science is a good thing, I've had my
mRNA
flu vaccine, which has made my symptoms reasonably minor, yet still
enough to interfere with good vocal work.
However, I didremaster
the karaoke demo to take some of the bass frequencies out of the
EQ
in order to eliminate some muddiness. I did it in the
stereomixed-master
rather than messing with EQ in the multi-track project. In retrospect
I should have gone back there, mostly because there is one instrument
that needs to have the high end tamed down without pulling those
frequencies from the whole mix. That instrument is more of a
problem in headphones so I still now have a better demo to play when
I work on full-on composing and rehearsal of the vocal melody, but
I will go back and tame that instrument's highe end at some point,
either as another iteration of the karaoke demo or when doing the
final mixing and
mastering.
WHAT'S THE OPPOSITE OF AN "EXPERT"?:
It's a great understatement to say that I am not a sound engineer
of the calibre of a
Geoff Emerick
or some such who would be well-known in those circles. The best word
to describe me is "novice," and that is the most
flattering word to use. I write this to preface that I am running
into an issue with the
mixing
of the opening song from this album project, an issue that I think
a half-seasoned sound engineer would be far more on top of. The
problem is that some of the
stems
for this song ‐‐ and one stem in particular ‐‐
have a lot of hiss to eliminate, but to do so at a good measure has
proven to take some frequency out of the recorded subject to a point
that dilutes the quality too much. I've fiddled with the
EQ,
I've used both the
High-pass filter
and the Low-pass filter,
but there's still noticeable hiss if I don't compromise the dynamics
of the recorded sound.
Going back to that "ethical use of A.I.," I'm sure I can
get an A.I. app that can solve this problem for me. The one I purchased
doesn't serve that purpose. I may have to look for one that does.
If anyone happens to actually read this, and if any of you happen
to have a good suggestion:
www.klstorer.com/contact.html.
SLIGHT MONKEY WRENCHING:
Me, working yesterday on creating flashcards which
now most of could be obsolete.
I worked quite a few hours yesterday on the information for the
upcoming U.D. Law Schoolguided improv
gig, where I'll play a couple witnesses. I used this day off to be
on track getting ahead of the game so I would not be cramming at the
last minute. Then, toward the end of the day, I was sent a revised
set of documents for the case. After having put so much work in
yesterday, it's safe to say that I was pretty frustrated about this
turn of events. I haven't look at the revisions yet but I get the
sense there are some significant changes, though I very much welcome
being wrong about this. The most irritating part is this twist may
mean I have to put work on any music projects on hold this week,
and I am not enthused about that.
Me, last week, comparing the facts & info from
the revised case documents against what I'd previously
put on my index cards for study.
There was supposed to be a
U.D. Law Schoolguided improv
yesterday, but the snowpocalypes that's attacked over a good portion
of the country, including the
Ohio Valley,
prompted the cancellation of the in-person mock trial. Rather it was
decided to hold in a zoom session, with fellow students taking the
roles of the witnesses. However, I've been asked if I can be available
next Saturday.
But we actors did do the Saturday sessions on campus at U.D. The
case was a robbery/homicide. I played the sheriff for the prosecution,
then a forensics and police procedure expert witness for the defence.
I must admit I panicked on the stand a few times in both roles,
having momentary problems recalling particular important details
that the character should know. The characters we play need to give
the law students the correct information from the files we've been
provided. I don't think I've ever not been at least a little nervous
that I'm going to forget some vital fact. I want to best serve the
law students.
I think I've written this before, somewhere in the archive of this
blog, that here are always built-in flaws in the facts and thus the
testimonies of all the witnesses; it's part of the learning experience
and training for the law students. So many times have I been studying
the facts and thought to myself, "This guy is an idiot" or
"Oh man, opposing counsel is going to have a field day with this
crap." I am often dumbfounded when the opposing counsel lets
something ridiculous slip by unchallenged. This is probably where
we actors come in more useful to the students as we have more of an
ability to commit with conviction to bad leaps of logic and nonsense
in our characters' testimonies, more so than another student with no
acting experience might have.
At any rate, overall, I feel good about the gig Saturday. Though it
is a bummer that the snowpocalypes has likely cut my paycheck in
half....but then, maybe not.
I have had a bit of
preproduction
work going on as the DV movie
director
‐‐ and the camera operator. There were a few inventory
items I needed: more heavy extension cords, a couple lite extension
cords, and a surge protected power strip, all as potential needs for
the location shoots.
I got those last Tuesday at a local Menards.
Micheal London also procured a wireless mic system with two
wireless Lavalier mics
and two wireless handheld mics. Jared will wear a Lavalier during
his performances. Michael will have a hand held to use during the
talkback
sessions. I'll be running from the wireless receiver into my
digital eight-track recorder,
to have better audio for the
final cuts
of the DV movies.
I should make it clear that Michael purchased the wireless system
as his property, or maybe OPC's property, however, I could stand to
own such a system, so that's going on my wish list. I also realized
that I could stand to have my own supply of
gaffer tape,
so I order some over the weekend.
STILL COMING THIS YEAR?....MAYBE:
I'm thinking that I may have to regroup on the
mixing
and mastering
of this album. If I had a newer
MacBook Pro
with an
Apple silicon chip
I'd be able to upgrade my
Logic Pro X
to the latest version that can better isolate the sounds on each
stem.
But I don't have the finances for that right now. I am going to try
to process each stem with a
High-pass filter
and/or a
Low-pass filter,
before they're loaded into an LPX project. That, to eliminate the
hiss tape noise and the hum tape noise inherent on the original
analog tape recordings. But I'll probably also search out a better
audio AI program to help me with the task. Then I'll load the stems
into a new LPX project for the first song, and try again. And again:
the proper and ethical use of AI audio technology. It's just that
I'm simply not gaining satisfactory ground with the current LPX
project; I need cleaner stems to load into a new one.
I have no idea what kind of delay this puts on the album project as
a whole. I'm not ready to drop my current goal of early to mid summer
for a release, but I am preparing myself for the possibility. If it
gets pushed beyond this year, I will be sad. I want this done and
out, but it needs to be the best it can be.
I've decided to break ‐‐ or, more accurately,
bend ‐‐ the rules, and reveal a little
more about a song. Here I am, on Saturday, auditing
a portion of the remix of the horn chart for the
R&B song, though isolated from the rest of the
instrumentation.
Unfortunately there's been little to no activity recently for any
music projects. But Saturday, I did finally
remix
and remaster
the karaoke demo of the R&B song. I rebalanced the mix, including
a fine-tune
sweetening
of the MIDI
horn chart *(see the video on the left). I also tamed that
one instrument needing some high-end frequencies lowered
or cut from the
EQ.
It needed a volume drop, too.
This mix and master serves as the templet foundation for the final
mix and master, but, of course there will be adjustments to the
multi-track master as well as the mastering project. For instance,
as I've listened to this latest iteration of the
stereo
master, it's clear the piano parts need to be boosted in their
high-end EQ and have their low ends tempered down. They're just
not reading clean enough in the mix. Hey, I may still not be an
audio engineer in the class of
Alan Parsons,
Todd Rundgren,
etc., etc., but I am getting better, if in baby steps.
Like most all my DV movie productions, I'm shooting these performances
three-camera,
using my
Canon Vixia DV cameras.
I'm recording the audio on my
Tascam DP-03 eight-track digital portable recorder.
Yesterday I migrated Thursday's footage and audio files from the
perspective machines onto a two terabyte external harddrive and into
the Final Cut Pro X
project for this gig. I didsweeten
the audio before I dropped it into FCPX.
There was a rather new and odd issue importing the DV footage from
the cameras into the FCPX project. It didn't seem like the DV files
were actually copying over, but rather FCPX was using their original
location on the
SD card
in each camera. It may have been that since each DV file was large,
making up almost five to six hours of footage on each card, that it
was simply taking a long time to copy over. Still, to be safe, I used
an SD card reader to copy all the files into a folder on the external
hard drive I'm using to edit together the DV movies of the three
performances. Then I migrated those into the FCPX project for the
first performance. And copying those in did indeed take a few hours;
the copying was not finished when I went to bed last night. Whether
or not I needed this work-around, at least the footage is accessible
for the edit, and I have a solution if I need it.
It turns out that I was not needed for the second half of the
guided improv
gig for the U.D. Law School,
which was rescheduled this past Saturday from the previous Sunday.
Of course, it cut my paycheck in half, but it did give me more time
and room to work on other projects.
My throat is in much better shape now, so I plan to give the vocals
for the R&B song a shot tonight. The last few days I've had an
idea for my approach to the lead vocal, which will get me to, or
close to, the melody line I originally heard. I'm going to at least
experiment tonight. I've been sucking on lemon eucalyptus cough
drops and drinking
Throat Coat tea
just to be safe. I know I have other gig projects to attend to,
but music has been getting the short shrift lately and I'd like to
get the recording of this R&B song finished.
I'll do another post soon where I go into some of the production
issues I've been having with the DV movies of the readings. But
for now: it's Two Down, One to Go.
My weekend was a big bust until the eleventh hour. I was down ill,
spending a lot of time conked out in bed or simply in bed watching
TV, and usually drifting in and out of consciousness. I managed to
rally toward the end of the day, yesterday, and got productive on
at least one project: the
Album 2.0 Project
‐‐ see next entry. I'm not 100% today, but I am
functional. Good thing, too. I have a lot of stuff that needs
attention.
VOCALIS REALIS:
After too much delay I finally got back to that lead vocal for the
R&B song, though my throat hasn't recovered as much to the point
that I could give it my all; I thought it had but I was wrong. Still,
last night I worked with a new remix of the karaoke demo of the song
and was able to mostly get a good start on the melody for the lead
vocal. A few high notes were a little weak and flat due to throat
issues, but I know where I want to go in those moments. No surprise,
I also slightly tweaked the lyrics.
I've gone back to the vocal register and melodic elevation I'd
originally envisioned, but went for it with a different vocal approach.
Earlier, I'd made a decision to bring everything down a few steps
because I was not getting the vocal I'd envisioned. But I came across
a short essay about the
Paul McCartney
of today, the legend in his eighties who's still selling out stadiums
and playing three-hour rock shows with amazing personal stamina. It
was posted on a facebook page called John Fan Worldwide and
it says in part:
?
Of course not. The high notes are harder to reach, and there
is a fragility in his tone now, a warble that wasn't there
before. But rather than shying away from it, Paul leans into
it...that fragility adds a layer of emotional weight that a
25-year-old Paul simply couldn't convey....
I've further been focused lately on what I find a masterpiece, a
career apex, from the late, legendary
Johnny Cash:
his brilliant, excellent cover of
Nine Inch Nails'
"Hurt,"
written by
Trent Reznor.
Johnny's interpretation is raw, intimate, and vulnerable. The
whole album,
American IV: The Man Comes Around,
exemplifies a music legend in his eighties who, alluding back to
the John Fan Worldwide essay, is leaning into the fragilities
in the vocals that age has brought on. I really love that whole
album. Just like I really like Paul's
McCartney III
from 2020. Both are recordings by great recording artists who are
at the top of the game as it is at the time. For those of you
fortunate enough to know who this is,
Harry Nilsson
did the same thing. Harry, at one point had one of the best voices,
ever, in pop music. His rendition of
"Without You"
is one of the greatest vocal performances in pop history. A few years
after that came out, he'd seriously compromised his singing ability
with a hard-core life-style of excessive drinking and heavy partying.
Yet he went on the record some great albums. Some of my favorite
work by him comes from the vocalist who could no longer sing
"Without You" anywhere close to the way the Harry of the
early 70s could. He'd compromised his instrument, yet he still gave
us some wonderful performances with the instrument he then had.
I am absolutely not putting myself on the level of any of these three
brilliant music makers. But I also don't suck. On the other hand,
as I've written in this blog before, and recently, I'm not the singer
I once was, for two reasons. One of those reasons has at least a
partial solution. I am not the singer I was in my teens, my twenties,
my thirties, because I'm not as in practice as I was then, especially
my teens and twenties when I was singing almost every day, and usually
a couple hours each of those days. I can greatly improve my vocals
today by getting myself back in practice, by warming up more,
by rehearsing more. The other reason is the one I need to accept.
The one that Paul and Johnny accepted: I'm older; age is going to
take a toll on capability regardless of the singer's attention to
staying in the best shape they can. So, as did Paul and Johnny
‐‐ and Harry ‐‐ I have to lean into the
capabilities I have now; though I know I can improve them to some
degree, maybe some great degree, who knows. But I'm still not
going to be the singer I was at twenty-five or thirty years old.
With "The Answer,"
off Virtually Approximate Subterfuge,
I'd already taken this approach. I wrote that song in, I believe,
1978 at the age of twenty. I had really strong vocal control in those
days and could slide seamlessly from my middle register into falsetto.
The original melody of the song had me doing just that in a few
spots. Forty-three years later when I recorded it for the VAR
album, the slides were anything but seamless, and hitting the upper
pitches proved a challenge. Again, some of it was not being in the
consistent shape the twenty-year-old's voice was in; but then there
was the sexagenarian standing at the 2021 microphone. I had to alter
some of the melody. But, you know what, the new melody works better.
As I wrote in my
On-Liner Notes page entry for the song:
...The new melody line...is a much better fit for the song.
The new melody is jazzier, and there's more of a jaded,
contemplative mood to it. It gives more weight to the pondering
of that dude, sitting on that bar stool, and I think, more
credibility to him and his musings.
I think, had I recorded an album at twenty and had put
"The Answer" on it, with that original vocal
melody...it would have rightfully reflected a young man
sitting at that bar...It would have come from a quite honest
perspective of relative inexperience with life. It would have
been the pondering of a young seeker.
The version that exists has more gravitas. It's a sexagenarian
on that bar stool, questioning humanity's foolishness from
a place of lived observation. And the pondering of the
challenges to humanity's understanding and approach to
spirituality is served better....
That this song, conceived when I was a much younger man, one
who could rightfully still be called a boy...didn't surface
to the world until the much older man was able to refine it,
is a good thing....
When I wrote this new R&B song, like I've already said, I very
much intended on a very Sting-like
R&B feel all the way around, including the vocal. I'm pretty
sure Sting is a first tenor; in my younger days I was a full-on
second tenor and age has probably dropped me closer to a baritone.
Still, originally I heard Sting singing this song, so my target was
to cop as close to a "Sting vocal" as possible. I don't
think a strong imitation was ever going to happen, even were I still
twenty-five-ish. But last night, even with my throat still a tad on
the gruff side, I managed notes in the range I'd first conceived,
just not terribly Sting-like.
There's more experimenting to do. There are some other approaches
to the vocal I want to try. And there's letting my throat heal more,
too. I'm impatient to get the recording of this song wrapped, but
I'm not going to rush it and compromise things. And if I find I need
to alter the melody to get something that works better, that's what
I will do.
Before I gave the vocal a shot, last night, I
remixed
the song then
remastered
the karaoke demo. Again, the idea is to fine-tune the mix as I go
along, getting it closer to that final, locked mix for the finished
recording. I've gained ground, to be sure. The piano parts are not
as muddy in the mix as they were, that due to my punching the high
end and tempering the low end of the
EQ
for each. But the balance of volume levels between all the instrumentation
is still off. The mix is still very much a work in progress.
Showing weekends
Through Feb 15, 2026
Tickets on sale...
_for_By_The_Riverside-2026-01-04-B&W-400.png)
