DAY 1 STUDIO
This morning I picked up a lovely gift from a student, a beautiful deerskin medicine bag with purple beading outlining the corners. I felt it was such an auspicious way to begin the first day of working on my new album! Today was a pre-production meeting to go over the new songs and ideas for recording and I am so excited about the new project. I delivered the 11 tracks to Adam the producer about a month ago for him to listen and evaluate.
Today I played them live for Adam and we went over the keys and feels. I slowly begin to take off my songwriter's hat and put on the performer's cap.

First change is I am going to record the song Boy in a higher key now and we worked out an alternate strumming pattern with a way for me to build and highlight the guitar along with the dynamics for the vocals. The new key gives me a chance to really use power in my vocals so will be fun practicing with the new power and richer tone. I think I may use our rooftop garden to belt it out while practicing as no one is up there these days :)

We changed the key to F#minor for the song Today and Alice took a big gulp when she heard the news. It's an easy key for guitarists and singers not so pianists poor gal! But the new key does help my vocals in the bottom end of my register from fading away.

Adam totally changed the feel for  How Would We Know into a ska skanky reggae style ( his words)  and it so works. I love the song but for some reason I couldn't find the right vibe and he sure found it! This is going to be a great tune to record.

Adam had a recommendation to add a chorus to the song Dizzy. I explained my reasoning for not having a hook, my intention was to intensify the feeling of not having anything to hang on to like when one is dizzy. He asked me to think about adding one so I came home and played and a lovely dreamy chorus fell out of the heavens. Love it and is very hooky giving folks something dreamy to hang on to and sing along with. This is going to be a long and adventurous track! I sent an mp3 of it to Adam and heard back just now, he thinks it's fantastic, YAY!

We have 4 tracks lined up for Huggybear to shine on and 2 will feature him as soloist. Alice will be on hand for her lovely piano and or organ. Alice and I have also been working on harmonies for some of the songs too.

Next step is to record scratch tracks in 2 weeks and drums to be recorded in 3 with percussionist Elliot Polski! I plan on writing and blogging the process as I tend to forget how things evolve when people ask me later on and this will serve as documentation in the process of making an album. Stay tuned.