I looked at this as a setback for a few days, wallowing in self-pity about how I’ll never finish this album at this rate, blah blah blah, but then I realized this was a good opportunity. Since I started in earnest on this album of mine just about a year ago (eek), I’ve been neglecting writing and working on new songs for the most part. (I wrote a few tunes on vacations, but that’s not as much as I’d like.) So I started working on some demos for songs I wrote over the summer, and on Sunday I even wrote a new one. With my computer out of commission from some driver issues (again), I busted out my trusty iPhone and the 4-Track app and laid down some ideas.  That’s one of the most useful apps I’ve ever downloaded (if only the metronome would work from anywhere but the beginning of the song…), and with an iTunes gift card I had lying around, I still haven’t paid a single cent for an app for my phone.  I imported the tracks into Pro Tools and whipped up a quick drum part in BFD and added some bass and electric guitar and now I’ve got a shiny new demo to listen to and try to come up with lyrics for.  Good times.

I also came to the decision that, while the samples I’m using for a few horn parts in some of the songs (Garritan Personal Orchestra) sound decent, they’re not as good as I’d like.  So I set out to find a good horn player to play them for me.  I’ve got a few leads, but if anyone out there knows someone who can play trumpet, and maybe trombone and french horn as well, hit me up.  If you’re gonna do something, do it right, right?

That is, when my computer is working right…  I’d have a lot more done by now if I wasn’t spending half my time troubleshooting computer issues.  Pro Tools ran great on Windows Vista 32-bit, but I needed more than 3.2GB of ram for some of these sessions.  (32-bit operating systems only let you access between 3 and 4GB of ram…)  So, I’ve been running Windows 7 64-bit.   Win7 is running awesome for the most part, and I quite like the way it works, but Pro Tools doesn’t officially support 64-bit operating systems, so it’s been an experiment, to say the least.

For example, a few times now I’ve recorded a guitar part and gotten it just right, but then on listening back, I found pops and clicks in the audio, so I had to redo it.  Or I’d be adjusting an edit, and PT would just stop responding, forcing me to restart it and wait several minutes as it re-loads the session.  Or I’d change the hardware buffer size and PT would just crash and take down Windows with a BSOD in the process.  That’s always fun.

Somehow though, through it all, I’m still making progress.  I recorded 6 electric guitar tracks and 11 acoustic guitar tracks for a song called “The Words” tonight and yesterday.  I used two mics on the acoustic for each part (a 414 and a 57), so there are actually 28 guitar tracks in this song currently.  I’m gonna have to figure out a way to whittle those down, though; I think I might have done too much this time around.  But it is much easier to remove tracks than to record more later, so away I went!

I’m still optimistic, and listening to the new mixes as I get more and more parts recorded is still a thrill.  And yes, part of me is wondering if getting a Mac would make this go much more smoothly…  I feel dirty.

At around 11 Sunday I got up and listened back to the tracks we did the night before.  Stuff sounded great.  I picked up my guitar and was working out parts for a new song.  I had a verse and a chorus written and was trying out an idea for a bridge.  Phil woke up and came into the room and said “What was that you’re playing?  Play that again.”  I told him it was a bridge for a new song I was working on.  He told me he thought it’d make a good verse instead.  He then proceeded to sing a real cool vocal line over that, and a new song was born!  He picked up a guitar and came up with a prechorus and chorus pretty much on the spot.  He even had some of the first verse lyrics written within a few minutes.  We spent the afternoon finishing the lyrics together and arranging it, and then got to recording it.  We didn’t finish until just about 5:15am.  Phil’s vocals are done, and he wrote a guitar solo, too.  Now I’ve got to write a bass part, sing the harmonies, and add a few more guitar tracks to finish it up.

I’d changed the tempo from the demos to the final versions in most of the other songs, but realized that for this song, the demo was at the same tempo.  That’s good, since that meant I’d be able to import more tracks from the demo to use as a guide (without having to time-shift them to fit).

However, when I went to import the demo’s vocals and guitars, I noticed that the lead vocal and some of the harmony tracks were missing.  In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a big deal since I was going to redo them anyway, but it was annoying since I enjoy listening to the songs in progress and they sound better with more stuff going on than just drums and bass.

I even went to my two backup drives to see if the missing audio files were there, but no luck.  I must have lost them before I did the backups.

So, having once again experienced random file loss in old PT sessions, I’ve renewed my pledge to make sure I have sufficient backups.  What a pain.

I’d always “heard” and expected to have a guitar solo in this song, so I left a “space” in the song for one all along while demoing it.  I spent a good 30 minutes last night trying to come up with a solo.  This was always going to be the token “grunge” song on the album (which will otherwise be a bit more “indie” rock, whatever that means, with hints of alternative rock, though this is of course subject to change as I put it together), and so I’d wanted a “Jerry Cantrell” style solo in my head, but I couldn’t come up with anything I liked.  I had the idea to try a slide guitar solo, but couldn’t find my slide.  So I experimented.  Threw some crazy effects on the solo track and tried out a few ideas.

I went with some some wacky synth-sounding effect on the track that I liked, played a simple melodic solo over that section and got a neat John Frusciante thing going on.  Also threw in this little stuttery/funky guitar thing in the verses.  It totally changed the feel of the song, and I think I like it.  It had a Nirvana/Alice in Chains vibe before, and now it’s got more of an Audioslave/Chili Peppers (Stadium Arcadium era) vibe in there as well.  Cool stuff.  I love when songs just evolve like that.  The whole is totally greater than the sum of its parts.

So, yesterday, after sleeping in til about 1pm (The Velmas had a show in Syracuse Sat. night and I didn’t get to bed til about 7am Sun. morning), I got to work on demo’ing one of them.  It was between working on the song and mowing the lawn.  The grass will live to grow another day.  Five hours later, I’ve got a fairly good-sounding demo on my hands. This is one of the poppier tunes I’ve written in a few years, and I’m planning on doing this one with The Velmas.  I’m pretty psyched about it.  Maybe once I get lyrics done I’ll throw it up on Myspace.  (You know, regurgitate it, or something.)

So in the combined 3 weeks over the last 3 summers I’ve spent in Chautauqua, I’ve come up with a total of 13 new songs.  Of those, I think I’ve been able to complete (i.e. with lyrics and everything) maybe 4 of them.  A couple are gonna be on my upcoming solo CD, and the others on the next Velmas album.  But the others are languishing on my hard drive and iphone (I record quick demos “in the field”, as it were, so I don’t forget them), waiting for me to find the time to work on them and bring them to fruition.  What I’d give to be able to spend as much time as I wanted doing just that…  As it is, I’ll keep spending my free Sundays and odd hours on weeknights, I guess.  In between recording the solo CD and doing Velmas stuff, that is.  And you know, mowing the lawn, doing laundry, eating, sleeping…

this is just the demo that i recorded in my home bedroom studio, all by myself; mike maenza (from the x’s) will be gracing this track on drums for the real deal.

there’s a bit more happening in this demo than on my old acoustic demos, that’s for sure. drums, bass, guitars, vocals, tambourine, even some sitar on this one! pro tools is great. i’ll be re-recording all of this from scratch for the album.

so anyway, please check it out, and let me know what you think!

listen to “blue skies black”:
myspace.com/mikegrosshandler

i finally put together some lyrics for it this last week, after thinking i’d never finish it. i like it. it’s got a name, too: “blue skies black”. i’d been calling it “ladyboat”, for fairly obvious reasons… it’s a rather scathing break-up song set to relatively upbeat music. there’s a sitar in the bridge, though that’s more the beatles and type o negative’s influence than anything i heard on that ship. the guitar solo is something i imagine harvey danger would have done, perhaps.

i’m thinking of adding this to the batch of songs i’d already decided on including on my upcoming solo cd. that’d make 12 songs, and that’s ok, i think.

The song was inspired by an awful article I read last year about a kid who was killed. Apparently, this kid was at the site where his friend died in an accident earlier that night. He was playing guitar, and when everyone else left, he stayed behind to play one last song for his friend, when someone else hit HIM and killed him. It struck me as something I might do, playing a song for my friend like that. It’s a completely horrific story and it moved me to write a song, from the point of view of the guitarist friend. Here’s the original article which I saved:

Teen killed at spot where friend died hours earlier
POSTED: 5:12 p.m. EDT, March 25, 2007
• Teen killed by hit-and-run driver hours after friend died in the same spot
• Andrew Coit was hit at makeshift roadside memorial for his friend
• Police searching for hit-and-run driver

WEST WARWICK, Rhode Island (AP) — A teenager was killed by a hit-and-run driver at the same spot where his 14-year-old friend had died in a car crash just hours earlier.

Andrew Coit, 18, was hit by a car after 4 a.m. Saturday as he played a guitar at a makeshift memorial to Darien Plass, 14, on West Warwick’s Main Street. Plass died after driving his mother’s minivan into a utility pole late Friday, friends of both teenagers told the Providence Journal.

“He wanted to play one last song for (Plass), and that was the last time anyone saw him. He loved singing. He died doing what he loved doing,” said Coit’s friend, Dennis Sullivan.

Plass’ friends said he had been drinking and took his mother’s minivan without her knowledge. Coit and other friends set up the memorial.

Sullivan told the newspaper the mourners remained at the memorial until about 4 a.m., but Coit stayed behind to play one more song for Plass by himself.

Minutes later, police received a call of a man down, and an ambulance crew found Coit on the sidewalk. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.

“He died pretty much instantly. He did not suffer,” Alan Coit said of his son.

Police were searching for the hit-and-run driver who hit Coit, said Detective Sgt. James Tiernan.