I’m currently listening to a variety of Fleetwood Mac as I write this. One of the songs called “Come” off of 2003’s Say You Will features Lindsey Buckinghams gritty guitar tone along with the pounding rhythms of John Mc Vie and Mick Fleetwood. This makes for one of their heaviest songs ever. Overall a great song to rock out to. Anyways, on to other stuff.
Rock Opera
Mixing has been coming along slowly but surely with about 3/4 of the songs being finished. It’s been interesting mixing all the textures and soundscapes. One of the challenges have been with co writer Barry Brown’s songs. He has a fantastic sense of melody and chord structure and has written some great ballads for this musical. His arrangement style is very simple with the song textures originally being based around piano and strings. To help vary his songs, I’ve applied different instrumental textural arrangements to the songs. In some cases I stripped the arrangement down to just feature the piano. In other songs, I used the full string texture throughout with almost no piano. In another case I chose a combination of the two. All in all, I thing I’ve been able to compliment the lyrics that go with these songs.
Wilton Said…
A few weeks ago, I met up with an old friend who I’ve had the pleasure of playing with throughout the years. Deb Ray is a bass player who I first met when he joined an early band of mine called Crisis Ten. After the band broke up, we went our separate musical ways. However, he has leant his jazzy writing skills to a few songs throughout the years. “Shopping Asia” was a song which was jammed out while we were in Crisis Ten which I later rerecorded for my 1st CD World up my Ass. He also played on a few tracks on that CD. He later helped with the writing on the song “Circus Alive” off of the Butterfly Plague. He was responsible for some of the riffs which appear in the opening and the verse. He later played with the WS band substituting for Frank Heisler while he was dealing with health issues.
Currently, I’m thinking of recording a 3 or 4 song download E.P. Two songs are already written but I wanted at least a third. I had a few rhythmic and textural ideas but nothing as far as the actual notes, chords or melodies. Deb was able to come in and we jammed through a few of his Bass riff ideas and throughout the weeks I’ve been able to arrange them into a part of a song. I probably have a 1/3rd of the musical textural ideas written in my head, but I’ve still got 2/3rds to go. So if you happen to see me out and about staring off into space while my hands and feet are twitching, I’m probably writing and arranging in my head. Do Not disturb.
Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and Hippy Holidays
Thanks
Wilton