Hi Folks,
Since my last post here, I've been working on the 6th song, “Did We Tie,” for the new album, and at this point in time I'm happy to be able to say that this song is also already nearly finished, and it's been so much fun creating it! First, I used a nylon-string, “classical” guitar for the main guitar track, then I added the main vocal track. Next, I recorded a second vocal track – sung an octave higher than the first – and then followed that with an acoustic piano track. It's been a long while since I've performed a piano part on any of my recordings. We'd have to go all the way back to my debut album for the time before this one. I've been very fortunate to have some very talented artists play piano on my subsequent albums, but it has been a long time for me and I really do enjoy composing on the piano, so I wanted to do it on my own for this song. The piano is an instrument that evokes a very different mindset for me, than playing a guitar does. Everything is laid out right in front of you, very orderly, with all the notes right there in a repeating pattern to just push at. The ideas just seem to flow very quickly and smoothly for me, from that setup and I'm really happy with how the piano track came out on this song.
All of that was most of what I had intended to record in my studio here, for this song, before getting set to start the next. But then I decided to also add some Latin percussion (a Claves track), which I had originally planned to have someone else do but wound up giving it a go myself. I had a lot of fun figuring out the best technique for getting the sound I was looking for from this instrument – which appears to be a very simple percussion instrument, and in some respects is, but in others, is less so than you might first imagine. Now that it's finished, I love how the song sounds with this newly added part! It feels so good when a song's vision starts taking shape, and the more parts that I can record to get me closer to completing that vision in a recording, the better I feel about the progress I'm making in getting that much closer to being able to release this new album for you all to hear! After the Claves part, I wasn't planning on added any other instruments on my own, but when I listened back to the recording, I was inspired to also add a Tenor guitar part. This is something I hadn't originally envisioned for this song at all, but I started composing and recording it today (Tuesday, 8/29), and am really happy that I did! Once I finish the Tenor guitar track, it will be time to start recording the seventh song for this album. That will put me at just about the half-way mark for the number of songs that I'm hoping to include on this record, and that is such a great feeling!
I look forward to sharing more of the progress of the recording of this album with you in the days and weeks to come. I greatly appreciate your interest and support! Check back here soon for more news and updates! With so much love and gratitude…
All the best!
Bill S.
