Acoustic Album Update #4
Here’s an exceptionally juicy update on my upcoming acoustic album! In this post I’ll recap what I’ve done since my last update and also give you some audio goodness! Read on!
Last time, I told you about how I recorded guitar parts for 2 songs. At that point, I had already noodled around on those ideas, so I felt comfortable doing it that way…sort of. Now I can say that it turned out pretty well, and I might do that for the rest of the original songs.
So the first song to come out of that little experiment is called “Ooh La La (Ooh La La La La La La).” I would describe it as having a happy, upbeat vibe. It went through a number of revisions, mostly on the vocal tracks.
One of my goals on this album is to have a different vocal sound than I usually do, for better or for worse. My first idea was to have this almost whiny sound for the vocals, but it got on my nerves after listening to it a few times. Then I did a more typical (for me) sound, and I didn’t really like that either. But layering them worked pretty well, actually. And in one verse, the two vocal styles take turns, alternating each line, which I think sounds pretty cool.
As for the guitars, I recorded 2 tracks. It was rough getting 3 acoustic guitars to sound decent for the “Alcoholic” acoustic version. Mixing 2 was considerably easier.
As usual, I have a problem keeping songs short, but I’m succeeding in that department, sort of. Right now, I feel like the endings to all these songs are odd, but hopefully I’ll change my mind by the end of it.
Anyway, then we have a song that I’ll call “Dungarees.” I don’t know what I’ll end up calling it. How can I describe it? “Mature,” perhaps? The music and even the vocal style sounds relatively serious, for me. In its current state, the vocals and lyrics need some work, and I’ll probably add in some tambourine here and there. But I’m pretty happy with this song too.
Maybe more than any other song I’ve recorded, “Dungarees” transformed pretty drastically from its beginnings. Originally, I had what I was thinking should be the main riff that kind of kicked off the song and would appear throughout it without any accompanying vocals. But then I realized the guitar part for the chorus was much better, and so I used that musical part instead. And then I took the original main riff and used it as a weird breakdown part in the middle. It’s a little strange, but I think it works.
“Strange.” That’s the word I would use to describe that song, for sure. The lyrics, the song structure, everything. But in my opinion, it’s not awkward. It’s actually pleasant to listen to. Again, making these songs short is likely important to make them more enjoyable to hear.
For guitar, it’s essentially just one recording, but I duplicated it and have different effects and EQ, so it sounds like 2 recordings. I’m not sure if I should have recorded another guitar track instead, because I don’t really have a problem with how it sounds as is.
So where does that leave us?
- “Everyone I Know Is an Alcoholic”
- “Pretty Little Ditty”
- “Around the World”
- “Ooh La La (Ooh La La La La La La)”
- “Dungarees”
Five songs! I’m shooting for 8 songs at least. If I hit 8 songs and I feel like I can do more without any of the songs sounding too much like each other, I’ll do a couple more. But since I’m restricting myself to to acoustic guitar, drums, harmonica, and tambourine, it’s a little hard for me to go in too many directions.
The plan for this weekend is to record guitar tracks like I did a few weeks ago for more songs. Maybe I’ll get lucky and bang out 4 or 5 songs’ worth of stuff. That would be awesome.
Alright, so you read this far, so I’ll give you samples. Remember, these are unmastered, unfinished samples. This stuff will sound way better by the time they’re officially released.