Acoustic Album Update #3

This week’s post (I’m not sure if I’m doing these weekly, but I’ll say it anyway) is a quick one, but it’s pretty important. I’ll touch on a decision I made regarding how many of these acoustic songs will be remakes of my old tunes. On top of that, I’ll give an update on my progress. Read on if that interests you!

Ever since this acoustic album thing was just a glint in my eye or whatever, I wrestled with something. I knew I wanted to record acoustic versions of a few old songs that I know people like. That way, the project shouldn’t be a complete disaster. Recording new, original songs was something I wanted to do too, even though I was a bit nervous about doing it.

Going by a Twitter poll that 2 whole people voted on, I have decided to stick with only 3 classic songs acoustified. I reserve the right to change my mind about that, but that’s my stance at this time. It depends on how many songs I end up recording, really. The results of my Twitter poll said that the people want new songs, not old songs. Two of those “old” songs are 100% done now. I’m not going to not release them; they’re too awesome anyway. Say I end up recording 10 songs in total, I’ll feel good about 7 songs being new. Simply typing that makes me nervous though. Hm.

It is nerve-wracking to commit to producing that many songs in a musical style I’ve never really even attempted before. However, after today, I feel a lot better about it. Today I essentially recorded all the acoustic guitar parts for 2 new songs. Starting with a basic drum loop, I jammed out a little, coming up with some semi-interesting guitar patterns. Then I hit “record,” saving about 10 minutes of musical ideas. Doing that twice got me 2 good skeletons of songs!

Even I doubted the potential of recording that way. But after a few hours of piecing together one of the tracks, I have to say I’m digging it! I may end up hating it, but right now I like it a lot. The main guitar part is a variation of something I came up with on an electric guitar some time ago. I feared it would never get used, but my fear was all for naught. I recorded harmonica for the first time on this track as well. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I bought myself a harmonica back in March and have been trying to figure out how to play it. I’m no expert, but I’m getting decent enough to throw it on a song.

As of typing this, I would say the music is about 90% done. The drums need some work, but I wouldn’t regret leaving them the way they are either. Vocal-wise, I have recorded absolutely nothing. I have no idea what the vocals are going to sound like. What should I do? Maybe I should pull a James Hetfield and record some scratch vocals like on the old Metallica demos. Wa na na na nanana! Wa na nana na nanana nana!

Seriously though, I never don’t write lyrics, but I haven’t written any for this acoustic album in mind. It’s kind of exciting. Should the lyrics really be any different just because they’ll be sang on top of acoustic type music? I don’t know. The songs are slower and less chaotic, so I feel like since they’ll be easier to hear and understand, they should also have a certain attitude about them. I don’t know.

Should I post audio samples next week? Hm…