Categories
Half the Man Rock and/or Roll

Walking the Wire

As promised, here is the first of my weekly posts from the upcoming album, Half the Man. “Walking the Wire” is one that I’ve played dozens of times solo since I wrote it in 1997, so it’s particularly gratifying to flesh out some of the things I’ve heard in my head all these years.

As with all of the songs I’ll be posting throughout the summer, I’ve given myself a time limit of a week per song to force myself to finish the recordings. My hope is that uploading these “good as I can get in 7 days” drafts will allow me to gain a little distance and perspective by the end of the summer. At that point I should have a good idea of which songs are working, which need a little attention, and which I need to drop from the album.

And now it’s your turn. Give me some feedback. Do you like the song? Is the recording working, generally? Are there specific problems that jump out of the mix? Any feedback you have is welcome. Here are some things I’m thinking about:

  • I like the mix generally. (As of 7:04pm today.) I especially like the bass, I’m pleased with the re-recorded lead vocal, and it feels like the song’s groove is in the pocket (always a concern when multi-tracking).
  • I thought I needed a drummer n the song, but now I’m liking the combination of percussion.
  • I’m wondering if the vocal echoes in the chorus are too much.
  • When I come back to this I’ll probably do some minute tweaking of the lead vocals.
  • To my ear there is a “sonic glue” issue that I’ll need to address with either reverb or in the mastering phase.
Categories
Half the Man Rock and/or Roll

Who wants to make a CD?

Who wants to make a CD?

I do. I’ve been sitting on an album worth of rock songs for far too long, and this summer I’m going to finish it. I’ve got draft recordings of every song, and I’m going to finish a song a week until it’s complete.

And you’re going to help. Yes, that’s right. This is going to be something of an open source project. Here’s how you can take part:

  • Listen to each recording I post this summer and give me feedback on what you hear. At the end of the summer I’ll let all of you vote on which songs will be included on the CD and which song should be the “single.”
  • I could really use some help with graphic design, packaging and marketing. Anyone willing to help out?
  • I could use some additional tracks: backing vocals, some solo work (e gtr, dobro, piano, sax, etc), and especially a rock solid drummer.

Check out the current Half the Man page, which has the current song list and latest recordings.

Categories
Art Music

June 26, 1993

Tuesday was Amy’s and my 19th wedding anniversary. 19 years of wedded bliss. How cool is that?

As an ode to our love, here’s a post of the string quartet that I wrote for our wedding. In fact, this is the actual recording from our wedding. In honor of our marital achievement, take a moment to listen to these 3 movements, perhaps imagining a young Amy on her father’s arm, walking tentatively down the aisle, or young Greg trying to look confident at the front of the church, or the happy couple walking briskly out of the church to start their new life together.

processional, MP3

meditation, MP3

recessional, MP3

For a little extra fun, feast your eyes on this photo:

Categories
Demos Rock and/or Roll

Come, Sweet Muse

A few weeks ago, Colin Gordon-Farleigh sent me an email asking if I had anything for a New Zealand singer with whom he had been communicating. Toni Gibson is a “classical crossover” artist similar to Australian Grace Bawden, who sang Colin and my song “If Only I Had Wings.” Toni was looking for something edgy to fill out the rest of her upcoming album. She put it this way:

The ‘edge’ that we are looking for is something more classical mixed with rock style. Like possibly a melody line that is operatic and the music which has a slightly dark feel and has a healthy dose of electric guitars to rock it up, but also still balances well with the classical feel of the melody line.

That one paragraph set the course of the rest of my week. I made a quick mock up of an idea to see if I was headed in the right direction. I knew she liked Evanescence, so I combined heavy guitars with strings and piano. Lots of drama. She loved it.

Next I got to the real work of actually writing the song. Toni’s byline at her website is “Angel of Music,” so I decided to write an ode to the Muse. My first draft went well beyond epic, tipping the scales somewhere around immense and gargantuan. It was almost ten minutes long and included an aria-like bridge with a Latin text by Ovid (supplied by Latin guru Nancy Van Baak). Clearly I needed to do some trimming.

During my jog on Saturday morning I edited mercilessly in my head and wrote down the cuts when I got home. (That’s right, I even take my Muse when I exercise.) Next came a few days of recording. (Mostly long and tedious, but lightened somewhat by the joy of using my new mic and homemade shock mount.) Then a few days of mixing, fretting, remixing, re-recording, more mixing, cutting, and polishing. (Amy says I’ve seemed “distracted.”)

At the end of the day yesterday I had the mix to a point that I wanted feedback from my most honest critics: Simon and Theo. (When I played the long version for them a week earlier they told me it was really long and asked if this was still one song.) When I played this latest mix for them, Theo got really excited, did some air guitar, and told me, “This is great, Dad. I wouldn’t change a thing!” So I knew I was on the right track.

The end result rolls together Evanescence and early Heart, and adds a pinch of Metallica, Rammstein, and Hollywood Philharmonic for good measure. Too epic to fail? You be the judge.

Categories
Contests Production music Quirky

CD Baby and Me

A few days ago Simon and I sang for you our new song, “Clouds So Fluffy and Free.” The next day I saw an ad for a CD Baby jingle writing contest. Suddenly, “clouds so fluffy and free” became “CD Baby and Me.” Serendipity? Fate? You be the judge.

Speaking of judging, if this doesn’t win the contest, it will prove, once and for all, that there is no justice in the world. It’s a bonafide earworm. Of course, I’ve been listening to this 30 second bon bon over and over again for two days, so it may be more a matter of it being stuck in my head than the song being catchy.

After recording it in pristine 24bit sound, I decided that an old record player version was also called for. Enjoy them both for maximum enjoyment.

Categories
Quirky

Clouds, So Fluffy and Free

They don’t get much fresher than this. This little ditty was written about 12 minutes ago.

I was sitting on the back porch working on a soon to be completed Evanescence-esque song for a singer in New Zealand, when my son Simon joined me. I tried to get him to enjoy the clouds floating overhead (instead of asking me if he could play Connect Four on the computer), so I wrote this little song to encourage him to relax and enjoy nature. Now you, too, can join Simon and me in our little paean to our fluffy friends over our heads.

MP3

Categories
Congregational Songs Retuned hymn

Awake, Sweet Gratitude

Ascension Song coverThanks for bearing patiently with the sins of my youth. (I.e. the recent “Spring Cleaning” series.) There are more, but I’m going to give you a little break from that nostalgic tour de force, and introduce something brand new.

“Awake, Sweet Gratitude,” was written for the recently released Cardiphonia compilation Ascension Songs, a great collection of 18 retuned hymns by great songwriters around the USA and beyond. The text is by Augustus Toplady. It does a great job of exploring the role of Christ as the heavenly intercessor–we have a sympathetic advocate in Jesus, who lived among us and ascended in body to the Father’s side. Check out the PDF leadsheet to study the words more carefully.

I took a little different tack on this recording. I wanted it to be a group project, so I enlisted the help of a number of friends from Grand Rapids and beyond. Each contributed a track or two, then I combined them all into a mix that sounds surprisingly coherent given the variety of voices and instruments that went into it. Here’s who took part:

  • Jess Alldredge, backing vocal and violin
  • Luke Brodine, backing vocal and accordion
  • Michael van Patter, accordion
  • Bruce Benedict, mando
  • Dave Landrum, banjo
  • The Church of the Servant Zoombaphonics, choir
  • Greg Scheer, lead vocal, trumpet, trombone, guitars, mandolin, string bass, drums/percussion
Categories
Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Praise the Lord!

When I returned home from my time in Europe, I kept in touch with Annegret. She was a music director and teacher at a church in the area. So when the Hermsdorfer Kirche had its 100 year anniversary she asked me to write a cantata for the occasion.

And that, my friends, is how a young man from Narragansett, Rhode Island has a cantata premiered in East Germany.

Preist den Herrn!/Praise the Lord!

Categories
Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, The Needy

The Trübenbachs were awesome. They were a solid family trying to live right in an extremely stifling government and culture. Annegret was about my age, and she and her sister Julia took it on themselves to show me around the area. Our sightseeing included a stop at the Scheer bakery in Ernstthal, which was one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced: “Hi, I might be your relative.”

Den Armen/The Needy

Categories
Art Music Choir Church Psalms

Spring Cleaning: Psalm 113, Interlude

Indeed, the Trübenbach family from the Chemnitz area (Karl Marx Stadt at the time) invited me to stay with them. After my studies in Salzburg were done for the year, I hitchhiked my way through Hungary and Germany, with the goal of ending up in East Germany.

My plans were temporarily thwarted when I tried to hitchhike across the border. The guy who had picked me up got cold feet a mile from the border and let me out. I walked past a mile of cars trying to get a ride, then I got to the border on foot hoping to walk across the border. The border guards told me that I needed to take some sort of official transportation into the country, so I hitchhiked to the nearest train station.

By this time it’s getting late, I’ve been walking in the hot sun with a back pack all day, and I haven’t had anything to eat. Starving. The problem? I’m on a train in East Germany, and I’ve got no East German currency. I had a small bag of raisins which I nursed for the rest of the ride. When I arrived at my destination (a campground was the cheapest option while I waited for the Trübenbachs to pick me up the next morning) I was famished. I will not tell a lie–I traded some money on the black market so I could buy a soda and a bag of chips before drifting off to sleep.

Interlude