Shoestring Century

It seems my string players have been found:  M.B. and C.K.   This development, along with an ongoing demoing process, has helped me pretty well settle on XX XXXXX XX XXXX’s palate:

• Grand piano
• Vox
• Nylon-string acoustic guitar
• Steel-string acoustic guitar – Often shadowing (quietly overdubbed in a unison part atop) the nylon guitar
• Clean-voiced semi-acoustic guitar
• Woven-together light percussion instruments
• Violin + Cello – Behaving as a unit
• “The Chorus” – Vocal harmonies that behave as a unit
• Electric bass

What is disallowed?  This question is crucial in setting the tone for a record. If I had allowed synths, strings, and acoustic guitars onto Abstracted Catholic, the menacing, digitized oil-slick guitar tone that unified the album’s tracks would have disintegrated. Instead of one athletic thing doing a wide range of actions, it would have been many smaller things trying to sound wide-ranging. To create an atmosphere of tension, I needed the listener to never know how the electric guitars might mutate; applying strings to, say, “Forthwith,” would have indicated (as bad actors indicate) that it was a rock album’s ballad.  But that was that.

On XX XXXXX XX XXXX, I will not allow overdriven electric guitars, rock drums, subliminal mixing techniques, or overt effects like delay, bit-crushing, etc. The numbers will breathe and allow the listener to reflect, unlike in opuses one, two, and three.  This is helpful: I’m trying out arrangement and production ideas by recording a rolling version of “Silver Moons,” written by Spencer Krug, in the style of the album that I hope to construct.

Here’s a demo recorded yesterday, in which the left-panned vocals represent cello and the right-panned vocals represent violin:  

Update:  This article was posted just before I went to sleep on Monday, January 25th.  Here I am at 6:40 a.m., having been waked by a painful dream for the second night in a row.  Last night’s involved watching an unspecified friend fall to his death and have his head pop off at a ski lodge.  After we reached the ground level, our third friend picked up the parts of the now tiny, doll-like body and carried them immediately into a pawn shop.  Tonight’s dream first involved being publicly embarrassed outside of the Seattle Colosseum by an unspecified loudmouthed bandmate, and then taking a stroll through a Summer campground full of old classmates and friends.  I kept walking by old lovers who looked-like-someone-else but were them, taking a romantic stroll with someone who looked-sort-of-like-me (slight, brown hair) but was not me;  even walked by someone who looked-exactly-like-an-ex-I-had-just-seen but who was, I knew, not really her.  I’ve been working on this album full-time for three days.  Must be onto something.