Category: cd

cd

My Three Sons release at AbstractLogix.com

my3sons_whoswe Just in time for the holiday gift-giving season, AbstractLogix is now selling the latest release from the rock/funk fusion group My 3 Sons.  Titled Who’s We?, the album was recorded and mixed at Manifold Recording this summer by Ian Schreier.  Recorded live with minimal overdubs to capture the dynamics and tone of a high-energy My 3 Sons performance, it exemplifies the magic that can happen when a great band comes together in a great space to play great music.

There are some other new releases coming out around the corner, but this one’s available now.  Check it out!

Sarah Shook and the Disarmers — Sidelong

Sarah Shook came to Manifold Recording by way of an Intern from Italy, Mario Bianchi, but the story of Sidelong, Sarah’s first full-length album, has a longer history.  And one that makes this album release that much sweeter.

A recent feature in INDY Week tells the backstory of a Sarah’s journey, from growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household in Rochester NY to the devilish ways that led first to her musical emancipation, her break from religion, and ultimately the embrace of herself as a unique and uniquely driven person.  Regardless of how dangerous that may be.  And without any apologies.

Sarah first came to Manifold Recording to make an EP with her band, Sarah Shook and The Devil.  It was a fast and wild ride, but one that told us that there was some real magic, too.  Ian Schreier took it upon himself to use his 20+ years in the business to convince Sarah to come back and make a real record, with him as producer.  The fact that her band had just dissolved wasn’t an excuse to sidetrack the project.

Once Sarah had recruited a new band that could both play together and work together, Ian was ready take the reins as Producer.

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Making a Record? Or Making a Demo?

Last night as I was driving home, I heard Bryan Adams interviewed on the CBC’s program q.  In the course of that interview, he went into some details about his three-step process for making a record:

  1. Write the song
  2. Record the demo
  3. Make the record

His 12 studio albums have been extremely successful, with 11 going at least Gold, and Reckless going 5x Platinum.  He’s also charted more than 10 #1 singles.  Clearly he has a talent for writing and performing, but he has also learned to follow a process that helps good become great and great become the best.

Bryan takes collaboration as a given.  Just as Design Thinking teaches that “the best idea wins”, so, too, does it apply to songwriting and producing.  When he was just getting started, he felt his initial drafts were “precious” and wanted to retain the purity of his authorship.  But, as he says in the interview, “Mutt Lange beat it out of me.”  And as Wikipedia reports, they co-wrote “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You“, a hugely successful single written for the Kevin Costner film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves that currently holds the record for the longest consecutive Number 1 UK chart single with 16 consecutive weeks at the top of the charts (7 July-26 October 1991).  They clearly worked well together!

After the songs are written, demos are recorded.  The demo is the first really concrete representation of a song as it might be played and recorded for real.  Demos are not low-quality sketches, but an honest first draft of the real thing.  They are also a baseline for quality: when recording a record, Bryan’s goal is that each “real” song be better than the demo.  In cases where that doesn’t happen, the song is likely going to be left off the album.  The demo provides an objective way to tell if they are really knocking the ball out of the park or if they are just making another version of the demo.

When enough material has passed the demo test to fill out an album, and when that material all fits together coherently, then it becomes possible to make a record that will be successful.

Obviously Bryan Adams has had a very successful career as a musician.  In his telling of his own story he is humble and humorous, but it is also clear that he follows best practices rather than ignoring them.  And this has certainly served him well.

Kat Robichaud studio sessions

Last month Kat Robichaud and her band moved in to the studio to record an epic rock album, with Ian Schreier engineering and producing.  The process actually began some time before that, but the studio came into play for some intensive rehearsals before tracking and mixing began.  Here’s a shot of the whole band rehearsing, showing the great energy that everybody had throughout the session:

Rehearsal 2-sm

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Success Stories

MiraveseHorizontal

I have been talking for some time about the virtues of kickstarter funding for music recording projects.  The indie album Move by Matt Phillips and the Philharmonic could not have been made without kickstarter funding.  But the more I learn about the world of music kickstarters, the more I see there is to learn.

The Set Chopin Free project reached its $75,000 goal scarcely two weeks into its seven week funding schedule.  It is already more than $5,000 above its funding goal, and could well surpass $100,000 by the time its funding window closes.  And the Open Well-Tempered Clavier project (launched by Robert Douglass) has already reached 50% of its $30,000 fundraising goal from more than 450 supporters in its first 5 days!  That kind of strong start virtually guarantees funding success, and leaves us only to wonder whether it will achieve 160% (like Open Goldberg Variations), 200% (like Fractal Journeys and the Twelve Tones of Bach), 350% (like the Well-Tempered Clavier Tour), 600% (like Musopen’s Set Music Free) or more than 1100% (like Amanda Palmer did in her amazing 2012 record).  The possibilities are quite wide open.  But real questions remain: how did this happen?  what does it mean?

A press release today invites the press itself to consider some more pointed questions:

If both Open Goldberg and Musopen succeed with their Kickstarter campaigns, collectively raising over $100,000 for new recordings of standard repertoire, it is probably worth asking “Who is holding classical music in shackles?” and “Why do so many people feel it is so important to set Bach and Chopin free?” Continue reading “Success Stories”

More than a coincidence: Frederic Chiu records at Manifold Recording

When an artist makes a recording at a studio, there is always a coincidence–two things happening at the same time and place.  One is the interpretation and the performance of the artist, the other is the creative capture of that ephemeral performance so that it can be replicated and experienced across time and space, perhaps by people not yet even alive when the recording was made.  But the coincidences we shared with pianist Frederic Chiu this past week went far beyond that.

FredericChiu-CR1

Continue reading “More than a coincidence: Frederic Chiu records at Manifold Recording”

Construction and Deconstruction

Michael Pollan Pulseoptional While I have been fairly diligent about maintaining my construction blog, I have neglected to blog about much else since January, which could mislead the reader into believing either that nothing else of interest is happening, or, worse, that nothing else has been interesting me, both of which are false.  But this past week, two creative works—one a book and the other a CD—were so interesting that I was compelled to respond to both in manifold ways.

Now, for the blog, how to begin?

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Week 53 (From down to up)

Pat Metheny - The Way Up Though it was only scheduled to take six months, the digging, building, filling, and finishing the foundation took pretty much the whole of 2008.  That’s a long time to spend on the down part of the project.  For 2009, we’ll be doing the up part of the project: cutting and stacking blocks to make the walls, building a roof, laying in doors and windows, and, if all goes well, moving in some serious acoustic materials and audio equipment.  I can’t wait!

(The image to the left is not a construction photo.  It’s a whimsical reference to Pat Metheny’s album The Way Up, which I happen to like very much, and which, having selected the theme of this blog posting, makes a great musical background track.  And if you like it, check out the NPR interviews of March 7 2005 and March 29 2005.)

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Music: Food for the Soul?

Another article by Robert Frank confirms that the most desirable purchase these days is not a thing, but an experience (a memorable meal to be precise). What’s up with that?

For data, Frank provides that:

A new study by American Express of their U.K. Centurion card holders (read: titanium-toting super-rich) found that “self-fullillment and learning” is the second-most-important priority for high-end vacationers. Number one was “value for money.”

Continue reading “Music: Food for the Soul?”