Hey everyone,
It's been a crazy month for me that started off in France for my spring break. It was a dream to back there, and now I'm slowly working my way back into reality. I've expressed how I really love the autumn months and the changing of the season, well now we're at a different point. It's always exciting to be thinking about golf again and driving somewhere without scraping away at your car in the morning. This time of year always gets me writing songs, so we'll see. Looks like the weather will be up and down for a while, but I'll be waiting in April for spring to arrive.
Hope you all read Eric's thoughts on our new EP. I've listened to it a good amount of times (shameless self-promotion). I think we really have a good feel on the EP. I really like how many of these songs changed to a more farmer's market kind of sound. Uncommon Ground started off in the summer of 2009 as a song about a relationship that was only called what it was because of an organic restaurant in Chicago with the same name. Since then, we've messed around with enough versions and finally settled on what it is today. If you've seen my solo work, you know that I'm in the 2 Minute Song Club, and that's what happened with Tinted Window. There was never too much to the song, but I think we did well with it. In my opinion, Somewhere is really the track that defines what we did on this EP. Eric's accordion playing brought a whole new layer of sound to the band!
Time is On My Side sounds great with the electric guitar, and She Loves is a song that Eric and I could play at any moment. It seems like that is one of our more popular songs. I really love the vocal that Eric did when first recording this, great feel to it.
Overall, I'm hard at work but excited for the next few months. Looking forward to spring and new adventures!
PK
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Let It Go EP
I was so focused on all the other social media, I almost forgot to blog about the new EP! Listen and Download at www.myspace.com/thesoloistsmusic. For some background, it has 5 songs:
Uncommon Ground
Tinted Window
Somewhere In These Pages
Time is on My Side
She Loves the Summer
Pat wrote the first 2, and I wrote the third and fifth songs. Time is on My Side was more of a collaboration between Pat and I. Pat also had a lot of musical influence on Somewhere. I don't usually like to talk about the songs I write but this EP means a lot to me so I thought I'd write a little about it. I'm sure this EP has different meanings for both of us, but to me it symbolizes letting the past go, as captured in the album cover, a symbol of Novi's past. The title was taken from a line at the end of Somewhere in these Pages, which we eventually removed in the recording process. These songs were all written a while ago and we kept playing and changing them. Recording them meant that they could be captured in their current form and we could feel good about their sound as they were.
We recorded all these songs ourselves, which gave us a much different view of the editing process and gave the songs a much different feel than Bending the Truth. We had a great time recording and messing around with different sounds and instruments on this EP, including box drum and accordion.
I feel like Somewhere in These Pages really embodies the story of this EP. I wrote it about coming back to Novi and reflecting on what has changed and what hasn't. It's easy to get caught up in changes and forget where you came from, and this song is about staying true to our roots. Time is on My Side began with me trying to write more of a rock song and getting the intro done. I didn't know where to go from there or even what the song should be about, so Pat and I jammed for a while, forming the rest of the song and I think its a neat contrast to the rest of the EP, with the electric guitar instrumentation and the way we recorded the chorus. She Loves the Summer has a slightly different sound than the others because it was recorded partly in my room at school last semester and partly wherever Pat was. I wrote the song and borrowed my friend's portable recorder to record it, then emailed it over to Pat and left it open to him to do the harmonies. He sent some different versions back and I tried out a couple different mixes, settling on the current. We were going to record a new version while we were recording everything else but I liked the old version a lot so we decided to go with it. I like the lo-fi sound and the way I did the end, which I think would be difficult to capture again.
Overall, I'm really happy with the way the songs came out and I'm looking forward to the new songs we're putting together! Let us know what you think, we'd love to hear your feedback!
-Eric
Uncommon Ground
Tinted Window
Somewhere In These Pages
Time is on My Side
She Loves the Summer
Pat wrote the first 2, and I wrote the third and fifth songs. Time is on My Side was more of a collaboration between Pat and I. Pat also had a lot of musical influence on Somewhere. I don't usually like to talk about the songs I write but this EP means a lot to me so I thought I'd write a little about it. I'm sure this EP has different meanings for both of us, but to me it symbolizes letting the past go, as captured in the album cover, a symbol of Novi's past. The title was taken from a line at the end of Somewhere in these Pages, which we eventually removed in the recording process. These songs were all written a while ago and we kept playing and changing them. Recording them meant that they could be captured in their current form and we could feel good about their sound as they were.
We recorded all these songs ourselves, which gave us a much different view of the editing process and gave the songs a much different feel than Bending the Truth. We had a great time recording and messing around with different sounds and instruments on this EP, including box drum and accordion.
I feel like Somewhere in These Pages really embodies the story of this EP. I wrote it about coming back to Novi and reflecting on what has changed and what hasn't. It's easy to get caught up in changes and forget where you came from, and this song is about staying true to our roots. Time is on My Side began with me trying to write more of a rock song and getting the intro done. I didn't know where to go from there or even what the song should be about, so Pat and I jammed for a while, forming the rest of the song and I think its a neat contrast to the rest of the EP, with the electric guitar instrumentation and the way we recorded the chorus. She Loves the Summer has a slightly different sound than the others because it was recorded partly in my room at school last semester and partly wherever Pat was. I wrote the song and borrowed my friend's portable recorder to record it, then emailed it over to Pat and left it open to him to do the harmonies. He sent some different versions back and I tried out a couple different mixes, settling on the current. We were going to record a new version while we were recording everything else but I liked the old version a lot so we decided to go with it. I like the lo-fi sound and the way I did the end, which I think would be difficult to capture again.
Overall, I'm really happy with the way the songs came out and I'm looking forward to the new songs we're putting together! Let us know what you think, we'd love to hear your feedback!
-Eric
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)