And so it begins again

I hope you all had a good spring break... Mine was exactly what i needed: some peace and quiet, solitude, afew good movies, lots of beer and lime, and music.....

I've been noodling with the zentar... i dunno.. something is not right... there's very little sustain.. which i am guessing is due to the shoddy neck... And as much as i want to delve into fretless land... i cannot justify buying a fretless axe at this point. More then most likely i am going to get an Oud next month or so and mess around with that & the maqams till i can get my hands on a fretless axe... Also i have the fretless bass which i can noodle around on till i get the Oud... so it's all good.

Actually, i'm pretty psyched: Tommorow i should have my Duduk! I bought one from a respectable place in the UK that sells really well made ones, so i'm looking forward to learning a new instrument and having something new to work on. My New CME keyboard controller will be here too... thank god.. no more programming music with a mouse..... can finally play the parts and work on them like a real musician......

Now, i said i'd elaborate more on my new project. Now i think i jumped the gun abit... after 5 days of working on the music i realised afew important things:

• i don't have a good singing voice for lead vocals. Background vocals sure, choiral ooo and ahh stuff fine.... but the lead voice in a song.... nope.
• i have to accept the fact that this album is going to get mixed receptions, and there's nothing i can do about that
• that i really need to write the melody first and the harmony second, not vice versa....

the last one has given me allot of grief since i'm trying to come up with decent melodies, and allot of the pieces have some weird harmonic movements which means allot of weird melodies, which i like... but ultimately it means the music is more somber and soft, as opposed to rock guitar stuff... like my previous album.

The album is mostly written, it's just a case of tracking the guitars & mixing... which i plan to have done within the next 2 months. It's all mostly laid back stuff, no rocking or up tempo pieces, very dark & atmospheric... which i think is a fitting follow up to S.E..... I'm working on finishing the "singles" of the album first, so i can post a few previews & eventually put the singles up on my myspace to help promote the album.

it'll be about 12-14 songs long, and be much better produced then the last album, thanks to having better equipment on hand, and having learned more about the limitations of what can be done in the digital domain.

Oh, and it's called Failure To Adjust....