Victorious Combinations

31 Jul 2007 King's Cross Hello folks, Our song has been getting some pretty good reviews on Garageband.com but I quite often see comments about the vocals in the first verse "sucking" or being shakey. That's lead me to believe I should give an explaination why I sang the parts the way I did and therefore expand on the full meaning behind the song. Initially I preferred the idea of not giving my exact story behind the lyrics as it would limit the ideas for a new listener, however this song is kind of important to me and therefore a full disclosure is in order. The basis for the music of this song began from a long rambling jam we started on Christmas Eve 2005. It was initially titled something clever like "U2" in reference to the guitar part with all the dotted 1/8th note delays (at the end of the final arrangement). It sat on the hard drive for almost two months before I could find a way to expand upon the initial ideas. E...

22 Mar 2007 iPods vs. Cassettes Current mood: quixotic Isabelle confessed to me last night her crazy gambit that she pulled off last week. She had been to a "mixtape night" at a bar in Chinatown with a couple of her friends. The idea of the night was for everyone to bring a mixed cd or tape, whatever, exchange it with other people, and then meet up next time and exchange back. Well Isabelle had gotten into an interesting conversation with one of the guys there and he decided she should be the recipient of his mixed tape, literally on cassette mind you. When the guy went to retrieve his cassette he noticed someone was already holding it, assuming he'd have the opportunity to listen to it's contents. The Cassette maker asked for the tape to give to Isabelle but the other chap thought he'd really like to hear it himself. So after a bit of negotiations the second fellow said "but look, she doesn't have a mixed tape to exchange ...

11 Feb 2007 Why We Need Other Artists Current mood: artistic It's almost pathetic how obtuse I can be sometimes. I was feeling a bit low this evening, even though the Canucks won their hockey game vs. the Thrashers, and we had a brilliant practice this afternoon. For external reasons, both Isabelle and I have been feeling a tiny bit drained of late and I was poking around on myspace (not necessarily the greatest form of self help) and came across a page with an absolutely beautiful song playing. It was almost a gospel song, or certainly came from that genre. It soothed my head a bit and I listened to it in it's entirety. As I was relaxing to the woman's voice (I couldn't find her name as it was a song on a record label's page and they weren't too clear with their credits) it occurred to me that I need to expand my horizons fairly frequently. In the past, well certainly over the last eighteen months, while we were writing and rec...