yesterday and today i thought more about ‘bring it back’ and what to do with it. i ended up just sitting down and playing with some drums and did a real basic type of beat that i think will work, and recorded the rough track to be sure. it seems to work okay. still not sure what else i’ll add, but this at least can get me started. worked on ‘make me whole’ also, another that i wasn’t planning on doing drums for, but i brought it into garageband for the tempo and the rough track, and to play around with some things that might work. right now i’ve got a few options that i like; a few heavy-reverb conga beats that work, and one beat that’s a simple tambourine driving it. so i’ll have to give those another listen next week and see which jumps out as the best anchor. needs to be subtle though…i love the tambourine one but it’s just not subtle enough. maybe i can EQ it some and fix that in pro tools.

so that gives a basic idea and/0r basic percussion for just about all the songs, which is nice. i feel like i’ve hit another milestone, and that feels good. i was planning on going for bass next but i think i’ll put that off; i think it will be easier to track bass when there is some more to the song, so i may try to focus on tracking acoustics next week and see how that goes. should get the banjo sunday if all goes well, so i can track that too.

it’s been interesting so far at how much thought has to go into where to take the song from the version i wrote with just an acoustic. a vision of what some of them can be pops into my head really easily, or it was just there right away when i wrote it. others seem to almost lend themselves to a specific set of instruments and a specific feel. others still are like riddles i have to figure out. i feel like i’m walking the line between being okay with the ideas i’ve got and working and reworking an idea until i feel like it’s the perfect fit for the song. you could really drive yourself nuts thinking about it, to be honest. i also want them all to feel different in some way besides the chords and lyrics…musically i don’t want you to hear a song, then hear another later and go “oh, this is kinda like that other one before.” it’s a little trickier than it sounds.

i think, though, that once they get a little further along it will be easier to see how different they all sound. i’m also starting to think about things like the order of songs, even though they’re not narrowed down yet. there are a few that i feel like will make the cut no matter what, mostly ones i’ve played out and gotten good response to.

but there is still the big lingering question:

what track goes in the 1 spot?

so important, the 1 spot….i’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and don’t have an answer yet. it may end up being obvious once the songs are closer to finished; but who really knows? still, i gotta admit it’s exciting.