Hello everyone!

It has been just over a week since the end of the 1st musical retreat for the writing of 7 Deadly Sins, a ballet presented by BalletMet and Shadowbox. During that week Shadowbox has been busy with their annual Sketch Comedy Festival, but we have been steadily making forward process on the project. Before I get further into updates, I want to impart with some information and reference material for you to keep up with the project

Visit our friends!

Obviously, I’ll continue blogging about it right here on the Random Coomle, but you can also get more info on the BalletMet website! Go check out our partners in this process and support their upcoming season! Here’s a snippet from their “About” page:

The BalletMet Dance Academy, founded in 1980, ranks among the five largest professional dance training centers in the United States and offers a variety of classes to students ages 4 to 84 years old.  Since its 1990 move to the 35,000 square-foot Dance Centre which is one of the finest facilities in North America, both BalletMet and its Academy have become recognized as institutions of local and national stature.

Visit their website at: http://www.balletmet.org

You can also see the listing for 7 Deadly Sins (complete with show dates and times) HERE!

In addition to this, Shadowbox will have a page dedicated to this show in the near future, so keep an eye out!

NO this is NOT a remake of the The Seven Deadly Sins by Kurt Weill!

In 1933, there was a satirical ballet written by Kurt Weill that in NO WAY reflects what we’re trying to do with this piece. There is a completely different intent behind it, and the musical structure will be far more current in style and composition. For more information on what our ballet will NOT be, visit the Wikipedia page for the Kurt Weill’s ballet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Deadly_Sins

On with the updates!

So what exactly has been happening with the project? Well lots of things actually! Brian Rau has been busily mixing down the rough cuts we recorded in order to give the choreographers the highest quality versions to listen to – correcting mistakes via Pro Tools, repositioning sounds in the mix… basically performing the magic that sound engineers do Obviously these are by no means “finished products”, but it should be more than enough for the choreographers to give us some meaningful feedback.

In fact we have received our first feedback! Amy Seiwert, the San Francisco based choreographer for Envy, has listened to our version and essentially decided on the following (a quote from Stev Guyer in an email to the band):

“The choreographer was thrilled with the intro to envy that we’d created and asked if we could marry the two pieces”

The two pieces being our New Original and Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. Though it is a bit of a bummer that the piece will no longer be 100% original, you can guarantee that we’ll be putting our own wild spin on it Stev also had this encouraging reminder for the band:

“I’m sure as the dance develops our experience will run the gamut… However, even those who want our original work will undoubtedly ask for many, many changes… it’s the way this relationship works in the professional world of dance.”

We all knew that from the get go, but it’s always difficult seeing hard work get changed or discarded in ANY respect. However, I think that ultimately we’ll all meet in the middle and have a truly incredible and unique project for the world to enjoy!

Stev Guyer also recorded a Shadowbox VLOG during the musical retreat week that I wanted to share with you. It should give you a little taste of our experience, the atmosphere and even a couple of short clips of the music we created!

(cue segue music)

The band we have created will be known as Light.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we tossed around a bunch of ideas for band names during the final days of the retreat. We wanted to steer clear of the religious implications of several of the names we discussed for 2 main reasons: 1- we are not a Christian band and don’t want audiences to get the wrong idea and 2- we hope that the 7 Deadly Sins will be our first project as a group not our last An eccentric but excellent reason for choosing Light as our name is that every light casts a shadow (Shadowbox band members past and present make up most of the group after all)! There are several other equally brilliant and reasonable arguments for why this our name, but you get the idea

Adam Fauth and I have been working together on a rune-like logo for the band… with me using another ancient technique called “drawl-eeng” and Adam updating the images to the current millennium We’re getting close, but it isn’t finalized just yet. We’ll probably wait to share it until we can get our ReverbNation page up (more information on that in the future)!

Adam has also been busy working towards the poster art for 7 Deadly Sins, and it looks phenomenal It fits all of the prerequisites in my opinion, and it looks hip as well!

Outside of those things, I’ve been going through my own process by playing through the concept recordings and making THOROUGH notes (That week was a real whirlwind of music!).

I just discussed (literally 30 mins ago) some really fun ideas with the old man about how to continually share our process with you, the audience, and I can’t wait to spill the beans! (Maybe even tomorrow! Booyah!)

More to come soon, so I’ll catch you on the flip!

I am once again using that “pinchle” thing while on my flight home to Los Angeles. There is WiFi on my Delta flight, but no plug for my dead lappy battery (Boooo ). I took some pictures this morning for memories, posterity, and your viewing pleasure

It was Thursday morning, and I was WELL rested (considering the fact that I passed out after a big dinner and 2 glasses of wine lol) With some coffee in my system and most of the boys rolling in at about 8:45a, we were ready to move forward at 9.

Marc "Silky" Brown counts out some crazy keyboard licks

First thing this morning we needed to get Silky’s keys laid down on top of the final Gluttony take we did the previous night (so even though Ced was late this morning, it worked out ). It took a little while just because he had to learn the new structure and remember how to play the song heh.

Now that may sound kind of silly, but with all of the hours that we’ve put in and all of the music we’ve written (and we’ve probably ditched an equal amount to what we’ve kept), I wasn’t too surprised.

Cedric Easton throwin' up signs again

Cedric arrived in the midst of it but forgot his snare at home which was on the opposite side of town, so he had to bug out and grab it in order for us to move on.

He had a show at Dick’s Den with Christian Howes until about 3a, so I GUESS we can forgive him this time .

Once we got that bad boy on lock down, we needed a better rough demo for Sloth, so we spent a little time refreshing, during which our drummer rolled back in. Then we actually made 3 minor structural tweaks 2 it and started trying to lay it down.

That actually took a while tho…

Adam Fauth kickin' back on Sloth

The problem with recording Sloth is that 2 or 3 chord mistakes in certain spots pretty much blows the whole take because it’s so languid and full of held chords. Luckily, we did finally get a really clean cut and were able to move on.

We got through those 2 and were FINally able to move on to Greed (the final sin to be composed).

Now here’s the thing with Greed… this is the one piece that was fairly fleshed out before the retreat because Stev had some really thick ideas for it. Lucky for him, they were pretty dope ideas that we were all down with hehehehe. Unlucky for Silky, there was a very specific and complex keyboard part.

Stev Guyer in "Producer" mode

He did a good job trying to learn it before the day considering how little time he had, but it really had to be exactly right because it plays off of the 3-part harmonies of the vocal lines.

Ultimately I ended up being able to get some of my parts “down” and Matthew & Cedric came up with some ideas while we were working through it, but with the impending Shadowbox show tonight, time was getting strained quickly. Adam spent the time making notes and thinking through the structure because he is going to do some sequencing work for this song, which I think is really going to be amazing.

Matthew Hahn gettin' down on the baritone guitar

Finally at 2:30p, we saw no chance of truly getting through it and putting down a demo recording. Gear had to be broken down, packed up and back to Shadowbox so that they COULD do the show heh

We came up with a solid plan on how to accomplish the writing of Greed from here on out, and that was the end of the musical retreat.

After closing up shop, the room we had spent so many hours together in seemed almost like an an empty womb after just giving birth – and I guess it kind of was.

It was pretty strange and a little anti-climactic… even bittersweet.

Brian Rau - truly a magician behind the board

After such a phenomenal experience and writing so much music, it was difficult to leave it behind with a song unfinished, even WITH a plan.

We all took a moment with each other to share words, appreciation, well-wishing, and talk about how much we were looking forward to seeing each other again to continue the project.

As I said to almost everyone, this will NOT be our only project together if I can do anything about it. Our chemistry was perfection…something most musicians only dream of, and I couldn’t be more thankful to be a part of this project.

Don’t change that dial music and ballet lovers!!!

Gabriel Guyer... must... follow... drummer...

The blogs are NOT over! We have a song remaining to write, and once the choreographers from BalletMet get ahold of our demos, there will be changes you can be sure. Hopefully they will be minor structural changes and not “we hate what you did, do something else” lol. We also still have the transitions between the sins to write, another musical retreat to clean things up and rehearse in a couple of months, etc etc. “We’ve only just begun…”

Maybe next blog, I’ll tell you the name of the band and why!

Maybe… heh heh

See you tomorrow!

Another amazing day of writing and recording began on a little gentler note than the previous couple of days…

… as a group we weren’t getting together until about 4pm because of the many things going on at and around Shadowbox yesterday, so I got to sleep in a whole extra hour! (WOOT)

After getting up I had some of that whole “life” thing that I needed to get in order, then Adam and I spent some time brainstorming about names for the group we have created (ultimately, we would like to do this again sooner than later, so we need a name to hold it down ). We had a pretty good list going of about 12 really solid names we liked, with Seraph being Adam and I’s personal favorite, but we would bring it to the table later in the eve.

Then Adam gave me a little tour of ReverbNation.com where we will eventually be posting our tunes for public consumption in some form or another.

At that point, I sat down and started pounding through the structure of Gluttony (the old man had asked me to write out the structure so that we could be as productive as possible by the time we got together). So I nailed down the choices we HAD made, and threw in a couple of choices of my own just to get us through.

By that point, Mr Rau arrived and started dumping tracks into Pro Tools, and I wrote my last blog. Before I was even done, Matthew arrived, then Cedric, so I wrapped it up super fast and we got rollin even a little earlier than planned.

Gluttony… as difficult of a night as we had prior… we pounded through the structure I had put down. It worked, but it still didn’t feel right. Cedric piped up and suggested we combine the verses, then I threw in the “humpty dumpty” section at a different spot (affectionately dubbed as such because of the flavor).

Matthew got a little bit self-conscious about his climb on A, but I talked him down Glad I did too because not only does it work, it goes really nicely in the song. Finally we book ended the last verse and chorus section with that second bridge in order to end the song with the different flavor of Gluttony - thinking more about consumption generally than the “eating of food” that most people associate with the sin.

The carnival undertones in this song are REAlly fun too

After a couple of hours, we had a fairly good recording down for Stev to listen to – who showed up just a few minutes after the last recording we did. Thankfully he was totally down with our new arrangement and said “Great job guys, NOW we just need to produce it” and tossed us that devilish grin that he does lol

He, Matthew and I plucked through a couple of details in the runs then we started recording. After a couple of recordings we had a really solid recording for Silky to overdub his keys the next morning. Also, amazingly enough we had the song in a place that we all REAlly loved, and somehow we had another comPLETely different movement. That’s not an easy task when you’ve been writing steadily for days. I think Stev said it best that “when you have a story you’re conforming to, rather than just writing random music, it really informs your opinions and options.”

We have a real benefit with this group of guys that we were able to be cerebral about every song before even starting to pluck away. We have talked about the conceptual aspects of each sin throughout the process instead of just “how do you like this rhythm or pattern?” Not many groups or musicians can say that. I feel truly blessed to be a part of this process

Once we got through that, we did a brief discussion about Greed then Adam and I threw out our list of names for everyone to consider.

We all talked about what we liked/didn’t like and why. I think avoiding religious connotations was an important part since hopefully we’ll be doing another piece and it’s unlikely that it’ll be based in similar context! Kind of bummer since I personally really liked what Seraph stood for, but it IS a very obvious and direct religious reference. I liked it because the Seraphim are the only angels with 6 wings, and we have 6 musicians… among other interesting comparisons. However, I think we decided on the correct name once all was said and done, but we decided to table it until the next morning in order to digest it.

At that point, we actually broke for the evening which was pretty nice after the 2 crazy-long sessions the 2 days prior. It was a little nerve-racking thinking about what was left to be done, but I think we’re going to be just fine. So a few of us bounced over for a delicious dinner at Barcelona (if you haven’t been here and you live in Columbus, you really ARE missing out!). A nice meal, a couple of glasses of Zin, and I came back to the house and passed the hell out lol

Getting ready for another nice and full day of writing… all that remains is Greed (double meaning? heh)…

Woah day 3…. 15 and a half hours in total after a 13 hour day…

Well the day started off a little bit rough for me personally because I slept through my alarm heh It was playing music for about an hour while I stayed in my dreams thinking “this is a great soundtrack” lol Luckily the old man poked his head in about 8:45a and told me I should wake up. I flew out of bed and said “Oh shit, is it 7?!” I caught him so off guard he said “uh no it’s 8… I mean almost 9.” I’m still laughing about it even as I type hahaha

It was a fairly slow start for everyone as we had everyone rolling in fairly last minute, but I wasn’t shocked after the previous session. Once we were all in, set up and the amps were buzzing away, we started talking about Pride.

As with most of the movements, there were structural and musical concepts laid down for us to play with, break apart, change, etc. This was the other one that I personally had a lot to say about.

What I had originally heard sort of reminded me of a bank teller or the sounds of a cash register, so I made the initial suggestion to make this song into the basis for Greed and make Pride a funk song a la James Brown (I mean who knows more about personal pride then James Brown?! “Jump back, kiss myself!”).

However, I apparently overlooked the music file for Greed, which already had a concept. After taking a listen to that and really liking the direction it was going, we were back to the beginning of the conversation. So Matt started playing through the chord changes for Pride, and I started playing with some funk rhythms underneath it because I still wanted it to go that direction. Somehow I ended up with a 7/4 pattern that I had to fix (thank you Cedric for picking that out), but we ended up with something pretty interesting.

I was also laying down some slap an pop, which is parTICularly interesting because I am NOT a slap and pop player. I never really spent time practicing the style because it just didn’t jive with most of the stuff that I played. I also don’t think I’m very good at it. It’s a pretty simple riff for a typical slap and popper I would think, but I was pretty damned happy with it! (Yea I just patted myself on the back a little bit )

When it hits the chorus, it just becomes this HUGE, triumphant song with long chords and slow runs. It is REALLY tasty As we were plowing through the song (“plowing” being a relative term since it took us about 8 hours to write this one), we got to a section where we struggling to make the next step. Suddenly Cedric says, “What do you think about throwing in that 7/4 lick you were playing earlier?”

Tossing it around in a few spots, it came out of the verse pattern really nicely and still keeps the steady quarter notes so the dancers can continue at the pace they were already moving. Silky busts in and starts laying into the rhythm with me, and yet we’re still looking for the “complete” purpose of the section. After rereading some of Stev’s original notes, we decided to put in parts from a few famous “anthems” but drop them down into our key (it is called Pride after all). So Matt and Cedric are laying into this ill 4/4 for the anthems while Silky, Adam and I are hammering away at the 7/4.

I won’t break down the song completely here, but we ended up with possibly my favorite song of the week (my fingers were SCREAMING! lol).

Unfortunately after we got through it, we had to lose Cedric for the evening and Silky for a couple of hours due to prior engagements. So Adam, Matt, Stev and I launched into Gluttony discussions and chord progressions.

By the time Silky got back a couple of hours later, we had the basic structure down, but we were struggling to find some movement to the piece. For the next several hours we started throwing out ideas, which slowly dwindled over time as we got more and more exhausted heh Suddenly Silky comes up with this nasty climb to lay down over the verse. After letting him pluck it out, we tinkered around and made a really nicesection, but we were still missing the movement of the piece.

Somewhere in there I tossed out a 4/4 rock piece and Stev went upstairs and grabbed his guitar to try and follow along while Matt went outside to pluck through some things on his own. We were rockin along, but the 4/4 required us to make a fairly hefty speed change because Gluttony was in a 6/8 swing.

After playing with it for a bit (and we’re all at our wit’s end), Matt says “Guys! I just really don’t think this is going to work.” Now at first I think we were a little taken aback, but we all realized that the feeling behind his words and our defensiveness were mainly just because we were completely toasted. So we listened to his suggestions…

…and I think FINally found the answer to our problem Once we had it solidified in our brains (well… as solidified as possible at that point lol), we broke for the night at around 12:30a.

Today is a shorter day and we have a LOT to do still, but I think we cleared a really necessary hurdle before calling it a day.

Yea… I went there

Here I am at the end of a very long day of writing and recording that was difficult but extremely fruitful.

Today’s writing session began at 9am and finished around 10:30pm after getting extremely solid, full band recordings of Envy, Lust and even Wrath (which I think ultimately surprised us all!).

Due to time constraints for the choreography, those 3 pieces were an absolute requirement for us to get pretty close to a finished product this week, and I can comfortably say that we accomplished that for sure! Now… who knows what the choreographers are going to think of the music ultimately as it is VERY different than your traditional music for a ballet, but then, that’s why they hired us heh

Everyone was ready to jam by 9am, so I think I should explain who we all are in this process:

Stev Guyer – acting mainly as executive producer and conductor in these writing session, he conceptualized all of the base aspects for the ballet along with Mathew Hahn

Brian Rau – our fucking phenomenal sound engineer who has been recording and mixing on the fly since we began yesterday… if you’ve never heard one of his mixes then you are missing out… sick

Matthew Hahn – Guitar Player and co-conspirator on most of these pieces, he can lay down in any groove comfortably and always brings great ideas to the table… I would say Wrath was really his baby, we just laid into it for him

Adam Fauth – Percussionist extraordinaire bringin the bongos, shaker, afuche, and many toys to flavor the meat of the song into a delicious treat for all

Marc “Silky” Brown – Jazz and Blues Keyboardist that can noodle better than spaghetti… he’s one of THOSE guys that just kind of makes you mad because you can say “what note is this? aaaaaaa” and he says “oh that’s a G” without batting an eye

Cedric Easton – Young drummer that plays with Christian Howes normally that is just plain ridonculous… seriously… he was playing quarter notes on the hat while dropping a right hand and kick beat today that was probably 4 BPMs faster… that’s just stupid lol

And me, Gabriel Guyer – Bass player and loud mouth that loves making music with these fools

So that’s the band that is writing, recording and eventually playing the ballet, 7 Deadly Sins, once it comes to fruition and hits the stage next Spring.

As I said… today was a great day though it had it’s hard times…

We started out by picking up where we left off with Lust last night; by showing Cedric the 2 parts we already had, and then we began trying to sort through the rest of the piece. Once we got through the 2nd blues section we married the 2 styles by dropping a blues beat underneath the keys and guitar playing the latin groove in 4/4. Then I just decided that I was going to try and throw in the syncopated rhythm I came up with the night prior… it was a hit, which I was really happy about! It really felt like a great way to bring some tension into the song, but I never expected it would go as far as it did!

Stev suggested we drop it down to only the first 4 notes for a faster syncopation, then Silky suggested we try the full riff as a 6 over 4 during the next section then into a different 4 beat syncopation and finally to triplets. It was STUUUUUpid lol After that, the piece drops to this NASTY funk beat then back to the 6 over 4 syncopation for the end. It is just ridiculously complex! lol It is a movement in the truest sense of the word.

Even though it’s phenomenal, it really became our bane for a while today… getting through it was really tough because there was a TON to remember in addition to the difficult parts within the song. BRUTAL! I think it took a couple of us near the brink befoe its completion, but luckily we made it through without any real problems or arguments. That’s a REAL test of musicians right there I couldn’t be happier with the pros I’m writing with (Side note: this song made my tricep about 4 sizes bigger from running that syncopation so many times lol).

Once we got through Lust, we went back to Envy in order to add the 2 percussion breaks at the top and bottom of the song, which went smooth as silk. Then we played the main section while Cedric laid down this crazy shuffle beat. We of course played through it a million times to solidify, record, etc., but ultimately it was a breeze in the grander scheme of things.

Now at this point, we were all pretty spent.

However it was still only about 6pm, so we launched into Wrath with as much vigor as we could muster. With the heavy metal nature of the driving rhythms in this song, we woke up real quick lol

We pounded away at it and made some serious progress pretty quickly which I think surprised us all. Within  a couple of hours we were tearing down the roof in this place!!!

It starts out kind of ethereal with these really open and interesting ambient “noises” over a heartbeat, then comes in like a frakking train! Once it’s in, it just churns along! I think the choreographer is going to be blown away lol

It also has these hits in the verse patterns that are just nasty We got them so tight already that you would think we had been playing together for ages.

All in all, I REALLY think this show is going to knock people’s socks off. We’ll see what kind of changes we end up making over the next several months in order to accommodate the choreographers, but this music is so strong on its own, I really don’t see how they could go wrong

Catch you on the flip…

So there we were…

… the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and the equipment was being setup throughout the house. We felt like The Beatles or the Red Hot Chili Peppers (who wrote Blood Sugar Sex Magic in the same house as the Beatles brilliantly enough). We filled this house with gear and started to string it all up. It was fantastic!

The dining room table became the stand for the 56-channel mixing board. I setup live bass gear in the corner facing into the middle of the living room.

Truly awesome.

And a couple of hours later, the house was filled with music.

We started the whole process yesterday by working on Envy. Stev Guyer, Adam Fauth, Matthew Hahn and myself just started plucking through the music and throwing whatever ideas we had out there. The feel of this tune was right on the money, but we had to lay in all of the details and changes, so we started with the intro which had yet to be even conceptualized.

While Hahn laid down a simple chord riff, I went for some simple roots then Stev stepped in and suggested a simple 2 note drop for me to put on top of it. Adam put down a nice, simple “do do bop” riff on the bongos and we were off to the races. After about an hour, we had the intro sorted out and launched into the meat of the tune.

Shortly after, Marc “Silky” Brown came wandering in and then we were 4

For the next 5 hours, we hammered away at the verses, choruses, bridge and solo of the 7 minute middle section. Ups and downs but playing along, all the while getting serious, sitting down and building some tension throughout.

After some laughter, some Cosi for dinner, and several shots at recording it without drums, we finally all felt pretty happy about it. Happy enough to table until the next day when Cedric was going to join us on the drums at least

Soooooooo THEN we moved on to Lust…

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I had some very strong opinions about this piece and where it was at in its beginning stages. We played through the sections that we had created, which was basically a latin groove for the intro and verse that goes into a blues riff for the chorus. We “nailed down” some ideas for those sections, made some changes and recorded it to listen to. It sounded fine but I was just NOT feeling the tension… the uncontrollable feelings that accompany true lust.

While sitting there listening and talking about it, I got a little bit aggressive trying to make my point (shocking for those who know me, I’m sure), but I felt like that’s how important it was. Ultimately we decided to table it for the night because we were going to have Cedric in the morning and it was already about 10:30pm.

So we all went our separate ways for the night, and most of the house went to bed. However, I was plagued by the question of how to make it happen… there was no way I was going to sleep until I figured SOMEthing out that I could throw into the mix the next day. I stayed up for the next hour listening to some Bear in Heaven, who have some really interesting syncopated electronic beats within their music. After tinkering around for a while I came up with an idea that at least made me stop thinking about the damned thing enough to realize I was pretty tired.

Guess it’ll have to wait until morning, and we’ll just try to figure something out…

——–

A couple of  hours of sleep and up at 6am to read a script from Kurt Larson, a.k.a. The Kid, before launching into the day of music.

So today – at this moment in fact – I am on the plane getting ready to depart for the retreat. Even though you’re seeing this blog digitally (and a day later), I’m actually writing it using an ancient writing utensil called a “peensul” or something and my plane is playing Annie Lennox and Mazzy Star… random and brilliant. I might be too excited to sleep on this flight, but I’m hoping I’ll crash somewhere along the line (me not the plane).

Running on fumes here… (and I’m not liquored up!?! WTH?!?!)

…which leads to my inevitable intro/whiney paragraphs on travel woes…

What do you MEAN there’s no bar open at 5am on Saturday in LAX?! Are you kidding me?! Now I’m no lush, but Bloody Mary’s are a traveling staple IMO. Apparently I’m in the minority, and that is balls! It’s Saturday! *sigh*

I’m not going to complain about the plane because, well, I’m on a chair in the sky. I mean 3 days becomes 5 hours… it’s still awesome to ride a flying bus.

(I scribbled some other whiney stuff, but I’ve decided to leave it out )

Ok now that it’s out of my system, I’m waiting (patiently) for the time I can turn my electronic devices back on – ready for a day of listening, reading and writing while flying through the sky WAIT!?! What do you mean American Airlines doesn’t ave Wi-Fi?! What is this, 2008?! *sigh* Guess I’ll have to keep using my “pinshul”…

DING

Sweet… headphones on, reading materials out, ears popped, and plane shakin… let’s write some music!

(1 hour later)

Starting off by revisiting my originals – possibly unrelated noodling that I recorded for this very moment – will it work? Actually I think there is some real potential for an additional section of Envy here. It has an excellent ‘hard working’ flavor to it. Consequently, I have also now spent some time on Envy as whole and made a few more choices like “never match the chord root here to give the feeling of resentment for the main line” (we really do have a Herculean adventure ahead of us heh).

Now that I have Stev’s notes and notes from Amy Seiwert, the choreographer who will be creating the movement for Envy, I know a lot more about their goals for this particular vignette… but I have my OWN thoughts muhahahahaha (Choreographer always wins in this scenario tho, so we’ll see how it all works out)

(1 hour later)

Next up – Sloth. Now I really like the verse pattern, guitar tone and general flavor of this one already. I revisited it to make sure, but all of the choices I have already made are still 100% viable and tasty IMO. The reigns are where they belong in this piece. The only caveat is that I’m not sold on the “chorus” section, but at this moment I don’t have a better choice either.

I am totally looking forward to working up the percussive elements in this piece and am thinking heavily about Sloth going into Envy to create a suite and really accentuate that aspect of human existence. It is a fairly viable outcome for all of us if were not consciously pushing against it! It’s the choices you make, when you can, that really color you future. I think that would be excellent to explore musically and then to share elements among them

(4 hours later – thank Dallas >:()

Rounding out the first leg of the journey was some extra work on Lust. Now interestingly, the music for this has been one of the few making the most sense, or at least “obvious” to me in musical intent. However after today, it seems this one may be one of the “idea collisions.”

The sheet of info I have on this song has Stev and the choreographer, Gina Patterson, on seemingly different pages as far as visual intent. Having read through both of their ideas, I prefer Gina’s, but I think both are missing the mark. Stev’s storyline is more of a ‘lust to love’ idea whereas Gina’s is a buildup of lust until the character gives in to the sin.

In my opinion, Lust is about the uncontrollable feeling of constantly wanting what you don’t have sexually, being in a room and feeling the sexual desire or urge for everyone else there, etc. These are feelings that appear absolutely out of nowhere, in many cases. In order to fulfill this hurricane-like experience, there MUST be internal competition and ignorance of others’ feelings/opinions to show the purity of this sin. I know I’ve been in the hurricane myself before. That’s something worth showing because it’s a difficult place to be.

Also the current musical iteration has male/female music flip-flopped, where the male music is more innocent and sweet while the female is bluesy and dirty.

Now… I get it.

But swapping stereotypical roles just for the sake of art is silly to me. You force the audience to think about an element that is relatively unimportant in the grander scheme of the piece. Our target audience is teenage kids, so I think making art for art’s sake is a bit naive. That’s my opinion anyway.

We’ll see where it goes hahaha, but I’ve got a strong opinion that I will have to be convinced to let go of lol

Well due to that lovely 3 hour delay in Dallas and the necessity for a little shut eye, that’s it for this blog.

Almost down in Columbus where I’ll scoot off to see the folks at Shadowbox and visit with my friends while I can

Tomorrow? It’s retreat time!!!!

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Morning update:

We’re busy getting set up here in the space this morning, and now we’re about an hour from start time Stoked!

I’ll let you know how Day 1 goes!

Let the rocking begin…

Well it’s 8am, and I’m just too damned excited to sleep heh Don’t you love those kinds of days?

Since I’m up already, I figured I should blog about yesterday. Yesterday was the first real day of composition for the ballet, 7 Deadly Sins.

No I’m not in Columbus already, and no I haven’t lost my mind… well maybe I have lost my mind, but I know what day it is! However, I don’t like to walk into any project without some sort of opinion or research. As I mentioned in my last blog, I have been doing a fair amount of prep, listening to the scratch tracks, reading about the sins, etc., but yesterday was my first day where Farm and I got down and dirty (‘Farm’ is the name of my bass fyi).

The writing day started with putting my fingers on the fret board and seeing what came out when all of the imagery and words were tossing around in my brain. I think that I laid down a few elements/riffs that could be really nice within some of the movements, or potentially become aspects of the 2 sins yet to be attempted. I even laid out a couple of full on verse/chorus patterns , but I don’t know if I really “feel” them for the remaining sins – even if I like them generally as musical structures. We shall see!

To begin the writing process, I was given guitar and general structure for 5 sins: Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, and Pride. The show is being laid out as a series of vignettes, so there is not a through-line to babysit outside of each sin. That gives us a whole lot of flexibility as composers. Each movement can really be a complete story – its own microcosm, if you will. I know Stev has a lyrical/libretto outline for each song already in mind, but after our conversation yesterday, it seems like we are on the same page conceptually(shocking, I know). Consequently I felt pretty good about moving forward aggressively on my own.

After laying down those general, unrelated ideas, I revisited each of the sins I have been listening to for the last week. With Farm in hand and my “musical branding words” on my mind, I plucked away for hours on end. Now… these words didn’t necessarily color every choice I made on bass, but since I have now sussed out the basic structures, I think they will from this point on. I know that Lust and Gluttony have already been infected! lol

My first job yesterday, as it should be, was to lay down a foundation and groove, so that’s what I spent most of my time doing. As it got later in the process with each sin, I was starting to add some embellishments, musical oddities, runs, etc. Over the next couple of days I can really think about taking apart and/or reshaping those general structures in order to encompass the visuals and branding words more directly.

Let me give you some examples of what the hell I’m talking about:

Sloth; “laziness” and “indifference” are 2 words I have chosen that will color my choices in bass tones and will obviously effect the way I play the song as well

Lust; in Dante’s Purgatory, the penitent were forced to endure “hurricane-like winds” to represent the lack of ability to control their lustful desires… I feel that if we don’t have moments in this vignette that truly feel like this to the audience then the full richness of the Sin isn’t being explored.

I have a multitude of other ideas to bring to the table, but I also don’t want to get too solid on anything since this is a collaborative process

By late in the evening yesterday, I had managed to get through all of the currently laid out sins (except for Envy, which is this morning’s project) at least in a small way, so I am feeling pretty confident about my prep. Lord knows I won’t be solid on everything (heh anything for that matter), but I am much less concerned about the little time I have available between now and Sunday’s first retreat day.

So in a nutshell, phenomenal first real day of writing yesterday!

At this point, I would think most well-known composers would have shut out all other music in order to focus on the task at hand, but I am actually going to take a different stand for this project. For example, I am going to listen to a variety of music that I normally would were I depressed, in order to foster and marinate some ideas for Sloth. I’ll also be listening to some funk in order to support one of my ideas for a rewrite of Pride. So, this isn’t a process I intend to go through in a vacuum, which I think will give the ballet a richer, more up-to-date tone over all.

Now unless some random thoughts come to my brain (which happens a lot lol) or I have some unexpected time to write, I won’t be blogging again for the next couple of days – so try to curb your anticipation! ROFL (does anyone read this besides my mom?)

But I will be back with a new blog on Sunday at the latest!!!!

Have a rad day!

At LAST I can shout to the world my excitement!!!!

This coming Saturday, I am off to Columbus, Ohio!

No it’s not for fun times with old friends where we …

…wait a second…

It kind of IS! That’s even BETTER!

There is a mission for this trip! I am actually traveling on business in order to participate in a musical retreat with several of my old musician friends. We will be laying down the foundations for a ballet, 7 Deadly Sins!

Shadowbox and BalletMet have decided to collaborate on an original project set to run in mid-Spring of 2011. 7 Deadly Sins will be an exploration into the human core and presumptuous nature of these 7 sins. Unlike Dante’s works, many of the specifics within this piece will be challenging the perceptions of these sins and point out how corroded the line is between their reality and their definitions.

At least that’s the heady, pretension definition I’ve come up with so far. Like it?

It’s possible that some of you reading this may not of even realized that I play music, as I have taken a very large step away from it since I moved to Los Angeles. However it has been and always will be an important part of my life. I even have an album back there somewhere!

Can I get a shout out for some “Strength”?!?! (that’s another blog lol)

A couple of months ago Matthew Hahn (Shadowbox bandleader, awesome guitar player and old friend I have played with for years) and Stev Guyer (Shadowbox CEO & Executive Producer, friend, fellow musician, hella-composer and my old man) honored me with an opportunity to collaborate with them and several other musicians in the creation of this Ballet.

My “main” writing job is my particular area – the bass guitar – but we will all have input on the entirity of the piece, each other’s choices, etc. So I’ve written some bass lines to go along with music beds we have already, but I’ve also got a couple of O-pinions as well. Shocking, I know. But hey, I’m sure there won’t be ANY tense moments with 6 musicians locked in a house for 5 days, right?

Honestly when they first asked me, I hesitated for about 20 minutes… but then I came to my frakking senses!!! As we have gotten closer and closer to the retreat, I have been getting more and more excited about this project About a week ago I received the (scratch) tracks for 5 of the sins… basically just Mr Hahn on guitar laying down some structural ideas and sharing the chord changes and progressions that he and Stev had worked on thus far. It also had a couple of notes attached about musical ideas for other parts of songs, etc etc.

I have been listening to those scratch tracks non-stop for the last couple of days just soaking them up as much as possible heh I also started doing a lot of research about the sins… Dante’s view, definitions, aspects and examples (I think I’m going to grab some images as well just to color the mind). It has been absolutely a phenomenal and wild ride already!

I was particularly happy when I spoke with the Stev a couple of days ago and was told that I was allowed to talk about it I was a little afraid that it would be another one of those “secret” projects I’ve done over the years that never really ended up being shared  (You know what I’m talking about SecondLife >:(). And apparently I have free reign on what I share! Muhuhahahaha!!!! (we’ll see how long THAT lasts lol). So I decided that I am going to blog about it because dammit… I wanna share this experience with everyone!

I hope you will join me on the journey. I have no doubt it will be a difficult but illuminating one, and I already feel that this is going to be a truly amazing piece of art.

We start the writing/recording retreat on Sunday and go through Thursday – all day, every day. I’ll be blogging every night even if it kills me, and many times (jinx) over the next year while we continue writing and preparing for the show. It’ll probably be theraputic anyway hahaha

Today was my first major day working on the music, but I’ll split that off into another blog. So, until next time I leave with a mish-mashed quote from Dante:

“And just as he who, with exhausted breath,
having escaped from the sea to shore,
turns to the perilous waters and gazes.”

- Canto I, lines 22-24, Dante’s Inferno

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