My first foray into making music with AI involved. How involved you ask? Is this shit even real?? Well I think it is indeed real. I did use Suno in the process of creating what ended up at the streaming links above, but I didn't start there. The song started the same way probably 80-90% of my songs have started, me strumming an acoustic guitar and finding a chord progression I like. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to have the foresight to actually record the idea while it's fresh and I did that here. The next step for songs that start out this way is to listen to them while I drive and see if words/melodies jump out to get to the next place in songwriting, knowing what the song is actually about. Here's the acoustic recording I started with:
For eight songs recorded straight to analog and mixed in a few hours, I think we did pretty well. In those days, you might be able to punch in a part, but there was certainly no "fixing" anything with digital magic.
The new EP is out on all the streaming platforms. Details on the songs are below the links.
I started writing the song For Everyone about ten years ago. Like most of the songs I write, it started with a chord progression followed by a vague idea of what the melody could be. One day I was driving and listening back to an acoustic strumming the chords, and the beginning of the chorus just came to me out of the blue: When do we get to the part where we stop hurting each other? How do we get to the place where we stop breaking each other down? It had been some time since I wrote a song with a "message" and this one seemed to be writing itself. Suddenly, I felt this one needed to be done in a hurry and rushed out. I already had a couple of new songs close to the finish line, Yup and Paying for Lessons. Now I felt like I was close to getting an EP worth of material , and I wanted to get it to the masses. It didn't take more than a couple of days to get the lyrics finished, now I had a song I could play on an acoustic, but I wasn't sure where it would go from here. I brought it to the studio where my stepsons worked on music and asked if they wouldn't mind learning it real quick and putting down bass and drums, I was still just strumming an acoustic. I think we wen't through the song all of three times and I brought home the acoustic, bass and drum tracks. In the big picture, I wanted this to have electric guitar instead, so I recorded a kind of funky electric riff over the drums and bass, put power chords over the chorus, and then another track of lead throughout the song. The final touch I figured it needed was female backups on the chorus. At the time I was in a cover band and I got the female vocalist from Tastes Like Chicken to sing a three part arrangement I put together, and I figured it was ready for prime time. Since this was the song with the message I made it the title track of my EP, and I rushed it out to CD Baby and all the streaming services. You can check out that version here:
So I found out Covid was "real" as I was in the office at my new job getting ready for a weekend of Frozen Dead Guy Days in 2020. The event was canceled 24 hours in advance and shut downs and work from home was happening immediately.
In the six days between the first two Covid shows, I decided the shows should have themes, I sure can't play the same songs every week right? The expectation was the same small handful of friends would show up and they deserve something better than a repeat.
For the third episode I stepped the sound up with a mixer so I have a stage mic and my guitar on separate channels and effects streaming with the video. I also started trying to pull off using a looper built into my guitar pedal. The looper pedal thing isn't my forte, just wanna play a solo here and there you know. I do think the set ends well. I played this full set with acoustic/electric but I already have my eyes set on electric.
That's right I opened the show streaming to the wrong page, the Tastes Like Chicken page. So nobody saw it as it happened, but there it is. The Dr Wippit page stream starts with Margaritaville, a better lock down song to be sure.
The first time I opened with a Pink Floyd reference. I’m starting to kind of feel like there’s regulars for these. Am I going through the trouble of putting on a shirt and hat for something? Yes.
April 26th, 2020 My first attempt to use the looper (Summer Breeze) is a terribly painful four starts, but it gets going eventually, and I need to practice this now. My snide comment about people requesting songs "I already played in other sets" goes to show how seriously I'm taking myself at this point, but really I'm just trying to play a whole new set every week to see if I can do it.