A couple years ago, I decided it would be cool to put all my Kotaku articles into a single post and update it regularly. If you want to look through a list of highlights from the last few years, you can find them here.
This list now starts with my final goodbye post from December 2018 and goes back through August 2016. Obviously, I’m no longer updating it. I’ve included dates with each article, though a couple of those might be “republish” dates, and not the date of original publication. (Those dates are always noted in the articles themselves.) In a couple of instances, I’ve inserted older articles I like into the chronological flow.
Hello, friends. Long time no see! I’ve been busy in my Kotaku-cave (Kotakave?) for the last couple of months, and have been doing so much writing that I haven’t had much time to do any blogging here. Today, that changes, and with what else but… a post about Kotaku!
Despite the fact that I’m writing and publishing more work than ever, I sometimes get the sense that my friends and readers maybe don’t have a firm grasp on what it is… that I do. I can’t blame them—fur flies all over the place at Kotaku, and unless you’re obsessively following the site or working there, I can’t imagine how a single human could keep up. In particular, some people seem to be under the impression that I “get paid to play video games all day,” which is a misconception so hilariously “mis” that I really do want to dispel it altogether.
I thought it might be fun to take you guys on a walkthrough of one week in the life of a Kotaku writer, focusing on last week. Get ready for thrills, chills, and behind-the-scenes excitement! Continue reading “A Week in the Life of a Kotaku Writer”→
When I was in music school, I was in a few saxophone quartets. At the University of Miami there is usually a freshman quartet, with the four freshman jazz saxophone principles assuming the four chairs in the group. It’s a great way to focus on intonation and blend. I’d never played in a “proper” rehearsing quartet before, and it was a challenging and exceedingly valuable experience.
My senior year, a group of upperclassmen actually put together an advanced quartet in order to tackle some really challenging music. The group consisted of me on tenor, Dan Kinzleman on soprano, Chris Shade on alto and Paul Roth on bari. UM Sax Prof Gary Keller directed us.
. We played a bunch of serious modern repertoire, including a Dave Liebman quartet that was as “out” as out can be. Lieb actually came down and listened to us play it, which was awesome and a bit harrowing. And in the spring, composer Jim Mcneely was the guest artist for the Concert Jazz Band, in which I was playing second tenor. Before the concert, our sax quartet took it upon ourselves to learn the final movement from a Mcneely piece called “Shadows and Whispers; Slash and Burn.”
We recorded it live at Gusman hall in early 2003. Every time I come back to the recording I’m struck by just how incredible Mcneely’s writing is, and how advanced the music was. His big band writing is equally cool, but something about the purity of the quartet really brings out what he does so well.
A (fantastic) student of mine named Ben is applying to UM, and Gary really likes his playing. Which is so very cool to hear. I saw Gary last week in New Orleans at the JEN convention, and we talked fondly about the Mcneely quartet. Gary went ahead and forward the recording along to Ben, so I thought I’d share it here, as well.
As you listen to it, bear in mind that there is no improvising in the piece – all of the notes were written. Check out how it goes in and out of focus, going from unison to harmony to rhythmic disjointedness and back. (Update: if you would like to purchase it, it is available via Advance Music.)
“Shadows and Whispers; Slash and Burn” by Jim Mcneely:
In addition to being able to carry more music with me in general, a side-effect of having increased portable music-player storage space is that I can finally take my entire They Might Be Giants collection everywhere I go. No more weighing various albums, going with older volumes just because they’re classic, cherry-picking songs from records… I finally have the entirety of my music collection’s giant-y goodness with me at all times.
I’ve had a really good time re-visiting their entire catalog, remembering what makes this band so special for me. Their music is so free, so unpretentiously groovy, but even more than that, their lyrics? Are amazing.
I thought I’d compile a list of my favorites from among John and John’s many amazing lines and refrains.
This past Sunday, my band at The Urban School of San Francisco gave our Spring concert, and it was, by all accounts, a crashing success. The group I direct there is the beginning group, dubbed the “Lab Band” – the idea is that students develop their skills in my band before graduating to the Advanced Band, led by Urban’s head jazz director, Scott Foster. This kind of hierarchical setup works really well, both in motivating students to improve, so that they can move up, and allowing those who are just starting out on their instruments not to feel overwhelmed in the early goings.
Part 1, detailing the gear in my looping rig, is here.
I’ve recently been working on becoming more self-sufficient as a performer. One of the great things about The Exited Door was how many brilliant musicians I got to contribute, but the flip side of that is that it can be difficult to perform the material without them! Generally speaking, I’ve always had the intention of performing with a huge-ass group, giving the tunes a literal reinterpretation of what’s on the record, but that kind of show is A) logistically hard to pull off and B) financially unsustainable. So, my plan had always been to come up with a way to perform solo or in small group settings – the trick was figuring out how.
Enter my loop pedal. Well, actually, Nervo’s loop pedal that he loaned me, but same difference. Using it, I’ve put together a pretty cool one-man band setup, as I detailed in a post a few weeks ago. It’s been a blast coming up with little “mini-melodies” and working out how to perform them. It didn’t take long to realize that, in addition to playing loop-specific songs, I could use the pedal to creatively add the flavor of the orchestration on the record.
However, as I began to implement this idea, I noticed a few things. For starters, my setup was taking up too much space – I had all my wind instruments laid out with my percussion on a separate chair, and four pedals in front of the amp… it was just a little too busy.
Another thing I realized was that while it would actually be possible to play a good number of the tunes from the record solo or with another guitarist, I’d need to get creative with triggering loops that I recorded using the melodica. What’s more, there wouldn’t be time for me to reach over and grab the melodica every time I needed to play a solo (like, say, the trumpet melody on “No Crow, Scarecrow”), so I’d need to figure out a way to have quick access to the instrument while playing guitar.
The Apparatus.
I’d been thinking about designing an arm-mount for my melodica for a little while – it always seemed like a natural fit for the instrument. That said, I’m kind of shocked that I actually pulled it off! All it took was one trip to the haight, where I picked up two matching big thick leather belts and some heavy-duty velcro.
After initially attaching the upper-arm band and the wrist band to my arm and threading the wrist-band through the handle on the back of the melodica, I attached velcro to the outside of the upper-arm band, as well as the underside of the melodica. It worked great for a bit, but after I started practicing with it, it became clear that I’d need a second strap around the top to hold the instrument in place. I was initially using string, but that was pretty flimsy; another trip to the hardware store and I found a 24″ velcro strap that was perfect. I attached another strip of velcro to the top of the melodica, wrapped the strap around, and voila! The thing wouldn’t fall off if I was chased by an angry mob. And, taking into account how awful it sounds when I screw up one of these loops, the possibility of that happening isn’t quite as remote as it may sound. Heh.
To detail how it was put together, I took a few pictures (a few used my mirror, so they’re inverted):
The shoulder and wrist straps. Also, the gun show. Yeeeahhh baby.Reinforcing the shoulder mount & the finished product.
But enough pictures, time to show this thing in action! Without further ado, I give you the YouTube debut of my looping mini-composition “Happy Pants.”
I’ve spent a good amount of my life fairly certain that somewhere out there exists an evil version of me. It goes back to when I was in school – while at UM, just about every guy in my group of friends was assigned an “anti” version of himself. Anti-Kenji was this fratty Asian dude we always saw at the cafeteria, Anti-Russ was pretty similar to real Russ, and Anti-Kirk was this big tall guy who always wore basketball shorts and a visor, with his school ID card stuck into the brim. The theory was that if any of us ever actually came into contact with one of these dudes, we would cancel one another out and cease to exist, as well as possibly rip a hole in the space/time continuum. Needless to say, we kept our distance.
So here it is all these years later, and again I find myself confronted with an evil twin. It started yesterday, when Dan A. sent along this picture of a CD he found in his friend’s car:
AWESOME. Is it possible for this guy to be any more of an evil version of me? He’s like a checklist of evil-version characteristics. Facial hair? Check. Black leather jacket? Check. Unkempt appearance? Check. Vaguely threatening jewelry? Check. And then there’s the issue of his name. I mean, seriously. I can’t think of a more perfectlyevil variation on my name.
Dan also pointed me to his myspace page – which I feel I should note contains a bunch of great music – and I decided to friend request him. I sent the request along with a note explaining that we were clearly evil versions of one another, and that we should probably never meet, lest we cause all of existence to cancel itself out.
A couple of hours later, I got word that he’d accepted my request, and also that he’d left a comment on my page. I’m not sure I can find the words to explain what makes it so unbelievably effing awesome (in particular, the fact that it was obviously written by an auto-commenting bot) so I took a screen grab so that y’all could see for yourselves:
You’re welcome, Dirk Hamilton. I will visit your page often. Mainly to keep tabs on where you are so that we never accidentally run into one another.
After all, I’d hate to be responsible for the negation of existence as we know it.
This week, I got to do something fun and different – my sister is getting her masters’ in counseling at the California Institute for Integral Studies (CIIS), which is a very groovy counseling/therapy institute located south of Market. I heard through her that a group of CIIS students were looking for a musician to accompany them during a drama therapy performance, and, with no idea what exactly would be involved, or indeed even what Drama Therapy was, I said “what the hell” and decided to go for it.
I spoke with a group member, Jessica, on the phone and she explained what exactly they were doing, and what they’d need from me. The method they use is called “Playback Theatre” and in it a troupe of actors solicits stories from the lives of the folks in the audience and then plays those stories back to them. It’s all improvised, and pretty abstract – men can play women, women can play men, scarves are involved…
My gig would involve improvising a soundtrack to the various scenes. I’d been wanting to get my loop station together for some time, so I thought this would be a good excuse to go for it, so I ordered a couple of missing components and got to work getting ‘er set up and working.
After rehearsing with the actors, we did our performance today. It was really cool! Listening to the stories while simultaneously thinking of what to play is a unique challenge – “Okay, she’s talking about the circus, what do I know that’ll work… and where do I start the loop… what key will this be in?” It’s fast and really enjoyable to do, you gotta think on your feet! My only complaint was that we didn’t perform for longer, though I have a feeling that today will not be the last time I join an improv group onstage.
Incedental to that performance, I got my loop station complete and MUNI-transportable, and I worked out a couple of fun little ditties that I can recreate pretty consistently and cleanly. I thought it’d be fun to post them here on Murfins. So, first I’ve written a breakdown of what I’m using and where, and then a posted few examples of some loops I did. The examples are far from perfect, since they were recorded live and on-the-fly, with no overdubbing or tweaking after-the-fact. That said, I’m pretty happy with them!
Without further ado:
Gear Breakdown
1. Tambourine (gotta have it!)
2. Flute
3. Avocado Shaker (which I dearly love)
4. Clarinet
5. Melodica (my new favorite instrument)
6. Microphone Stand (the hardest thing in the whole unit to transport)
7. Shure Beta-58, the mic to end all mics
8. Boss GigaDelay, Mic only
9. Boss NS-2, mutes the mic, supplies power to the pedals
10. Boss RC-20 looper, on loan from Dan Nervo. The heart of the beast.
11. Volume Pedal
12. Ovation Celebrity
13. Tuner
14. Crate Taxi 15-watt amp (rechargeable, portable, and LOUD)
To make a loop, I usually start with some sort of set pattern, and the challenge for me has been to speed up my transitions between instruments. It’s quite fun to jam out with a looper, but in the interest of making something that’s actually enjoyable for people to watch and listen to, going in with a very specific gameplan (and instrument choreography) is very important.
A Few Examples (Links go to downloadable MP3s.)
1. Dancing Pants
I really enjoy this first loop – the loop length is very short, and I think that might be why it works so well. I call it “Dancing Pants.” Got off to a good start, added things quickly, and got a pretty mean groove going by the end. I’ve been in the habit of starting loops off with the guitar, and it’s nice to start it elsewhere (in this case, on the clarinet).
2. Forlorn Pants
Second loop is a down-tempo, so I guess I’ll call it “Forlorn Pants.” The pants are forlorn, people. Pretty easy, with nice volume swells, though there are some pitch problems going on with the guitar that become evident later on – the big trick with this one is that it takes a little while to cycle around, so the whole thing moves quite a bit slower. Using the delay on my flute to add ambient texture is really fun, and something I want to experiment with more.
3. Happy Pants
Third is a longer loop which is quite happy – it’s called, you guessed it, “Happy Pants.” I’m a big fan of this little melody – I came up with it recently, and plan on working it into a larger show with a full band. It’s very stroll-in-the-park-y. Also, some rhythmic issues crop up, but whaddya gonna do? Go with it, that’s what. It’s still tough for me to get this groove settled without hearing the melody, for whatever reason.
4. Lemon’s Loop
Here’s an alliteration for ya: Last but not least is a little loop I made out of the Liz Lemon-y lick I noticed last week while re-watching last year’s 30 Rock episode “Greenzo.” It is one of the main reasons that I want to be Jeff Richmond, the guy who wrote it. I love it so much that I wanted to play it, so I did – it’s called “Lemon’s Loop.” My apologies, Jeff Richmond, if you’re reading this. And also, if you’re reading this, hi, Jeff! You are the man! I hope you like my blog!
…um, anyway. So, yeah, more timing issues come up in this one, there’s this effing late note that comes around every time, but once stuff gets going, it’s not that noticeable. I’ve played this one better, but I’m happy with the clarinet solo, so, yeah!
To conclude – looping is really fun. I’d say these four examples show where I’m at after working on it for a couple of weeks. It’s an unforgiving medium – one fuckup sends you back to square one, you know? I’m very interested in picking up an Electro Harmonix 2880 once I have some spare cash lying around – the idea of recording onto separate tracks (woodwinds on one, percussion on one, guitar on one) is immensely appealing. But ’till then, the RC-20 does everything I need.
Oh yeah – and perhaps the coolest thing of all is how portable this setup is! For all that’s going on, all of the sounds I’ve got access to, it is entirely battery-powered, collapses into three pieces, and fits onto MUNI like a breeze. Which means that it’s great for busking, and that’s the plan!
Everything from that first picture is here, if you can believe it.
Crampons are outdoor footwear that include pointed metal parts and are worn on boots to provide traction on snow and ice. General-purpose crampons designed for most mountaineering and glacierice climbing. For ice climbing, specialized crampons that provide better support for front pointingwelted boots to ensure proper fitting. travel are not well suited for vertical are advised. Most crampons require
“Ebb”
Ebb is the flowing back of the tide as the water returns to the sea (opposed to flood, flow ).
The phalanx (Ancient Greek: φάλαγξ, Modern Greek: φάλαγγα, phālanga) (plural phalanxes or phalanges (Ancient and Modern Greek: φάλαγγες, phālanges)) is a rectangular mass military formation, usually composed entirely of heavy infantry armed with spears, pikes, or similar weapons.
“Chyron”
In the television industry (especially in North America), a lower third is a graphic placed in the lower area of the screen, though not necessarily the entire lower third of it as the name suggests. (…)
Lower thirds are also often known as captions, or occasionally chyrons in North America,[1] and astons in the United Kingdom, after the major suppliers of broadcast caption/graphic generators. Other common terms include superbars (or simply supers) (US) and name straps (UK).
“Tchotchke”
Tchotchke—originally from a Slavic word for “toys” (Polishcacka, tsatsca; Russianцацки, tsatsci)—adapted to Yiddish טשאַטשקע tshatshke, tshàtshq·qh|tshawtshq·qh, “trinket”, are small toys, gewgaws, knickknacks, baubles, trinkets, or kitsch.
After over a year of recording and rehearsing, writing and ranting, working and waiting, my first-ever solo album, “The Exited Door,” is finished and in-hand. What’s more, as of today it’s available for purchase online! In honor of that, I thought I’d devote a post to sharing links to all things Exited Doorian. If you’ve enjoyed my blog or liked reading about the album, please pick up a copy! It is an entirely self-funded project (look ma, no financial backers or label!) – I made the entire album with my hands and the scant contents of my bank account. Your support really matters and is very appreciated.
Ways to Buy the Record:
1) The best way is to order the disc online from CDBaby. I love CDBaby, and they love me – the disc is a steal at $11.95, and the physical item is the way to go, not only because it includes all the lyrics, but because it contains all of the wonderful artwork that accompanies the record.
2) Download it from iTunes. The easiest and most familiar way to go. Though you won’t get a copy of the artwork if you do this, you can download it for free as a PDF from my website.
3) Download it from DigStation. Another good way to go – I’m not sure what the deal is with the downloads at CDBaby, but I know that when you download my album from DigStation, I get 100% of the income. iTunes gives about .67 on the dollar, so that’s a huge improvement. Plus, you get a downloadable PDF of all of the album art and lyrics, so it’s really the next-best thing to buying a CD.
Links, Etc:
If you’d like to keep track of the latest happenings with the record, as well as keep up to date on live performances, I keep my personal website and my myspace page very current.
I had a really good time writing the blog series about the creation of the album, and have organized the posts below:
Part one covered the album’s initial conception; this is the “why” behind the disc.
Part two discussed the initial writing process; this was probably the most exciting time in the album’s creation, when it felt like anything was possible.
Part three detailed writing the lyrics and creating the initial demos of the record. This was also a fun project, and was a really fun time of the year (April/May of 2008).
Part four got all technical and stuff about the recording process; getting the rhythm section, strings, and horns recorded was a big logistical challenge that was fun to tackle.
Part five went inot detail about the final recording sessions – woodwinds, vocals, guitars, percussion – and the initial organization and mixing of the record.
Part six covers the mixing and mastering process; in other words, how we wrangled the audio from raw to finished.
Part seven discussed the album artwork and design, and the process of organizing the wonderful artists who contributed original artwork to the project.
Contributing Musicians/Artists:
A lot of amazing musicians played on The Exited Door. Below, I’ve posted links to their various websites and projects.
Lindsay Garfield sings with the alt-folk group Or, The Whale – they are great, see them live!
At the start of 2009 I finished work on my first solo album, titled “The Exited Door.” It is a collection of thirteen original songs, and it features just about every Bay Area musician I know. It has been, to embrace the cliche, a labor of love – I began work on the record at the start of 2008, and spent most of the year shepherding the disc from conception to completion. I am immensely pleased with the finished product.
This is the seventh and final part in a seven-part blog series detailing the various phases of its creation. Part one covers the initial conception, part two is on the writing and scoring of the music. Part three details the creation of the album demos, and part four is about the large recording sessions we did throughout the summer.Part five covers the final recording sessions and the initial mixing process, and part six details the final mixing and mastering processes.
Assembling the artwork and finalizing the design on the album was by far the easiest part of production. With the tunes written, recorded, edited, and mastered, the only thing left to do was to put together the art and the layout and send the thing off to Discmakers.
Yeah, I know.
I’d had a pretty good idea of what I wanted with the design from the get-go; I knew I wanted some sort of portrait-like illustration for the cover, and my initial thought was that it would be something like Billy Joel’s “River of Dreams” album cover. Which is kind of hilarious, in retrospect. That might be the least-cool album cover in existence. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was actually drawn by Christie Brinkley when she was married to him, so it’s this total non-art kind of thing, with tons of watercolors and drawings, and it’s kinda sorta… lame. But at the end of 2007, after putting down “cool” for a while and trying to come up with something more real, it was at least in the neighborhood of where I wanted the cover to be.
It didn’t take me long to figure out where to go to find an artist to commission to do the work. I know plenty of artists around San Francisco, but didn’t really know any of their work that well, and just tracking down an artist friend didn’t seem like the way to go, for whatever reason. Right at the outset, however, when I thought about how much production and recording work I’d be doing at school, as well as how many students I’d be getting to help out musically, I realized (in a bit of a forehead-slapping moment of clarity) that I should get an Urban student to do the cover art!
At the start of 2009 I finished work on my first solo album, titled “The Exited Door.” It is a collection of thirteen original songs, and it features just about every Bay Area musician I know. It has been, to embrace the cliche, a labor of love – I began work on the record at the start of 2008, and spent most of the year shepherding the disc from conception to completion. I am immensely pleased with the finished product.
This is the sixth in a seven-part blog series detailing the various phases of its creation. Part one covers the initial conception, part two is on the writing and scoring of the music. Part three details the creation of the album demos, and part four is about the large recording sessions we did throughout the summer.Part five covers the final recording sessions and the initial mixing process, and part seven is about the artwork, photos, and design. The record is now available for download at Digstation.com, and tracks from the disc are streaming on my myspace page. Part Six: Mixing, Editing, and Mastering
It was December. The music had been written, the charts laid out; the musicians had learned the parts and been recorded, the voice-overs were complete. The singers and I had learned, tweaked, and re-learned the parts, and the tunes had morphed from abstract ideas into actual recordings. This was the home stretch – time to wrestle these tracks into a finished album.
I’ve already discussed how much easier it is to mix things when all of the tracks are recorded and accounted for – the drums can be EQed to leave space for the bass, the vocals and the horns can be put where they need to be in order not to clash, etc. But there’s another aspect to it as well – when I have an incomplete session, it’s tough to get in the mindset required to make things sound finished; all of the ingredients aren’t yet in the stew, so it’s tough to begin to add seasoning.
Once all of the tracks are recorded though, for better or for worse, I know what I’ve got to work with, so it’s much easier to begin to chop up the audio and make it fit into the sound of the tune. Which, once the tracks were finished, was exactly what I got started doing. Continue reading “The Exited Door – One Year, One Album (Part 6)”→
At the start of 2009 I finished work on my first solo album, titled “The Exited Door.” It is a collection of thirteen original songs, and it features just about every Bay Area musician I know. It has been, to embrace the cliche, a labor of love – I began work on the record at the start of 2008, and spent most of the year shepherding the disc from conception to completion. I am immensely pleased with the finished product.
This is the fifth in a seven-part blog series detailing the various phases of its creation. Part one covers the initial conception, part two is on the writing and scoring of the music. Part three details the creation of the album demos, and part four is about the large recording sessions we did throughout the summer. Part six covers mixing, editing and mastering the tracks, and part seven is about the artwork, photos, and design.
Part Five: Final Recording Sessions and Initial Mixing
As the tracks started to reach their final state in terms of content, it grew a lot easier for me to mix them. I’m just not able to mix things separately – I have no way of knowing if the sound that I get on, say, the drums alone will sound good once the bass, guitars, and vocals are added, so it just wasn’t possible to tackle the mixing until everything had been recorded.
It was quite a process, and was the most challenging part of the album’s creation. The transition from demo to full recording required me to put down my preconceptions of the songs at every turn. One of the dangers of making complete recorded demos of tunes is that it’s pretty easy to get used to the demo – to the mistakes, the odd mixes, and lackluster instrument sounds – to the point that it can be jarring to mix in real instruments played by real humans. Since the sampled instruments and the real musicians were in utterly different universes, both in terms of mix and groove, I held off attempting any mixing until I had everything in place.
At the start of 2009 I finished work on my first solo album, titled “The Exited Door.” It is a collection of thirteen original songs, and it features just about every Bay Area musician I know. It has been, to embrace the cliche, a labor of love – I began work on the record at the start of 2008, and spent most of the year shepherding the disc from conception to completion. I am immensely pleased with the finished product.
This is the fourth in a seven-part blog series detailing the various phases of its Part one covers the album’s initial conception. Part two is on the writing and scoring of the music. Part three details the creation of the album demos, and Part five covers the final recording sessions and the initial mixing process, andpart six covers mixing, editing and mastering the tracks. Part seven is about the artwork, photos, and design.
With the demos complete, the music scored, and the parts written, it was time to head into the studio and record the actual musicians. Since I had sent demos and charts out to everyone already, my plan from the outset had been to do modular recording sessions, breaking things up to make it easy to schedule time with each musician or group. The Urban School has a very cool Pro Tools HD system and Control | 24 board, along with a nice big main room and an isolation booth. Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to run the sessions entirely on my own, particularly when I was playing (on the horn session), I enlisted the help of two student engineers at Urban, Sam Tygiel (who is also a brilliant young flutist, guitarist, and songwriter), and the always-professional, low-key Daniel Moattar.
The great thing about demoing in Pro Tools is that it makes it possible to take the demos you’ve created and really easily replace tracks one-at-a-time through several sessions, until you’ve got a whole new recording. In other words, the demos act as templates for the finished product.
The plan was to record the musicians over the following sessions:
At the start of 2009 I finished work on my first solo album, titled “The Exited Door.” It is a collection of thirteen original songs, and it features just about every Bay Area musician I know. It has been, to embrace the cliche, a labor of love – I began work on the record at the start of 2008, and spent most of the year shepherding the disc from conception to completion. I am immensely pleased with the finished product.
This is the third in a seven-part blog series detailing the various phases of its Part one covers the album’s initial conception. Part two is on the writing and scoring of the music.Part four is about the large recording sessions we did throughout the summer, and Part five covers the final recording sessions and the initial mixing process, andpart six covers mixing, editing and mastering the tracks.Part seven is about the artwork, photos, and design.
After finishing the initial writing and scoring process for the majority of the material for The Exited Door, the next step was making a demo of the album. I was bringing together an unprecedented number of musicians (for me, anyway), so my goal, in order to ensure that everything went smoothly, was to make it as easy on all of the musicians as possible. That meant having a really clear idea of what we wanted to record well before we entered the recording studio, and having recordings and charts for everyone to learn beforehand.
At the start of 2009 I finished work on my first solo album, titled “The Exited Door.” It is a collection of thirteen original songs, and it features just about every Bay Area musician I know. It has been, to embrace the cliche, a labor of love – I began work on the record at the start of 2008, and spent most of the year shepherding the disc from conception to completion. I am immensely pleased with the finished product.
This is the second in a seven-part blog series detailing the various phases of its creation. Part one covers the album’s initial conception. Part three details the creation of the album demos, and part four is about the large recording sessions we did throughout the summer. Part five covers the final recording sessions and the initial mixing process, andpart six covers mixing, editing and mastering the tracks.Part seven is about the artwork, photos, and design.
As I prepared to write the music for “The Exited Door,” I realized that I’d never actually sat down and written an extended, self-contained group of songs before. I’d written tons of songs over the past five years, but always one or two at a time, and never with the intention of putting them all together into an album. I knew I’d need a different approach to writing the music for this album.
At the start of 2009 I finished work on my first solo album, titled “The Exited Door.” It is a collection of thirteen original songs, and it features just about every Bay Area musician I know. It has been, to embrace the cliche, a labor of love – I began work on the record at the start of 2008, and spent most of the year shepherding the disc from conception to completion. I am immensely pleased with the finished product.
This is the first in a seven-part blog series detailing the various phases of its creation. Part two is on the writing and scoring of the music. Part three details the creation of the album demos, and part four is about the large recording sessions we did throughout the summer. Part five covers the final recording sessions and the initial mixing process, andpart six covers mixing, editing and mastering the tracks.Part seven is about the artwork, photos, and design.
When I talk about the concept of “The Exited Door,” I’m not so much talking about the album’s thematic concept as I am its musical concept. That is to say, the finished record is indeed a “concept album,” one that has a theme running through it (it even has a song called “Theme”), but that wasn’t my jumping-off point. I started with a pretty clear set of musical goals, a sort of musical manifesto.
As a writer and arranger, I’ve spent considerably more time behind a pencil (both a literal one and the figurative one on my computer) writing scores than I have behind the board in the studio recording their performance. That’s beginning to change, and the more time I spend mixing my own arrangements, the more I’m struck by the ways in which the two disciplines are similar, as well as one giant new aspect that mixing brings to the arranging process: namely, by using stereo pan, the mixer has the ability to move musicians around on a virtual stage. This allows an arranger/mixer control over not only the rhythmic, harmonic, and dynamic range of the music, but also the physical locations of each individual instrument.
I thought I’d write a bit about that and share some recordings in which all four aspects are manipulated in concert to a particularly nice effect.
The Score: Rhythmic and Harmonic Axes
When writing an arrangement for an ensemble, be it a jazz big band, a rock group, a vocal choir, or a string quartet, I tend to start by thinking in two basic dimensions – rhythm and tessetura (where in the harmonic spectrum the notes fall, i.e. low/high notes). The rhythm is the X axis, with each instrument’s assigned notes occurring over time, while the tessetura is the Y axis, depending on the “height” of the note played.
Music is all about tension (and release), and arranging is all about space. The manipulation of the space on the X and Y axes brings tension and release to the music – the farther everyone is apart on one or both axes, the more space there is in the music, rhythmically and harmonically. Write everyone close together, and things sound more dense; bring them farther apart, and the music opens up, each part gets more distinct, and there is less sonic tension. Continue reading “Arranging: The Score Meets The Studio”→
A couple years ago, I decided it would be cool to put all my Kotaku articles into a single post and update it regularly. If you want to look through a list of highlights from the last few years, you can find them here.
I’ve spent a good amount of my life fairly certain that somewhere out there exists an evil version of me. It goes back to when I was in school – while at UM, just about every guy in my group of friends was assigned an “anti” version of himself. Anti-Kenji was this fratty Asian dude we always saw at the cafeteria, Anti-Russ was pretty similar to real Russ, and Anti-Kirk was this big tall guy who always wore basketball shorts and a visor, with his school ID card stuck into the brim. The theory was that if any of us ever actually came into contact with one of these dudes, we would cancel one another out and cease to exist, as well as possibly rip a hole in the space/time continuum. Needless to say, we kept our distance.
After over a year of recording and rehearsing, writing and ranting, working and waiting, my first-ever solo album, “The Exited Door,” is finished and in-hand. What’s more, as of today it’s available for purchase online! In honor of that, I thought I’d devote a post to sharing links to all things Exited Doorian. If you’ve enjoyed my blog or liked reading about the album, please pick up a copy! It is an entirely self-funded project (look ma, no financial backers or label!) – I made the entire album with my hands and the scant contents of my bank account. Your support really matters and is very appreciated.
Kirk Hamilton Dot Com 