I haven’t written much for the last few months, so there is quite a bit of new info.

First, I was awarded a Beverly Sears Grant from CU to record Song & Dance for Alto Saxophone and Piano with Art Bouton and David Shuey. We will do the session next week with a student from Lamont as engineer and me as producer.

I have been remixing the Kallisti track She Got to learn my way around all of my new ProTools Plug-Ins (I bought a 003R Factory in January). I have made a bunch of changes trying to eek the best sound out of the original tracks. It reminded me how great that friggin’ song is. One of the best things I’ve been a part of. Check out the remix here.

I did a gig and some recording sessions with the Invisible College Quartet (Paul Hembree, Steven Snowden, Chris Rippey, Me). This group has some great ideas. I think there is at least one good CD there if we could just get together with some regularity.

Speaking of recording, I rearranged the studio into a more conventional studio/control room setup. I got all of the vintage analog synths up and plugged into the Mackie 24×8 (which serves as a studio submix for various things like keys, junk, electronic drum kits, etc). I bought another line regulator to run more gear on. Good power makes such a difference with electronics!

I am planning to re-record Distillations for the Distillations Set CD on Monday.

I’m looking at swapping the Behringer BCR2000 out for a 25-key controller. I just don’t use that many rotary controller, so I think I’ll use that with the desktop workstation. I borrowed a DBX 166xl compressor/gate from Conrad and added it to the rig. I really needed another few channels of compression and some more gate options.

I put together an Ableton version of the drum loops for The Passage (with Tosca String Quartet). After some careful listening. I am going to retrack a bunch of the guitar stuff. I just didn’t get the tone in the tracks, so I’ve had to do way to much doctoring. The result is weak. Beyond the tone, the piece has taken shape and there are quite a few places I think I can get a better take then I did. It seems like I might never finish this thing, but I just want it to be right. I’ve put enough time and money into it that I don’t want to cut corners on this one.

The SPMC series will have the final show of our first season this week. We started with the Playground and we’ll end there.

Still working on the guitar rig. New developments to come.