New video (new tune)
I just finished a video of a new tune that I recorded remotely with my friends, the L.A.-based drummer Andy Sanesi (my college roommate; we also used to play in tons of projects together when we first moved to NYC in the mid-90s), Milwaukee vibraphonist Mitch Shiner (also a wonderful drum set player), and Madison-based 6-string electric bassist (a fellow Canadian, and also a great solo performer on the bass). Like everyone else, it’s been hard for me not see our friends much these last few months and not to be able to make music with them, so this project was a wonderful chance to collaborate with a few of them anyway:
By now, you’ve probably seen a few of these types of multi-tiled videos, and even though they look a lot like a Zoom or videoconferencing screen, the latency inherent in internet transmission speeds makes simultaneous music making impossible (the equivalent of an 16th note delay in audio isn’t all that noticeable in a conversation, but infuriating when trying to play music together), so the instruments here were layered one at a time in our respective home studios (first with a “scratch” piano track, then drums, then bass, then vibes, and then the final piano part; with every player adding to what the previous players had already recorded), and then mixed and mastered by me at the end. The production part is a very labor intensive process, especially since I’m figuring out a lot of this technology for the first time (especially the video part, getting frame rates to match the audio, etc…). But it’s also been an interesting and fun challenge to learn this stuff, and the next one is now in the works (look for it in a few weeks).
Thanks to Andy, Mitch, and Josh for their wonderful playing!!!