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Tag: zeke zaskin

New Album Coming Along – Stepping WAY WAY Out There Now

August 12, 2013

Well I think we’re doing it again. Princess Little Tree and I joke around about “what a challenge it is to BE Ed Hale” compared to just “dealing with him” like other people do. I’m always like “yeah yeah I know, I’m sorry about that,” when she complains about how many different projects I have going at once and how unwieldy and crazy our schedule is, “but just imagine BEING the person who has to LIVE AS me!” I respond. “It’s hard enough dealing with me, I know, but it’s a whole different thing to keep waking up to the fact that you ARE that person and trying to figure out ways of handling being that person!”

I think of it like this: I’m just me. A regular Joe like anyone else. But on top of it, I was born INSIDE this totally crazy super-curious and ambitious wild man who never stops thinking and planning and taking notes and starting new things. If it were up to me, I’d just be chilling like anyone else. The usual things, picnics, TV, movies, family, the park, having drinks with friends, I don’t know, whatever normal people do… But I feel like I’ve got this responsibility to try my best to honor this guy that I was born inside. And he’s got this massive imagination and all this ambition and he really does believe he can do it all and more. So I just do my best to make that happen and hang on for the ride; and hopefully survive it all. Yep. It feels like that.

So we started Ed Hale’s new solo album in the summer of 2011. Right at the right time. The first single from the last solo album was taking off. A few months later the second single was doing even better than the first. We needed a new album and we needed it fast. Problem was that we recorded about 17 songs initially and instead of one good solid album, it sounded more like two partially completed albums. So we all flew back to New York to record more songs. Ended up with 34 new songs. So now we’ve been slowly making progress on them. Little by little. Drums, bass, acoustic guitars and vocals are slowly all getting done. Along with various percussion and keyboards. The crazy thing is how many hundreds of hours it takes to finish one song. At least for us. Now. On this album. Let me put it into perspective. We’re in the summer of 2013 now and I’m only done with 12 songs in terms of being done with MY parts. That’s insane. I know it. But it’s just a lot of work.

This album started out as a continuation of the Ballad On Third Avenue album. Acoustic pop, or what in the business we call Adult Contemporary; that’s the actual format. But what we’ve ended up with is three distinct sounds for three distinct different albums. One is still more organic acoustic, what you would call almost folksy. Think Bon Iver or Fleet Foxes or The Lumineers. Simple stuff. Do it in your sleep stuff. But I tire of that real quick. Whether it’s mine or someone else’s. I have a tough time getting through three songs in a row of that kind of material. So we branched out and made some of the songs more electric, more upbeat, more pop. I dig that. Though it takes a lot more instrumentation and production. And then there’s this third style that’s coming out that’s more like electric folk, kind of like Dylan when he went electric… Rubber Soul perhaps? But not really cause it’s more folky.

It’s all acoustic based. None of it is “rock” per se. And that was the plan. These are Ed Hale solo albums after all, and since all the same players play on these that do the Transcendence albums, THAT’S the only difference between the two artists at this point: the solo albums are slower and softer, more acoustic, more pop, and Ed Hale and the Transcendence albums are more rock. It’s just a name/style thing, rather than a change in lineup. I’ve been working with the same group of guys since 2002 and don’t see changing that anytime soon. They’re like brothers now. They know what I write and sing like. And they call me on my stuff; they know what to do and say to bring the best out in the music.

I’ve been living in Seattle for the last few months and so we’re working out of a studio here. Only problem is that all the guys are in different cities and states around the country now. Most of the guys are still somewhere in South Florida. But others are in LA or Texas or Minneapolis or Atlanta. It’s crazy. What we’ve decided to do, what I’ve decided to do, is keep on recording the songs here, my parts, and then we email the songs out as MP3s to all these other players — we’ve got about 15 additional players now around the country, adding strings, woodwinds, horns, guitars, keyboards, drum programming, background vocals — and have them import the MP3 into their recording studio rig. They then record their parts onto the track to their liking and then they send only their parts back to us and we then drop them into the original open track, as if they were there in the studio with us.

We’re really tracking three albums here… We have about 13 songs done with “my parts” now… meaning the basic drums/bass/acoustic guitars, some keys and all my basic lead and background vocals. That’s what these guys will be tracking to. But we have musicians all over the country adding other instruments while I am NOT there. And neither is the producer. So there is no way to monitor what they’re going to be recording. I’ve never done ANYthing like this before… NOT being there when peeps record their parts. It could turn into a total MESS. But I’m hoping to create a totally NEW sound by doing it this way — encouraging the dissonance that will naturally come from the musicians stepping all over each other without knowing it. Trumpet parts stepping all over sax and flute parts etc. It’s a crazy idea.

Of course we’ll mix the messy parts out and just keep the “good parts” Meaning whatever fits and sounds good. And hopefully that will provide a GIANT palette from which to choose for Zeke Zaskin who is set to mix yet again. He’s mixed every one of our albums since Nothing Is Cohesive and he always does a great job. Bear in mind that we usually provide absolutely insanely confusing tracks. Usually very messy because we record A LOT. I’ll lay down at least 15 different vocal tracks plus three to five guitar tracks and two to five keyboard tracks. In addition Vancouver will lay down five to ten additional guitar tracks. Now we’ll be adding an additional 10 to 15 additional musicians all laying down whatever they want to however they want to…

It has the potential to be a royal mess. But it also has the potential to be a roaring success, something brand new and exciting sounding. the potential for the musicians to step on each other musically is VERY high. Notes that may sound good to them clashing with notes that other players have added… Cause none of us are going to hear what the other people are adding. But that’s what i LOVE about the prospects of this new way of doing it. The utter randomness of it. No, it will not be the usual organic “all built up from the bottom up together as a unit” kind of recording style that we are used to. It’s going to be the exact opposite. But that’s what I am kind of digging about this new method. We now have the technology to record in this fashion. Of course no one in their right mind would do this on a professional commercial release. It’s crazy for sure. But it just may blow us all away with how cool it could sound.

In any case, there’s a catch up for ya. That’s where we are. If you were wondering where this new album is. Yes I know we’re a year behind schedule. But there’s a valid reason for it. We’re trying something a little different with this one. So be patient. As soon as we have something finished, IF we ever finish a song that is…. We’ll post it for you all to hear. Frankly I can’t wait to hear what this grand experiment produces. It’s bound to be new. Good? Can’t say yet. The songs are good. But I just may ruin them… LOL! We’ll just have to see. Standby on that.

As always, more later.



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Uncategorized bass, drums, ed hale, guitars, Music, new album, new recording techniques, Transcendence, zeke zaskin

article 2019-04-29 124625_5.html

June 25, 2005
Spent an hour on the phone with the infamous producer/singer/songwriter Zeke Zaskin, talking about the new album we are recording. I’m telling him about all the music I’m digging and what I want the new CD to sound like.

After an hour or so, Zeke tells me ‘well after everything you’ve said, we’re still at the same place we always are, that same comfortable yet uncomfortable Fishy place, which is where you’re standing there between wanting to create three different musical styles on one album, modern rock which is what you always make, pop and hip-hop, and experimental, which is what you listen to and like the most. Six months ago you said you wanted to make an album that sounds like metallica and now you say you want to make an album like gwen stefani.’ ‘o.k. I hear ya. I know I know. so what do we do?’ ‘I really feel like we need to hone in on what you want to make first before we go any further. You need to find that one unifying theme for this album and then just run with it once you find it and not try to fit everything in all at once.’

‘you know man, I say, ‘How can I sit here and say that I listen to all this popular rock music like the doves, and Foo fighters, and Audioslave, and bloc party and modest mouse and killers and all that but that I can’t even listen to more than thirty seconds a song because its so predictable and boring and the music that I love like beck and jay z and the game and gwen and Rufus is driving me crazy because I like it so much, and then I turn around and create another modern rock album of my own. it makes no sense. I have to find a way to start making my own music sound like the music I actually enjoy listening to. I’m so sick of rock.’ ‘well then stop making rock music.’

‘well then you need to build your songs in a different way. why not send over the roughs to me and if we have to we’ll strip away all the drum parts and bass parts and guitars and we’ll build them from scratch with electronic hip hop drums and bass and just scratch the guitars.’

‘Well I don’t know if the guys are going to be into that. look guys we erased all of your parts and we’re now a hip hop band.’ ‘well yes that’s a concern. You know Fishy its two different kinds of animals. With rock it’s a monstrous sound. its this huge wall of heavy guitars and drums and cymbals and bass guitar. And with hip hop it’s the opposite. Its all sparseness and just a killer beat.’ ‘yeah I know. well we’ve already got a huge wall of drums and bass and guitars built up on these songs. Look, if we can’t make it a hip hop album at this point because we’ve already laid down a foundation of a modern rock album, at least we can take the elements of the arrangement and production that we like from hip hop and pop, that it brings to music. we can arrange the shit from a hip hop perspective.’

‘well like I said, you can send me the shit and let me check it out and I’ll co-produce it, and where these songs are at now if it appears that the album wants to be a dog, we can just finish it, call it a dog, and listen to it say bow wow. or it might be that we want to scrap it all and place some wings on it and call it a duck and get it to quack. Its going to be up to you brother.’

‘dude can I quote you on that?’

‘zeke zaskin makes another appearance in the diaries? certainly. Feel free.’

Man isn’t it so true how we always just steal the shit from the black musicians. Since music first went pop and rock in the early twentieth century, we’ve been taking from the black folk. Al Jolson painting himself in black face. little Richard and chuck berry and fats domino invented rock and roll. and American jazz, the first great original American art form, that was all black cats forging that new territory. And then Elvis made his career from singing all the black songs and the Beatles and Stones just trying to cop the black music they loved, singing all the black songs, and zeppelin ripping off all the black blues songs they worshipped, and then Eric Clapton and all those guitar cats taking whatever they could from Jimi, and in the seventies they hit their stride basically defining an entire decade and sound called dance music/disco with sly and the family stone and g Clinton and P Funk, and of course the jacksons and Motown invented modern pop music, and al green and Marvin gaye and stevie and the temps and Curtis showed us what it could be like if we actually put some soul into our pop…  and then rap hit and blew everyone away and saved aerosmiths career, shit I don’t think they even had a career anymore until that duet with run dmc, and now its all everyone just trying to sound like the hip hop cats. Its just always been about what the American black cats are doing.

But you know, there’s a reason for it. the black music has just always sounded better, been hotter, cooler, hipper, more cutting edge. And we white folk always trying to grab onto it and put our spin on it… trying to get a little taste. Me I can’t get enough black music.

Current spin: Gorilaz, demon days. interesting but predictable. Destiny’s child, destiny fulfilled. Great production but predicatble. I’m sure it will sell well. Ficserspooner, odyssey. We were compared to them in a recent review. I see no similarity. A girl called Eddy. I like this CD a lot. So much music out there. no way to keep up. still completely obsessed with HOLLABACK GIRL by Gwen Stephani. Which is my favorite song of all time currently. Right up there with crazy in love as one of the all time great pop songs. Can a song get any better than that?

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Uncategorized Labels: making it in the music industry, making music, producer, recording an album, transcendence diaries, writing music, zeke zaskin

A private little world for me… a private little world for you. The online journals and musings of singer-songwriter author and activist Ed Hale. The Transcendence Diaries have been posting regularly online since 2001. Comments are always welcomed. And so are YOU.

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