My friend, Adam Roper, came to visit for a few days and we wanted to experiment with making some videos similar to the blogotheque style. If you’ve never seen a blogotheque video, go to www.blogotheque.net right now and be inspired (you can also type “blogotheque” in the search on youtube). I can’t say that our day of filming was a major success, but we had a lot of fun and learned a fair bit about filming.

We just wandered around the city and spontaneously shot footage of me playing some songs.

We actually had a meeting with a former professor of ours, Nelson Boschman, and on our way to the coffee shop, I played “Shame on Me” in the back of the city bus. Then after hanging out with Nelson for a bit, we wandered down to the beach and I played “More of Myself Without You” on top of a boulder that sits under a city art piece. That one didn’t work very well, so we searched the area for a new location. I saw a cool mural on the wall of an alleyway and wanted to shoot there, but we almost got hit by a truck, so we decided against it and just started heading to my house. On the way, we stopped at a skytrain station and shot “Tired Eyes”. The train dominated the sound as it came it, but it looked pretty cool. The other downside was that some chauch dove in front of the camera as he got off the train. Somehow that didn’t get caught on tape though. As we continued heading toward my apartment, we saw a violinist busking at Waterfront station. He was really good, so I asked if he would jam with me for a few minutes. We played “Numbed” together. He was a nice guy. I think he said his name is David. He had a thick foreign accent that I couldn’t pinpoint. Finally after a short sea-bus ride to the north shore, we walked up to the look-out and filmed me playing “Won’t Wake Up”.

When we got to my place we uploaded the videos and watched them over a late lunch. The sound quality wasn’t great and there were some things to be learned about simplicity with videography, but we had so much fun and it was an adventure. Perhaps art is supposed to be adventurous – breaking forth into unmarked territory with creative attempts.

(1) On the first day of recording, we set up all the equipment, tuned up the guitars, and warmed up on a song or two… then when we tried to queue up the recording, the metronome* wouldn’t work. It took about an hour for Adam (my producer) to it figure out. Meanwhile, I was just sitting there silently, thinking, “I’ve made a terrible mistake….” (Arrested Development reference anyone?) Apparently Adam was thinking the same thing. So we weren’t exactly off to a good start, but things got much better quickly… until…

(2) I had recorded all of the guitar tracks for the original set list of the album and I wanted to record drums, percussion, piano and guitar for a new song all on the same day. We weren’t exactly set up properly for drums. I am a very rusty drummer – I was in my prime in high school (and in hindsight, I wasn’t even great back then). On top of that, we had a poor quality drum set and only two microphones. All of the drums and percussion we recorded that day was scrapped in the end. We didn’t get any piano done either. I did, however, record the rhythm guitar for “No One But You” that day. So at least I got something (other than a lesson well learned about recording drums) for my money.

(3) The first day of recording vocals, I experienced the harsh reality of my limited vocal range. All of my songs were too high. I could hit the notes, but they didn’t sound very good… or at least not professional. I was pissed off. I thought that I sucked and I seriously considered throwing in the towel and cutting my losses. I spent most of that day moping around the studio, feeling sorry for myself. Adam convinced me that I really do have talent and that I just need to find my sound and use my strengths. For the first time, I tried singing in my lower register. It felt weird at first, but I eventually started to love it.

(4) When the recording was finished and it came time to get the album professionally printed, I ran into a couple problems. First, the day before I was going to the printers, I tried playing the master copy of the CD in my computer. To my dismay, it did not work properly. We burned the CD in the wrong format. I almost panicked but Adam and I solved the problem the next day, just in time to get it to the printers. Then on the next day, the printers sent me a digital copy of what the artwork would look like and there was a new problem. My eye on the front cover got cut in half because of the bleed room**. This looked terrible, so I actually had to get Matt (my designer) to put a new photo in and re-send it to the printers. Thankfully, it all worked out in the end.

* A metronome, aka click track, is a constant beeping beat that keeps musicians in time (not slowing down or speeding up) when recording.

** Bleed room refers to the part of a picture that gets printed, but cut off in order to insure there is no unwanted white border.