Here We Go: Direction Is Coming June 1!
My first original music since 2015 will be released one week from today, on June 1, 2018. It is a six-song EP called Direction, and I have put all of my creative energy into it for the better part of the last three years.
Direction is a themed EP that explores the concepts and meanings of the words that represent the six relative directions: forward, backward, up, down, left, and right. This is made pretty clear if you peruse the tracklist:
1. Forward
2. Backward
3. Right
4. Up
5. Down
6. Left
A themed EP is an idea that I’ve kicked around for a long time. I stole it from Sleeping at Last’s Ryan O’Neal, who has been releasing awesome themed EPs and albums for years now. I always thought it was a really cool songwriting challenge to start with a topic or category and build songs from there. Sometimes, when we have the technology at our fingertips to explore unlimited options, the best way to spur creativity is to impose some restrictions on ourselves.
The idea of using direction as a motif for a set of songs came to me about two years ago while taking a long drive. Before I reached my destination, I had already come up with the six song titles, started brainstorming different interpretations of those words, and started making connections between some of my existing songs and ideas and how they could fit into this framework.
The recording process for this EP was much different than Silhouetting. Rather than completing each song before moving on to the next, I exhaustively demoed all six of these tracks and then recorded them all at once. I laid down all of the drums and keys during the demoing process and then recorded bass for the entire EP, followed by guitars and finally vocals. Since I did the demoing with MIDI patches, I wrote most of the parts on a Novation Impulse keyboard that I added to my little home studio in the years since Silhouetting was released.
The result of this very different recording process is twofold. I think that the EP is much more cohesive than Silhouetting since all of the tracks were being worked on simultaneously. The music that was influencing me while I was writing and recording was mostly harder rock, so these songs have a more aggressive, driving quality to them. There are no acoustic guitars on Direction, which is a pretty large departure from my first album. (There is piano, though. Always piano.)
I also think that the songwriting and musicianship is a leap forward. By writing the parts on piano, I came up with a lot of chords and melodies that I would never have arrived at if I was strumming a guitar. In fact, there are a number of chords throughout the EP that I had to improvise how to play on guitar. By arranging all of the parts before recording any performances, I was able to come up with some more intricate interplay between instruments. And another few years of experience with musical arrangements and theory didn’t hurt either.
I am so excited to release these songs! Later today I will be making a couple more posts with the cover art for Direction and the first track from the EP that I will be sharing with everyone. I can’t wait for you all to get a taste of the music I’ve been working on!
