Pianissimo

Over the holidays I asked my parents if I could have the "family piano". I haven't had a real piano since I moved away from home nearly 16 years ago, and the piano (a 1957 Quidoz spinet) which is a family heirloom has been sitting relatively unused in their basement ever since. I don't think it's even been tuned in the past 18 years.

Anyway, they said that would be a great idea and this week I got some piano movers to bring it from Irma to Spruce Grove (and the move was not a cheap one, man!). It arrived safe and sound, but with some assembly required (I needed to run out and get some lag bolts to attach the front legs. The movers took the legs off in Irma and noticed that one bolt was crooked and the other loose, and a piano with useless front legs is actually kind of dangerous when you think about it).

I haven't written any recent songs on a piano, and I don't anticipate recording any live piano for the upcoming Caffeine Sunday project, but I'm going to enjoy getting reacquainted with the piano I learned music on, and getting it all fixed up. This old wooden beast will be a big part of my future songwriting process, I can feel it. That may sound weird coming from a synth-pop band, but keep in mind that all of Depeche Mode's songs and Erasure's songs were all written on either acoustic guitar or piano first, then arranged using all the cool electronics. It helps keep the process focused on the songs (melody, chords, etc) until you're ready to expand the soundscape based on that solid song.

The only problem - I have to wait 4-6 weeks to have it tuned, and it's a little painful to play it right now because it's sooooooo out of tune!

cn

In the studio - 21/01/07

Just a note about this weekend - I installed and have been testing the new version of Digital Performer (version 5.1). So far, so good, although I know I will have to upgrade my computer at some point in the not-so-distant future if I ever want to take advantage of the soft synths that are included.

The list of potential tracks for the new album are sitting at around 13, plus more if we decided to do a special edition double disc set with the second disc a remix album (the way Pet Shop Boys released the special edition Fundamental/Fundamentalism) there could be even more stuff.

There are a bunch more song demos that are in bits and pieces for future development, but there are definitely 12-13 tracks that could be finished and released relatively quickly.

My focus for the next couple of weeks - vocals. Now that I have my voice back (after being useless for the bulk of November and December due to a bad flu and subsequent infection that just... sucked) I can get back to singing, and the vocals are the main piece that's missing on most of these nearly-ready songs.

I'll let you know how it goes...

cn

A video so flaming it's damn funny

One part of our plan in terms of releasing new Caffeine Sunday material this year involves videos. The ability to make your own no-budget music video and then post it online (with YouTube et al) makes this idea almost a no-brainer, forgetting that "music stations" like Much Music don't play videos anymore. Anyway, we definitely want to make videos of songs. (We actually have already made one for Waiting for a Whisper - I'll post a link soon).

I hope we never end up, in retrospect, ever having a music video as brutal as this one: a monstrous smoking ball of cheese made by the Calgary Flames in their glory year (not years) in the mid '80s. It stars actual Flames hockey players lip-synching and air-guitaring to an amazingly bad theme song. Joel Otto playing a stack of synths - classic!

Anyway here it is - "You Can't Stop a Flame When it's Red Hot" - enjoy. (The scariest part - Doug Gilmour looks just like Mike Reno!).



Comments?

How the hell do you put out an album in 2007? (Part I)

This started out as an email to Ryan. But once I started blabbing I realized very quickly this should be part of our blog, because it's part of the challenge of being in a band in the 21st century.

At the top of my New Year's resolutions list is that the next Caffeine Sunday album will be finished and released by this summer. We have a bunch of older, unreleased songs and brand new material that we can use. I'm sure there are many of you who would like to hear and yes, even buy new CS material.

Here's the question all bands are struggling with right now - how the hell do you put out an album in 2007?

I don't have a clue.

No one does right now, really. The music industry and the method of delivering music to customers has never been in more flux than it is right now. If you look at it one way, it's an exciting frontier to be in the middle of. But that's little comfort when your goal is to have an album available to fans in the near future. Looking at it another way, it's just a big damn mess to be in the middle of.

Through the first eight decades of the 20th century, if you wanted a recording of yourself that was to be taken seriously by anybody, you made a record. A black wax disc. If you "made a record" it was a big deal and part of your musical legacy. The ability to make a record was in the hands of a very few people, but there was at least clarity on what it was you were after. Vinyl. Period.

By the 1970s eight-tracks came, and then tapes. I was into tapes in a big way in the '80s, mostly because the Walkman (actually the Home Hardware cheapie version of the Walkman) was portable, and then later on in life I could play tapes in my truck. But there was never any question on what was the true legitimate format - big bands put out records, not tapes. Tapes were the hissy, portable version of the record that you bought or listened to because you couldn't listen to the record itself.

Then came the CD. I actually like CDs a lot, and feel they get an undeserved bad rap from audio geeks who sneer at their digital clarity. I thought they were fantastic, and although I still had nothing against records, it certainly made a lot more sense for me to be buying CDs of new artists than searching the globe for the rapidly disappearing vinyl or sticking with freakin' tapes (other than for making mixtapes from your CDs or old records).

Around the same time in the '90s, home recording technology started becoming cheaper and easier to use. Then the ability to create your own mass-production "record" also became cheaper and easier. You could have your own CD replicated through companies like Candisc for less than $2,000 for 1,000 units. Things became a little more accessible to the common songwriter or band. Then things got even easier - I remember little more than 10 years ago, in a band Ryan and I were in previously, how ecstatic we were because we were able to record a CD of our own material (for ourselves, basically, not 1,000 copies) at the lowly cost of $40 per CD-R. Yes, that's EACH disc. And we had to use a burner owned by the University of Lethbridge, and it burned at 1x speed. But at least we could do it -- make our own CD, our own album. For all of those decades, bands simply did not have the keys to the make-your-own-album safe. The record companies did. Now we could all do it ourselves. Not just crappy demo tapes - real, live CDs.

Of course now anyone with a cheap PC with a built-in burner can make a stack of audio CDs in a matter of hours. And $40 will buy you more blank CDs than most indie bands can ever realistically hope to sell in a year.

But just when everyone has access to the means of distributing albums of their own at a very cheap cost, comes an even easier, cheaper way - digital downloads. They're awesome, they're convenient, they're cheap (free for P2P users) and people are dropping CDs like mad in favour of MP3s and AACs for their iPods (or their Wal-Mart cheapie iPod knockoffs). Consumers are in control, slumping music giants are now getting the life beaten out of them, and the whole business of putting out music feels like you're hovering in the midst of a weightless chaos.

So what do you do now if you want to release a new album? Do we go the digital route with releasing the next Caffeine Sunday album? Do we bother making a CD version? I mean when even the chairman and CEO of EMI Music is declaring CDs as we know them today "dead", it makes you wonder about bothering with CDs at all. I've mentioned this before, but have you visited any big-time music stores lately? The massive A&B Sound in downtown Edmonton used to be a major shopping destination for music seekers. It's a shell of its former self. The entire upper floor is closed off, and a room on the main floor has been converted to the CD section. And when I was in Toronto a couple of months ago, my friend was all excited to take me to HMV on Yonge Street. What a disappointment. The HMV in West Edmonton Mall is bigger (although the majority of that store's floorspace is dedicated to DVDs now, not CDs, if you take the time to notice). I digress.

On the other hand, does anyone get excited about a band like us having an "MP3 release party"? Do venues book bands to play because they have MP3s on a website but no physical release like a CD or, gasp, a vinyl record (which some local bands are going back to)?

I think this is a topic I will be posting about frequently over the coming weeks and months, because I really don't know what the outcome will be - other than one way or another, you will all hear new Caffeine Sunday music this year.

cn

Ryan's Top Albums of 2006

In leiu of exciting band news, here's a list of my favourite albums from last year.

1. Imogen Heap – Speak for Yourself
Believe the Nash hype, this is one of the most amazing, life changing albums you'll ever hear.
2. City and Colour – Sometimes
This acoustic gem was so beautiful and achingly heartbreaking it made me want to fall in love again just so I could live all the pain and insecurity of these songs.
3. Shiny Toy Guns – We Are Pilots
The most energetic release of the year. It's been the exclusive soundtrack for my exercise routine for over two months now and I have no plans to change this anytime soon - I've lost 2 kg!
4. Mobile – Tomorrow Starts Today
The best '80s rock album of the year. Nothing new or original here, just impeccably produced wanna-be mega-hits.
5. Memphis – A Little Place in the Wilderness
Soothing, peaceful, introspective, best served with a bottle of red wine.
6. The Legends – Facts and Figures
Sweden's most prolific indie rocker Johan Angergard returns with the best synth-pop album of the year. This guy is a musical genius... one of his other bands, Acid House Kings, topped my list for 2005.
7. Pet Shop Boys – Fundamental/Fundamentalism
The main album is a continuation of their brilliant career. And the remix album was actually ballsy (PSB, ballsy?), something you could cruise around listening to at a loud volume and feel like a real bad ass, even if you drive a Saturn Vue.
8. Snow Patrol – Eyes Open
Britpop lives.
9. Placebo – Meds
Back to form after their "best of" cash-in. Still one of the best filth bands around.
10. Office – Q&A
Chicago's best kept indie-pop secret.

Worst band of the year (and possibly decade): Billy Talent. Words cannot describe how much I despise this "band" and I'm willing to bet money that the vast majority of their "fans" will completely disavow them 5 years from now when the wheels come off the bandwagon.