This past Monday I had the first of my four weeks worth of recording sessions at The Institute of Audio Research (IAR). They have this really cool program that’s basically a barter: they provide free recording time for ensembles in exchange for being the “guinea pigs” for their recording engineering classes. The classes are three hours, very relaxed, and I can bring in any group ranging from a quartet to a septet. They get a really good sound there too, perfect for a demo or archival recording.
To kick everything off, I brought in my good friends Sam Minaie on bass, Brian Fishler on drums, and Sean Fitzpatrick on piano to play some new music for quartet that I’ve been writing. We had a gig the same night a Spike Hill in Brooklyn (which was awesome, by the way!) so the recording session gave us an extra opportunity explore the material. We ended up recording 5 tunes, and here are a few of the rough mixes, for your listening pleasure!
Beard of Bees: I thought of this as a song title a while back, and the title finally found its tune. I Googled “beard of bees” last night, and the results are pretty disgusting and bizarre. It’s a fun tune though, and includes one of the most angular basslines I’ve ever written.
Done and Done: A pretty waltz. Sam is really doing some cool stuff (I wish you could hear him better on this mix!) that is making the song happen.
Melange: Sean suggested that we take the tempo slower on this one than I had originally conceived and it worked splendidly! This song has a Maiden Voyage-ish ostinato for the first 12 bars, followed by an 11 bar section with very Trav-like changes.
I’m excited about these three tunes in particular, because they were written just last week! That’s one of the things I love about NYC, you can write something new and hear it played (and in this case even get it recorded) by spectacular musicians in a very short span of time. Where else in the world can that happen so easily?
Next week for the recording session I’ll be bringing in a group that I co-lead with vocalist and composer Kat Calvosa, The Calvosa-Sullivan Project (CSP!). I’ll be definitely posting some of the results of that session as well!