well, duh!!

Today I figured out that my lovely new instrument mic - Shure SM57 - is perfect for picking up my keyboard! It sounds warm and rich. I just played around with recording some bass chords, and then playing a tenor melody with piano voicings. Sounded fine. So hey, maybe I can do some instrumental work now! Cool.

I need to just tweak the song I recorded as a collab with Bill Boutin yesterday - there's a couple of places where the harmony doesn't quite match the lead, so I want to fix that. Then I'm going to send Bill just the vocal track so he can mix it effectively. But you can hear a working version if you like, it's called "Been so Long", check it out at http://www.soundclick.com/billboutin

I'm also working now on re-doing 'Jack of Spades' with better instrumentation at a slightly faster tempo, since most folks said they felt it was a little slow. Overall I received a lot of positive feedback on the song, so I'm hopeful it will wend its way to Taxi, and beyond, with some success.

I have a couple of other ballads I've been mulling over in my brain, probably get to them later this month -- I'm out of town next weekend, but where I'll be there is a grand piano, so I expect I will still fool around with music & lyrics.

I've had some lovely feedback on the folk song I recorded. If you'd like to hear it, it's at http://www.soundclick.com/islandgirl

Later,
V