Design/Part Two

With a project title like DREAMSVILLE, I certainly needed an interesting visual concept for the CD. And I knew there would be only one photographer who could help give me the look that I wanted: Peter Simon.

Since 1999 I've enjoyed spending summers, college breaks and getaways to the island of Martha's Vineyard.  Peter's photos regularly appear in the Vineyard Gazette newspaper and Vineyard Style magazine; each year he releases a highly anticipated and very collectible calendar of his photos which all Vineyarders look forward to displaying in their homes on-island and off; and his work is regularly featured in galleries all over the world. In addition to being a world-famous photographer, he is a writer, a lecturer, and a music maven. If that weren't enough to impress, he is also a brother to the singing Simon sisters- Carly and Lucy.  I had always been impressed by Peter's work and knew very well that he had captured timeless images of many famous personalities and musicians: The Beatles, The Stones, The Dead, The Police, John Belushi, Bob Marley, Richie Havens... the list goes on and on. I was convinced that Peter could create that 'dreamy' look that I was searching for, and I had to have him on board with the project.

So during October break when I took my usual vacation on the island, I was lucky enough to be able to contract Peter for a photo session. After a preliminary chat on the phone when I gave him the concept for the project, he had an idea for one of the photos for the CD that he felt would capture a dreamlike state.  We made plans to do the session on Saturday October 6th around 5:30pm. There was only a narrow window of opportunity because the weather was due to turn windy and rainy on Sunday, and Peter was looking for a certain atmospheric condition that would take place when the sun went down. A dreamy fog would come in from the ocean, hopefully.  Of course, the humidity had to be just right- and the conditions wouldn't appear if it turned too cold.

Peter gave me directions to his house in Chilmark and I traveled up-island to pick him up.  He was a cool 1960's looking guy, very laid back and relaxed.  We drove out to an area in West Tisbury where he had used trees in a previous photo in a slightly apprehensive yet definitely dreamy way.  The spot he brought me to was a large, rather gnarled tree about halfway up a green grassy hill.  He asked me to pull my car onto the grass just slightly below the hill facing up at the tree and to put my high-beams on. I also needed to leave the car running so I wouldn't discharge my battery and leave us stranded out there. As I walked toward the tree I would be posing in front of, I realized I had dressed really too properly, wearing a powder blue shirt and blue segmented tie with my dark black slacks and dress shoes, much more appropriate for a formal shot in front of a piano. Peter rightly suggested that I should take off my tie, remove my socks and shoes, roll up my shirtsleeves and try to look a bit more relaxed.

 

We wrapped some shiny plastic that I had in my trunk around a boulder that was slightly off to the side of the tree to hopefully create a little extra soft light from the flash of his camera. The beam of a hand held flashlight was shined on my face to provide highlight there. And then he set about his work, laying down in the grass on his back and shooting me from further up the hill as I stood in front of the tree.  

We were there about an hour as the sun went down and dusk fell- and just as we had hoped, the fog slowly crept in all around us. As the humidity increased, dew collected and began dropping off of the tree and it was almost as if it was raining.  I will tell you that modeling is not my type of work, and I will not be giving up my day job any time soon! Not to mention by the end of the shoot my clothes were rather soaked from the change in humidity and the dropping dew. We tried some other poses seated on the tree before he decided that he had taken all the photos we needed.

I had mentioned to Peter that I was also interested in getting a professional shot for the disc. He was very kind to schedule some additional time with me two days later on Columbus Day. He called up his friend Chris Scott who was willing to allow us into the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown to shoot with the finest piano on the island, a Stanwood Steinway C.  That morning Chris informed me about David C. Stanwood's work on bettering the actions of pianos for people who suffered with crippling hand ailments like carpal tunnel syndrome. 

 

Peter snapped me for about five minutes while I played "How Deep Is The Ocean?" (one of the photos is on the acknowledgement page of the insert- and after playing the piano, I was sold on the effortless touch, velocity and responsiveness of the instrument thanks to Stanwood's improvements). Peter also shot me through the frame of the opened piano lid and captured my mirror image (quite like a doppelganger) in the underside of the lid- a really cool idea that again contributed to that 'dreamy visual factor' I was searching for. Then he took some straight ahead shots beside the keyboard, one of which I'll be using as my professional publicity photo.

After each session, we went back to Peter's work area in the basement of his house where he loaded the raw footage into his computer software, Picasa.  He had me look at the raw proofs and pick the shots which I liked.  Then he examined each one to check for blurred pixels and selected a few that he felt was the best to work with. Through the magic of photo editing, he was able to play around and make the photos simply perfect. (For instance, he was able to remove the numerous soggy stains on my shirt from the dewdrops falling off of the tree.) 

My impression of Peter's work with me, both behind the lens and at the computer, was exactly what I had expected.  He knew exactly how many photos to take, he chose the ones that were extra special to tweak a bit, and he turned each photo into a work of art.  

As I've said before in reference to Katie Mazzerina-Schwartz and her impressive graphic design, the musical content is only one part of a CD project.  A CD has to look good as well.  I can't imagine having done this project without Peter's artistic touch.  The tree photo on the back cover is so awesome. So many words describe the photo: dreamlike, mystical, fantastical, stunning- just to name a few. The cover shot ("Sunset at Cow Beach", used with his permission) shows his expertise for capturing sunrises/sunsets and seascapes. If you need a photographer for anything from a wedding or special occasion to professional/business pursuits, Peter is definitely your man!

Theme and Content, Part Two

I've always been intrigued with 'easter eggs', the extra bonus material on CD's and DVD's that one discovers unexpectedly.  So I decided that I wanted to include some hidden tracks on my first CD project.  Why? Well, first, the timing of my 14 programmed tracks equaled about 56 minutes, and I wanted at least 60 minutes worth of total time.  (You can put about 72-80 minutes on CD's, usually, but I felt an hour would be nice. Not too long of a program, but also not too short. You could listen to it for one half of a 2 hour dinner at home with friends, or one half of a 2 hour car ride.)

Secondly, since I would be releasing the disc around the holiday season (I am a huge fan of holiday CD's, having over 50 of them in my personal collection), I decided that the songs I recorded should be holiday selections.  SPOILER ALERT: Don't read on if you want to be surprised when you play the CD.

One of my favorite holiday CD's is the "Christmas Album" by Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass.  Herb is/was an amazing trumpet player who founded the TJB and also was the co-founder of A&M Records (with Jerry Moss).  Even Miles Davis was impressed with Herb's talent. Herb and the TJB were at the top of the pop charts during the 1960's and I loved listening to his music. I even wanted to play the trumpet when I was four years old because of him. Unfortunately, I couldn't hold the damn thing at the time, let alone blow into it, for a trumpet was way too heavy for a little kid. (That is why I ended up playing the piano!)

   

Anyway, Herb surprised everyone by singing on one of the TJB's biggest hits, "This Guy's In Love With You", written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. I decided that I wanted to try my hand at vocalizing on my two bonus selections.  (My Vocal Jazz students and jazz piano students hear me sing all the time, but not in this kind of forum.)  As for the songs to be sung, I selected one rather little-known Christmas song, "Let Me Be The First To Wish You Merry Christmas", written by Steve Lawrence; and the well-known holiday staple "What Are You Doin' New Year's Eve?', one of my personal favorites.

So on the evening of November 10th, I recorded the piano backgrounds for the two bonus selections in the Warbeke Room of Pratt Music Hall at Mount Holyoke.  I had the option of using the concert grand in McCulloch Auditorium, but I didn't want the piano sound to be massive because of the concert hall acoustic. I liked the idea of recording on the baby grand Bosendorfer piano in Warbeke. The room has a wood floor, a few rugs and a lofty wood beamed ceiling. That seemed to suggest the warm acoustic that I was looking for.

Brian couldn't attend the session, but he instructed me on how I should set up the microphones. Courtney Duhring (a member of my Vocal Jazz Ensemble and the student Jazz Board) supervised the session as assistant recording engineer. Unlike the live Delaney session, I had complete control with my performance and wanted it to be as perfect as possible. I would be recording the piano tracks first and then putting the vocals on later. Courtney was on the main floor of the building stationed in the sound booth to record me while I was upstairs on the third floor, and we communicated by using walkie-talkies. Unfortunately, she had to endure the sounds of crabbiness and exclamations of disdain in between imperfect takes.  Courtney remembered a few funny responses from me:  "Oh, shoot!"  "Man, why can't I get this right?"  "Okay, I'm walking around the room right now to regain my composure..."

Well, happily we were able to get the tracks I wanted after about 75 minutes worth of work (and the aforementioned crabbing). On the afternoon of November 17th I took them to Brian's home studio for re-mixing. He was pleased with the sound of the tracks, and I was glad that Courtney and I had done a good job in his absence. 

For the piano background track of "Let Me Be The First To Wish You Merry Christmas", Brian and I used take 8 until the pause before the end, and then spliced the ending of take 7 onto it. And for "What Are You Doin' New Year's Eve?", we used take 10 for the bulk of the song- there were at least six takes with false starts, because it took me a little time to get the intro timed the way that I wanted it. We spliced on take 11 for the intro to the song and take 13 for the coda of the song.

We then focused on the vocal tracks to be placed over the finished piano backing tracks. Brian and I agreed that they would best sound very intimate, as if the listener is sitting right next to the piano as I serenade her.  That would match the intimacy of the live portion of the disc. So he put my vocals right in the center of each track, with the piano sound warmly wrapped around. I tried three takes of each song, and after listening to them we were debating the pros and cons of combining multiple parts of different takes.  But then I think I got inspired and said "Let's just see if I can get them both done in one take, so we can avoid any splices in the vocals." And somehow I did manage to get each song on the fourth try exactly the way we envisioned them.

I asked Brian to supply me with the audiophile information for the whole disc- for anyone who loves that kind of inside info:

• Delaney House session: two Electro-Voice RE16 microphones into a Tapco 6200 mixer
• Warbeke session: two Shure SM 81 shotgun condenser microphones into a Mackie 1642-VLZPRO mixer
• Ecclestone Sound session (vocal): one Electro-Voice RE18 microphone into a Tapco 6201 mixer
• Mixing/remixing of disc: Adobe Audition software
• Burning/finalizing of disc: Roxio software

So that's the story on the bonus tracks.  I really enjoyed making them, and I do believe there is a full-length holiday CD in my future sometime down the road- with more singing! Meanwhile, my thanks to Cheryl Cobb for helping me prepare the vocals.  She spent some time with me where I was able to bounce a bunch of ideas off of her, and she gave me some great input and suggestions.  Thanks also to Courtney, too, for her assistance on recording these hidden holiday tracks!

The Unveiling

My CD arrived from the manufacturer yesterday!  I am thrilled with the final product.  As promised, this is your notification that it is now available for purchase at the Odyssey Bookshop, and the price is $16.  There will be more locations posted in the coming days.

I will also have another post on the making of the CD soon, so stay tuned.

Theme and Content, Part One

As I mentioned in my first post, I had over 30 tracks to select from as I put together the musical content for the DREAMSVILLE CD project. Brian Ecclestone had gotten pretty close to three sets worth of material that evening on two discs for me to preview- a mixture of uptempo and medium swing tunes as well as ballads.

 

When it came time to select the tunes for the CD, I first listened to all the tracks to see which ones I felt were the cream of the crop, so to speak.  Remember also that the tracks were recorded live, so there would be no possibility of fixing any 'wrongly placed' notes. (I can't remember who said this, but some wise musician said "There are no wrong notes in jazz- only 'wrongly placed' ones.")

  

After several days of listening, I had some definite favorites and was able to figure out a playlist that worked on two levels:  

• Fast tunes needed to alternate with slow tunes so the listener wouldn't get either overwhelmed or bored.  (Anyone who has created a 'mix CD' or an iTunes playlist knows what I mean.)  
• The key of each tune needed to have some relation to the tune that came before and afterward.  

And then, of course, what would I call the CD? Was there any kind of theme that could be gleaned from the titles of the tracks that would make for a good, catchy CD title? Well, not really, other than that many of the tunes dealt with 'love'- but what American Popular Songbook tune doesn't? 

Maybe one of the tune titles would work as an overall title of the CD? I had planned to call the CD LIVE AT THE DELANEY HOUSE, but that seemed kind of ho-hum and predictable. And then I recalled Brian mentioning to me at the session that he really liked the Henry Mancini song, "Dreamsville"- he had never heard of it before and loved the chord progressions. So I decided that DREAMSVILLE would not only be a interesting title, it would also give my designer Katie Mazzerina-Schwartz and my photographer Peter Simon a very cool theme to work with.  More on that later. 

Here are the tunes I selected and the order that I came up with:                                           

1. A Foggy Day (uptempo; key of F)
2. Dreamsville (ballad; key of C)
3. How Deep Is The Ocean? (ballad intro/uptempo swing; key of dm/F)
4. I'll Never Smile Again (ballad; key of Eb)
5. A New Kind Of Love (uptempo; key of G)
6. These Foolish Things (medium shuffle; key of Eb)
7. It Might As Well Be Spring (slow swing; key of G)
8. MEDLEY: I May Be Wrong.../I Hadn't Anyone (uptempo swing; key of C/F)
9. The Girl I Love (ballad; key of Eb)
10. Lover, Come Back To Me (slow swing; key of G)
11. I Left My Heart In San Francisco (ballad; key of Bb)
12. Somebody Stole My Gal (fast stride; key of Eb)
13. Blue In Green (ballad; key of dm)
14. I Can't Give You Anything But Love (medium stride; key of G)

Here is the order in which the tunes were actually recorded that evening (I haven't tried listening to them in this order yet):

• A New Kind Of Love
• These Foolish Things
• Dreamsville
• Lover, Come Back To Me
• MEDLEY: I May Be Wrong.../I Hadn't Anyone...
• I'll Never Smile Again
• I Can't Give You Anything But Love (take one)
• It Might As Well Be Spring
• How Deep Is The Ocean?
• I Left My Heart In San Francisco
• The Girl I Love
• A Foggy Day
• Somebody Stole My Gal
• Blue In Green

The above order does not include the other unreleased tunes I recorded that evening.

"Blue in Green" by Miles Davis and Bill Evans, one of the last tracks I recorded that night (and the only really straight ahead jazz tune I included on the disc) is a very emotional piece for me to perform. I've always been affected by the beautiful chord changes that occur in its irregular ten measure pattern. The pattern begins slowly, and soon the chords occur twice as fast, but the theme eventually returns back in the slower tempo. For me, the song has a melancholy and wistful feeling attached to it. It's probably my most favorite of the live tracks. I seriously considered ending the CD with it, but I realized that I needed to match the optimism of the opening song, "A Foggy Day", with something equally upbeat. So I ended up selecting "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" to be the final track of the program proper. I've always started the latter with a rough glissando up the keyboard to give it an exciting start. I felt that by placing "I Can't Give You..." at the end, the glissando effect would nicely brush away the residual sadness of "Blue In Green".

There were actually two takes of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" recorded, and I preferred the first take over the second, but the second take had some closing dialogue on it that I really liked.  It was at the end of the evening and a table of four (two couples) had enjoyed listening to me, so right as I finished the tune one of the guys came over to the piano and said "Very nice! I know that's your last number, so..." as he dropped some bills into my brandy snifter tip jar- to which I responded, "Thanks!" So I asked Brian to tack on that dialogue onto the end of the first take.  It's the only splice we allowed in the live portion of the disc, I'm pleased to say. I think that the closing dialogue was a neat way to finish the disc. 

However, the disc would not end there- I wanted to put some surprise bonus material on it, too! I'll talk about that another time.

Release Date, and Design/Part One

I've received a number of emails inquiring about the release date for the CD.  It will be shipping out around December 17 and should be at the Odyssey around the 20th.  I will be sure to post a notice here when it is available there. 

Our original target date was December 10 (which I had listed on the main page) but a couple of minor production problems put us about a week behind schedule.  One of the problems was the color of the disc. The production proof of the template of the disc that I received from the manufacturer did not match any of the colors which my designer Katie Mazzerina-Schwartz had originally selected. She wanted to match the disc's color to the color of a piano silhouette in the insert information booklet.

In order to exactly replicate the color she had in mind, the manufacturer referred us to something called the Pantone Matching System. This is a comprehensive swatch guide of just about every color imaginable, with a color coding formula which ensures accuracy.  

I had never heard of the system (it has an unfortunate but amusing abbreviation), but I had heard of Pantone, and they seem to be the worldwide authority on color.  (Actually, I think they believe they are the universal authority.) The PMS is an excellent starting source and guidebook for visual designers in all fields.  I had originally tried to match the color with a guide I found on the web, but I soon found out that you could not accurately match in that manner because of the differences in color computer monitors. We were able to borrow a Pantone system from the college's Office of Communication, and after carefully looking at the swatches Katie selected the color she desired: PMS 5195 C. And by supplying that code, the manufacturer finally matched the exact color she was looking for.

One might think this was too persnickety a detail to slave over.  But consider that the design of a CD is really just as important as the musical content of it.  It was really crucial for me to get it right not only for myself but for Katie too.  This was her first CD design project, and what a fabulous job she did.  I can't say enough about what an impressive talent this young woman possesses in graphic arts.  She regularly designs our collegiate jazz program posters and they never fail to amaze.  I've already warned Katie that I will be calling on her again for my future CD projects! :)

One side note: Pantone has a sister site called Colorstrology.  My friends know that I have a keen interest in astrology (chiefly, how people interact with each other through personality traits that are native to their sun signs). This site matches color to birth dates in a very cool way. Check it out, and make sure to view the Flash introduction.

THE FIRST POSTING.

This will be a place where you will initially find behind the scenes information surrounding the making of the CD, and- in the future, as this website expands- other pertinent details of my musical life. Postings should occur on a weekly basis, depending on my workload. I hope you enjoy reading this blog!

The obvious opening question: have I ever released a solo CD before? The answer is no. I have appeared on many Mount Holyoke College CD’s as a pianist/accompanist/director as well as a keyboardist for several independent recordings for friends and former students. Many people have often asked me why I didn’t record one of my own. I would jokingly respond that I would do it when I felt I had something meaningful to ‘say’.

However, this past summer, my good friend Brian Ecclestone brought to my attention a live recording session he did for me one evening several years ago when I was the featured pianist at the Delaney House in Holyoke, MA. I had completely forgotten about this session, but after coming across the master tapes quite accidentally, Brian took all of the tracks (over 30 of them), brought them into the digital world, and to my great surprise he gifted me with two discs of songs to preview. I listened to the discs and I realized that I would be quite proud to release them in some fashion. And so with Brian’s help and blessing, the time has come for 14 of the tracks to see the light of day. There are also two holiday bonus tracks, newly recorded, that are being included on the disc for a limited time.

There’s so much more to mention here… so this is “to be continued”. Thanks for visiting my website, and check back here again soon.