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MAXEL TOFT26 (Roosevelt)
2018 This is a mostly purge album of pieces that didn't seem to go with lyrics plus a few new ideas. Everything (except where I change banjo tuning and style) is still one take with no edits and it took me a long time to get passable tracks. All of them are just for the fun of matching up drum beats to melody. I did the drums last, it is poorly mixed by myself, and I did not get it mastered. Gimbal is similar to Assembly Line where I had a bunch of licks sitting around and decided to combine them and move on. I wanted to switch between guitar and banjo so I set them all to D tuning to fit. Some of the pieces work and some are forced. I am not as happy with the first two parts. First is Drop D acoustic guitar finger picking. I am not sure about the bass guitar but it is how I wanted to start the pattern. Second is Open E capoed up to D banjo in clawhammer style. This was one of the newer licks so I might develop it later and rerecord without the distraction of the drums. Third is back to Drop D acoustic guitar but with flatpick and now both drums and bass underneath. It leads nicely into the (fourth) Open D banjo in three finger style. And then fifth is back to another Drop D acoustic guitar similar in style to the third part. All of the banjo pieces are doubled and split right and left. I had to do a bunch of takes to get through without messing up and then I couldn't decide which to keep so I picked two. The drums were recorded through all the pieces and it was frustrating when I often messed up near the end of the fifth part and had to start over. Buoyant Mind is a combination of lyrics I thought would go nowhere and a guitar lick I thought I would never use. One day they just seemed to go together and I like it. It is reminiscent of early 2000 Maxel Toft but written more recently. It also works great to show how much more focused I am with the 2 minute pop trio format as opposed to the 12 minute collage instrumental where all I am trying to do is not mess up a take. The guitar lick for Taffrail Log is really old. I tried to develop it a couple of times (usually for acoustic guitar) but finally gave up and decided it should be a sparse instrumental. This really is early 2000 Maxel Toft but finally recorded. It is so old that I was lazy and just did it on bass with drums accompaniment (and vocal surprise). I just wanted to display the original idea and see if it could stand on its own. |