10 Ways NOT to Record Your Audio
1. Don’t record at 16 bits
We have 24 bits now, and we want all the headroom we can get. Use 24 bit audio and record at lower levels, that way you don’t have to worry about putting your recording into the “red”.
2. Don’t record in the red
Back in the analog days people used to overload their pre-amps a little. Just to get that sweet sound you know? Well, there is nothing sweet about digital clipping. Don’t record in the red when you are recording digitally; digital clipping sounds horrible and you can’t fix it. Like I said, record at 24 bit and enjoy recording at lower levels.
3. Don’t Record With Shoddy Cables
Cables matter. They might not matter as much as the microphone or type of pre-amp, but they certainly have a say in the overall sound. Don’t use a shoddy “the cheapest I can get from Radioshack” type cable.
4. Don’t Record Your Guitar With Reverb
If it’s absolutely crucial to the sound and you know 100% that you won’t want to change it during mixdown then go ahead. But if you are not sure if that specific reverb works, or if you don’t think it will fit with the arrangement then consider recording it dry. If the guitarist can’t play without it then add some to his headphones from your software to compromise.
5. Use the Right Microphone
Don’t use a cheap dynamic to record vocals and then wonder why the vocal track sounds so bad. Even though dynamic microphones might work for some vocals and styles chances are you need a decent condenser instead. Use the right microphone for the job, and if you have access to a few, try them out.
6. Position yourself correctly
Before I knew anything about recording I stood in the middle of my bedroom and sang into a cheap dynamic microphone I held in my hand. Not the most ideal situation for a great vocal performance, since not only was the microphone wrong (and bad) but standing in the middle of the room AND holding the microphone was a recipe for disaster. But I still wondered why my vocals sounded so bad. Well, now I know! Acoustic treatment and a great sounding room are a must, as well as positioning the microphone correctly.
7. Waves of Phase
Are you recording with two microphones? Make sure they are not causing extreme phase problems. Phase cancelations weaken the audio signal and make your signal sound thin and well….bad. If you did this mistake already most DAWs have an “inverse” setting where you can flip one of the tracks 180°. Try that to see if the signal gets stronger. If it does then you were having some phase problems during recording and should probably try to get better at recording with two microphones in the future.
8. Don’t record tracks in a hurry
Some artists work well under pressure. Most don’t. Don’t expect a singer to be able to belt out all the vocal tracks to an album in 2 hours. Don’t plan for efficiency, it never works. Things will go wrong, people will show up late and you won’t be able to record everything you wanted. Get used to it and don’t record in a hurry.
9. Don’t record to the highest possible sample rate
Rather, record to the one you can handle. Higher sample rates mean more space and the difference between 30 tracks at 48kHz or 30 tracks at 192 kHz is a whole lot of hard disk space. With many people recording to their laptops the highest sample rate and the most ideal sample rate might not be the same.
10. Don’t record bad instruments
If an instrument is faulty, out of tune or needs new strings or heads then replace them before you record. Drums that have old heads sound worse. Replace them and tune them before you track your drums. Old guitar strings, at least to me, sound bad. Restring your guitars to get a more vibrant sound. Trust me, it will shine through on the recordings.
article from online magazine “Audio Issues” @ http://www.audio-issues.com/
Are You Telling Yourself These 10 Audio Production Lies?
Lie #1 – I Don’t Need Acoustic Treatment
Yes, you do. I’m sorry to break it to you, but you really do.
Do you tell yourself, “I don’t need acoustic treatment because I mix at such low levels?”
Well, lower levels help keep the reflections away to a certain extent, but what about the times you want to crank up your mix to see how it really sounds?
Yeah, that’s right. Your walls will come crashing down with all that flutter echo, your mix won’t sound even and your bass response will suck.
That’s why bass trapping and absorption is so important. You need to tame the lower frequencies and reduce the reflections.
Lie #2 – I’ll Fix it in the Mix
No you won’t. Especially if your source sounds terrible to begin with. You can only mix a bad recording up to a certain level. It will always sort of sound mediocre. Great source sounds and recordings will only result in better mixes. Fix it at the source and get it great from the start.
Lie #3 – Compression Can Fix This
If you look at compression like some miracle cure for a wimpy kick drum sound or an un-even bass guitar, you’re mistaken. Compression can’t really fix anything. It can make things sound better, punchier and more tame. It won’t fix an already broken recording. Compression can’t fix it, but it can make something cool even cooler.
Lie #4 – Nobody will notice this Edit
Yeah, they will. Especially if it’s a misplaced drum hit, or an off-tempo chord strum. Music loving people will notice when something is wrong with the music. They’ll notice your bad edits.
Lie #5 – It’s Probably in Tune
Probably is not enough. You have to be absolutely sure it’s in tune. Just try recording a guitar part over a slightly out-of-tune bass guitar. It’ll sound terrible, trust me. Make sure your instruments are in tune.
Lie #6 – We Won’t Go Over the Budget
You probably will. That’s why budgets are estimates. They usually don’t hold in the long run. Also, if you underestimate the amount of time needed on a specific instrument, you will most certainly run out of time, and over budget.
Lie #7 – Reverb Will Make Everything Sound Bigger
Big reverbs can certainly make things sound big, but they can also clutter everything up. Interestingly enough, shorter reverbs or delays make things sound bigger, not the other way around. Big reverbs have their place, but don’t think it’s the only way to make your mix bigger.
Lie #8 – Louder is Better
No. Just no. If everybody is screaming at you at the same time, you won’t listen to anybody. Don’t try to make the loudest record of all time. Have faith in your audience. They will turn up your music if they want it loud.
Lie #9 – An Hour is Enough to Edit Drums
Tedious tasks like editing can take forever. Don’t allocate an unrealistic timeframe to a task you know is going to take longer. Drum editing ALWAYS takes longer than you think.
Lie #10 – Better Gear Will Make My Recordings Better
Finally, better gear will NOT make your recordings better. Your skills make your recordings better. Don’t think a better EQ will make your EQ’ing skills better.
Understanding EQ makes your EQ’ing better.
article from online magazine “Audio Issues” @ http://www.audio-issues.com/
A letter to Club owners, for your own good!
Musician Dave Goldberg wrote a pointed and darkly humorous open letter to LA club owners that I thought was worth sharing. In it, he argues that it’s actually a counterproductive practice for venues to book bands who are willing to work for free. And when I say “counterproductive,” I mean it’s bad for the venue’s business. Here are a few of the highlights: Just the other day I was told by someone who owned a wine bar that they really liked our music and would love for us to play at their place. She then told me the gig paid $75 for a trio. Now $75 used to be bad money per person, let alone $75 for the whole band. It had to be a joke, right? No, she was serious.But it didn’t end there. She then informed us we had to bring 25 people minimum. Didn’t even offer us extra money if we brought 25 people. I would have laughed other than it’s not the first time I’ve gotten this proposal from club owners. But are there musicians really doing this? Yes. They are so desperate to play, they will do anything. But lets think about this for a second and turn this around a little bit.What if I told the wine bar owner that I have a great band and we are going to play at my house. I need someone to provide and pour wine while we play. I can’t pay much, just $75 and you must bring at least 25 people who are willing to pay a $10 cover charge at the door. Now wouldn’t they look at you like you are crazy? “Why would I do that,” they would ask? Well, because it’s great exposure for you and your wine bar. The people there would see how well you pour wine and see how good your wine is. Then they would come out to your wine bar sometime. ”But I brought all the people myself, I already know them,” they would say. Well maybe you could make up some professional looking flyers, pass them out, and get people you don’t know to come on out. ”But you are only paying me $75, How can I afford to make up flyers?” You see how absurd this sounds, but musicians do this all the time. If they didn’t, then the club owners wouldn’t even think of asking us to do it. So this sounds like a great deal for the club owners, doesn’t it? They get a band and customers for that night, and have to pay very little if anything. But what they don’t realize is that this is NOT in their best interest. Running a restaurant, a club, a bar, is really hard. There is a lot at stake for the owner. You are trying to get loyal customers that will return because you are offering them something special. If you want great food, you hire a great chef. If you want great décor,you hire a great interior decorator. You expect these professionals to do their best at what you are hiring them to do. It needs to be the same with the band.You hire a great band and should expect great music.That should be the end of your expectations for the musicians. The music is another product for the venue to offer, no different from food or beverages. When a venue opens it’s doors, it has to market itself. The club owner can’t expect people to just walk in the door. This has to be handled in aprofessional way. Do you really want to leave something so important up to a musician? This is where the club owner needs to take over. It is their success or their failure on the line, not the musician.The musician can just move on to another venue. I’ve played places where for whatever reason only a few people have walked in the door on a Saturday night. The club owner got mad at me, asking where are the people? I turned it around on him asking the same thing? Where are all the people? It’s Saturday night and your venue is empty. Doesn’t that concern you? What are you going to do about it? Usually their answer is to find another band with a larger following. This means the professional bands get run out of the joint in favor of whoever can bring in the most people. He then makes the point that professional bands will have a somewhat harder time playing the “friend and family” card because, well… they’re pros! They play every night. But here’s where the club owner doesn’t get it. The crowd is following the band, not the venue. The next night you will have to start all over again. And the people that were starting to follow your venue are now turned off because you just made them listen to a bad band. The goal should be to build a fan base of the venue. To get people that will trust that you will have good music in there every night. Instead, you’ve soiled your reputation for a quick fix. If you asked a club owner, ”who is your target demographic?” I doubt they would answer ”the band’s friends and family.” But yet clubs operate likeit is. … would you expect the chef’s friends and family to eat at your restaurant every night? How about the dishwasher, the waitresses, the hostess? Or how about the club owner’s friends and family? You see,when you start turning this argument around, it becomes silly. So what does Dave suggest? Start fighting back, with calm, reasoned arguments. He explains: I’ve started arguing with club owners about this. It happened after I played a great night of music in LA. We were playing for a % of the bar. There were about 50 people there in this small venue, so it was a good turnout. At the end of the night, I go to get paid, and hope to book another gig. The club owner was angry. “Where are your people?” he asked. ”All these people, I brought in. We had a speed dating event and they are all left over from that.” I pointed out they all stayed and listened to the music for 2 hours after their event ended. That was 2 more hours of bar sales, because without us, you have an empty room with nothing going on. He just couldn’t get over the fact that we didn’t walk in with our own entourage of fans. Wasn’t happy that we kept a full room spending money. Right when we were talking, a group of people interrupted us and said ”you guys sound great, when is the next time you’re playing here again?” The club owner, said ”they aren’t, they didn’t bring anyone.” I went home that night bummed out and sent him an email. Telling him most of what you are reading here and how his business model and thinking is flawed. After a lot of swearing back and forth, because I’m guessing that musicians never talk to him as a business equal, he eventually admitted that what I was saying made sense. BUT, that’s not how LA clubs and restaurants work. And he has bands answering his craigslist ads willing to do whatever it takes to get the gig. It’s been a couple of years now since that conversation. I called his bar, and the number is disconnected. So what do you think? Can this battle be won by reasoning with one venue at a time? Or have the economics of the live music world shifted forever beyond our influence? We’d love to hear about your experiences as a live musician. Please feel free to comment in the section below.
Mercury Sauce Year End - 2011
Mercury Sauce Year End 2011:
This was a big year for all of our Mercury Sauce family. The artists, musicians, writers, engineers, and producers all contributed to our growing little company, and the future is even brighter as we look to the new year.
We started with Julie Zorrilla making the top 24 of American Idol. She did an amazing job and showed America the potential she has for the future, not to mention shedding some light on the talent that exists here in Denver. Actually, we start 2012 off with her new EP, and everyone is eager to begin the next evolution for her recording career.
Then we recorded the BLKHRTS EP and mixed it with Yonnas Abraham & Jesse O’Brien at Colorado Sound. BLKHRTS is hard, nasty, and very much a part of the future of Hip-Hop. Just featured in Pitchfork as one of the drops that stood apart this year, a full length BLKHRTS release is in the writing process with an expected drop date later next year.
Next was the massive undertaking that was Amanda Hawkins release “Who is Jane Doed?” that included contributions from virtually every high profile musician, beatmaker, & rapper in the state. The first single, “Foolish”, got significant radio airplay, and her amazing performances both on the album and her live showcase has garnered attention from multiple record labels, so much so that we expect an announcement from her shortly about her future.
THEN, we embarked on the epic journey that was the #SEXTAPE from Yonnas Abraham. The 8 prequel tracks and the 6 EP tracks continues to get massive blog spot and press coverage and the national release of the EP is expected to contribute to the success of this rising star. The epic will also continue into 2012 as we work on the trilogy that will include King Foe’s “Drugs”, and Karma’s “Violence” from the BLKHRTS trio.
We also had news that Adam Duncan was signed to A&M/Octone, and his continued work beyond his Mercury Sauce solo release, “O.N.E.” has everyone watching him closely.
We completed our first single “Forever’s Temporary” with Denver stalwart Mane Rok, and hope we get the chance to continue that work in 2012. We also dropped an additional single from the Jane Doed project “Savior”, with Mane Rok and Spoke-n-Wordz that exemplify why these artists are on the rise.
After shooting a couple of covers for Julie Zorrilla, we also began a series that will continue every month for the coming year. “The Living Room Sessions” feature local artist performing covers live and uncut. We really wanted to highlight the talent in our artists and the musicianship of our players by putting them in a relaxed setting and just letting the cameras roll. The response has been overwhelming to the first few sessions and we saw amazing performances by Julie, Amanda, and our next to rise to prominence, Devan Blake Jones.
Devan had been working on all of the Mercury Sauce projects for years, but it was really only this year that he really seemed to find his “voice” and began to realize some of the massive potential he has as an artist. We expect big things from Devan in the New Year.
Last but not the least by any stretch, sees the year-end release of the Dorhan Cobb EP “Acezi”. Dorhan has been there from the beginning and while this is his third Mercury Sauce release, it is his first as a solo artist. The stories range from the humorous to the very personal, and we expect the public to take notice of his talent and follow him on his artistic journey.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the contribution that our session players make to the recorded products we release and the live shows that feature our artists. Casey Sidwell, Imkong Yaden, Justin Kephart, Tohbias Juniel, Darren Hahn, Ronneka Cox, Jarod Sarlo & Jenna Moll Reyes all have made our songs so much more than we ever could have without them. And while they do not always get the publics attention, they are every bit the superstars we know them to be.
I also would like to thank my partners, Jon Oster and Jason Carncross. Most people don’t see their work, but they are the people I reply to make all the pieces work and nothing would happen without them. Trust me on that.
We’ve come along way in these few years, and I believe that the path ahead holds great things for the future. We are a family and I love you all.
Nathan Reid
Pilot, Mercury Sauce
#SEXTAPE Credits
“YO”
Credits
(1) When We’re in the Dark (I Can See the Light)
Vocals: Jane Doed
(2) What Up YO!
Vocals: Jon Shockness
Backs: Jenna Moll Reyes, Devan Blake Jones, King FOE, Catch Lungs
Contains sample from “Beyond Fantasy” by PicturePlane written by T. Egedy
(3) Pure Pitch Black
Vocals: Jon Shockness
Feature: King FOE, Karma
(4) Tanisha (Pop Off)
Pop Off: Tanisha (Bad Girls Club)
Feature: Catch Lungs
(5) Sybian
Vocals: Cassie Nova
Feature: Nate Schmeeze
(6) The Most Beautiful Thing You’ve Ever Heard
This project is dedicated to the love of my life Micaela DeLisa. You are the woman I am going to spend the rest of my life with and that inspired me to make this. Thank you for everything. Thank you to my Dad, you made this possible, you are the best male role model anyone could ever ask for, thank you for being perfect. Special thanks go out to Nathan Reid who has served as my mentor and better half in this project, you are the reason this is the best work of my life. Cassie Nova you are a muse and a powerful artist in your own right. Thank you for everything, i owe you so much for your help in this. Nate Shmeeze, thanks for killing this shit. Same goes for Bianca Mikahn and Catch Lungs. Amanda Hawkins your work on this project was truly perfect; your voice is one of the greatest instruments on this earth. Jon Shockness, your work on this project saved the day and is a shining example of your massive talent, and watching you grow as an artist has been a true honor and pleasure. Devan and Jenna, your singing was so flawless on this, it truly makes me proud every time I hear it. Shout Out Angel ” The General” Garcia and Ashley Quezada for their incredible art that inspired this project, you were very much vital to every piece of it. To my brothers Foe and Karma, BLKHRTS for life. You are the best MCs I’ve ever met. We ‘bout to get this fucking money. Thanks go to Chez Strong for being an incredible musician, graphic designer, filmmaker and all around badass. You are indeed a Unicorn. Hogans Daniel you are the most dedicated and disciplined artist I have ever met and I feel truly lucky to play with you. Qknox you are the illest producer I know and the fucking man. Casey Sidwell you are the anchor and the calming spirit I need in my life, thank you. Aisha Renee you are the consummate artist and the true visionary behind BLKHRTS, let’s get this fucking money. Thanks go to Ru Black, Dave Herrera, Eryc Eyl and Jeff Weiss, your work is important and inspires me to do mine. Shout Out Atim Otii, Ageno Otii, Bongomin Otii, Mario Lintz and the whole Lintz Family, Will and Kristine Aspinwall, Matt Kenney, Adam Waltner as well. Ronna Brinkman, you are a huge inspiration to me thank you. Shout Out Joshua MacCurdy, you have held me down from day one for sure. Shout my Moms and my little brother Alex, we gotta get started on you early buddy! Ben Serruto, Sam Bershof, Micheal Carter, DJ Comatoast, Street, Haven, 800, Cody Beastly, Concept Oner, Lorenzo Baca, Terry and Roxy and everyone at Faith Tattoos, and everyone who ever gave a shit, thank you so much. It really helped. I love you and thank you all.
Yonnas
Produced by Nathan Reid & Yonnas Abraham
Engineered by Jason Carncross, Nathan Reid, & Yonnas Abraham
All Music & Lyrics written by: Yonnas Abraham
Photography: Peter Bishop, Ashley Quezada
Models: Angel “The General” Martinex, Cassie Nova
Artwork: Peter Bishop, Aisha Renee Brown, Yonnas Abraham
Copyright 2011 Mercury Sauce, Inc. (ASCAP)
Warning! Unauthorized duplication, public performance, and broadcasting of the music on this CD is a violation of applicable laws.
My PERSONAL PET PEEVE
If you write the music/lyrics, you are the composer/author. If I track, edit, mix, and master, I am the producer. Please God get it right!
the end
by the end of every album i produce, i am physically and emotionally spent. i don’t know how many i have left in me, and can’t imagine doing another one. it usually lasts about 2 days
Mercury Sauce Release Schedule - December
For whatever reason, December this year is a busy month for releases. We are wildly excited about these projects and they are the result of incredibly long hours of work from our artists, writers, musicians, engineers, and producers. Please support these artists and the musicians that create these projects, because your support allows us to continue to work with and develop local talent.
6 December - “Savior” (single): Jane Doed featuring Mane Rok & Spoke-n-Wordz
8 December - “O.N.E.” (album re-release): Duncan
16 December - “Sextape” (EP): Yonnas Abraham
22 December - “Acezi” (EP): Ace
Yonnas Abraham’s “Blanco” - The Backstory
Week 5: This song is about the amazing love story between Griselda Blanco and Charles Crosby. A friend of mine, Joshua MacCurdy told me the story because he had actually taken up correspondence with Mr. Crosby. Anyway, Josh thought it would be a good idea for me to write a song about it. To show him. Maybe it could be the theme song in the major motion picture about his life! Starring…………… Jamie Foxx! Seriously, it could happen. So I did.
I made the track first and sat with it for a few hours and went about the business of writing lyrics. After showing the song to Nathan Reid, including the chorus, which I was really proud of. I remember taking apart some dubstep remix of some song because of the vocal sample in it, which was stabbing, but emotional, sort of melodramatic. I built the song around those chops which are in the chorus and just tried to amplify that feeling with every brushstroke, so to speak. The words, the drums, the strings, melodrama, melodrama, melodrama. Like a fucking soap opera without the soap.
So the chorus: Never go away, I don’t wanna die here, this kind of stuff, I imagined these to be the core impulses of their love, her in prison, him in the trap. At any rate, I also wrote verses that told the narrative pretty linearly and quickly, fast paced, double-time rapping. This older version of it, Nate has, and likes more, but I found that after showing it to a few friends, namely, Colleen Anderson and Catch Lungs, the fast lyrics completely blurred the story, making it impossible to decipher. Maybe because the vocals were mixed too quiet, but probably because the delivery was too fucking fast. Also, Josh had sent Charles this older version of the song, and after waiting what seems like forever to hear back, Mr. Crosby said something along of the lines of he’s a very busy guy, and he thought the song was good. Which in effect means either one of two things, he thought it sucked or he didn’t even listen to it. I remember in the movie, a couple of rappers from his Charles’s neighborhood in Oakland made a rap song for him during the filming of the documentary. It ended up being the title track for that film. They showed them playing him the song. He looked upon, and bobbed his head, looking none too pleased, though I guess he liked it, or at least appreciated the sentiment. I imagined roughly the same response though perhaps with added face scrunches and an abrupt space bar “stop this shit now” tap, due to its inscrutable lyrics and rough demo mix quality, which it still had at that point. Plus, maybe he wouldn’t like all that singy, melodramatic crap. So took off the verses and sat with it for months.
In the re-write I tried to condense the words and rhythms and go with instinctual turns of phrases and rhythmic motives I heard whenever I listened to it. Humming those, words appeared. I re-wrote and re-recorded. After watching Cocaine Cowboys 2 again, I realized that I had gotten some facts wrong. One, Charles did not have an affair with a female prison guard and two, he was shot once, in the arm, not the long, as is in the song, by that point though I really enjoyed the way it was and was sick of re-recording. And you know, the factual errors should hopefully help me if he ever tried to sue me or some shit, when this song blows and makes me famous. Seriously. It could happen. In that event. I will delete this post. What about the cached pages? Fuck. I’ll figure it out. Anyway, I showed it to Catch, he liked the new version, and I haven’t shown it to Colleen but I’ll let you know what she says.
This was actually the third version, there was a second, also failed version of the verses. After I actually finished the verses, Nate laid programmed vo-coder line under my verse, of my verse, that I video recorded him playing, with my phone, and that video is actually on the tumblr. www.blkhrts.tumblr.com Amanda Hawkins laid the this glorius vocal track of the chorus much earlier in the process, when I still had the earlier version of the verses. Her work was so clear, so striking, so powerful, that it really exemplified the flaws in my muddy mess of a verse. The rhythms and flows were pretty dope I guess, but I honestly have never considered double-time one of my strong points, but I’ll probably never quit trying. Her chorus was deep impetus to do better. So I thank her for that. Along with Catch and Colleen and Josh and Nathan. And you. I can’t forget you. I mean, this is all for you. I remember telling Karma and Ru Johnson how excited I was about this song. That it was the best song I had ever made. And King Foe says its his favorite. It definitely marks a turning point. When the sound and feel of SEXTAPE became galvanized and I realized I was thinking and operating in the aesthetic mode I had initially aspired. The soft plush synthetics, a warm romantic glow, yet still the gritty overtones and minor key sensibility. And lots of singing. Ha. Still hard hitting drums, though. Still intense dynamics. Still Melodrama. Just………Sexier. I guess. I hope.
P.S The transforming effect on the second half of the chorus, the ” I don’t wanna die here, etc…” lines, was an idea I had, and I guess I thought of in that 3-6 Mafia song “Stay Fly” and I always thought that was fresh, ultra-modern way to add melisma to whole notes. I pitched it to Catch, and he said, try it, so I sat with DJ D.j. Comatoast and he performed the transform with Serrato and his Rane Mixer into Acid with the Acapella and the instrumental at his house. I took those tracks to Nate and we worked them into the chorus, which took some doing, but as always Nate did it, and did it perfectly. I don’t know if he likes it. But I REEEAALLLY do. I wonder sometimes if it sounds like a skipping track or something to first-time listeners. Then I stop caring. After adding those though, I recorded those ad-libs at the end, over the chorus repeating for the third and final time. We also then added clips from the Cocaine Cowboys 2 film, which is a documentary about the story. It was perhaps the most laborious song of the project, and maybe of my fucking life. So yeah, major turning point. I mean, have I ever spilled my guts like this before? But I probably will again, now. This is kind of fun. I guess.
The Living Room Sessions @ Mercury Sauce
Mercury Sauce is going to shoot a series of videos called the “Living Room Sessions” over the new several months with many of the local artists we work with. Stripped down acoustic sessions, recorded live with our amazing team of sessions players.
We’re going to strip away the “production” piece of the puzzle and highlight great songs, great vocalists, and amazing musicians.
Keep an eye out and enjoy!
The Jane Doed Project (producer notes)
The origins of this album actually started last year when Amanda and I had begun to write for what is now the “next” album. As part of that process, we always sort through the bits and pieces of recorded songs and ideas that we’ve been working on to see what we might be able to use for the album.
It turned out that very little of the stuff we listened to out of the gate really fit into the new project. But what we did find was a wealth of material that Amanda had recorded with and for other artists that either hadn’t been released or didn’t get the attention we felt like it deserved.
I have been working with Amanda since she was about 14. She has always had an amazing voice, but as with so many young talents, she just didn’t have enough life experience to be believable in certain settings. Now, when I listened to these songs, I was moved by the emotion and her connection to the tracks. I knew she had found a voice inside her that people could relate to and would enjoy listening to forever.
Early days in Amanda’s evolution, she had created the alter ego “Jane Doed” in order to provide a voice for herself that was different than her existing material, and to avoid certain conventions placed on her the world at large. Whether those restraints were real or imagined, Jane Doed became the unrestrained voice of a true artist, unafraid to expose her feelings; her pain, her joy; her strengths and weaknesses; to sum it up, her life.
It was also an added bonus that on these tracks was some of the very best hip-hop talent in Denver. DJ Bedz & H*Wood, Black Prez, Rockie, Julox, King FOE, Ra Bailey, Acezi, Bianca Mikahn and many others had all lent their talents to tracks along the way. It turned out there were more tracks than we could fit onto an album, and that didn’t even include the new tunes we had in production.
We sorted through them all, finished up the production work, made some hard choices, and arrived at what would become the first release, “Who is Jane Doed”.
The album starts at her first real effort on the Capo G track “St. Louis”, journeys through her work with the group Forgotten Culture, and finishes with new tracks that include “I Lay Here Alone”, with Jon Shockness of Air Dubai, and two of my personal favorites, “While the Record Spins” with Bianca Mikahn and “Save My Soul” with Julox.
The first single. “Foolish featuring Rockie” will be released on 17 May 2011, and the album is set for release 28 June 2011.
A lot of work has been done by many gifted writers, artists, and engineers; and it has been a labor of love to produce this record. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as did in making it.
I can assure you, it is only the beginning. Nate
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
