I write a column called Woodshed for the quarterly print magazine Green Door. My byline says “…he’s currently at work on his fourth album of original music and blogging about the process at jamesbeaudreau.com.” It’s true; most everything I write here is about this album, directly or indirectly. I try to be open about what my experience is like within each post. But more about the process is revealed between the posts than within any single one; it’s all the turnarounds, negations and reworkings that tell the real story.

Like last week’s post. I was really definite about my facts. The first batch of demos — the primary purpose of which is to start a collaboration process with a producer — would consist of 8 tracks. I then mentioned that these tracks might be collected into an EP for release (at least I wasn’t so sure about that!) . But within a few days I decided I probably wouldn’t want to re-release “The Devil Is a Sad Spirit” and “Dunebuggy” with the rest of the tracks — after all, these recordings have been released already. So that’s one change.

And then I decided to drop “King Laugh” (aka “Hermes”) from this first group. I haven’t exactly thrown it on the scrap heap, but that’s probably what I should do. For now, it goes into the “Not Using” folder.

This track has been such a pain in the ass — from the start. I’ve written about all that before, so I won’t go into it again. What happened this week was that I finished recording “Soft Power” — I’m very happy with it, thankfully — and then chose “King Laugh” to work on next, because it was “almost done.” But nothing was falling right. I had already re-recorded — at different times — the drums, and then the bass, and this week I thought that maybe I just needed to re-record about half of the guitars. But nothing I did — none of those re-recordings — really addressed the main problem, which is simply that the writing is disjointed. The intro I like, and I very much like the solo section. But that’s not enough.

It’s funny that it has taken me so long to get to this point with this track.

This is the part of “blogging about the process” that is the most difficult. Creative work is messy and nonlinear. Reworking is built in. But writing a blog post is a pretty controlled thing — it’s when you have more than one post the story gets out of hand. I thought about revising last week’s post — and have done it, with other posts — but I decided that it’s truer to my intention to document the process to leave it as-is.

I wouldn’t say progress on the demos is humming along, but work is getting done. As I’ve mentioned before, I have 17 songs in the running for my next album. To help decide which of them are the right ones (and for other things too) I want to bring in a producer or co-producer. The right person for the job has to have a feel for the music and ideas about how best to bring it to life. So I’ve got to have something to show in order to begin.

In my case, this means recordings. I could write lead sheets for each (well, most) of these pieces that would provide some information, but not the important information.

Recording, of course, takes time. I’ve sketched out 17 tracks in Pro Tools, but most of those sketches have 1 or 2 guitars only. I need drums and bass and finished guitars to get the full idea across. To fully flesh out 17 tracks would take months, so I’m not going to do that. I’m trying to finish 6. I’ve tried to choose tracks that represent the scope of the whole project.

So Union Square will stand in for Gentleman, Josie, Grand Street and Badger.

Soft Power, Corporeal Agents and Dunebuggy will stand in for We Barely Stop, All Harmonize, and Celestial.

King Laugh will stand in for Target Practice and Eris.

Blues In C (still need a name for that one), Urhixidur and The Devil Is a Sad Spirit (all to be included in the initial demos) are pretty much their own things.

Like that. So, in the past couple weeks King Laugh (which was called Hermes) got new drums and bass. Acoustic guitars, percussion and some electric guitars remain from the first sketch, and a couple new electric guitars need to be added. Union Square got drums and bass and needs guitars. Dunebuggy and The Devil is a Sad Spirit are done. Corporeal Agents and Urhixidur need to be mixed. Blues in C needs some guitar work — I’d like to redo some other things too, but will try to refrain since I have so much work left on the others. Soft Power got drums, bass, percussion and some guitars. It needs a couple more guitars, then mix.

So — there will be 8 pieces in this first batch of “finished” demos — 6 of which have not been released before. I hope to finish the recording within 2 weeks, and then crank out the mixes in a weekend.

I’m happy with how most of this stuff is shaping up. When I was writing these pieces I was excited about each of them. Then when they were sketched out using 1 or 2 guitars they seemed less special — like they had less personality. A lot of the excitement in writing was due to how I was imagining the tracks — the sound, orchestration, interaction, energy — most of that is lost in a simple sketch. So I’m glad (relieved too, maybe) to see some of that excitement returning, now not just in my head, but actually recorded and coming out of the speakers. This has been a tough process and I’m glad there’s already been some payoff.

Once I get these finished I want to post them so you can hear the project take shape instead of just reading about it. Initially I was going to post a track here and there on Soundcloud, but I had the idea this week that maybe I’d put this first batch of demos together as a digital EP. I think that would be a more potent way to generate interest in this project. After all, if it’s crowd-funded, as I believe it’s going to have to be, I need interested listeners. How could anyone know that they’d be interested if they can’t hear what the music is like?

Crazy week here at headquarters. Well, they’ve all been crazy lately.

Last time I mentioned that I bought more memory for my laptop, because it was crashing a lot. Innocent days. Tuesday morning I got up and the computer display wouldn’t come on > cut to > Apple Genius Bar appointment where I find the logic board has bit it > cut to > phone call to the wife and hand wringing decision > cut to > new laptop and over $3k to pay off in 1 year.

So. I won’t have to worry about crashes anymore. That’s cool. But the plan had been to use some of our money this year to finance this new album project. This unexpected expense makes that… challenging.

I’ve been working with the good people at Pledge Music in my role at Masterdisk — they help artists get funding for projects. I may explore whether that might work for me too. I don’t have loads of prior album sales or a large mailing list, or lots of traffic to my sites. But considering how many times my albums have been downloaded, there may be interested people out there who would engage. I may also be able to reach out to some of the Billy Nayer Show fans who appreciated the albums I did with them — this new project is much closer to that sound than my first three albums were. And I have a pretty great network of people working creatively in music that could make the recording and post-production process run smoothly.

Thinking out loud there — that’s been the main music-related consideration of the past few days.

Musically, things are moving along. Last time I said that writing for the album was nearly done. Well, now it is done, totally and completely. I’ve got 17 songs, 15 of which are brand new.

The recordings that exist so far are — in most cases — bare sketches. Solo guitar, or a few guitars to outline important features. I want to fill out some of the sketches now, so that I can “explain” the tunes to other people — and in some cases, re-sell them to myself. But I need to remain mindful that I don’t need to make masterpieces here — I just need to get “enough” done. I don’t want to get bogged down in a lengthy demoing process.

The first decision has been how to get some basic drum tracks down. I tried using samples and a sequencer in Pro Tools the other day. I could see that with a little practice and a midi controller I could probably get fast at it. But I don’t love that work process. Next day, inspired by some bucket players in the subway, I set up the primitive rig you see above, and had a go at the same tune. The sound is way lo-fi — the “kick drum” doesn’t have much weight — but you get the idea of the drum part well enough. And it’s more fun to do.

This morning I’ve been working on finishing up the arrangement — and execution — of the last piece I’m writing for this new album project. The working title is “We Barely Stop” and it’s perhaps the most “prog” of the tunes I’ve come up with.

SO glad I’m nearly done with the writing part of this album. The previous two tracks came fairly easy but this one was a grind. Because the past few tracks have been different from the earlier ones — multi-part pieces, with distant (in my mind at least) ideas coming together in unexpected ways — I was planning to write until I hit a wall. Done!

This week I bought more memory for my laptop. It was having a hard time with ProTools 9, which is what I’ve been using to record these sketches. Lots of crashes. That seems to have been ironed out now, so I’m ready to jump into recording mode, and get these sketches fleshed out.

Good timing to be getting into recording mode for another reason. I’ve been producing recordings for Philip Lynch for a very long time. I shudder to think of the file dates on some of these tunes — like back to 2006. Philip has been very patient indeed. We’re in striking distance of completion of his album finally, which is looking like it will be a 15 song, 40 minute affair. Nearly everything is recorded — we just need to add the final missing parts. And then we may hire out someone to mix the final 5 or so tracks.

As I move along in the process of making this album, I’m beginning to take a more detailed longer view. And asking questions, like “Will this be a CD and an EP? Who’s going to record it? Play on it? Mix it? Design the packaging? Print it? Promote it?” And perhaps foremost, “How the hell am I going to pay for it?”

Luckily, others have managed all this successfully before me. I’ve been relying on the experience of UK guitarist Matt Stevens in particular, who has done a tremendous job of getting his music heard on a total DIY level. Matt’s blog posts for Live Unsigned are a great source of practical advice.

I’ve also been very much enjoying Matt’s recent music — solo (check out Relic) and with his band The Fierce and the Dead.

It’s a tricky thing to create instrumental rock music that doesn’t just substitute a lead instrument for the role of the singer while sticking to typical ABAB forms. Or at least it’s tricky to escape those tropes and still provide emotional engagement. I think Matt’s been successful at this in both these projects.

I haven’t done it, but I suspect if I went back and took a look at past blog posts I’d find a lot of “I set out to do this, but then this is how it actually went.” This, here, is another of those posts. This may just be my pet theme…

This time, I set myself a schedule to write six songs over the course of January: one every five days. I came up with the first two songs in ten days, but I ground to a halt shortly after.

My friend Chris Gray asked me to fill in for his band’s bass player for a gig on January 28. It was a hell of a lot of fun — the rehearsals and the show. Aside from one duo gig in 2006, I hadn’t played with a group of any kind in 8 years(!) and I really missed it.

I suspect that it was some combination of setting the January writing schedule and playing with the group (and who knows what else) that shifted my album goals. I recognized that I needed to define the scope of the music more.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I had a lot of influences fueling this project. Here’s a quick recap of my main preoccupations: Jeff Beck’s mid-70s fusion records; Jimmy Page solo stuff; Led Zeppelin; John Scofield with MMW; The Meters; Booker T and the M.G.s. There’s a lot of difference in that music, but the list splits pretty cleanly into two categories: amp-loud and drummer-loud.

Drummer-loud, to me, is the volume level of a band that uses the drummer’s level to calibrate the rest. Amp-loud is the norm in rock: the guitars run the show and the drummer has to be miked to be heard. In performance without a PA, the amp-loud drummer has to hit harder to be heard: the kick drum gets lost and the cymbals become white noise. The amp-loud band is at home on the bigger stage, with a good PA. Then nuance returns to the drummer and the rest of the band.

Beyond mere volume, though, I think the music you write is going to be different for an amp-loud band vs a drummer-loud band. I’m not sure exactly where the difference lies, but I can feel it in there.

Amp-loud playing has its charms (believe me — I’m a guitar player) but my own project needs to be drummer-loud. And I think some of my recent songs were written with an amp-loud band in mind. (See the last post about writing for a phantom band: The Band That Did Not Exist.)

Another dividing line that got clearer in January involves the rock shuffle. I’ll try to get into that next time.

Oh, and here’s the split: amp-loud: Zeppelin, Beck, Page; drummer-loud: The Meters, Booker T. and the M.G.s, Scofield w/ MMW. One caveat: you can, of course, make any drummer-loud band amp-loud in different settings; basically, introducing a PA can do it very easily.