The Acoustic
Folk Art
Story
The Acoustic Folk Art series is a collection of selected tunes from around forty years of playing guitar and writing songs. The effort started with the goal of building an audio catalog for family and friends - and gradually grew into the Acoustic Folk Art project.
The earliest song selected (Echoes) was written in 1977 when I was fifteen and the most recent (One Day My Days) in 2015 when I was fifty-three. These songs are tokens of life and love, pain and perseverance, faith and forgiveness, admission and acknowledgment, mercy and mirth, hope and holding on. On the canvas is smooth folk with brush strokes of country.
In 2013 I purchased some equipment and began recording the guitar and vocal tracks at our 1800's era home. I used a Neumann mic for the vocals and the dining room became my studio for capturing the dry tracks - with acknowledgment that Neumann could make tracks recorded in a horse barn sound good.
Still, I couldn't get the songs to sound the way I wanted in the mix. Having some recording gear doesn't make you a mix artist. The skill to find the right combination of reverb, compression, equalization and the whole sound sculpture process is both science and art. Stated slightly differently, in the expression of recorded music, there are skilled artists who never play a note or sing a word.
A couple years went by and then in the spring of 2015, through the website SoundBetter, I reached out to J2 Music Productions in Virginia (now in Los Angeles). Josh Woods showed me what my tracks could sound like when someone who knows what they’re doing is handling the mix. These are my words, not his. Josh is a talented gentleman.
Josh enlisted the help of intuitive professional musicians who recorded cello, violin, flute and even a little mandolin to overdub with the guitar and vocal tracks that I provided remotely via Dropbox. And Josh, himself, added piano. With the availability of high quality digital sampling, we went with electronic keyboard for the piano. The remainder of the instruments were recorded live in Josh’s studio.
The AFA project was eventually released as a four album set in 2017. There are 11 tracks on each of the four albums or 44 tracks in all consisting of 42 songs, one story featuring a tri-modal turtle and one corresponding guitar sonata. Because, let's face it, there's a shortage of guitar sonata's in the world and someone needed to step up! The story and sonata are found on volume two of the AFA series.
The musicians who play on these albums are top end. I'm in awe and appreciation of their talent each time I listen. There are subtle almost hidden complexities supporting clear acoustic arrangements. Check out the Tuneography or Playlists for audio clips from each song in the series.
So here’s the epilogue.
Between being born and dying is the middle. And here - in the middle - is yours and my whatever. And whatever can be painful or hard at times. But a song can be a hoverboard lifting you and me in the middle a little above our whatever.
Music is bigger than the sum of the notes, layers and lyrics. God gave us liquid sunshine - and we call that orange juice. God gave our spirits the ability to fly - and we call that music. Music finds it's way and elevates us.
Rob Hatem, who provided the excellent and fun cover art, once described the folk genre as straightforward simplicity with character. I hope my tunes approach that standard. I hope you enjoy them. I hope they help a little in the middle.
Folk Art
Story
The Acoustic Folk Art series is a collection of selected tunes from around forty years of playing guitar and writing songs. The effort started with the goal of building an audio catalog for family and friends - and gradually grew into the Acoustic Folk Art project.
The earliest song selected (Echoes) was written in 1977 when I was fifteen and the most recent (One Day My Days) in 2015 when I was fifty-three. These songs are tokens of life and love, pain and perseverance, faith and forgiveness, admission and acknowledgment, mercy and mirth, hope and holding on. On the canvas is smooth folk with brush strokes of country.
In 2013 I purchased some equipment and began recording the guitar and vocal tracks at our 1800's era home. I used a Neumann mic for the vocals and the dining room became my studio for capturing the dry tracks - with acknowledgment that Neumann could make tracks recorded in a horse barn sound good.
Still, I couldn't get the songs to sound the way I wanted in the mix. Having some recording gear doesn't make you a mix artist. The skill to find the right combination of reverb, compression, equalization and the whole sound sculpture process is both science and art. Stated slightly differently, in the expression of recorded music, there are skilled artists who never play a note or sing a word.
A couple years went by and then in the spring of 2015, through the website SoundBetter, I reached out to J2 Music Productions in Virginia (now in Los Angeles). Josh Woods showed me what my tracks could sound like when someone who knows what they’re doing is handling the mix. These are my words, not his. Josh is a talented gentleman.
Josh enlisted the help of intuitive professional musicians who recorded cello, violin, flute and even a little mandolin to overdub with the guitar and vocal tracks that I provided remotely via Dropbox. And Josh, himself, added piano. With the availability of high quality digital sampling, we went with electronic keyboard for the piano. The remainder of the instruments were recorded live in Josh’s studio.
The AFA project was eventually released as a four album set in 2017. There are 11 tracks on each of the four albums or 44 tracks in all consisting of 42 songs, one story featuring a tri-modal turtle and one corresponding guitar sonata. Because, let's face it, there's a shortage of guitar sonata's in the world and someone needed to step up! The story and sonata are found on volume two of the AFA series.
The musicians who play on these albums are top end. I'm in awe and appreciation of their talent each time I listen. There are subtle almost hidden complexities supporting clear acoustic arrangements. Check out the Tuneography or Playlists for audio clips from each song in the series.
So here’s the epilogue.
Between being born and dying is the middle. And here - in the middle - is yours and my whatever. And whatever can be painful or hard at times. But a song can be a hoverboard lifting you and me in the middle a little above our whatever.
Music is bigger than the sum of the notes, layers and lyrics. God gave us liquid sunshine - and we call that orange juice. God gave our spirits the ability to fly - and we call that music. Music finds it's way and elevates us.
Rob Hatem, who provided the excellent and fun cover art, once described the folk genre as straightforward simplicity with character. I hope my tunes approach that standard. I hope you enjoy them. I hope they help a little in the middle.