Ryan Gregg Project: Drums

For the past month or so I have been engineering and producing a project for a talented singer/songwriter named Ryan Gregg. I met Ryan a couple of years ago when he played guitar on a project I was working on. We were reaquainted last May while recording a demo for his current band Addison Road. While working on the demo, Ryan would bring me CD's containing demos of his own material. I was so impressed with his tunes that I convinced him to start his own project.
We are currently in the middle of tracking drums. For those of you who don't know much about recording, there are a 1000 different approaches you can take. Some people like to record everything at once, some record one thing at a time. For this project we are doing the latter. We have been extremely lucky to have the infamous Joel Cameron playing drums. He's quite the drummer, and there is a good chance that he has played on some of your favorite CD's. Below are some pics of the first drum session at Joel's studio. The first pic is of Joel playing his new Taye Kit (which is very nice). The second is of Joel editing his drum tracks while Ryan sat beside him with a very serious look on his face.

Extra Weight

Yesterday I took 14 keys off my key chain and 24 business cards/hotel keys out of my wallet.

The many joys of sight reading

This post is for all of the hack musicians out there like myself. Yesterday I filled in playing bass at a fairly large church in the DFW area. I think I'm probably the fourth or fifth call, but it's Christmas time, so everyone else was out. I get there to find a notebook full of charts of music that contained familiar songs and ones that I have never heard. The majority of them where in funky keys, not the standard E, D, G that are typical of most worship songs today. We also had to transpose on the fly. It was brutal! I fumbled through practice, somehow managing to make it through the service without the band leader walking over and unplugging my bass!
The lesson is this. I used to be one of those guys that thought learning music on a page was a waste of time. I felt this way because of all of the piano players that I knew who could not function or think without sheet music in front of their faces. So I worked on developing my ear, all the while writing and performing songs in the same easy keys that I have been playing in since I picked up the guitar 13 years ago. I have learned, however, that "playing by ear" will only get you so far. I have also learned that even the little bit of theory that I forced down has made me a more creative and thoughtful player. Unfortunately, the theory book I am reading has about 500 pages. I'm on page 20.

new website

I think trying to learn spanish was easier than HTML. I have a book that is supposed to teach me how to make a page, but I can't seem to make myself use it. I just fumble around until I eventually figure out what I'm trying to do. I better figure it out soon because there are only 5 days left on my Dreamweaver MX trial!
The new page is actually and adaptation of my old site that was built by Bobby Strickland. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get in touch with Bobby. I decided to edit it myself. It's not near as cool as what he would do, but I do my best. Let me know if you find any problems with the way the site works. I may or may not be able to fix it.

I guess I will give this I try

Obviously, this is post 1. If history repeats itself it will be my last. I'll try harder this time.