~all about fossile~   ~free songs~

basically i construct my songs as short stories and try to create an overall feel or mood and then back into lyrics and arrangements. once i have the construct of the song, the lyrics (or in some cases the form of the lyrics) i'll put together a reference track along with the drums. ever try to perform a piece without locking in the tempos and then trying to add automation? :-) yes? then i'll work through additional parts: bass, guitars, keyboards, pads, background vocals. finally i cut a copy to CD and practice vocals in the car... this way i can do all the experimentation i need to without wrecking the household (only moderately offending the other commuters -- yes! i have a day job...) and eventually those practices will pay off in being able to get a good vocal take in only one or two tries... it's my theory that more than a couple of tries on the vocals means waiting til the next day to try again... otherwise they just never capture the right feel... once the track is complete (or in the case of the tracks you have now) i'll cut it to a WAV file, resample and set the bit rate, do some basic mastering (compression, eq, etc...) to a CD compatible file, lastly cut it to mp3 format using winLAME or Sound Forge.