My Gift Is My Song and This One's for You

For reading, for following, for answers and listening!

For waiting, for playing, for singing and mixing!

From the isle of Brooklyn to your towns big and small!

Thank you, my friends, thank you each one and all!

Merry Christmas, from Alaska and Virginia BK!

Ask Seek Knock (1999)

(for the love, please listen with good speakers)

BIG FAT SPECIAL THANKS TO Alaska - studio/recording engineer; Mark Corbin of CorbinSound - mix engineer; Matt Gelfer of The New Students - guitars, fiddle, mandolin; Gretchen Poole - tenor back-up vocals; Rachel Zylstra of Rachel Zylstra - alto back-up vocals.

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And for those who like a good (Christmas) make-over story, or who would like to look under the hood of the songwriting/recording process: an annotated time-line with audio and visual samples to show the transformation with each stage of the song's production.

December 30, 1999 - Amidst an otherwise boring journal entry about showering etc, a song appears.

ORIGINAL LYRICS (click image to enlarge.)

Summer 2002 -  I don't own/play/havemoneytohire bluegrass instruments so I record this piano/vocal demo on a Sony Multrack Recorder at my apartment in Miami, FL.

AUDIO SAMPLE: PIANO/VOCAL DEMO

April 2010 -  NYU songwriting class culminates in my first performance of an original song. Tired of using my imagination, I decide to finally record one of my jillion songs with proper scoring. Somehow.

Summer 2010 - Start lessons with Mark Baxter, who listens to the above piano/vocal demo and declares my singing too safe, too polished, too guarded, too careful for a songwriter. (He is right.) Begins stripping away the lacquer. Gruesome.

November 2010 - Mult-instrumentalist Matt Gelfer offers to play all of the instruments. (Really??)

December 3, 2010 - Lyrics adjusted for better prosody.

 FINALIZED LYRICS (click image to enlarge)

December 4, 2010 - Guitars (Matt Gelfer), scratch vocals (me), and back-up vocals (Rachel Zylstra and Gretchen Poole) recorded in our basement on a laptop and one mic. (4 hours)

FIRST RECORDING SESSION (guitars, back-ups)

December 7, 2010 - Voice lesson with Mark Baxter via Skype goes something like this: "This isn't a live play, this is a film. You shoot one phrase at a time. Your lead vocal track should take an entire day to record. Unfortunately, your song is great but I don't believe you when you sing it. Stop singing! Stop singing and just talk to me. You have a lot of work NOT to do. Merry Christmas!" (He is still right.)

December 8, 2010 - Matt Gelfer lays down fiddle and mandolin tracks on top of existing tracks. (2 hours)

SECOND RECORDING SESSION (+ mandolin, fiddle)

December 12, 17, 2010 - Lead vocals wrestled, strangled, slurred, stripped, and finally accepted for who/where they are and laid to rest. Dear Mark Baxter, if I wait until my voice is perfect (or perfectly imperfect) none of my songs will ever be heard. My gift is my song and this one's for my friends. (6 hours)

UNMIXED EXPORT OF ALL TRACKS (+ lead vocals)

December 18, 2010 - Mark Corbin of CorbinSound, who offered to mix the song (really??), performs wizardry before my very eyes and ears. The song is finished. (5 hours)

FINAL VERSION AFTER MIXING

Twelve years (seventeen hours) in the making, it turned out all right!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!