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Phase One Studio A is Booked for Tracking …

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I was excited to send this email out to the Band and Flyingbow Board last week after a generous supporter offered to donate a week of recording in one of Canada’s best recording studios, Phase One Studio A:

Well, things have been moving very quickly on the next Flyingbow Project … here is the latest: Richard has booked Phase One Studio A for the Band – the first week of August starting Monday, August 3rd through to Friday August 7th. What an honour it will be to track in one of the finest studios in the country (if not North America!) – with our favorite engineer, Richard Cleaver.

All our initial “live tracking” will happen on that week. Our focus will be to get the best drum, bass and acoustic piano takes in that order of priority. All overdubs can happen the following week or two in Kingston at Richard’s home recording room. Obviously, the more we keep live off the floor at Phase One the better. Our priority over the next 6 weeks will be to settle on the final rep, arrangements, charting and rehearsal times etc.

It has been incredible how this has all come together so quickly. I am pumped as I am sure you all are! …

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So … I have been hard at work in my home studio over the last week tweaking the ideas Brad and I came up with on our writing weekend,  charting and sending off .mp3’s & lead sheets to the band for our first full rehearsal on Monday, June 22. Stay posted for more updates as they come in. You can also check out all the technical progress updates on this new CD project as they happen on Richard Cleaver’s blog. He has just posted two recent updates here and here. Until next time,

Trevor

Progress Update on the New CD Project …

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Some of you have been asking how progress on the new CD Project is going … here is a little update.

We have been brainstorming up a concept and list of songs for the new project … here is the list of songs we started with (if you can read my “chicken scratching”!). We have cut some from this page already, but this will give you an idea of the process.

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I want the album to have a cool, modern vibe (like “Glory“) that explores beautiful, simple melodies (rich in meaning) in world music styles, rhythms and instrumentation for a growing multi-cultural audience. My audience as you know is mainly “the Church” (internationally) so the songs we select needs to speak to that audience. The beauty of old and new “hymns” is that the album will have a timeless quality that will cause it to have a much longer shelf-life (like the “Glory and Peace” Christmas album).  The messages of the songs also need to be a good fit with Compassion and my ever growing, exciting partnership with them.

Brad Toews (keys) and I had a very productive, fun weekend (May 14-17/09) writing and fleshing out some arrangement and concept ideas. We are using Apple’s Logic Express on my iMac as a recording platform. From this I will be able to print out charts for the band to work from – all within the Logic software. Brad is flying out again from his home town of Halifax on the weekend of June 18-21 to continue this process.

Here are some shots of Brad and I in my new rehearsal and pre-production studio in May:

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To view more pics click here.

On June 22, we have a full band rehearsal planned for each player’s input and creative genius. I am very excited about starting this next step in the crafting process. This full band approach early on in the arranging works extremely well for us (as we saw in the success of “Glory”) in breathing life, ownership and authenticity into the music.

Until next time … T