September 2020 Studio Update

Here's how the recording of "The Battle - An Opioid Story" is going

STUDIO UPDATE for SEPTEMBER:

Greeetings fellow progressive rock lovers and all you others who are keeping an eye on our progress.  4 songs are in the can people! Lee Abraham will be putting on his producer hat and begin mixing stuff as soon as this week. I've already sent him these 4 songs.

5 more tracks to go, but that includes the monstrous closing 22 minute epic, "The Battle!" I've managed to make some great improvements to some of the riffs and rhythm tracks to make everything sound a little more diverse and interesting. Of course that resulted in an epic 9-hour recording session to get the rhythm guitars just right in "The Cross I Bear" which is a song with a long history, but that's for another post.

Jimmy Keegan on the telephone to me after he finished the drums, "dude, that's a lot of notes!" 🤣😮😂🤣 His performance here is impeccable (no surprise there!) and he definitely channeled Nikko McBrain in all the right spots. I can't wait for you all to hear this side of Jimmy's playing. I've got to hand it to the man. I think I only had to ask him to re-do two very minor things across an entire 9-song, 75-minute album. Dude is a true professional and one of the easiest musicians to work with that I've ever encountered.

I had forgotten how complex some of these rhythms actually are. I'm a total prog nerd, so it was inevitable but if I remember correctly, there's 5/8 - 7/8 - 7/4 - 6/8 and plenty of 4/4 to give your brain a break, lol.

I wrote a lot of it for 3 guitars, like Iron Maiden so you're going to hear a lot of Maiden-influenced harmony riffing, especially in the epic, but it's scattered throughout the album, too. A couple of harmony guitar passages almost have an Alice In Chains sound with some different guitar harmony choices too.

OK, moving on now to track 5, the album's only ballad, "Yesterday is Gone" I will report again in a couple of weeks when I've completed the guitars.

I'll post another update in a couple of weeks!

Take care and please stay safe and healthy.

--Barry--