singularity

What can I say? I used to think 6 month gaps in the band diary were bad. This represents an 18 month gap. So let’s get right to it. Jamie, partly out of frustration with how Singularity was flailing in late 2003, joined another band: Pindral. I think it provided him with a much-needed additional outlet since we weren’t doing a whole lot of anything at the time. Shortly thereafter, we invited Scott to join the band. Scott accepted. Then, after auditioning several bass players, we invited Jonathan Patch to join the band. Jonathan accepted.

Another 6 month gap in the band diary, which pretty much represents another 6 month gap in the band. With Matt’s leave of absence, Jamie and I hope to elicit some movement with Singularity. Forwards, sideways, backwards - it doesn’t really matter, as long as we do something. Despite the frustration that built up over the last year, I feel that the mutual decision for Matt to take a break was made at the right time. Any earlier would have been disrespectful to him as a dear friend and bandmate, and any later would have been too late for Singularity to survive. As things stand right now, Jamie and I are very excited to move forward with incorporating new musicians into the writing process as well as seriously pursuing playing live for the first time in the band’s history. It’s a rather nerveracking process to play with different guitar and bass players; it exposes my lack of ability as a musician and wreaks havoc on what little self-confidence I posess. However, my mind is racing with possibilities - lyrical and structural concepts, melodies, other musicians and lyricists - for a third CD that reflects this band’s progression through the years. I know Jamie is excited as well, and our faith in each other and Singularity has most certainly kept me afloat over the last several difficult weeks. I just have a feeling that our work in 2004 will involve all the key players in Singularity’s brief history, including Scott, Matt, and Andrew. I also have a feeling it will involve a few other special people whose contributions will help make our next work much greater than the sum of its parts. Perhaps that is why I still love the name Singularity so much. I have always felt, and continue to feel, that our music is a point in which many lives and loves and passions and hopes and fears converge. Signing off for now on a chilly December afternoon in New Jersey…

In keeping with my illustrious history of not writing anything in this journal for months at a time, here I am again after having not written anything in the journal for months. There has been much to write about in terms of the band and the seemingly inevitable soap opera that followed the completion and release of Between Sunlight and Shadow, but I always found myself unable to articulate exactly what was happening. Thankfully there is a bit of distance between those tumultuous times and now, so perhaps I’ll be able to document a bit of what we’ve been through over the last several months.

We’re still here!

Barely.

With 2 official recording sessions under our belt, I’m pleased to say that the process is going very well. Our first session was on 9/29/2001, during which we recorded the drums for a few sections of Between Sunlight and Shadow (Stratum, Matt in G, and the Metal). Jamie was magnificent, nailing all of those on the very first take. We broke for lunch at around noon, and found that our collective energy level had dropped several notches upon our return. Nevertheless, we did try to record both Hold a Candle and the E-F# sections. Neither of them went well, mostly because I was struggling with keeping a consistent tempo on the piano parts. I tried to not get too discouraged with myself, but I must admit it was frustrating. Everyone agreed that we should call it a day and not push ourselves beyond what felt good. So we called it a day and felt good!

The second session was just last night, 10/9/2001. We got started around 6:30 or 7:00, and Jamie nailed Ground Zero and the Quirk in just a couple of takes. Since we still had some time left, we decided to re-record Drive. None of us was really ready for it, but we refamiliarized ourselves with the structural details and went for it. I think the feel of the piano was much better on last night’s take than on the one from late August, although I did make a couple of boo boos. I also gave Matt some misinformation about the verse structures which caused him to flub his take. Oh well. We’re really only shooting for good drum takes at this point, so it’s no big deal. We’ll have plenty of time to perfect the keys, guitar, and bass once the drums are all done.

Session #3 was on the evening of 10/12/2001, and consisted of me doing keyboard and rough vocal work. Scott and I only worked for a couple of hours, but I pretty much finished all of the synth tracks for Drive. We took a few extra minutes to throw down some vocals on Invictus, and I learned alot about how my distance from the mic affects the overall quality of my vocals. Unfortunately the takes themselves are not keepers, but hopefully the experience and feedback from Scott will help me when I’m ready to lay down some serious vocal tracks.

Quattro Sessiono (?) happened just yesterday (10/22/2001), and was a winner. We ripped through 4 takes of Hold a Candle, and decided to leave them for judgement at a later time. I continued to struggle with my plastic $95.99 MIDI controller, so there were some lags and rushes and moments of overplaying. I’ll nail it one of these days. If not, we’ll just have to live with the best available take. Matt attacked the bass track for Traces, which contains some of the most difficult bass riffs on the whole CD. (Thanks Andy! He was very well-prepared, and did a great job considering he has only logged about 60 minutes of playing time on the 5-string bass. I jumped in after an hour and did some synth work on Traces, and Matt finished up with one more stint of bass playing. The session lasted about 4 hours, and I think we accomplished quite a bit. I did take a few minutes towards the end of the day to plug in JP’s Korg Karma and record a quick choral section at the end of Traces. JP, bless his generous and tolerant heart, was kind of enough to lend me his state-of-the-art Korg Karma for 2 weeks. I’m trying to figure out where I want to use it before I return it to him. Once we’re done with all the main tracking, I’ll borrow it once more and decorate the CD with a few of the Karma’s amazing sounds. Thanks JP!

3 sessions later, November 4, and I feel like I’m about to explode with frustration and anticipation. These little 3 hour sessions are killing me, suffocating any chance for creative voices to find themselves and breathe. Everyt hing went well today from the perspective of patience and fortitude, and yet I feel overwhelmed with a sense of ur gency and compulsion to work day and night until this thing is out and done and finished. Unfortunately that is no t possible due to several factors, all of which I resigned myself to accept months ago even before this process be gan. Today’s session mirrored the last two, all three of which consisted of the playing of seemingly random instru mental sections of an inconceivable 40-minute piece of music. Each 2-3 hour recording session relies on complete a nd total faith that the grand design of the composition is worthwhile; each note that is played without any refere nce to the overall meaning of the piece relies on the (perhaps misplaced) trust that it fits in to the bigger pict ure. I have complete and utter blind faith that this is the case, and yet it’s not enough; I feel the need for a l ong, uninterrupted session wherein each level of the song is recognized, addressed, challenged, and ultimately rec onciled into THE final version. Perhaps the merged version of everything we have recorded to this point will lend itself to the realization of this hope; I do not know, though, since I’m still in the process of downloading it fr om Scott’s computer. In the meantime, I’ll pour and drink another glass of wine, and cling to the faith, the belie f, the KNOWLEDGE, that we will complete this project and be proud of the final product.

Another 2 month lapse in writing, which either means that things have been going really well or really poorly. Hon estly, I’m not sure which. Most of the drums, bass, and keyboards are done - Jamie and I have spent the last coupl e of sessions hammering away at our vocal parts. The biggest missing link at this stage of the process is the guit ars, and Matt is spending some time on his own working out and rehearsing the many parts that still need to be don e. The pressure on him has been and continues to be tremendous - playing bass for the very first time and THEN hav ing to record 45 minutes worth of guitar is a monumental task. Jamie and I have plenty to keep us busy, though, so guitars will just end up being one of the last things recorded. No big deal - the pieces are all very clear, so i t really doesn’t matter to me what order they get plugged in. I just know that we’re all VERY anxious to hear the guitars since they provide the meat of many of the sections. Go, go, go!!!

After working on vocals for a couple of sessions, we pulled a rough mix of the first half of the song and took it home to listen to. It’s very difficult to listen through the flaws (of which there are plenty) and objectively dec ide what is and isn’t working. As I look at the Spock’s Beard web site and see that they’re already back in the st udio for some intensive recording work, my frustrations with the pace of our process and the impossibility of maki ng spontaneously creative decisions are once again eating away at me. Being frustrated is useless, though; if I were truly creative, I would find some way to make this happen faster.

The last 4 weeks have been the most productive of all, and the results are VERY encouraging. Matt has been kicking butt with guitar and vocal work, and Jamie and I jump in whenever he gets tired. Our target date for finishing al l tracking is March 15, and then we’ll take 2-3 weeks for mixing and mastering. Scott has a knee surgery scheduled for March 20, so he may need a few days off to recover. But only a few, dammit! Special thanks go out to Alan Mal lery for once again loaning his Roland JP8000 to me. I spent about 75 minutes on Tuesday night laying down some tr acks with it, and the sounds are absolutely perfect. Thanks Alan!

This process definitely reminds me of the Halloween ice storm duathlon in which I participated a few years ago. Th e first 2 1/2 hours felt like 2 1/2 hours. The last 1/2 hour felt like 3 1/2 days. I keep saying that we’re gettin g close, and I’m pretty sure we are, but at this point we’re so delirious and dizzy that it’s hard to tell. The ni ce thing is that we’re delirious and dizzy from focusing on minutia that we never got to focus on during the makin g of Color of Space. If we had to stop today and release Between Sunlight and Shadow, I think I would be pretty da rned happy with it. Just a few more weeks of details and dizziness and delirium, and we’ll have a CD we can all be more than pretty darned happy with.

September 2002 is upon us, and we have a new CD! The final stretch towards completion was long and difficult, and included glitches in just about every phase. The important thing is that everyone (Scott, Gary, Jeremy, Matt, Jami e, me) and everything (mixing, mastering, artwork, printing, duplication, etc) came together, and it is a very gra tifying feeling! Jamie, Matt, and I got together last weekend to celebrate and put a tiny bit of closure on this p hase. It was a great night - we had a blast watching the studio videos from the last 12 months, talking shit about how much we kick ass, and finally listening to the finished product. CD number 2! Done!! Wow. Life does not get much better than this….

No wonder I’ve never been able to keep a journal for more than 4 days. It has been nearly a year and a half since my last Singularity log entry, and it’s hard t o decide whether a whole lot or very little has happened since then. The most horrible event I have ever known in my 33 years on the planet occurred 16 days ago, and I’m not sure if I (or anyone else) will ever be quite the same. Despite my apathy towards a great many things in my life right now, I still have a deep desire to finish our project in the face of all the changes the band has undergone over the last year and the awful things that are happening in the world. Matt a nd Jamie seem to be very focused on our music as well, and it’s a great feeling to be working towards a common goal. You may have noticed that Andy’s name was missing from the last sentence. Or you may have not noticed that Andy’s name was missing from the last sentence. Either way, Andy’s name was missing from the last sentence because Andy is no longer with the current manifestation of Singularity. In other words, he quit. Our long-distance musical relationship did not work out despite alot of effort, and we’re all still great friends. I certainly wouldn’t rule out working with him again in some context, but for now we are concentrating only on the task at hand - recording our next CD.

The process of choosing a recording studio and engineer for the new material has been an arduous one. We want to achieve a very different sound and feel from Co lor of Space, so working with Doug in a traditional studio setting didn’t appeal to us as much as it did last time. It was clear that we wanted to work with som eone who was genuinely interested in our music, someone who would take the time and make the effort to really listen to the arrangements and performances instead of just slapping them all together with a bunch of effects. Of course, we also wanted to work with someone who would do this for a bargain basement price. Based on those requirements, I won’t be completely surprised if this CD never sees the light of day. However, we feel like we have the best shot possible right now with a fine gentleman named Scott Cleland whom we met at a CARS (Colorado Art Rock Society) meeting. My fingers are crossed….

April 2000 finds Singularity with a bass player living 1000 miles away and a somewhat sporadic practice schedule. Andy left for San Diego a couple of months ago, just as the initial structural and conceptual ideas for Inferno were being introduced. None of us were sure if the band would survive his departure, but we all agreed that it certainly could work if we put forth the effort. And the time for that effort is now. In some ways the change has improved the writing process; we all have a better understanding of what our roles are and what we each need to contribute in order to make this work. However, losing Andy’s presence at practice has also decreased the overall energy and spontaneity of the writing process. We must adapt to this change if the band is going to survive, and I have confidence that we will. I believe that everyone is excited enough over the awesome potential of Inferno and the other new bits and pieces that we will persevere and see them to completion. Matt, Jamie, and I recorded a fledgling version of Inferno a few weeks ago and mailed a copy to Andy. He recorded it onto our ancient Tascam 4-track and used the remaining 3 tracks to write and record some bass and vocal ideas. So far it is sounding very promising, so I’m thinking that this is working pretty well despite how unconventional the process is. Time will tell…

The old millenium left, the new millenium came, and the power grid and my computer still work well enough that I can reflect a bit on the completion of Color of Space. Matt’s amp did eventually get fixed, and we were finally able to schedule a few more sessions to track the remaining guitar parts, mix, and master. Although the entire process was memorable, the memories of the final night of mastering will be with me forever. After some relatively ordinary struggles with the computer, we spontaneously made some decisions about track order, EQ levels, beer and pretzel brands, and other important musical parameters. 2:00 a.m. eventually rolled around and saw the departure of our hallucinating engineer. Fort unately we were offered the opportunity to preview the final product by one of the night owls at Fanfare Studios, so the three of us (unfortunately Matthew was not with us that night) dimmed the lights, cranked the volume, and pressed play. The next 47 minutes and 18 seconds were filled with indescribable emotions and happiness as we leaned back and enjoyed the results of over 2 years of work together. If you are reading this and have heard the CD, my only hope is that you en joy listening to it a fraction as much as we enjoyed making it.

While the drive to write and record our first 2 songs had been mostly fueled by raw enthusiasm, we found the motivations to continue with our writing a bit more cloudy and unclear. Each of us had fulfilled a unique set of expectations and dreams, and each of us also had a unique set of resultant motivations that shaped our writing. Some of those motivations began conflicting very soon after we finished Lenses, and we found that each of us wanted to take the writing in a slightly different direction. The next few months were a period of individual and collective growth, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes downright threatening, but ultimately very necessary. It was during this period that the building blocks for Strange Attraction and Ripple in Time were born.

Fast-forward several months to July, 1999. The recording studio is an incredibly unforgiving place to record and listen to this music. Song sections that we used to fill in with our imaginations, riffs that we used to skip, phrasings that we used to go so well with the buzzing of live amps - they all have become a stark reality at the mixing board now that we have recorded the basic live tracks for Ripple in Time, Strange Attraction, Mars Direct, and Who We Are. All of the stumbling blocks and nervousness we experienced last year when recording Lenses and Ebb & Flow were back with a vengence. I had hoped those feelings and problems were unique to last year’s sessions, but we were slowly finding out that they are just a part of the recording process for us.

It is August now, and we have already faced more stumbling blocks this time around than we did during the entire process last year. This morning we all showed up bright and early at the studio, and waited for Doug (our engineer) to show up. And we waited. And waited. And waited. And finally we called him at home where he was enjoying a day off with his family. He had no idea we were scheduled for a session. Out of the goodness of his heart he drove over to the studio and worked with us for a few hours. Unfortunately, though, I had already let the frustration of scheduling snafus and equipment failures and tuning problems cloud over my excitment for the day.

Last night was supposed to be Guitar night. The night when Matt was going to finish all of the guitar tracks so we could do vocals over the weekend and then mix and master early next week. Last night ended up being I Love the Smell of Burning Transistors and Fuses in Guitar Amps in the Morning night. Mmmmm, burning transistors…

It was sometime in February 1997 when I received the call from Andy informing me that, after several years of not playing music, he had just bought a bass and an amp out of the blue and was having a great time noodling around with a bunch of old tunes. I half-jokingly said that I’d be there in a heartbeat if he felt like playing. After a couple of phone calls later in the week, we were already discussing getting together with Jamie, a drummer he had met while attending the Colorado Institute for Art. I had met Jamie once before at a Dux gig, and had heard from Andy about our common affinity for Genesis and Marillion. At the very least, I had confidence that the three of us would have a fun afternoon talking about music. Fortunately, we ended up doing a bit more than just talking about music.

On the very first day we immediately began noodling with original material, presenting old and new ideas that had been brewing for years. The result was a nifty little piece of music that had all of us brimming with excitement. While wondering if our musical memories would be rusty after so long, I boldly declared that I NEVER forgot any piece of music I had ever written. Naturally, disaster struck the very next session as I fruitlessly struggled to remember even a hint of my part. Jamie and Andy, after giving me alot of grief, good-naturedly accepted my humble apologies, and we simply moved on to the next idea and the next idea and the next idea and…

As time went on, the absense of guitar in our music became less of a novelty and more of an emptiness. We wanted someone who would fit in with our gestalt musical philosophy, but who also had the technical ability to follow the direction in which we seemed to be headed. We tried out a couple of players who definitely had the equipment and the chops, but who seemed to lack the ability or desire to interactively create music. We wanted someone who not only had the ability to rip out a nice lick or groove, but more importantly the ability to NOT rip out a nice lick or groove. We wanted a guitar player who had the willingness and confidence to stop and listen to what was developing and evolving and the talent to create something to go along with it. In other words, we wanted Matthew. And we got him.

The refreshing qualities that I felt during out first months together were ones of respect, realism, and focused energy. We respected the fact that none of us had played for several years and were all rediscovering our instruments and creative energies, had very realistic goals and expectations of what we would accomplish, and capitalized on our common backgrounds and enthusiasm for music with a great deal of refined energy and efficiency. The result was an unparalleled level of freedom, maturity, and fun.

After a few months, we collectively set a goal to record at least a couple of original songs in the best studio we could afford. This was a pivotal decision for me as it represented the opportunity to finally turn 12 years of musical dreams into permanent reality. For so long I had imagined what this song COULD have sounded like, or what that band COULD have done if it had stayed together, but all I had to show for it was a disorganized collection of 4-track recordings and some glorified memories. This was a real chance to create and preserve a quality of music I had only dreamed of doing.

The result was our first EP, Lenses.