Dawn: day 4

Rose with the morning sun today and mixed “Carpe Vita” in bed while watching documentaries. The synth tracks sound neat and are barely perceivable at times but really brighten up some spots. Some of the biggest struggles I have with DIY songmaking is making sure the brights are bright but not *too bright* and that the drums pack enough punch. So far these things are pretty damn close if not there already. Also I lucked into a very awesome bass guitar tone by duping the track and mixing them totally differently, and the track reminds me of Entwhistle which I couldn’t be happier about.

I’m enjoying mixing this one as I go along rather than waiting ’til the tracking is done. I’ve done six mixes and it’s my best sounding track yet. I’m learning a lot and establishing a standard for the quality overall that I hope I can continue to meet. Next time I hit the stude I plan to re-record some oohs and aahs and lay down a 3-second guitar part and call this one a day, and start on the rest of the Quadrumvirate which is almost entirely instrumental and much more subdued.

Spent the afternoon printing flyers and and posting them around Ferndale for the next Counter Elites show that fell into our collective laps yesterday. In the words of the Right Honourable Greg Aubry this show has been appropriately termed “Fuck Yes Fest.”

Dawn: day 3

Just a little synth-work from home today. I’m beat from late nights mixing and a day of yardwork, and beautiful weather forced me outside ’til sundown. But I made more progress on “Carpe Vita.” All it needs now is a bit of vocals and maybe a tiny guitar part and it’ll be done-done.

Also had to dig the Counter Elites out of carbonite today for a just-announced show this Thursday at Small’s. As their producer/co-manager it’s up to me to make sure they’re able to comply with SLF corporate protocol. The fact that I don’t know their names makes them particularly difficult to work with, but I think they’re on to something.

Dawn: day 2

I mixed til 6am this morning and had to wake up at 8am so I wasn’t sure if I’d have the steam to hit the stude today, but after doing chores all morning with music on my mind and then getting back to mixing, by early afternoon I was excited about what was coming together and headed back to the Shed. I spent the afternoon adding some electric guitars to “Carpe Vita”. Some parts are subtle and the guitar solo is a foundation I’m going to add synthesizer and maybe some other wackiness to. I was able to retain year-old rhythm guitar, piano and vocal tracks and recorded a bass part a few weeks ago, so with the drums and lead guitars it’s really sounding huge already. All it needs is some swirling synths and some oohs and ahhs and it should be right as rain.

Now that I feel able to play drums I have a really good idea of how to move forward with the whole project, but before diving into the rest of the full-length I’m gonna cut my teeth on the Carpe Vita Quadrumvirate and hopefully get it to the ears of the world as soon as summertime.

Dawn: day 1

I started recording Dawn of Isis today. I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while but haven’t been sure how to approach it. I’d been revisiting demos and trying to think of what each song needs but always felt restrained by my abilities as a musician/engineer and my technological limitations. Though as time has gone on I’ve started playing new instruments (bass last year) and discovered new techniques while home-engineering a number of records DIY-style.

Basically everything that’s come out of Simple Living Ferndale aside from Songs From The Moon‘s Protest Strategies and “Xmas Eve” has been recorded with a Tascam field recorder, which only records one track at a time. In order to multi-track I have to record something, transfer the SD-card from it to my laptop and line the audio file up with the other existing tracks, which is a much bigger pain in the butt than actual multi-tracking when you can play along to a recording and lay tracks down on top of each other. But I’ve gotten used to this technique, and though I’m in the process of acquiring a new computer, sound card and multi-mic setup, I decided I’d rather not wait to start and just hit the ground running with the tools I’ve become accustomed to using.

But I wasn’t exactly sure how to hit it, or what “it” was going to be. I didn’t know if this was going to be a record resembling my recent solo recordings–stripped down, maybe with some hand-percussion, nothing full-band sounding–but I was inspired by a couple of events. Yesterday morning I went for a walk and listened to the Blasé Splee record Et Cetera for the first time in a long time and it hit me that what I really wanted to do was make a rock record as extensive as that. Even though my solo shows are totally stripped down, I feel capable of transforming my songs into fully fleshed out compositions and can take care of the bulk of the instrumentation myself. The only thing I felt I couldn’t handle would be the drumming, which I was going to ask friends to do for me, but that idea never really sat right with me. I know it’s not a big deal, but if I had others play on the record I just wouldn’t feel right calling it “Jon From The Moon.”

Later yesterday I was having a conversation with a friend and she asked me if I played drums. I took the long way around saying no–that I do play percussion, or sometimes one drum at a time, but don’t feel comfortable on a kit. But I didn’t want to say “no” outright because I really wasn’t sure if I play drums or not, as it’s been years since I’ve sat at a kit. But I knew recording a rock record had to start with the drums.

For the last couple months I’ve had a key to Woodshed Studios in Oak Park, which is owned by Songs From The Moon producer/bassist/guitarist Ed Sertage (formerly of Bedford Drive). Though I don’t know anything about the knobs, bells and whistles, I have access to a large soundproofed room I can use at all hours of the day and night, equipped with a piano, countless amps, and drums. I asked Ed if I could use the space for DIY-recording because my upper-flat home with paper-thin walls is not feasible for it. I got to the studio today expecting to start by constructing basic drum tracks for “Carpe Vita” one at a time, with each drum on its own track, and spent a couple hours deconstructing the song and laying down bass, snare and toms separately. But then I recalled the conversation about drumming–and the particularly inspiring, adventurous nature of the girl I was speaking to–and decided to say fuck it and set up a kit and just make a go at it. I played along while listening to a demo of “Carpe Vita” on my iPod and recorded the drums to one track with the recorder on the other side of a wall of blankets. I played until my blisters broke and I could no longer hold sticks. I have two recorded hours of drumming to rummage through but I feel I have something to work with, and have a revitalized confidence in my abilities to make a band-sounding record by myself. Now that the first track is recorded I’m beyond excited to move forward, and feel like I’ve opened the floodgates to probably the biggest project I’ve taken on by myself.

tentativitude/upandcomingness

Dawn Of Isis Against The Signified
coming 2013

One of my many goals for the 3 1/2 months I have off from school is to make a full-length solo record. I’ve produced eight singles/EPs in the last year and a half and feel ready to take a flying leap into something more substantial and involved. I’ll be working on two full-length albums at once, producing both my solo record and one for The Counter Elites (whoever they are) while Songs From The Moon wraps up our impending EP Blood For Power at Woodshed Studios. Anywho – I have my full-length demoed out and about 95% written for piano, synthesizer, acoustic and electric guitars, bass, drums, multi-layered vocals and maybe some extra interesting musical happenings. I may or may not invite friends to play/sing on it – at least know for sure my ultra-bud Shaun Wisniewski will be playing drums on at least 2 or 3 songs, including the lead single “Carpe Vita.”

So here’s a tentative track list for Dawn Of Isis. I’ve been playing quite a few of these tunes at my solo shows, and a couple go back to the earliest days of SFTM:

1. Before We Turn To Dust
2. Carpe Vita
3. Long Night
4. Why Would She Want To Be With Me?
5. Doin’ Nothin’
6. Jordan Haircut
7. We’re All Underwater
8. Wonky Eye
9. Phossy Jaw pt. 3

Speaking of up-and-comingness, SFTM has a new teaser-trailer out, featuring a clip from “Ball Of Thread”:

Songs From The Moon BLOOD FOR POWER commercial from Simple Living Ferndale on Vimeo.

and our first show booked in 13 1/2 months – at the Phoenix Cafe Hazel Park’s 4-day Memorial Day Weekend May Bash.

Happy spring (and all).

Happy Apocalypse

I recorded this song last night in celebration of the final night of existence. I wrote it on Sunday and debuted it live on Wednesday at Skipper’s open mic in Hamtramck. I figured if the world was going to end, I might as well go out making some music on an otherwise lazy Thursday evening.

I kind of took a break from the Internet. I played a show on my birthday in July and gave out 100 CD-Rs of early mixes of my upcoming EP over a couple weeks. Since then I played at the Phoenix Cafe after the Hazel Park Art Fair, but that’s it. The Walking Beat had a handful of cool shows, including a Halloween party at the Lager House where we played as The Kinks. I was the Dave Davies and it was unimaginable fun. SFTM has only gotten together a handful of times to work on our next 7″, which is about 2/3 complete. I’ve been working on my Master’s, some writing projects, and Shaun and I have been producing a punk band called THE COUNTER ELITES and prepping for our Simple Living Ferndale mega-release party that very few people know much about.

SLF 1 year anniversary party

video produced by Shaun Wisniewski
music and poster produced by Jonathan A. Berz

SLF 1 YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY

with
THE COUNTER ELITES
SEX POLICE
JON FROM THE MOON
PANCHO VILLA’S SKULL
MATILDA

download 3 Demonstrations

My new EP is ready for the ears of the world. Download freely at your leisure or donate a couple bucks. Your support keeps everything going!

Get it on CD for free at the show tonight:

a sweet little Suite

Meet our newest composition–“The Lucky Suite” by Songs From The Moon.

My favorite band ever is The Who. Ever since I heard “A Quick One, While He’s Away” I’ve wanted to write a Who-style medley, or “rock-opera.” Though I doubt I’ll ever craft anything as epic as Tommy or Quadrophenia, I do have plans for a number of extended, multi-part and multi-layered musical pieces. Here’s my first. This one took me about 13 months to create.

It started one day when I was walking down the street, jangling my keys, and heard a melody in my head. I sang it to myself that entire day as “my deedle-eedle own again.” I had no idea what to do with it but that little melody stuck in my head for a couple of weeks. Then I took a road trip to Virginia, and while I was driving somewhere in silence I sang the first thing that came into my head, loudly, and kept going: “I’m lucky to be alone again / this one would never-a come without the solitude.” Then I added the “among the multitude” later after reading the poem of that name in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I decided that was plenty, and that it accurately summed up what I was trying to communicate in the song–a celebration of being an artist, and having the freedom to work on my creations.

I wrote the rest of the piece when I got home from Virginia. I wanted it to sound like a blend of ragtime-honky-tonk, the Melvins and the Pixies. Really it just wrote itself, and is all based around the same melody and chords. Surprisingly, I realized months later that the music is very similar to “Brave Iranians,” just down a half step, and with some lingering moments. It’s also based on the same “one-two, one-two-three” beat that I tend to use a lot (but have also moved away from).

Shaun Wisniewski, Dan Clark and I had an acoustic show booked at the end of May, and I had the idea of turning it into a split cassette release party for Matilda and SFTM. So we quickly recorded the “Suite” for it. It was very hurried, and was my first home-recording for SFTM. I had no idea what I was doing really, and didn’t even have a keyboard to use. I borrowed a lot of things to make it come together. The tape version is much more stripped down, more acoustic-based, but this is always how I intended it to sound. Producing the Get To Know Mine EP and “Morning Sun” single, I learned a lot about home recording and felt confident enough to give it another go. I had acquired some tracks over the year from a couple of sessions at Ryan’s, and Shaun and I re-did most of pts. 1, 3 and 4 from the ground up over the last couple of months. I gave “Lucky” a nice digital dusting as well, and actually recorded some new parts for it that I didn’t even end up using.

I missed my arbitrary personal deadline for its release, but overall am very pleased with how it turned out. A writer I know said it sounds like “ELO from Hell.” I think it also has hints of Black Sabbath, KISS, and Mount Eerie–three more of my favorites.

pt. 1
“The Prologue”
Jonathan A. Berz: vocals, piano, electric guitar, synthesizer, drums
Shaun Wisniewski: electric guitar, bass, drums

pt. 2
“Lucky To Be Alone (Again)”
Jonathan A. Berz: vocals, piano, acoustic guitar
Ryan Looney: drums, percussion
Dan Clark: electric guitar
Sara Grosky: bass

pt. 3
“The Appendix”
Jonathan A. Berz: piano, electric guitar, synthesizer
Shaun Wisniewski: electric guitar, bass
Ryan Looney: drums

pt. 4
“The First Amendment”
Jonathan A. Berz: piano, electric guitar, bass, synthesizer, drums, percussion, vocals
Shaun Wisniewski: acoustic guitar, drums, percussion
Ryan Looney: drums

recorded at our homes in 2011 and 2012
written and produced by Jonathan A. Berz

download it: http://songsfromthemoon.bandcamp.com/track/the-lucky-suite

Next up–a solo EP, and 4-part instrumental EP called Humors.

making “Yours”

Tracking has begun for 13 new ones. They’re each at varying stages of completion, and we’re gunning for the following deadlines:

Tue June 26: “Lucky To Be Alone (Again)” / “The First Amendment”
mp3 release by Songs From The Moon
plus stream of “The Lucky Suite” in its entirety

Tue July 17: “Yours” / “Why Would She Want To Be With Me?”
mp3 release by Jon From The Moon
w/ music video for “Yours”

Tue August 7: “Sanguine” / “Choleric”
mp3 release by Songs From The Moon

plus – late August / September – triple CD release:

Porn on TV / The Lucky Suite split CD by Matilda and Songs From The Moon
Dawn of Isis Against the Signified CD EP by Jon From The Moon
Humors CD EP by Songs From The Moon

I’ve decided to track the progress of my next solo single – “Yours” – and will be posting pictures and audio clips along the way.

stage 1: