Record an album

The new EP Transition is here!

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Melissa Axel
PO Box 6201
Denver, CO 80206

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Recorded at Coupe Studios, Transition features five of my vocal/piano originals, with violinist Kailin Yong joining me on three of them. My husband James Jacoby and I collaborated with Kailin on several song arrangements, and one song also features Ryan Drickey on cello. The cover art was created by Stacy Allen Hummel.

As always, many thanks for your interest and support. I’m thrilled to share this music with you and hope it will bring meaning and enjoyment into your life in the year to come!

Well folks, at long last I have a major milestone toward this goal:

My new 5-song EP Transition arrived on our doorstop yesterday! I don’t know how much 1000 discs weighs in at, but the stork sure delivered a welcome holiday gift. ;-)

Putting together a pre-release email/web announcement today amidst some last-minute gift wrapping and even a little cooking for tomorrow’s seasonal festivities at our friends’ place … It’s an exciting, festive time around here!

Hope all is well with everyone on here and wishing you lots of fulfillment in the new year with achieving whatever goals you set your heart and mind to! :)

Well, I’m finally back with another recording update – hopefully those of you who have been following along are still there and still at least vaguely interested! ;-) I’ll kick this entry off with a bit of advice for those of you following this goal on 43 Things looking for tips from others going through the recording process:

Feel free to set targets for timing, album length, etc. but do not expect to always (if ever) meet them, particularly on your first go ‘round. It is incredibly difficult to extrapolate release timing when you are scheduling sessions here and there over the course of several months or a year, as likely your song selection will evolve, and perhaps even more compelling new material will emerge and threaten to take over other songs that were in the queue … and so now you know a bit of where I’m headed with this entry and its title. ;-)

• by end of July, had finished tracking (recording) 4 songs at the amazing studio over the course of about a month (for those interested, probably spent 5 hours per song total – almost 3 each to track and just over 2 to mix, give or take)

• got a partial scholarship to WOMAD Summer School to study songwriting and African music with pros and peers in the UK and suddenly off we went … this is relevant to the update for two reasons: 1. gone for almost 3 weeks, b. emerged from said 3 weeks rather broke (thanks, weak dollar!), and iii. emerged from said workshop with new material that, as predicted above, moved in for the kill in terms of song selection for the album

• following typical post-travel illness/exhaustion/recovery period, listened back to everything we had recorded, including rough demos, then made more rough demos of über-new stuff and older stuff we had picked out that we re-arranged a little/worked with tempo on, etc.

• early September, had a good production meeting with the studio folks, in which it was determined that the best thing to do is get the pre-release EP out there, then move ahead with the album taking our time to flesh out the best of the new stuff and cull the absolute best out of all the stuff I’ve been writing for years and years and years …

• added violin and cello to the last song we’d recorded, which was feeling like it still needed something after the piano and vocals were done – collectively got very excited about the result and mixed it

Finally, we arrive at our current status: typing this update as we arrive in the studio parking lot to put final mixing touches on the remaining songs!

So, we’re getting very close to actually having something in-hand that I hope moves you and connects with your life in some way. And it’s looking like the full album will be out sometime in ‘09 – but I don’t wanna make any promises. ;-)

Meanwhile, I released the first two preliminary tracks for download online, you can check them out at www.melissaaxel.com

Thanks as always for listening, much love! :)

Wow, it’s been forever since I’ve updated on 43, and I’m thrilled to finally return with productive news! When last we typed, it was October 2007 – and now here we are in July ‘08. Here’s what’s happened since the previous update:

*ch-ch-ch-changes – for starters, the producer friend who had recorded the demos in my (now old) apartment has sorta disappeared. I hope he’s doing okay. Had the impression he was going to go back to teaching more and maybe stop producing/recording, kind of a bummer but I do hope things are working out well for him, he was a really good guy and I think that studio he was at really didn’t appreciate all that he did. Speaking of lack of appreciation, for a number of reasons not worth getting into now (and some of you may already know in one way or another), we left that music magazine and are still trying to get them to pay overdue balances on work I did lonnnnnng ago. Please send good collection vibes if ya got ‘em. ;-)

What’s been even cooler than the incredible improvement in my state of energy/stress/interaction with people since departing is that I really have been able to focus almost exclusively on music (and a few things that directly serve it in true synergistic fashion). I’m working with a new studio now that is absolutely fantastic on all levels: state-of-the-art gear, super professional, connected with film and other licensing opportunities, helping to make pro recording affordable for artists, has an incredible vibe, and perhaps most importantly of all, the people are so wonderful and it’s high integrity. Hurrah! And, we moved into the coolest apartment in a Victorian house near downtown. Goodbye, suburban sprawl, hello cuteness and connectedness! People actually “just stop by” now. Very nice.

• practice practice practice – well, I did finally work with the metronome and am indeed improving my time and using “out of time” Joni Mitchell-esque songs to better effect by having a better sense of the timing I’m deliberately ignoring. This has made the other musicians and the studio engineers very happy. It’s making me happy too, because I feel that I have a better handle on the music now, and I look forward to performing with other musicians live and “syncing up” with them. Even though in that situation, all but drums and bass would be following me, playing together can be more like the effect of pendulums near each other, determining a balance between their movements that supersedes the timing of any one of them. Cool.

• song selection – well, I am pleased to announce that I will not be strangled (this comment makes sense if you’ve read the previous entry from October), as we have already recorded the most requested song “Fall This Hard” and if this is one that you were waiting for, you can hear it on my myspace player. A newer song called “Transition (No More Fairytales)” was recorded during the same weekend and is up on there too, as well as older tracks.

I decided to enlist my mom in the song selection process, largely because she is a really good gauge as she doesn’t automatically love everything I create but also because she herself is quite the by-ear musician when she plays piano and sings, and her father played a ton of instruments and led a band, so it’s in her blood. She listened through every rough demo (and some were very rough), all the previous recordings, and a live radio performance and interview with like six more songs. Then she came up with a priority order for the songs to be recorded in, and we’ve pretty much been working on that schedule to much success. One of the earlier songs is being kept for the album because it tends to be the favorite of many, and we’ll re-record the first song I ever recorded at this new studio as it’s been people’s second favorite but definitely needs some tinkering (the old ones were on an EP).

One thing that’s been really interesting is how my voice has evolved over the past few years (and it’s a good case for why I’m actually happy things took the meandering path that they did, because this really makes a difference in the sound and feel of the music we’re capturing now). A lot of the concerns I had about my vocals really started to just melt away after 1. moving here from Florida and adjusting to the altitude and lack of humidity (both things have been great for not only my voice but also clearing my head/congestion, etc.) and b. focus. I don’t want to go back and dwell on the negativity of my previous work situation, but suffice it to say that the phrase “WELL, DUH!” has been prevalent in my mind as I looked back and realized it was no wonder that I was not getting the expression I wanted out when what was going on inside wasn’t anything I wanted either. It’s amazing how connected singing is to your state of well-being … now that I’ve spent a good deal of time getting into a much happier, focused state, what comes out creatively and even interpersonally has really transformed (and feels transforming).

If you’re starting to wonder if this whole project has become a bit of a spiritual journey, I guess the answer is yes. Religion or any kind of belief system completely aside, I see now that my relationship with music – and through it, my relationship with life – is incredibly spiritual in nature. By that, what I think I mean is simply that this whole process is really about growth.

• discuss plan of attack with producer friends – oddly enough, we’ve been working really well with me self-producing with the assistance of a violinist/composer friend who recently completed his own self-produced album that turned out amazing, as well as my husband (also a musician), who’s been very helpful with arrangements, tempo, and such.

• enlist musician colleagues – the violinist has already recorded some breathtaking work on two tracks, and as we move on with the rest of the album, he’ll continue to be involved. the sax player and a percussion colleague of his are both excited to be involved as well, and indeed my dear one may be playing tuba on a track … this aspect is coming together nicely.

• survey people – I actually did ask a few people when/if/how/under what circumstances they would want to support my work by buying a CD and/or downloading individual songs, and the answers were pretty interesting. For this first record, we’re definitely pressing some physical CDs, albeit in more environmentally-friendly packaging, and there will also be download options available. Still fleshing this out, but for now the focus is on the recording itself.

That said, I’m putting together a pre-release EP with 5 of the new songs. We’re back in the studio on Monday night to get the last one recorded, and then it’s off to the presses! The full album will be out at the end of the year. Gotta run, more to come … Thanks for reading, erm, listening. ;-)

Ok, here’s the progress so far:

• demo’d 9 songs at the end of January (made rough piano/vocal recordings in my apartment with producer and an iMac in order to determine if we need to work on song structure, decide what kinds of instruments to use on each song, etc.)

• thought we were going into the studio to get started recording and then it got booked by somebody (we had been hoping to get in there where my producer friend was working during off time)

• got married on a mountain to the bunny of my dreams (this was unrelated, and awesome)

• went on the best honeymoon ever (also unrelated, awesome, and yeah, I know this is not making you feel very sorry for me, but just read the next one…)

• kerrrrrrrr-THUD.

But, all hope is not lost! I have been thinking/discussing/simmering up energy on this over the last week or so during the current, intense phase of “I’d better get my plans together now or else” vibes… and yesterday, I went to the piano to look (listen?) over all the song candidates for the album again for the first time in months. Definitely felt a big resurgence of positivity after a. venting and 2. playing/singing and just “being in” the music again.

Soooo, next steps… (Coincidentally, in this month’s issue of the local music magazine I edit, my producer friend, who will hereafter be referred to as PF, has launched a column about getting into the studio for artists at any stage of their careers named – aptly – “The Next Step”.)

• practice practice practice – specifically, play piano against the metronome to figure out which songs I can actually get to the point of playing with a “click track” (for those of you non-recording peeps, this is so that a. I play in perfect time and 2. it’s much easier to sequence and record other instrumentation/sound programming in time with the acoustic piano performance)... those of you who know my music know that my sense of time is “Joni Mitchell-esque” at best, and just push-pull-y at worst. Sometimes this can be used to wonderful artistic effect. Sometimes it’s just a huge pain in the ass for my producer/programmer friends.

• song selection – I think I about have the list, though it shifts whenever I look at the various songs I have to choose from at different times… this is the curse of the singer/songwriter and his/her first album: choosing from the huge backlog of songs you’ve built up over a near lifetime of writing (well, so far, at least), when 1. many of the songs appear to be fighting each other for a place on the record, b. many of the songs are really old and therefore not representative of what you currently have on your mind/going on in your life/in your vocal range/etc., and iii. sometimes you feel like you’d really rather sit down and write a whole new, “now” album but people are waiting for certain favorite songs of yours that they’ve heard you play and if you don’t record them now you never will and they will want to strangle you. Fun! But actually, it is. Choosing what songs to put on an album is like choosing the elements of a really wonderful celebration and imagining how the guests will react and enjoy and find meaning in all your choices, kind of like with our small but special, very non-traditional, very “us” wedding. But I digress…

• discuss plan of attack with producer friends – there are two, the one who I had planned to work with back in Florida before both of us moved to other states, and the one here. Both awesome people/musicians/producers/engineers, each bringing a very different mix of talents and personal approaches to the project. I need to talk further with them both about how a collaboration can be fleshed out, and whether travel is imminent for all of us in order to get this whole thing off the ground – and carry it out efficiently and enjoyably.

• find a way to get piano recorded here for as many tracks as possible – we are not sure if we can get into the dream studio in the “off” time anymore for reasons I won’t bother going into detail about, but my PF seems to think all hope is not lost on this count yet. If it doesn’t work out, I think I might have a contact at one of the universities here and hopefully we can get in to do it there, which also coincidentally, is how my PF found me, when he was in the grad program there looking for an artist to record for an upcoming project. In the end, the prof said he had to record a full band, but he still wants to work with me and that was over a year ago now, so I think that shows promise for the working relationship and, therefore, my music. Gotta focus on the positive, right?

• enlist musician colleagues – I already know of sax and violin players who want to play and can quickly come up with their own parts upon hearing the piano with maybe scratch (rough) vocals… have to determine what other instrumentation will be involved for each song and/or what will be programmed/created by the PFs.

• survey people – this will probably end up being another entry, but the recent Radiohead announcement about something I established when I put out my debut EP put the idea in my head that it would be really cool to ask people when/if/how/under what circumstances they would want to support my work by buying a CD and/or downloading individual songs. More on this in the near future…

So, it seems I already have a nice list going here of what goals actually should be on my current 43 things list; now, to actually get going on them… ;-)

on January 23rd, 2007. Recorded nine vocal/piano demos here at my place into my producer’s iMac (well, I guess the process technically began when he found me on MySpace back in August looking for an artist to work with for one of his projects in the CU Denver Recording Arts masters program)... anyway, we have the nine songs – plus two more I had already mini-disced and many more alternate choices that have yet to be recorded, and now we need to sit down and determine instrumentation/arrangements (several really amazing musicians have agreed to volunteer their talents to the cause so far!), and I need to practice, practice, practice to get back into musical shape, especially vocally.

Some days, it is “all right there” and others, well… other days it sounds pretty much like I just haven’t made much time for making music in a long while. Mostly it’s editing this music mag, but it’s sort of made me gear up for yet another close look into what it is I really want to dedicate my life to career-wise. I don’t see life and career being separate, and that’s certainly true in the case of my work with growing this magazine, but… hmm, I don’t really feel like it’s any one thing I’m meant to do exclusively, and I wonder what path this music will take if it’s not “the one thing” I do. Maybe this is just the way it’s meant to be for me… the balancing act. Or maybe it’s just a question of each thing in its right place and time.

So, we’ll see. Looking forward to the next steps. =)