Melissa Axel

The new EP Transition is here!

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Melissa Axel
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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! :)