Collision of Vision

I experienced a lot of frustration in the days following our meeting with Don Brewer. What added to my frustration was learning that members of our "entourage" were secretly laughing and poking fun at the tape behind our backs. I let my ego get the best of me and I began to lash out at the others involved in our project. This stressed the relationships with everyone and ultimately caused a cessation of rehearsals. The fact is: I quit. I began writing some new material and set a goal to record on my own. I auditioned for couple other local groups but found it difficult to absorb their respective cultures. In these cases, I was the extra member of the band and not really a contributor to the creative process. This left me largely unfulfilled and more frustrated.

About six months after the first recording sessions, I contacted Bob Goodsite again to schedule some more sessions and began recording some of the new material. I had written an overly ambitious medley of songs, a theme song in the style of "2112" by the band, Rush.

This time, I was the only person in the studio playing all instruments. Now, playing drums was NOT my forte and I quickly decided this session would be sans-percussion.

The first day of recording started as before, laying the basic foundation tracks for the piece. The medley was written for an approximate running time of 17 minutes. There were 6 distinct component passages to the work, 4 parts had lyric content woven with 2 instrumental segues. I ran through the piece once for setting proper levels before we began to print tape. Quickly, the rhythm guitar parts were laid and I started to overdub bass guitar. I immediately felt the piece was not going to work and I was losing my drive to salvage it in it's intend form.

I decided to break up the medley, using the stronger musical passages, and make them individual songs. This decision left me with 3 songs that I felt comfortable about and we began to re-track the foundations for the songs.

Song titles were:
1. Rain Forest of Tugin / Findleragin (I kept the concept from the original medley, "Infinite Destiny".)
2. Ocohed
3. We'll Be Together

The first session ended on a much higher note (sorry) than it had begun. All initial tracks recorded with bass guitar and lead guitar overdubs complete. There were some sound effects added to the Rain Forest song and these were finished as well. At the end of the day, Bob made me a rough mix dub tape and I would spend the next week fine tuning (sorry again) the lay of the lyrics.