well, it's been awhile since we posted here. A good question came up in the last post, which is "how do you select songs for these records?" a great question. and for anyone interested, here's sort of the way we go about it here at red mountain.
we have these gadsby hymnals and we can't stop reading through them. I keep one by my piano, and I'll sit down to play and flip through it and either a song happens or it doesn't. It always starts with text that we like, and then we'll start applying music to it, and, well for me and clint at least, a song either comes together in about 5 minutes or it doesn't come together at all. So the result is a lot of songs, almost a hundred between the 5 or 6 main people who contribute songs for these projects. So we record just about all of them and live with them and wait to see which ones we like the most.
For this record we initially started tracking over 20 songs, and then that has been whittled down, added to, subtracted from, and now we are right at 15 songs. it's been a long process for us, but ultimately, we choose songs based on the poignancy of the text and on the quality of the music we've applied to it. There have been great texts that haven't made the cut because we weren't able to deliver music we are satisfied with, and in the same way we have had to let go of some incredible musical moments because for one reason or another, the song wasn't working out.
It's kind of an involved process, and I feel like I'm doing a bad job of answering the question.
For anyone interested, the songs that look like they will be on this next gadsby cd are: 93, 238, 245, 278, 281, 386, 389, 524, 528, 550, 705, 1091, and 1117.
But, things are moving along well, and we look good to have a final cd in hand by mid-may, which means it could be available to the public by very early summer. Thanks for hanging in there with us, we really think the wait is proving worthwhile...
Brian T. Murphy
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3 comments:
Very nice. I'm looking forward to hearing some of these texts I haven't heard yet.
Oh, I had a question for you that you might answer via blog post or comment: What exactly does the album art selection/creation process look like? Do you guys have something in mind or do you use artists from Red Mountain (I guess I could just look on the notes of one of your CDs, but I don't have one in front of me)?
http://danhames.blogspot.com/2006/04/william-cowper-and-contrite-heart.html#comments
it was cool to hear some thoughts on one of your hymns here...
wish i knew how to do a link better to make it easier to reach.
hearing you all play here in nc made me more psyched for when the new cd comes out!
it's encouraging to hear how one of the reasons for the delay in the music is because rmc folks are focused on actually living out in your lives what you're singing about in your songs - loving god through loving your families...well not sure if you're actually singing about that in particular in your songs, but anyway...ya'll are cool in how you try to stay focused on what's impt.
terry b
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