Hi, and thanks for coming along on our journey. As some of you may know we used to have a blog called Cat Tales. The story of our travels as told by our cats, Tasha and Mikey. They both lived long and happy lives, but are no longer with us. Sigh.
We decided to name our new blog Joys of the Journey. Kathy and I have been on a musical journey together since 1972, and upon retirement in 2007, we started a journey across the United States in our RV. At this time we have no plans yet to hang up our keys. Our love of travel and music have merged to form our strange and wonderful life style. (I'm kind of strange, and she's wonderful.) It's a life style we wouldn't change for anything. We have a simple outlook on day-to-day life that we'd like to share with you. The greatest part of a journey isn't arriving at your destination, it's the things that happen along the way. The purpose of this blog is to share with you some of the things that are happening along the way as we journey through life.
So, here goes:
The weather here in Southern California has been great. It hasn't rained in weeks--although we did see some new snow in the mountains--and it's really dusty. Kathy and I have been quite busy, mostly wrapped up in our work. Relaunching a website, starting a new mailing list, rehearsing, performing, re-mixing our first CD, going to gyms 4-5 days each week, planning occasional touristy day trips, preparing for a recording session in April, going to restaurants, and watching way too much tv.
Relaunching a website and making it functional has taken up a lot of time. At this point, functionally it's about 95% finished and aesthetically it's about 85% finished. We welcome your feedback about the site, and encourage you to make comments below. I'll gladly accept any Attaboys you would like to post. If there are any complaints, you can direct them to Kathy.
But seriously, if you see a typo somewhere, or something doesn't work the way you think it should, please let us know. In the future we hope to add videos. They're more fun, and you don't have to read as much.
After our very first performance in 2008 someone asked if they could purchase a CD. We didn't have any, but I thought, "How hard can that be?" So, we decided to make a CD. We started out two steps below clueless. Best practices for recording and mixing were things that we would learn later. If ignorance was bliss, we were two of the happiest musicians on the planet. We had a great time recording and mixing, and we weren't smart enough to know what we were doing wrong. We are amazed it turned out as well as it did. Today we are fairly proficient with recording, mixing and mastering. So, we set out to make our original CD a little better. When we are finished, and the songs are mastered, we will make them available for download.
Have you ever listened to someone sing along while wearing headphones? Were they on key?
Well, that was the first thing we did wrong. Vocal volume needs to be set correctly in your
headphones or the singer's pitch will drift. Needless to say, some of our original vocals needed to be pitch corrected, or just sung over. We also added harmonies where we thought they were needed. Lastly, over the years we have accumulated a large collection of audio tools, and, more importantly, learned how to use them. Our process for mixing is probably a little different than most audio engineers, because we both do it. I get the song all set up and ready to go, and do a rough mix, focusing on the drums and bass, and then the other instruments. Then Kathy steps in. She tweaks the vocals. Afterwards, we listen together and make more adjustments. Next it's up to Kathy to fine tune the mix, then I come in and add a little polish. Lastly, we listen together until we completely agree. For those of you who are married, you know that can take a while. A day or two later we will listen again. If we see no need to tweak anything, it's done.
We'd like to share a couple of songs with you from our first CD. They're called Days of Elijah and Beautiful One. These are recent re-mixes, and they are not quite done--but almost.
Give them a listen, and let us know what you think. Please leave a comment below!
Click here to listen and download Beautiful One and Days of Elijah.
Don't forget to answer the one-click survey
Robb (& Kathy)
PS. For the next two weeks, the discount code joy will get you 50% off anything in our store.