Everyone needs time & place

I was clearing out my studio computer yesterday, sifting through music that I’ve been working on with other people. There are times when you co-write where you don’t get done and then neither person ends up pushing through with it. Sometimes it’s good to hide it from each other and then move on your merry way and forget you did it. Other times it’s a matter of schedules getting in the way. There’s one song on the hard drive that’s been staring back at me for a while and I could have sworn that I had put time into it just prior to the mad rush of finishing my Christmas albums.

Double click into the folder to see what’s going on and the date posted on the song is from early 2005. Damn. Screw it, it’s the song I’m working on, so I double click it and up comes the program and layout of the arrangement. Now I’m confused as I could have sworn that I had done more on the song than what I’m seeing. But no, I do another search through the backups of everything and this is the latest version. It’s a song I’ve been co-writing with Bob Karwin called Master Plan.

Since it’s been well over a year since the two of us had dealt with it, I took it upon myself to start adding musical parts to it as the framework was already there. I added about 4 different guitar parts into the arrangement. Then I added about 4 horn parts. I reworked the drums a bit. After all that I hit save and called it a day. I still have more work to do on the song to really complete it, but its certainly much closer to done at this point. Its a good song, it just needed finishing.

Often times when I’m writing like that I hate to leave things until they are done. It drives me nuts. However, its happening more and more often now as I scrutinize parts when I write my own songs. When I co-writing it’s happening more often because I’m working on networking more, so you schedule things. If it doesn’t get done in the allotted time, you have to find a next time.

Aclarion’s song Hide Away caught my ear because it sounded like something I could have written with another friend of my John Stacks. The guy from Numira that I’ve been friends with for years, but have never co-written with. I imagine that the vibe going on there would be more like stuff I wrote with my first CD that was a bit progressive and with John’s power riffing. The more I listen to Hide Away the more I hear other bands creeping out Aclarion’s influences (I’m quite sure John and I are not influences).

Who do I hear in there? Incubus is for sure. Then there is Hoobastank and Trapt for sure. Then there is parts of Atreyu and Sevendust. It’s an interesting mix. Oooh, I just remembered another band that’s in this mix – Staind. With those names of recent fame it’s quite possible that Aclarion could make the leap onto the stage with anyone of these bands and fit right in as an opening act. Though I’ve never seen them live I can see that they have slugged it out in the trenches.

Show ’em some support if you’re from Georgia. If you’re a promoter, it’s probably time to see if you can get them on the road.