The very late latest...

So when I started this whole blog thing I thought I'd be more diligent with posts and I'd be throwing down stuff all the time. Then I thought... "What makes me think anybody really cares what I have to say? So... I didn't document too much stuff. So this evening I checked out the stats to see how many people have been read the page and WOW!!! I was surprised!! So now I feel double bad that over 5000 people have read the same posts multiple times! Sorry to all 5000+ of you!

I plan to make more time to document stuff and perhaps I'll use this medium to answer questions I get often and maybe even rant about a thing or two. Ha! Maybe even post stuff that nobody cares about and perhaps someone will! HaHa! After all, it's my blog! So get ready....

In the spirit of keeping this about CMP, let me just say that I've started working on some new music for what will be my third record. An opportunity came up where my friend and producer Chris Cubeta said... "Hey.. I have some free time, ya wanna do some stuff?" So I figured that was a wink from God! I have been feeling the need to be creative and was thinking how I could spend that energy. New Video perhaps? Boom.... call from Chris Cubeta. Problem solved! I'm reluctant to even say a thing about it because this usually (warning.... rant beginning) starts the barrage of "when are you going to be done" questions.... and "why is it taking so long" and as a result the feeling of failure starts to leak in. The fact is that writing songs takes time... driving to NYC to record them takes time. Working essentially alone takes.... yup...time. Chris and I are extremely productive with our time, it's just for reasons that would be too boring too discuss.... the times we get together are spaced out. Thus, the completion of a whole record (12-14 songs) takes a great deal of time from concept to product in hand. I have a rather new approach I'm going to take to this record and I'll be discussing it more soon as it reveals itself a little more to me...

In some other news, Eric Wagner has joined the lineup of drummers and we just started rehearsing this past week. Went super well and exciting to get all the music together with him asap! Drop him a line at ewdrums@gmail.com and welcome him! 

And lastly, only 48 hours ago I received from Master Terry McInturff my new custom guitar. I've wanted something like this forever and yet I feel I've had it my whole life....

It took six months but was worth it. It features Bare Knuckle Pickups and it sounds great. Had two rehearsals with it and it sounds bright, clear and alive. Terry McInturff is a genius not recognized in his time. I'm honored to own his guitars and even more so I can call him a friend. 

Be well... be safe and as always... Stay Tuned. 

The latest.... by request.

Hey all!

As February is coming to a close it occurs to me it's been a while since my last blog post. The myriad of "experts" on the topic of success in the new music industry say ya gotta stay up on this stuff, and while I'm not sure I agree, I HAVE received a few "inquiries" as to the recent happenings. So here I am to not only address those inquiries, and while I'm at it I'll add a few that..... um...... nobody has asked about.... Ha! Though I may spread it out across a few posts. We'll see......

So at this moment the happening that comes to mind first is the Immersion video, simply because I'm due to see the first edit mid week and I'm nervously excited to see it. We shot the video in early January and it was a cool experience. I approached this one very differently than the Madness video. Whereas Madness was written about just that... madness and the voices OF madness, Immersion was inspired by the concept of soul searching. By looking deep into one's self to reveal, discover, unravel.... whatever may be in there. This to me, had to be solitary. The same way in which it was written, did I wish to visually display it. Alone. So no band, no actors..... just me. This was difficult on a host of levels and was met with some resistance, but it DID seem the most honest to the song. So how to portray soul searching? I had several ideas but decided to use a Church. Where would someone go to uncover the deepest part of the soul? To me the church confessional kept coming to mind....  People bring all of their good AND bad to their God. Confess, ask, search.... etc. So the idea was set in motion. Now..... let's find a Church that will allow a crew of people in for a few days, with all kinds of gear, guitars, cameras, crew... etc. NO PROBLEM!! YEAH!! Well it wasn't as difficult as I anticipated, confirming I was on the right path for the project. We found an abandoned Church in Poughkeepsie that in spite of the fact that it had been empty for a decade, it was left rather eerily intact. So we shot it in a day....  shorter then we expected on account of the visitor we encountered at sundown. A bat. He decided he would be a most unwelcome party crasher and zip around the church gracefully weaving around the crew. I ducked into the confessional and shut the door. I hear they are very docile creatures but I wasn't hanging around to see his gentile disposition up close. I was willing (hoping) to end the shoot at that very moment. Instead, the Director "directed" a crew member to be on " bat patrol" and keep a sharp eye on the antique and rather beautiful church organ, where the bat had ducked into after realizing he wasn't gonna get a cameo in the video. I found it enormously difficult to concentrate on ANYTHING BUT the bat, but we managed to get a few more shots in and high tailed it out of there. All in all in was a great experience.... a learning AND rewarding experience. Normally I obsess to the point of distraction over a project, song, idea.... pretty much everything. I carefully tried to be true to the original concept.... Conceptualize, report it, shoot it, move on. I let the director and crew do what they do best and though it took a great deal of discipline to surrender and trust....... if the final product is cool I can say with confidence that perhaps over obsession is unnecessary. As my Father says, Time will tell.

Ok so, it will take a few posts for the latest. Stay tuned!!

The "loudness" war

Hello All,

Those of you visiting from my music page, I thank you for following the link and being interested. As you know... Appearance, my new album is in it's final stages. That final stage may be a bit longer then I anticipated. The reason? MASTERING. For those who don't know, mastering is the final stage of a recording and in simple terms, ties up all the loose ends of a recording. It allows you to place the desired amount of time in between songs, ensure all your songs are a unified volume.... and the all important... MAKING IT LOUDER. This is a painful process for me. (and others I've discovered) Reason being is making stuff louder doesn't make it better.... it makes it worse. I won't get to techy here, but basically adding the right amount of EQ and compression to boost volume to the level that everyone likes to hear  smashes the dynamic range of a recording. Picture a sound wave.... ya see all those peaks and valleys? That is dynamic range. It has hot and cold. Soft and loud. Think of the crack of a snare drum.... the smash of a crash cymbal. You WANT that peak in there (you may not know it, but believe me... you do) And in a last number of years, the volume war is ON!!! Everyone simply crushing recordings to make them louder and louder.  To me, many of these recordings sounds dreadful. Many are distorted and kill the dynamics that the artist spent months or years trying to achieve in the tracking process. This makes no sense to me, yet we all as artists fall a victim to the volume war. We don't want anyone to have to reach for the volume when the Ipod shuffles around to one of our songs. "Chris Mahoney's record sucks!!! It's so much quieter then the other stuff in my Ipod!"This is the last thing I would want anyone to say! Yet, the volume war leaves me in quite the quandary. So with me being knee deep in the Mastering process I've come to a decision here, at 4:30 AM. I'm going to re-master my record. I'm going to relax the volume in favor of some dynamics. I want that crack in the snare... I want the guitars huge... I want the music to sound.... right. So I'm gonna take on the volume war and be a big rebel and fight the system. FIGHT THE MACHINE!!! lol!! Yeah.... quite the danger seeker huh? After all, we're not gonna hear my stuff on Kiss FM anytime soon so what am I worried about? Well..... I am worried about the thousands of people (cough-cough) listening to my new record in their Ipods and in rock clubs across this great land of ours and wondering.... "why do I have to reach for the volume knob when CMP comes on? I guess that means he sucks!!"I wish more artists would be as bold as I am....(patriotic victorious music starts here).... to go where no artist has gone before.... to say to the nation.. I BELIEVE MUSIC SHOULD BE LEFT ALONE.... I BELIEVE WE SHOULD SAY NO THE THE VOLUME WAR.
I WANT DYNAMIC RANGE!! LEAVE THE POWER IN HANDS OF THE PEOPLE AND LET US REACH FOR OUR VOLUME KNOB WHEN WE WANT. LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE... AND IF YOU VOTE FOR ME....... wow it's getting late! I hope you get the idea. My record won't be a loud as many of the others in your ipod or cd changers..... but I assure you turn it up a bit.... and it will be fine. I won't distort.... and your ears will feel better listening to it. Look up articles about the loudness war and tiring. About the loudness war and your plants in your house dying. (ok... I made that one up) The first one was true though. Be well everyone!!

New Site... New Record... New Video... New Blog post

Hey all!

Chances are if you're here, you were directed from chrismahoney.com. Well... thanks for visiting here and there. The blog here is going to be an exploratory experimental dabble in the idea blog world and we'll see where it goes. It may not always be musical, it may not even be good.... but it WILL be about things that are important. I fair warn, I may use this space for some ranting. It may give me a place to vent about things that I simply can't understand. Take littering for example...  that just weighs so heavy on my heart.... YA SEE... almost got into a rant. I'll hold off for now,  but will continue soon. I just hope to have two way communication with any interested parties. You like the music? Tell me why. You don't like it? Tell me why. Will hopefully be a place to get to know some of you a little better, if only "virtually". Stay tuned!!!!

I've broken my own rules.

Hello there all interested parties. I've decided to take the plunge into to world of Blogging. Up to this point I've felt that nothing I have to say is all that interesting....... and I do not presume now that anyone actually WILL. However..... if the rest of the world is narcissistic enough to think anyone cares, then so will I. Truthfully... I will use it as my own "rants" and sound off about things I feel strongly about, feel sick about and just plain think about. The world is a strange place to say the least and begs much to be said about it. It won't make much sense to many of you. In fact....I will likely be the only one who it DOES make sense to..... But then.... I'm used to that. Who knows.... maybe after I'm gone somehow it will make sense to some. So here I am...... For now.