Music anyone?

You may notice in a couple of my other posts I mention that I play music and my band recently put out an album. It may not be big time, but it was a lot of fun and worth all the work it took to produce. We don't have a web site dedicated to it as of yet, but who knows. Right now, it's just an offshoot of the worship team at my church. But, you can download and listen to one of the songs if you want. It's all original music, mostly written by Candice of the worship team. The downloadable song was written by the entire band. I co-wrote one with another person. This is the album cover.

This very cool cover art was done by Nethaniah Dahline, also from our church. We play several concerts outside of church every year and if schedule permits, we can play at other churches in the area. Our next outside gig is the Aurora, Indiana Farmer's Fair. It's in downtown Aurora for several days with rides, food, games, entertainment etc. Typical annual small town celebration. This year I believe the dates run from September 28-October 1. If you're in the area, we play Wednesday night (9-28-05) at 6pm. (I think that's the right time)

Back to the album...If you've ever gotten the chance to work on an album, there's lots of things to consider which I won't go into now, other than the prework is mandatory that you spend more time here than in actual recording. Practice, practice practice, then do it again. The artwork, the songlist, who does what, etc etc. It can be a very large project if you let it, which I think you should.

This is the picture we ended up using for the inside cover of all the band members. That's me in the back holding up the line. They're all leaning backwards a little.

A friend of mine, Tim Moistner, started up a recording business (which he doesn't have a web site for yet) called Superior Sound and gave us a good deal on recording it for us. He's out of Richmond, Indiana if you're looking for him. (Let me know if you want to contact him.) Our church pitched in some $, as well as we had several fund raiser things to raise the money to pay for the recording and production of the album. We didn't spend the $ on the polishing up sessions all the big guys do to make the tone just perfect and timing just perfect, it's just us singing and playing. But it is pretty good with a variety of styles.

We recorded the music on a Friday and Saturday, at a church in Indianapolis (that I currently can't remember the name of), then recorded the vocals at Tim's studio in Richmond. This next picture is of the band toward the end of th recording session at the church. (Notice how energetic they look!)

Actually, we were listening to the just recorded music playback and I jumped up to take a pic because the picture reflects how worn out we were at this point. Having all that fun can be tiring!

Eventually, we got the recording done and then concentrated on getting the artwork done. We tried several ideas for pictures until we ended up with the one shown above. We tried seriously to take pictures of stuff, but they would end up with us being silly. Notice that in the next few shots...

But, eventually, we would get something done. Hence, the Looking Up project. If you would like an album, there is contact info on the church website. The album costs 5$ plus S&H. All the proceeds go to the church to help upgrade sound equipment in the church.

Anyway, enough of the advertisement. My thanks go to our pastor, Pete Bryk, the church for their prayer and support and the band members: Tom, Candice, Mark, Brandy, Tina, Olivia & Travis. Since the album was done, Olivia & Travis tied the knot and moved to Florida. We've gotten a new guitar player too (Devon). Things are looking up for Looking Up.