Jeff Wahl: News/Journal

I'm still mixing the current album. It's going to be a mix of 6 string, steel string acoustic fingerstyle, 12 string, nylon string, and some spacey type songs that use a lot of cool echo sounds.

It really takes a lot of patience to do an album well. I've been working on this one for months, I just wish it were done at this point. But, if I just rush it, I'll have to live with something that isn't as good as it could be. You've probably heard me whining about this before. Luckily, the producers and engineers that I work with understand what a perfectionist I am and are patient with me. I know it can't be perfect, but it has to be as close to that as possible.

I might still have to re-record a few pieces for this album. Most of the songs sound good, but the nylon string pieces, which are some of the strongest songs on the album, don't quite sound right. As much as I hate to consider this, I probably will have to re-record those songs. Getting a good recorded sound from a nylon string can be very difficult because it's such a quiet instrument.

I learn so much about music and guitar technique when I record an album. The studio puts such a microscope on your sound. Live, you can get away with all sorts of strange sounds, but in the studio, you hear it back while not playing, and it sounds so different. I suppose it's like hearing your voice speaking on your outgoing answerig machine message. "That's not what I sound like!".

It becomes clear to me when recording how little things like fingernail length and age of strings can make such a huge difference. A perfect track can be ruined if one fingernail sounds different from the others or one string sounds less bright than the others.

Of course, at some point, you have to say "O.K. This album is as good as it's going to be" and then just let it go. It's difficult to do this, but if you don't you start to become "Brian Wilson", (the composer from the Beach Boys who drove himself crazy, literally, partially by obsessing in the recording studio over an album).

Something kind of interesting happened this week in "licensing" news. A magazine called "Farm Journal" contacted me about using one of my songs for a promotion they're doing. As some of you know, I grew up on a farm, and my family always had a subscription to "Farm Journal". That's pretty neat I think.

O.K. I guess I just wanted to write something. Oh yeah, also, I have no idea what to call the upcoming album. I guess I have a few ideas, but nothing spectacular has presented itself yet. I still have to do photography for it as well. And then, there will probably be another round of videos filmed to promote the album.

I don't mean to sound un-enthusiastic about it. It's awesome to record an album, it's great. But, I guess I'm just ready to be done with this one. I started the project too unfocused and I'm kind of paying in fatigue now. The next one, I'm going to have a much clearer plan for what I want to do. The recording studio is not the place to try to figure out what you want to do with an album. That should be set before you start recording. Listen to all my free advice I'm spouting out here! I should take some of it myself!

Anyway, the album will be my best yet I think. I hope. I can't wait for people to be able to hear it. I think that by October it will (hopefully) be done.

Jeff

Thank you to Larry Buckel. Larry tabbed out a very professional arrangement of my song "Prairie Sky" and sent it to me. That is so great and it looks so much better than the pencil and paper ones that I make myself. Thanks Larry!

I got a really nice e-mail and package from the Univeristy of Guelph in Canada last month. Their library used my song "The Return of Summer" in a promotional video promoting their services. It's really neat. It's linked here on their page. http://www.lib.uoguelph.ca/ Look for the video link. It's also here on youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtuJcaVS0Fk

Thank you very much for this.

Wow, what a weekend.

I played at Cafe Caliente in Denver, Friday night, Unity of Boulder, Sunday morning, and Belmar Shopping Center on Sunday afternoon.

All three gigs were great. It was really wonderful meeting all of you this weekend. Thank you so much for taking the time to let me know you enjoyed the music and/or to buy a CD.

Unity of Boulder, as always, is such a magical place to play. The congregation there listens so intently to every note. That's such a thrill for me to be able to really express the songs in an environment where every little nuance is listened to. Thanks to everyone at Unity for continuing to have me play there. It's such a great experience to play music for your services. Thank you!

Cafe Caliente was a lot of fun on Friday night. Thank you to the late crowd there. I was just about to pack it in for the night when you all showed up. That was great! What a great audience.

And Belmar on Sunday afternoon was a lot of fun too. Thanks to everyone I met there. That was a blast.

I'm recording again this weekend. This album is starting to drive me crazy, but it's better to spend the time up front so that the album(s) are perfect (or as good as they can be) when I'm done. At this point, I think the one album I went in to record is going to end up as two albums. About 30 songs have been recorded so far and that's just way too much for one album. I guess I had a lot of songs stored up. Anyway, I hope to have it done soon!

Jeff

A while ago, I was interviewed for a really cool podcast show called "Lending a
Voice". Here's the link.
http://lendingavoice.com/2007/04/29/interview-with-jeff-wahl/
That interview is online now. It's kind of a funny interview. I listened to it today and laughed a lot at myself. The funny thing, I was being serious, but it's pretty funny how I keep kind of tripping over my own words, repeating myself and kind of can't figure out how to explain aspects of guitar playing.

This is a late thank you ... sorry. Thank you to New Horizons for Spiritual Living in Lafayette, CO for the great service you all had me perform at a few weeks ago. It's always a terrific experience to play for you all as part of your services. I'll see everbody there again in August of this year.

A big thank you goes out to Ben Chan in New South Wales, Australia for the great work on transcribing my songs. They look great, so much better than my pencil and paper tabs!

I'm still working on the next album. About a month ago I recorded about 20 songs at Monster Island studios in Denver. Listening back to the tunes, I've decided to scrap all but 5 or 6 of these tunes. If I listen objectively, a lot of the songs just didn't fit together. Some of them may survive for later projects. The ones I kept were so much better than the others though. So, I'm completing writing new material to try to match those other songs' levels. I should go into record again this month. I think it's going to be a very mellow 6 string steel album.

I had originally planned it to be a primarily 12 string album with almost all the songs being very fast and "show-offy". But listening back to the tracks, the mellow, 6 string songs that I had just kind of included as "filler" sounded so much better than the ones where I'm showing off how fast I can play.

So, back to the drawing board. It's easier to redo the album at this stage than to release something that I don't like. Once it's done, I have to live with it for a long time.

One of the most common questions I get is "How do you write music, where do you get inspiration from?" So, I guess I'll try to address that here.

It's kind of hard to describe but this is the general way it usually works for me. I usually just start playing and a melody or chord change kind of "presents itself" to me. This initial idea kind of gives me a visual image. It reminds me of some scene and I start to see that scene in my head. Basically, the visual image becomes like a little movie that plays in my head. Then writing the song is usually very easy because I just write a soundtrack to the visual scene that is playing in my head. It's like watching a movie with no sound and just playing and notating what I think the sound would be if there were a soundtrack. So, I guess the songs I write are all soundtracks to imaginary movies. That actually would be a good title for an album - "Soundtracks to Imaginary Movies". I have to remember that.

So, the inspiration is the easy part. The work of it comes in notating the songs. I notate everything I write. I generally use tab instead of standard notation. I was educated to believe that tab was bad and "breaking the rules", but I don't care. It's easier. Anyway, notation is the hard part, not for the notes, but for the rhythms. The rhythms are really the unique part of it and the hard part to notate. But, if I don't notate the songs, I can't remember how to play them or what tuning I wrote the song in, etc. I highly recommend notating your songs if you are a solo guitarist, especially if you play in different tunings.

Then again, maybe it's just the way my memory works. Maybe a lot of you can remember your songs without notation. I know that Leo Kottke never writes out his tunes, and I've heard that Michael Hedges never notated his pieces. My memory needs the written aspect for memory. That's just the way it works for me. I have a file cabinet at home with hundreds of notated songs. A very nice aspect of this is that if a tune isn't right for an album and I stop performing it, I can always find it again later and re-learn it.

O.K. I've rambled enough for now.

Back to life.

The house concert last Saturday was a lot of fun. Thank you to Steve Mullins and Kevin Garry for including me in this concert. It was a real honor to play on the same bill with these two amazing guitarists. The variety between our styles was really cool too. I think we're going to do shows together like this again.

Thanks to everyone who attended. It was a lot of fun. And those baby goats at the farm were really cute!

I'm recording again this weekend at the amazing Chadzilla's studio.

O.K. I had a new batch of videos filmed and those are on youtube now. Thanks everyone for your kind comments on the videos there. Thanks to Bob Weiss at A Positive Image Video Productions. He's great. If anyone needs to do some demo's or music videos, he's the guy to hire.

I started recording a new album at the studio of my friend Chad Johnson (a.k.a. Chadzilla in the music world). It's going really well. I recorded 20 or 21 songs in one session. That's how I like to work. I like the songs to be really ready before going in to record. I did compose one song there in the session but everything else had been in my fingers for quite a while. I will probably record 2 more songs for this album, pick the best ones and release it. It's going to be some what of a "show off" album, with a lot of very fast playing and some fun songs. I'll probably record another serious, emotional album later in the year similar to "Meditative Guitar".

Congratulations to Chad and Andrea on their wedding. That was great to attend! The best wedding I've ever been to.

I'm playing in a house concert this Saturday with some really great classical guitarists. This will be the first house concert I've played. Hopefully I can make those a regular part of my playing schedule.

A big thank you goes out to Ben for transcribing my song "Lullaby" and sending it to me. I'm a pretty lazy transcriber so the version I had online was handwritten and a number of people politely complained about how sloppy it was. Ben took my pencil version and converted it to a very professional looking transcription. It's really amazing. It's not online yet, sorry (lazy again). Thanks Ben, and good luck on your High School exams. Thank you for this great favor as well as honoring me by playing some of my music as part of your exams.

It snows one day and then is sunny the next here. It's unpredictable as usual. Whatever. That's one thing that's fun about living here.

O.K. I had a new batch of videos filmed and those are on youtube now. Thanks everyone for your kind comments on the videos there. Thanks to Bob Weiss at A Positive Image Video Productions. He's great. If anyone needs to do some demo's or music videos, he's the guy to hire.

I started recording a new album at the studio of my friend Chad Johnson (a.k.a. Chadzilla in the music world). It's going really well. I recorded 20 or 21 songs in one session. That's how I like to work. I like the songs to be really ready before going in to record. I did compose one song there in the session but everything else had been in my fingers for quite a while. I will probably record 2 more songs for this album, pick the best ones and release it. It's going to be some what of a "show off" album, with a lot of very fast playing and some fun songs. I'll probably record another serious, emotional album later in the year similar to "Meditative Guitar".

Congratulations to Chad and Andrea on their wedding. That was great to attend! The best wedding I've ever been to.

I'm playing in a house concert this Saturday with some really great classical guitarists. This will be the first house concert I've played. Hopefully I can make those a regular part of my playing schedule.

A big thank you goes out to Ben for transcribing my song "Lullaby" and sending it to me. I'm a pretty lazy transcriber so the version I had online was handwritten and a number of people politely complained about how sloppy it was. Ben took my pencil version and converted it to a very professional looking transcription. It's really amazing. It's not online yet, sorry (lazy again). Thanks Ben, and good luck on your High School exams. Thank you for this great favor as well as honoring me by playing some of my music as part of your exams.

It snows one day and then is sunny the next here. It's unpredictable as usual. Whatever. That's one thing that's fun about living here.

I had an asbolutely wonderful experience playing guitar for the Unity of Boulder Sunday services today. It was great. This church is one of my favorite places to play. The audience listens so intently to every note. I can really express the feeling in the compositions using a lot of dynamics because everyone there listens so well.

Thank you to Jack, Norma, Syntysche, and everyone else who helped me out this morning. It was really nice meeting all the people who came to talk to me after the services as well. I'm sorry I ran out of CD's, but there will be more available some time this week.

Thanks again Unity! That was a wonderful time!

Jeff

O.K. We all made it through the holiday season! Wow. What a wild time of year that is.

Don't take this wrong. I love Christmas songs, but I'm so glad that I don't have to play any more solo guitar Christmas songs for another year! When my last holiday gig was over on Christmas Eve, I felt such a wave of relief that I could put the Christmas songs away for a while. I love those songs, but it is always a bit much after playing them so many times by the end of the season.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who keeps e-mailing and commenting on youtube and buying the music. Really, really wonderful. Thank you!

It's really, really cold in Colorado this winter! Yikes!

As crazy as it seems, my you tube guitar videos have been viewed a total of 91,000 times now. This is amazing to me. Thank you to all the you tube viewers for your kind comments. Who needs MTV when we have you tube?

I played Friday night at a private party in Denver for a gathering of mostly psychiatrists and counselors. It was great as always. This is an annual event that I play at. What a great night. Wow. Thanks to Jeff for including me again on this terrific party.

I played a really great event for "New Community Christian Church" in Littleton on Wednesday. It was really cool and everyone was really nice. I played pretty much all Christmas tunes all night which was new for me, but it felt great. Thank you to Julie for setting this up and for doing such a great job with the planning and the message. And thank you to everyone who stopped by after to talk with me. Really a great night.

I am having a great time right now! I mean just in general. Everything is really working, creatively and every other way. It's great. I feel like I've kind of been asleep for a while and I'm waking up again to so many things. The world is a pretty cool place when you're eyes are open to it. I'm not going to analyze it or question it, I think I'm just going to enjoy it. So many things to be thankful for. I guess that's cool to tap into since we're just around the corner from Thanksgiving!

Halloween was great and November feels awesome! The cool weather is terrific! I got rid of my television antennae a few weeks ago and it feels great to be cut off from t.v. I still have a dvd player so I can watch movies if I choose but no t.v. stations. It's great. I'm reading a lot again and I'm getting a lot more guitar work done.

I recorded a song for a CCM Christmas guitar compilation album last weekend. It was "Christmas Time is Here" by Vince Guaraldi. It was a productive session. The producer, Darren Skanson is really excellent. I have a tendency to really push tempos and rush. Darren delicately pointed this out to me and proved it to me by listening to the playback. Anyway, I controlled my rushing this session and I am now aware of how much I do this. It will be a great album. I think it will be called "Holiday Guitar".

I played at Denver's "Swallow Hill" about a week ago and it was great. Other acts on the bill were "The Milemarkers", "A.M. Whiskey", and Marcy Baruch. It was fun and Marcy gave me some great music business suggestions. Thanks everyone!

I'm rambling like always. I downloaded a lot of great music today and I'm totally enjoying listening to the new songs as I write this. A lot of music that I liked as a teenager. I would list the songs but it's a little embarrassing. I have always had kind of corny taste in rock music. I downloaded a lot of metal and punk rock from the 80's today. I am really loving listening this stuff.

O.K. I have a gig to get ready for tonight. I've become so quick with my load in and load out. It used to take me forever to load in and out for a gig. Now I accomplish this in a few minutes. I've got a good system down and I just go on auto-pilot until it's done.

Oh yeah. I played for another music history class last week. It was great. It's basically demonstrating the history of acoustic guitar music from the Middle Ages to the present in 30 - 45 minutes. Very fun! That's a lot to cover in that amount of time so it's kind of a whirlwind. I learn a lot every time I do this. I brought my amp and live rig into the class this time which made it a lot of fun. Guitarists always love to play loud. There's an old joke - "How do you get a guitarist to turn down" answer "Put a piece of sheet music in front of him and ask him to sight-read it". Very true. Most of us are terrible readers.

I have to go now.

Hi all. I had a great time playing for New Horizons church in Lafayette, Colorado this Sunday. Awesome! What great people. The music director there, Natalie is an amazing musician. I was amazed at her talent. Very inspiring. The service was great and everyone was super nice. Thank you all so much!

Now to my next gig -- almost. I was scheduled for another gig right after New Horizons but up in Fort Collins, CO -- which is like an hour away. For some reason, I thought I could make it on time. I didn't. By the time I showed up, there was no point setting up. Very embarrassing. It's so hard to say no to a gig, but when I can't get there on time, I need to not book the gig. Anyway, sorry to anyone who showed up to hear me play. You live and learn I guess.

O.K. It's October, my favorite month. Finally it's cooling off and all the Halloween decorations are just awesome. The changing leaves are really beautiful too. Wow. Playing out a lot these days which is great. Meeting a lot of great people on gigs and having a really good time. Thanks everyone! I gave a presentation on the history of guitar with lecture and performances of pieces from the Renaissance right up to now with my compositions. I've never played a "gig" like that before. It was fun and I learned a lot from putting this together. Did you know that Francisco Tarrega (great classical guitarist and composer) was almost completely blind? I didn't.

Hi all. I'm still working on the classical album. As always, I have this vision of it all being done in one quick session, but that's never how it works. But it's good.

I'm playing every Saturday at Cafe Caliente in Denver now which is a lot fun.

I have ideas for other albums - an all jazz album, an all new age age, a compilation one, a Christmas one. There are so many ideas and so little time in this physical body to get it all done.

Playing in Denver again has led to me re-connecting again with a lot of old friends I knew from when I lived in Denver. That's great. It's like re-connecting with family. Hi everybody.

The youtube videos continue to be very successful. I would like to film some more videos and post those this year as well.

I guess that's all for now.

Jeff

Today I'm doing my first recording session for an all classical guitar album. It's probably going to be very challenging but I've wanted to do an all classical album for a while. Hopefully I can also record an all jazz guitar album and anothe new age one this year as well. That's my goal, but I had better take it one step at a time and just focus on the classical sessions right now.