"Stop The Presses!"
My band, Sounds Like Water, has released our new album: ‘Expat’
Click on the green links to listen on your favorite streaming service. YouTube Music seems the easiest to use if you don’t have a favorite. If you wish, you can go to the Sounds Like Water website and click on ‘Music’ there.
I have spent over a year writing and recording 11 songs. About 80% was done on the road in Airbnbs or in our current condo. When we left home for our odyssey I had more recording gear checked at the airport than clothing. When deciding between socks and my Rode N-1 vocal mic, well I haven’t worn socks in 8 months.
Getting into the weeds with Bill about music...
There is a wide spectrum of thoughts and attitudes on rock/pop music in the world. They range from ‘I don’t really listen to music” to ‘I’m on top of the music industry and can recite lyrics from Led Zepplin to Taylor Swift” and everything in-between. Music is all around us. It is a part of our life. Even if you don’t listen to music during the light of day you are still moved by it in movies. It is a part of telling a story as much as the dialogue spoken by the actors. The people who compose the scores of the movies we enjoy are the modern-day equivalent of Mozart or Beethoven.
I always assume many people don’t think about how music is recorded or especially, how a song is written. I even imagine a couple people assume musicians just put that black and silver Panasonic tape recorder in the middle of the room, press the play button, and then the record button. Then in the style of old black and white movies, the singer says “hey, fellas. I got a new song, and it goes something like this” and the song is born and recorded at the same time. That has never been done that way and never will be done that way. On that note, did you ever notice that in black and white movies the main actress sings only one song, then sits down with the handsome guy. That aint how it’s done. In the club world you’d play 45-minute sets with a 15-minute break for 4 hours and be happy with the $100 your earned for the night. One song! OhForCryingoutLoud!
The rest is going to bore the hell out of you, so stop reading...listen to music!
The music world moved to digital recording by the late 80’s. It is amazing to me that I can do many of the things a major recording studio can do but on a much smaller scale. Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas are a success story when it comes to home recording. I suspect their first few albums used about the same recording equipment I currently have.
I am not alone in a desert. Pete, Sean, and Diane all have input and give help. They are the team. They are the band. Diane plays all the pianos, Sean plays bass guitar, and because of what I’ve learned from Pete over the years, I now can program my own drums. He is here in spirit for sure. I can bounce things off them and I will get honest answers. I can walk over to Diane (the real musician in the family) and ask, “if I am playing G Am Csus2 and G, what key am I playing in?” She stares at me with a facial expression of “how can you not know this?” Pete and Sean are overly polite too. “Er Bill, I kinda liked the original intro a tad better”.
This is my current setup in Chiang Mai. The giant monitor came with the condo. I took advantage. That is the same model of piano we have stored in Seattle. Now I have two Yamaha P-125 on two continents.
Why do I do this? I can’t imagine not doing this. It is an artistic outlet and gives me a feeling of accomplishment. I have already started writing for the next album.
This is now our 4th album available on all the streaming services. I formed a band in 1990 called Sounds Like Water. I wrote 10 songs then we went into Triad Studio in Seattle and recorded an album. BTW that cost me $14,000 in 1990. We played in rock clubs in and around Seattle but years later the group disbanded. Then in 2020 I gave away all my recording gear and thought that part of my life was done. But a month later, Sean changed my mind, and I invested in a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), then began writing again. Out of this, in 2021 the album ‘Sofie’ was created and can be found anywhere you download music. Since then, it has been downloaded in 28 different countries around the world. Admittedly the downloads are only in the thousands which is nothing in today’s standards. But it stunned me none the less that this occurred.
This album was recorded in Seattle and Thailand. Some of the Chiang Mai portion was recorded in what we refer to as the ‘bunker’. It was a two-bedroom, two-bathroom Airbnb which shared walls with a tattoo parlor and a night club, where I always had to do vocal tracks before the thump- thump came through the walls. The remainder of the album was recorded in the converted second bedroom of our 7th floor condo overlooking the city.
And… this would be a lovely opportunity to use your headphones. Music tends to sound better that way as opposed to holding your iPhone up to your ear. Thank you!!!
OMG! You made it this far down? Well as a treat you can click the video with the cat and watch our first music video. You are welcome!
Thank you for reading this blog. We will be back to our regular scheduled programming next month.