"Astronomy" Release Date

     "Astronomy" will be released on April 20th.

 I'm in the final stages of finishing up the six tracks on "Astronomy" and each of them have a few details I'm working on. It's a moving target. 

    At this point the process becomes one of working on a track, making a minor change then taking a break for a day or so and then coming back with "fresh ears" to see if indeed the recording is "final". It could be a one of three things I call "TTT" (Tuning, Timing, Tone). It's always a matter of hearing something that doesn't sound quite right that bothers me, first just a little, but then after a while it becomes so glaring that I have to see if I can do something else. 

I've learned two things about this:

1. Nobody else hears it, and in fact if I ask a friend, especially a musician friend, to listen they invariably either don't notice it or point out something else entirely, which of course sets me off in that direction. 

2. I usually find something that I like better and replace the part with something that stretches my skill a bit further. I'm going to get in the weeds a bit to explain how this works.

A "Punch"

    An example of this is in the song "Andromeda Run". Towards the end, right after the saxophone solo there is a repetitive guitar theme that had one note that was just a little off time (right, nobody noticed but me) so I set out to fix it. The way this is done is called "punching in", a term that refers back to when recording was done on tape. An engineer could manually hit the record button on the machine while it was running. It was a skill that allowed a very short section to be recorded without changing what was before and after it. In this way even a single note could be corrected without having to redo the entire part. It was a matter of professional pride if an engineer could perform a punch cleanly, and it required perfect synchronization between him and the musician to make the fix. Now with digital recording all I need to do is highlight the section I want to replace, and the whole process is automated.

    For this particular fix I started by trying to simply play the same part with better timing, and played it about 10 times trying to do that, but it still wasn't sounding right. Then on the next take I not only got it perfect, but actually added an embellishment, completely unthought, that caught me by surprise. Now when listen, not only is it fixed, but it has something added that takes the part up a notch and that's what makes the whole process fun and fulfilling. 

Now on to the next one!

Singer/Songwriter Rick Millward lived and worked on the West Coast until moving to Nashville in 2000. He was part of the Music City songwriter community, collaborating with other artists and producing over 30 projects in his boutique studio, including two EMMY nominated soundtracks. Now in Southern Oregon, Rick has discovered a vibrant local music scene centered around the many tasting rooms. 

His latest record “Loveland” is available on Spotify and other streaming platforms.

LOVELAND ON SPOTIFY