What Would Brian Boitano Do? Making Plans & Following Through – From The Mind of McFarland music blog.
What would Brian Boitano do if he were here right now? He’d hit unexpected objects to make percussive sounds and record them. Why? Because he’s all about making plans and following through.
If that makes absolutely no sense to you, it’s probably because you’ve never watched the South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut film. To catch you up on the conversation, here’s a video:
Ok, now that you’re back with us, with a full understanding of what making plans and following through has to do with Brian Boitano, I’ll proceed.
Right now I’m at Seventh Wave Studios in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and I’ve completed day 1 of a two-week process to record two EPs with producer Jason Rubal. I’ve been waiting for over a year to record a lot of these songs – road testing them out on tour all over the United States, figuring out which songs were ready for primetime, which needed work, and which needed to be round-filed (that’s a trash can, in case you missed it. Please do try to keep up! :-D). I’ve had a vision for the “sound” of these records for even longer than that, though.
If you’ve never seen me play live, I hit my guitar a lot. I beat on the body of it, and loop those percussive sounds to make the backbeat rhythms for my songs. I started performing this way shortly after moving from Kent, Ohio to Asheville, North Carolina. See, in Kent I had a full backing band, but post-move I was on my own, and for the sake of touring I didn’t want to try to assemble a new band, but rather to find the best way to do it solo. My previous record, Waking Up Is A Letdown, was recorded with a full band in mind. This time around, I knew it was going to be just me, so I wanted the sound of the record to, while not being an exact replica of my live show, have a direct correlation to what you’d see if you saw me perform.
What does that mean? No conventional “drum kit” drumming, for one.
I recall a conversation with my sister, while visiting her country house in Fatima, Brazil, where I told her about the vision I had for my next record. “I have this idea of using organic loops – I’ll find objects that give me the percussive sounds that I want, record those rhythms, and then loop them. I don’t want to use any pre-recorded samples, for the same reason I’m not using a drum machine on stage – creating those sounds is an integral part of the performance.”
And that’s exactly what’s happening.
Tonight & tomorrow, I start following through on that plan. Jason & I will be auditioning all kinds of different objects to see how they sound when miked, and figure out which will be right for each song. Because that’s what Brian Boitano’d do.
And in case you missed it, you can pre-order the first EP now! Because that, also, is what Brian Boitano’d do.
-MMcF
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Unleaded rhythmic alt-pop fuels singer/songwriter and two-wheel troubadour Michael McFarland’s engine. Michael McFarland in the simplest summary? Writer, Rocker, Biker, Geek.
For Michael’s Music, Cd’s, Downloads, Merchandise, live show schedule, music blogs, music videos, and everything else you want to know about McFarland, visit the Michael McFarland Website at http://michaelmcfmusic.com/
