Tuesday, January 5, 2010

the making of....

well, didn't forget! just got things on hold right now. jp did the mixes all is sounding great and moving forward in that department. my manager is coming over to the uk next week to join me and have some meetings on my behalf regarding my record and all things music. all is good; i'm on the tv show on itv, "from pop star to opera star", just got here yesterday, hitting it already today in a vocal session. tomorrow i'm meeting the amazing katherine jenkins for the first time. i'll see her and roland villazon so they can see how i'm doing with my song; it's "casta diva" from the bellini opera "norma" an amazingly beautiful song. just heard it in a scene on the way over in the plane in the movie "all about steve" with sandra bullock. very coincidental, n'cest pas?? been online for an hour now, gotta get my beauty rest. watch this space. big day tomorrow.
love always;
marcy x

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

days 125-149..the making of....

wow, what in the world happened to the time? what happened to me doing my blogs??? i guess i got pretty busy. I had to suddenly go to london to work on something that i can't really talk about. all i can say is, it's good. once i get the go ahead, i will let you know what it is.
meanwhile, re: the recordings with jp, well, while i was in the uk he sent me over some mixes of the 4 songs and they are really sounding good. so, now that i'm over my jet lag, I'll have another listen and see what might need doing, then we can move on and start planning to get this music out there.
now we're on the final ramp up to christmas. going to join the holiday madness for the next week or so, so i wouldn't expect to hear much from me. i hope everyone had a great hanukah. heaven knows i do have so much to be thankful for.

more news soon. n joy your holiday and all the very best for the coming year.

with love, always;

marcy xoxoxoxo

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Days 115-124 "the making of......"

oops, forgot about me blog!! sorry, whoever is reading them. things got a little crazy with the lead up to the holiday.
so, the last time I blogged, it was to say I had prepared the files for jp of my bv's and took them to his house which was good fun. he loaded everything in and it was sounding great. we ended up putting string parts on 2 of the songs which were sounding v.good as well.
the next night, wednesday the 19th, i joined jp and some friends that i haven't seen in quite some time, for dinner, good fun. i did'n't make it to cozy's to sing cuz it was too late. but i went this past wednesday and helped them end their 8 month residency. that was FUN! jimmy played his butt off on every instrument he could: guitar, b3, drums. you name it. I got up and sang a few songs with them and really let loose at the end which was very freeing for me, a good positive experience.
now, this past week, on tuesday, I had the most fantastic meeting with my new publishers, "music sales corporation". I finished a new christmas song and brought it into the meeting. they all really loved the song which was great and even gave me props for the mix which is unusual for me to receive; my hubby helped me with it. he's a better engineer than I am, but we are both growing as far as that's concerned, learning new things about it all the time. btw, that song will be up for purchase online very soon. I'll let you know when I've got it up on a site to be downloaded. it will be sometime this coming week. i'll also post that info on my site and facebook. one of the guys at the company was really chomping at the bit to get my christmas song licensed this year, but as it's already upon us, it may be too late. but next year is good. one guy at the company is someone I used to work with back when I first moved to L.A. doing lots of recording sessions, many years ago. he's incredibly talented at writing, producing, and is just one of the coolest people you'd ever want to meet.
well, may have some more news very soon too. we'll see.
meanwhile, the countdown to hanukah and christmas begins: you better be good!!

love always;

marcy xoxox

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

days 113 &114... "the making of".........

it's so late, my eyes are nearly closed, but the beams of light shooting off of my trusty imac are keeping them from snapping shut!
yesterday i did a few more background vocals for one of the songs i'm working on with jp. then, I had to prepare all the files and put them neatly on my portable little hard drive and took them to his house today. he loaded them into his computer, all seemed to be working well which is good. we worked on a few of the songs today; we put my harmonica solo on one of them and also some strings on that song and another one. that all took a few hours, but we got a lot accomplished and it was great fun.
now, all we have left to do is strings on one of the other songs, maybe, if we feel it needs it. there might be a guitar or two left to put on. we are getting close to having all the elements there, very exciting. it's sounding very good in my opinion right now. what i like about this new creation: there's nothing "gimmicky" about it. kind of scary, like doing it "without a net" so to speak. but i think, at last, that's a very, very good thing. for the longest time, I feel like i've been trying to be something that i'm not. i made the decision, that had to stop.
tomorrow, will see jp in the evening along with some other friends i haven't seen in a while. after dinner i might even go down to this club called cozy's to sit in with vivino and the gang. they're only playing there 2 more times, including tomorrow. a week from tomorrow will mark the end of their 8 month residency there. i've had a great time jamming with them and look forward to more in the future.


off to bed before i start snoring....

love always;

marcy xoxoxoxo

Sunday, November 15, 2009

days 97-112 "the making of......."

woahhhhhhhhhh, i can't believe it's been so long since i blogged. i put it down to my being ill for most of this time with a nasty flu like bug that found a nice resting place in my sinuses. very, very annoying. i'm just now starting to feel better.
so, wassup, you may ask? well, just before the lurgy really set in, I decided to do a vocal on one of the jp songs here in my home studio. I wasn't completely happy with my performance on the version we did at the hob studio, so i asked john to send me the backing track, sans lead vocal for me to re-do, which he did. oh, i should say also, during this little 2 week break, jp had to go to new orleans, so all was a bit on hold, except for my redoing my vocal. i really liked how it came out and jp came over on friday to have a listen. he liked it and said that he immediately understood why i wanted to redo it. we shall call it "bedroom studios"!! ha; these days, it doesn't really matter. you can have state of the art equipment set up anywhere-except maybe on the street, for the noise factor-and you're good to go as long as you at least know the basics of engineering whatever it is you're trying to record.
so, he took the vocal back to his studio and will be putting it into the track that he has back on his computer at home. i decided to do another vocal for the other track that I felt my performance was a bit lackluster on and redid that friday afternoon after he left. i really like the way it sounds too. today, I'll put some lush background vocals on it. this was the one song i was gonna get a bunch of my singer friends to sing on, but due to everyone's schedule being very different from mine, i decided to just do them on my own, which is totally fine. i've done all the background vocals on all the other tracks and i do love doing the bv's.
i'm meeting with jp on tuesday to put some more stuff on the tracks, mostly the string lines that i did in the demos, we are going to redo. I may do my harmonica for one of the tracks here and bring it to john on my little portable hard drive. it's about the size of half of a nail file, amazing what you can do these days.
i forgot one important thing that I didn't mention and never announced till it was final: for nearly 3 months i was in negotiations with a company called music sales who are experts at getting music into film and television. we finally reached an agreement and i signed the documents on november 6th which i'm very happy about. i'll be meeting with them very soon, things are already happening, all's good.

so, on that note, I'll say adieu till next time. i won't wait so long till the next blog, more to report in the coming days!!

love always;

marcy xoxoxo

Friday, October 30, 2009

days 93-96 "the making of....."

well, this week was not what i completely expected it would be. for one, i didn't make it to the club on monday, too tired. also, didn't meet with jp, but that was cool. he actually sent me mixes of all the tracks with percussion on them, they are all sounding really good. now, he's going off to new orleans to see jon cleary, amazing guitarist/keyboard player who played on my songs. he's back on tuesday next week. we will convene then and figure out what needs doing.

on wednesday, i went to sit in with some friends, jimmy vivino on guitar [conan o'brien, tonite show], rick reed on bass, barry goldberg on keys and also scott healey, also from the conan show band. i had big fun sitting in with them, doing my clapton co-writes. jimmy is so sweet to have gotten them all to learn my tunes. he is a great musician; he works every day taping the tonight show and still wants to play a little gig at a small club, just for the love of it. i do believe he is the hardest working man in show business and i could even venture to say he probably loves music and performing more than me-that's A LOT!! he is one of the finest guitarists i've ever played with-I've played with some pretty good ones too!- and it's always a pleasure and honor to work with him.
so, had communication from someone today with more release options. still, "nothin's final till it's vinyl" as they used to say in the old days, meaning, until it's a "record" you can't count on it happening.

and that my friends is the end of this week nearly. if there's anything new to report, i'll put it out there, if not, i'll wait till monday. oh, one other thing, albeit vague; had a cool idea tonight for some kind of interactive thing with my fans on my site. early days but i will talk about it with more specificity very soon.

ah, bed,,mmmmm...zzzzzzzzz

love;

always;

marcy xoxoxoxoxox

Monday, October 26, 2009

days 90-92 "the making of......"

well, weekend over, onto another week of fun and not so frivolous. tomorrow, i'm going over to jp's to discuss what else needs to be done on the songs. oh, forgot to say, yesterday i met jp at the studio and we had this great percussionist, lenny castro, who has played percussion on nearly every record known to man, play on the songs. sounded great! he played shaker, congas, and some tambourine. one of the shakers was actually about 8 beer cans joined together with some kind of gaffer tape with some kind of beans or something inside! yeah, i got a picture. it sounded very cool, smooth, but fuller than an ordinary shaker.

so, we shall see tomorrow what more needs to be done. I think I'll bring my Dflat harmonica to put on one of the songs, i can probably just put it on tomorrow.

should be an interesting week. i think i'm going to see a friend of mine play tomorrow night at this interesting club on sunset called "the libertine". the band is very funky with a great rhythm section, horns, you name it. look forward to hearing that. last time I was there it was a great night; the place was heaving, people were dancing, just having a great time which is pretty unusual at a club here in l.a...what a concept!

nite 4 now.

love always;

marcy xoxoxox