Self-Produced Recording Project of Electric-Violin Music

Announcement of a Recording Project to be completed from October, 2008 to December, 2008
Self-Produced by Kevan Paul
Recording at home-office studio in Payson, Utah, USA.

The goal of this project to produce a prototype or concept album of music to demonstrate unusual or interesting ELECTRIC-VIOLIN techniques, styles, and sound enhancements.

Title of Album: HEALING AGAIN, FOREVER
Genre: Jazz Violin, Neo-Classical, Cinematic-Rock, Orchestral-Pop

Reasons and Motivations for the Project:
I have been experimenting with electric-violin "sounds" and analog-to-digital sound effects processors for several years, and have recently been motivated to produce something different in terms of my musical output. I have been performing with several "western and folk" ensembles for the last ten years, as a chance to perform violin music whenever and wherever I can from a local performance perspective, while maintaining a career as a computer network engineer. My performances have been in good and healthy environments like town celebrations, private parties, cowboy poetry gatherings, schools, and churches. Avoiding the cultural trappings of bars and clubs and band member issues, has allowed my family to participate in my music performances in ways that I am comfortable with. The "Folk" violin genre has many pre-conceived expectations and inherent limitations in terms of style and participation as a band member, however, I have done everything I could to stretch the limits, and have patiently developed my ear training and harmonic "blending" with any song that seemed right for a violin part.

There is another side of my musical background and training that leads to other styles and instrumentation blends - this project is the beginning of being able to share some of my experimentation technique and style for unique violin sounds, while doing some basic home recording via a MACBOOK and various applications and Audio-Unit plug-ins, with other Digitech effects processors, a Yamaha keyboard, and whatever other instruments I can get my hands on.

A recent conversation with my brother David, has motivated me to try to generate a prototype or concept album of music to demonstrate what I have "discovered" or learned about basic home recording and combine it with my talent for violin music performance. I will dedicate this project to his personal healing process, and this is also the impetus for the album title that I have selected to use.

The style that I have selected for this album may be called neo-classical, cinematic-rock, orchestral-pop, or something along those lines. The intent is to be as melodic as possible using the violin as the primary or secondary voice throughout the composition or "re-mix", while introducing some of the unique stylistic sounds from modifying the violin from direct acoustic violin inputs using a piezo-electric transducer embedded in the bridge , an electric-violin (Yamaha Silent Violin -- no acoustic body), guitar-effects processors, and midi-to-synthesizer sampling, and anything else I can find to make it interesting.

My intent is to use my other guitars for some parts, but will rely on other guitar samples or solo guitar tracks as a reference to add the violin parts. I have an Ibanez electric guitar, a mahogany Johnson dobro resonator guitar, and an Ovation 6-string. I am going to try to use these instruments in some of the recordings along with violin as a way to stay true to the artistic vision that I have. With that said, I am planning on taking several solo guitar tracks from Michael Hedges, Pat Metheny, and some of the Narada recording artists, and perform a "re-mix" version of some of these solo tracks to add the harmonic and melodic parts that I believe are missing. Hopefully, if these songs develop to the level of perfection that I am hoping for, that I would be able to find local musicians that could help me perform and/or record these tracks (with the permission of the original artist and/or representative, of course).

My intent is to post a new blog entry for each song as it unfolds and develops. My personal favorite is when an artist shares their inner thought process while they reveal their creation or assemble their ideas. What motivation is there for revealing one's own inner feelings and thought-processes? I don't know, but I know that I am personally always interested in getting the story behind the story when creativity is involved.

As each song may have a story to tell, I am planning on using as many multimedia techniques as I can, while keeping true to the vision of "rapid-prototyping" as stated in the blog mission-statement. I hope that everyone who takes the time to listen will enjoy or find it entertaining. I will make full versions of the music available to anyone --- if someone wants to produce further evolutions of this type of music, I will make myself available for future recording, performance, or compositional projects.

If this first concept album can be completed within the rapid-prototyping period outlined (two months), then I will be motivated to continue to produce additional concept albums of various styles, and/or eclectic blending of styles at my creative whim.