Fresh Faced Fools

Layin' Down the Beats - First Cutz

2010-07-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

So, we just had a face to face to run through the chorus, first four verses and bridge of the first four tracks of Lululemons, our first song. I set down basic drums, bass and vocals to give the other Fools an idea of where my head was at on the song. They gave a listen and fully approved of the direction. Our time was super limited, so we didn't get a chance to have a recording session, but I will take a crack and modifying, getting in some guitar, more elaborate beats and revising it to their comments. We are off to the races!

Time Crisis

2010-06-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

The lyrics are written and the style is agreed, but I am just having a terrible time trying to get the time to sit down and start recording "Lululemons" into Logic. By the time I get time after 10pm, I am just too knackered to get going as I look towards the 5am wake up to start all over again. Oh well, just need to get a bit of sleep and keep the tune fresh in my mind and start to pound it out bit by bit and share it around to the other two Fools.

This is a Call

2010-06-17T21:25:00.001-07:00

This is a call for all you graphic designers out there to show your stuff for fame and glory! I think it is high time that the Fresh Faced Fools had a logo - essentially something that makes everyone think "Those guys must be wicked awesome". It could be a stylized way of writing "The Fresh Faced Fools" or "FFF" or ... really anything else that is in some way related.

If you have any form of talent whatsoever, give it a try and send us what you come up with. We'll post it here and everyone can vote on which one they think is the best. We will adopt the winner's logo design as our official logo and heap credit and praise upon you, and you will, of course, receive all credit for its design.

Give it a try! Looking forward to seeing what y'all come up with!

Send entries to freshfacedfools@gmail.com

Virtual Jam, Take 1

2010-06-17T20:56:00.000-07:00

Yep, John was right and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers really can still slay it. But, can they jam virtually using Skype, sharing screens and writing and editing lyrics to fit the tunes in real time, hundreds of miles apart!? Well, they probably can, but the point is that now so can we! Two nights ago we did a full test of the technology - a couple of Macbooks, Skype and Logic - and were able to view the tracks and lyrics we had layed down previously individually in Logic using the screen sharing feature in Skype. It was pretty awesome. Obviously, still second place behind actually being face to face, but a great start nonetheless!

I think I just short circuited by brain

2010-06-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

In the course of this process we have remained steadfastly confident that even with our limited skill, time, and talent we should be able to produce some killer licks that will keep people wanting more. Then, last night, driving through the City...minding my own business...I heard the new single from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers..."I Should've Known". Crap. Back to the drawing board.

As per usual, the real pros are like the Thermo-Nuclear weapons of the rock world, and this was like an ICBM that ran right under the radar and completely destroyed me, my vehicle and the six city blocks around me.

The problem is always when you hear a song that almost perfectly hits what you would like to have written...the groove, the lyrics...everything. Oh and the blistering guitar solo at the end made me think seriously about taking a skill saw to my own axe in ritualistic sacrifice (cue the "we're not worthy...we're not worthy").

I'm heading to the football game tonight to let my mind rest and think about next steps. I figure a key is going to be getting together with the Dee for an old skool jam session. We're going to need to "jam this one out".

I am bringing this devastating moment to the Dee's attention on the blog, as I fear if I tell him directly, two thirds of the Fool's brain power might be permanently gooified.

Well, onwards and upwards.

Breakthrough in Group Part 2

2010-06-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

Up until we posted Breakthrough in Group, it had been quite awhile since our last post, which is the result of two things: time being at a premium between full time day jobs, kids, yardwork and lives (how modern day rock star is that?!) and, in the ten minutes a day that we have to devote to this, having hugely creative low-tech sessions, mainly involving phone calls/Skyping and jotting down ideas in a notebook, in addition to listening to Top 40 radio stations basically non-stop. Now that we have a plan, we have put pen to paper and written out all of the lyrics and song concepts that have been playing around in our respective heads. Surprisingly, we have ended up with ten songs – 8 that are 70-80% of the way there on the lyrics side and two that are promising draft picks.

The working titles for the eight are:

- Lululemons
- Super Duper Bar Star
- ABC Famous
- Electro
- Mayor of Party Town
- RomCom Nightmare
- Party People
- Nine to Five

The two massively promising draft picks that just need a little more time devoted to them are:

- Day Job
- Stingray

The balance of the lyrics for the 8 will come once we start to really jam them out and record, but we’ve been discussing the vibe and mood of each song and have set a mini-objective within our goal of getting a song on the AT40 –actually starting to record two or three songs and see where we get to. We have set the August 20th objective to have at least two songs fully recorded and mastered (we don’t really understand fully what mastering means, we just know that we need to do it so everything sounds its best and we might have to pay a professional to do it for us). Once we have something that is in any way worth sharing, we’ll post it here for comments/critiques.

Our next step is to try to get the melody and bass line for the two or three set down and then shared amongst the Fools somehow. We are about to get our virtual jam on.

Breakthrough in Group!

2010-05-31T19:56:00.000-07:00

Oh YEAH! You just can't get anything done without a plan, and, ladies and gentlemen, the Fools now have a plan. It feels a little like those first few times we made a plan to play a gig, only this time the "gig" is entirely studio based. The Fools are going to make their debut on August 20, 2010...embedded in the play-list for a wedding dance.

Now lets consider the pluses to this plan: (1) 90% of the people will be drunk when they hear us; and (2) 90% of the people will be in a good mood when they hear us. NICE. Its going to be killah.

All we have to do now is take a few of our ideas and turn them into reality...simple right? RIGHT?

Step 1: We need a song.
Step 2: We need to finalize the song.
Step 3: We need to mix and produce it.
Step 4: It has to pass the Disco D "highsteppin'" test.
Step 5: We have to slip it past the Bride.

No problemo...

How Does a Song Get On the American Top 40?

2010-05-12T20:53:00.000-07:00

OK, it really is time to get down to business and two things come to mind: 1) how does a song get on the American Top 40? and 2) what type of song is the most likely to get on there? Dealing with the second question first, I think anyone who has listened to AT40 knows that you can exclude a whole host of musical types – classical, experimental, world, opera etc. – and that it needs to be a catchy, popular radio-friendly, rock/pop/rap mash-up. Just exactly how to cook up that secret sauce is another story altogether and is one of the main themes of this blog.

So, let’s start with reverse engineering from our goal to see what we need to do. AT40 gets the songs it plays from a chart, which is produced by Mediabase, a music industry website containing charts and analysis based on its monitoring of 1,836 radio stations in the US and Canada, in 175 radio markets. Mediabase is owned by Premiere Radio Networks, which also owns AT40 (not surprisingly).

Two stats from the Mediabase chart seem to matter – the number of “spins” and the “audience impression”. Spins are the number of times a song is played on a station and audience impression is a rough figure of how large the audience is that would have heard the song. Songs must be added to a radio station’s playlist in order to count for Mediabase’s purposes – it can’t just get one or two spins here and there. Songs “go for adds” when a promo CD is sent out to all radio stations for adding to their playlist … assuming they want to do so. Essentially, the wider the audience and the higher the number of spins, the more likely your song is to make the AT40.

What does this mean for us? Well, at first blush, the task of getting on AT40 appears more than daunting for the unsigned artist. How do you get your song out to all radio stations for radio play, ensure it will be added to their playlist and also get it the requisite number of spins to rate the Top 40, especially without the record label marketing machine to plan and do releases, promote the songs, call in favours from their contacts to get it played across North America and so on?

Sounds like we need to go viral (the good viral, not the nasty infection kind).

Yep, it seems that the answer lies in the same technological advancements that have made recording and releasing affordable for the do-it-yourself artist: use the internet, blogs and any other means at your disposal to get your music out there. Get it out on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter …. and whatever is next … and try to make it go viral. Submit it to music industry and recording blogs and let people comment on it. Put it on iTunes for those that want to pay for it but release a couple of songs for free and hope like crazy that they are catchy enough that people will ask for them from the radio stations, who will then add it to their playlist, which will then make it show up on Mediabase’s list, which will then, hopefully, get it on the AT40.

The other option seems to be to try to get signed, at which point this will all be taken care of by your record label, if they are big enough. If that happens, great, but this is all about the power of brains, talent and motivation winning the day, so we won’t focus much time on that.

AT40 also allows for “shoutouts”, so another possibility is to get everyone we know to phone, text and email the show once we’ve got our first song out and get it on the show that way, although our goal really is a legitimate play on the AT40, which means playing by the Mediabase rules.

It's Business Time

2010-05-08T18:15:00.000-07:00

This was not what I anticipated the rock n' roll lifestyle to be...where are the scantily clad women? Where are the expensive liquors, the incredible cars...I am not sure that Slash ever needed to make a 5:00 run to the local bakery to check if they still had fresh bagels.

Alright, so it isn't as much "slash n' burn" as we thought it would be when were in High School. That is AOK. Two thirds of the Fresh Faced Fools (the "FFF") have been making ears bleed since 1994. Perhaps it is time for a little history lesson:

1. True Colours was a cover band...I think. I was more periphery at that time than anything. When Davis and James and Joel formed True Colours in the 10th grade I was forced to consider that I made a wrong choice the night my folks asked me if I would like to play hockey...or learn an instrument. By the 10th grade I was doing neither. In one singular moment of clarity I realized something truly wonderful...if you can play guitar, women will dig you. I was hooked.

2. The Wonders of Aliceland: It is amazing what you can do when you have zero bucks. Joel had a bass, Davis a black Samick guitar and Samick amp, and I had a no name, $35.00 acoustic guitar. We pooled our resources, which included the theft of a traffic sign (which became the symbol) and built our own set of drums. They sucked...and they were awesome! The Wonders of Aliceland created such hits as "Clock the B**ch" and "Freelance Pharmicist". Good times. Inspiration hit with "Cry for Love". We didn't even know what love was, but did know enough to recognize that when you have a good lick, put love in the title.

3. "I Can't Remember the Name": Battle of the Bands in the 11th grade. Can't remember the name of the band. Would rather not remember the 11th grade. Do you remember that point in your life when you are SO WORRIED about what everyone else thinks, that you forget to have fun, enjoy and take care of your friendships. That was grade 11 for me. Sometimes I wonder how Davis put up with me that year. I have some no name, gray, Fender Telecaster knockoff, with a 30 watt Park Amp. It sucked...I sucked...but the band didn't necessarily suck. In fact, with James on the drums, the tape recording of the performance sounds pretty good. Now that I type this, I think I am confusing a number of different stories. Anywho...forgettable. This was like the "Fat Elvis" stage.

4. Johnny Talent and the Phuzz Monkey Five: This band was cool. Covers only, but total awesomeness. Three Colour Sunburst U.S. made Fender Stratocaster, with twin speaker Fender chorus amp. Loved it. What a great night. Two illicit propositions after the show. Felt a HINT of what it was like to be a rock star. Interestingly enough, the propositions meant nothing...being on stage was the best feeling ever. Playing WELL was the best feeling ever.

5. Sexual Chocolate: Similar line-up as above. Featured the great Jon Lovell on guitar. Man, that guy can wail! He was in a shaggy fur coat playing a blistering "Star Spangled Banner". I was enthralled. There is a reason they are called "Rock Gods"...you worship...you become a disciple. That was my reaction to Jon.

Then...nothing. I played in some show bands in Law School, but that wasn't the same. I have been friends with Davis (the first Fool in the FFF) since I was 15 and I have not met anyone else who knows how to kneel down at the alter of all things awesome better than the Furious D. So after this history of ear blistering, electo-rock phantasticness, it was great to get the call from the D and be challenged to take on this project. Lets make an album. And you know what...why not. Is there anything better than making music? When I think back to all of the jamming we did and all of those one off bands we formed I think of the fun more than anything. The enjoyment of practicing and getting better, and then, finally, how great it feels when people are enjoying what you are playing.

I just wanna rock...and who better to rock with then the Furious D (aka Captain Toronto) and Little P. I mean we all have to do what we have to do to make our way in the world, and I don't want to quit my job to hit the road, but I do want to rock out.

When I close my eyes, I think about the first concert I ever saw: the Tragically Hip, Day for Night tour...1995. The next day I was dead tired and I could hardly hear a thing...and I was hooked...and I wanted to rock too.

After all of these years, I have realized that it really is all about the doing...that is what makes living so much fun. So FFF is making an album. And I challenge Furious D to haul "Cry for Love" out of the attic! BONUS TRACK!

Why Ryan Seacrest and Why AT40?

2010-05-02T08:43:00.000-07:00

I got the idea for AT40 and Ryan Seacrest while seeing him on Oprah, of all places. They went through a day in the life of Ryan Seacrest immediately prior to talking about Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, which Ryan Seacrest Productions produces. Not only did I see that Ryan seems to be the busiest guy in Hollywood (two radio shows, a production company, American Idol, film appearances … the list goes on), I realized that he is a mover and a shaker at the epicenter of music, Hollywood and reality/new media. If you are or want to be the next big thing, I realized, there is no need to waste time on the fringes with imitators – might as well go directly to the source.

Couple Ryan and his team’s position with the fact that American Top 40 gets its chart based on radio play – hence, we have to produce a song and get it played …. A LOT (more on this to come in another post) - means that it is an impartial and objective measure of success. The fact that American Top 40 is syndicated in numerous countries is a nice plus, promotion wise, of course, but we’ve got a few steps to go through first.

Apparently, the best way to set and achieve any goal is to make it as specific as possible and have an objective way to determine if it is completed – at least, that is what every HR goal setting exercise in every job I’ve had has told me. To paraphrase, you just need to set out exactly what success looks like and then imagine exactly what it would feel like to achieve your goal (The Secret, anyone?).

Setting our goal as getting a song on AT40 and sitting in the AT40 studios, talking on air with Ryan Seacrest is about as specific and objective as you can get. I can visualize the Fresh Faced Fools sitting there amid the mics and the monitors, the hustle and bustle of a show in taping and the faint aroma of a coffee pot that has been on just a little too long lingering in the air.

Let’s face it: setting the goal as we have is also a little bit cocky, like being at bat and pointing for the back fence, calling your shot. We are fine with that. Musicians are supposed to have some ‘tude.

Davis

Crowdsourcing, Creative Commons and Other Most Excellent Concepts

2010-04-28T19:24:00.000-07:00

We recently came across the concept of crowdsourcing and, never having seen it before, immediately went to look it up. The Wiktionary defines crowdsourcing as “delegating a task to a large diffuse group, usually without substantial monetary compensation”.

This combined with the creative commons/attribution licenses on flickr and other media sites caused us to have a revelation: why not get aspiring visual and graphics artists, directors and videographers the chance to come up really cool artwork for the album, graphic design for the layout, videos for the songs, and all of the other cool stuff that we need to get the album out and promoted in exchange for recognition and attribution, as we clearly have no money to pay for these services and are also doing this way more for love than money.

Obviously, Fresh Faced Fools will take charge of the writing, recording and mixing of the songs – to do otherwise kind of defeats the purpose of having a band with one voice and message – but it would be really amazing to have the completed album with artwork for iTunes and videos posted on YouTube and elsewhere be as much a virtual world collaboration as we can.

So, in addition to being a virtual band, we hereby issue a blog call (blall?) to the virtual creative community to get involved in the album with artwork, photographs, videos for the songs and other aspects which we don’t even know we need right now. What would be mind-blowing, assuming we can actually write and record songs that have some legs, is if we could have readers of this blog (assuming there is more than one at some point) vote on their favourite artwork and videos and have whichever gets the most votes be the one that gets used. We will look into setting that up, but in the meantime, if anyone thinks this is a cool idea and wants to get involved, email us and let us know what you want to do.

Virtual Band

2010-04-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

Achieving our goal of recording and releasing an album and sitting in Seacrest’s studio talking about our first Top 40 hit has only been made possible by recent advances in communications and digital recording technology and software.

For starters, Fresh Faced Fools is a virtual band: the three members live in three different cities separated by either a 1hr, 3hr or 4hr drive depending on which city you are starting from and where you are going. Sure, we meet up occasionally, but with the rest of our lives in full swing with full time jobs / school, families and other things, it is really only very occasionally.

All of the advances in communications and in digital recording (and the ever lowering cost of each) has made having a band meet virtually and record possible and the ease of using at least the basic features in Logic has made the making of this album a reality for three guys with no professional recording experience.

Our central studio is really this blog and our gmail account, Skype to share ideas face to face and email to send Logic projects back and forth. The good thing is that it really cuts down on overhead – no rent or gas money needed and everyone has to buy their own beer – but the bad thing is that we’re trying to harness creativity without having a creative cauldron or sweatshop to really grind through the ideas. No matter what the end product sounds like, it is definitely going to be an interesting process.

Without each of us having Macs as our personal computers with some version of Logic installed, none of this would be possible at all - bless you Steve Jobs and the rest of the Apple – Logic team for making such great products.

With our next to zero budget, quality recordings would also not be possible without our recently acquired Apogee ONE, which at $249 seems to be a steal for the level of quality. We realize that the professionals out there will say we need a Duet or Ensemble and believe me we are looking like crazy on Kijiji and Craigslist for decently priced used ones, but in the mean time the ONE is amazing, the sound quality seems great, it is easy to use for total recording newbs such as us and it looks pretty bomb-ace as well next to the Macbook. Currently, the ONE sits with Davis as does the M-Audio midi-controller, but we’ll have to figure out a way to share those around or get more.

The prevalence of digital music distributed on iTunes and elsewhere and the decline in popularity of physical albums means that, once recorded, it should be relatively cheap and easy to get the album released on iTunes from everything we have read on Joe Shambro’s blog and elsewhere. More on that, obviously, once we’ve plowed through the creative process and got the songs recorded and mixed.

Starting the Creative Process

2010-04-19T19:39:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months, I have been just letting my mind go wild: no hooks, lyrics or concepts are too wild. I've been writing down whatever lyrics come to mind and I keep a notebook always close at hand. I seem to be at my most creative walking to and from work and have to quickly jot lyric ideas down. I've also been using the Axiom to record any form of melody, hook, bass line or drum sequence that occurs to me. When I don't have time to that, I just open up Garageband and try to hum the melodies and grooves as best I can into a "notes" track.

The bad thing about this is that I feel like I have stuff EVERYWHERE and there is no cohesive order. The good part is that some ideas are naturally starting to group themselves together and I've got some solid ideas for how to bring together a few songs, for which I am currently using the working titles "Day Job", "Lulu", "Party Town" and "9 - 5" (that latter which might mash together well with Day Job, since it covers the same subject). The other good thing is that I don't feel like I've left out or forgotten any ideas. The big task now will be to enforce some structure on myself and really get down to planning the songs and writing/recording them.

Davis

What We Don't Have

2010-04-19T19:31:00.001-07:00

We're not going to focus much time or effort on what we don't have, as this whole project is based on the commonly held and apple-pie ideal that no matter who you are, who you know, or how much money you have in the bank, if you want it badly enough and pour your heart and soul into it, you can make anything happen. This is all about 10% talent and 90% hardwork and we are going to see if that really pays off.

However, in the interests of full disclosure, we confirm for the record that:

- we are unsigned
- we have no record label
- we have no record deal
- we have no "people", meaning no agent, manager, PR team, marketing team, assistants, producers, masterers, engineers, distributors, radio deals, etc.
- our families are not in any way connected to show business, the music business, Hollywood, Bollywood, or any other "-wood"

We are really just three guys with some simple gear and a desire to release and album and get a song on the air.

The Musical Training We Have

2010-04-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

Except for Davis going up to Grade 9 Royal Conservatory Piano with some music theory and history thrown in and Paul and John taking guitar lessons, we are self-taught on all other musical instruments and, to complete the self-taughtness of this, we are also self-taught on proper recording techniques and using Logic and other music production software. A big shout out to Joe Shambro's About Home Recording for teaching us what we needed to get started with our own home recording rigs.

On the singing front, in our minds we are as smooth and as accomplished singers as Michael Buble. The reality is slightly different than our delusions, however, and we are going to need to practice a lot and, I hate to say it, probably do a lot of takes and then use AutoTune!

The Gear We Have

2010-04-19T19:11:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of the gear we are starting out with.

Recording Equipment:

- 1 five year old Macbook loaded with Logic Express 8 that has seen faster and better days and two newer Macbooks (one Mac each), one with Logic 9

- 1 M-Audio Axiom 25 midi keyboard

- 1 Shure SM-57 instrument mic

- 1 Apogee ONE

Musical Instruments:

- 1 Fender Strat

- 1 Marshall Valvestate 8040 Amp

- 1 Spider Jam amp

- 1 white garage-sale worthy, battered and bruised drum set that might fetch $20 on Kijiji

- a couple of acoustic guitars

Let's Get Fresh. Let's Get Foolish. Let's Get Started.

2010-04-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

Well, we've thought a lot about it and have come to the conclusion that the only way to start this blog is by asking the world two questions we've been asking ourselves recently:

Who out there doesn't want to be a rock (or movie, or cooking, or TV ... your choice) star?

What the hell are we all waiting for?

We've got some equipment. We've got some talent (even if it's debatable). We've got some brains and whole pile of motivation.

So why write a blog about it instead of just putting all that energy into writing and recording? There are a whole pile of reasons:

1. Starting this goal by setting it out on a blog makes it official. Even if no one reads this, we will feel a sense of intense embarrassment if we don't make progress.

2. Despite all of the internet research in the world, we are doing this completely by the seats of our pants and we know we are going to miss things that might make all the difference (or at least make achieving the AT40 a lot simpler), so we are hoping that those who have gone before or are professionals might share some tips and insight with us.

3. You only have to flip on the TV to know that the world is obsessed with instant celebrity or anything else instant, like weight loss. We aren't taking anything away from the winners of American Idol, but it really doesn't give the full picture, as all we see essentially is one drawn out audition ... then the marketing and production machine takes over and WHAM!, they've got an album released and are touring 5 seconds after winning. This blog is about the true reality: how three regular guys with jobs, classes and families go about realizing their dream of recording and releasing great music, with every step and misstep chronicled. Others that wish to tread the same path can hopefully learn from our successes and mistakes.

3. The vague hope that someone from Apple, Apogee, Fender, Marshall or any other maker of fine musical instruments and music recording and production hardware might read this and decide to sponsor us with a generous gear upgrade (in exchange for MASSIVE promotion on this blog, we might add).

4. The faint hope that Timbaland, Jay Z, Mutt Lange and Brian Eno might decide to come together and give us a full-on crash course in how to produce.

5. Last, but definitely not least, we figure that if enough people find this blog, someone other than our wives might buy the album or even one song on iTunes, thereby qualifying Fresh Faced Fools as a commercial success, and maybe, just maybe, someone will give in to our pestering and play one of our songs on the radio.