Congrats on Guitar Cousin's album

Guitar Cousin has released an album! He wrote and arranged the songs, did all the instrumentation and vocals, laid down the tracks and mixed it, and did all the graphics and layout. I think the only thing that he outsourced is the "mastering" process (and, the actual physical printing of the CD sleeve and the CD).

This is actually a belated announcement, as he released it around November 17th, 2011.

I appreciate that he included the lyrics in the CD sleeve: not everyone does that.


It's a long slog to create a CD. Particularly in the "recorded" arts (audio recording, film making -- and **especially** animation) -- the ratio between time invested and a final product is just wretched. For me, it takes about 8 hrs. for a three minute rock song -- so about a 160-to-1 ratio. Urgh.


Anyhow: tastes vary, but I think it's a good album. Depending on the song, it reminds me of bits of Rush, Evanescence, goth music. Also Metallica and Maiden influneces (not surprising, given his musical background).


So: band name is NilSonance, and it's available at his website -- http://www.nilsonance.com -- as well as Amazon and iTunes and CD Baby.


--GG

Songwrite-wishing daughter

Last night, Guitar Cousin e-mailed me to say that he was recording a cover version of one of my songs, and could I edit his attempt at the lyrics. I did a filename search on my hard drive, and couldn't find the lyrics (must be on my Mac Classic -- in a box since about 1998...), but **did** find the *.mp3 file. Played it to refresh my memory of the lyrics.

Played that song for my daughter, plus a few others of mine from that folder. She seemed impressed that I’d written songs, and asked who the other people playing were; I tried to explain the concept of multi-tracking (i.e., record one instrument, then play it back while recording another instrument).

Then she asked if **she** could make some songs; I said that she was free to **write** some songs, but that we couldn’t record them, as it would be several months before I had my recording gear set up. Her response was, “No fair. I like writing songs **better**!” (i.e., better than you do). I replied that it was possible – but unlikely.

I also pointed out that the key to writing songs is to come up with music that goes with the words, and then to remember how the music goes the next time you sing the words.

She's taking little kid piano lessons ("Hot Cross Buns", etc.): we'll see if she actually starts writing any songs.


Would be cool if she did.


--GG