1620 Degrees Update or how one song can change everything

So, it’s the day before Christmas. It’s 6 days before my self imposed deadline to release 1620 Degrees. I have 8 songs written, all the drums, synth and guitar tracks are recorded and I’ve been tracking vocals all week.

I’ve been struggling with getting it to sound like something I am in love with and Dawn and I have been having many conversations about the vocals. My voice is pretty unique and while I have a decent amount of range, these songs are coming together in a place where I am not in love with where I am singing. I’ve also been wrestling with how mismatched they are. Some are very metal. Some are very old school progressive. Some are really hard rock sounding.

I would really need to re-do a lot of this music in different keys to make it sit where I want to sing better and given that I am not totally in love with the sound, transposing and re-recording all of it just isn’t something I want to do with my time.

Finally, while I’ve put a lot of work into the lyrics telling this cohesive story, the bottom line is that the music just isn’t doing the same.

To add fuel to the fire, one of my friends posted this video to Facebook this week:

Immediately I went to iTunes and downloaded the track. I let Dawn listen to it. I sent it to my sister. I listened to it a bunch of times in headphones, my car, my studio, etc. I personally love the song, but what I really got from it is, “This is what modern sounds like.” My stuff just doesn’t meet my personal bar for quality.

Last week while at work, I was explaining how I work a co-worker. I had told him, “One thing that makes me a little different is that I never get married to an idea. I can get very far down a path, and if I realize it’s the wrong path, I have no problem backing up and starting over.” That’s because to me the final product is what matters. I don’t care how I got there or how many eggs I broke along the way.

What I am getting at is that I am canning this work as an “Album.” I am going to refocus myself on doing something I feel is more modern sounding and matches better with what I want to do vocally.

So, that being said, I am going to release some of the music I wrote for the album. I’ll start with this instrumental track I intended to set the tone for my modern interpretation of Dante’s Inferno by re-orchestrating Franz Liszt’s Dante Symphony in part for guitar. I added some kicking drums and some fun guitar solo work. I hope you enjoy it.

Purgatorio (Dante Symphony) by projectk2r4

Thanks for understanding. The bottom line is I can’t put something out there as the definitive example of me as a musician if I don’t personally feel that it represents me well. I don’t mind tossing the demos out and letting people hear snapshots of what I have done, but I’ve got to focus my music to be what’s in my heart and that means I it just has to “feel right.” Right now it doesn’t.

Jason