Linnea's Tenth Album, Momentary Saints, Journal

Click below to read Linnea's journey in making her tenth album, Momentary Saints.

Instalment VIII
Instalment VII
Instalment VI
Instalment V
Instalment IV: Day 4
Instalment IV: Day 3
Instalment IV: Day 2
Instalment IV: Day 1
Instalment III: The Vocals and Early Overdubs
Instalment II: The Bed Tracks
Instalment I: Preparing

Instalment VIII: The Launch Party
(with the Grade Five supporters)

A career in music is a kind of ethereal thing. You give a performance, feel a kinship with the audience, a sense of the perfect moment - and then leave forever. You work for months on songs, play them on real instruments with real people, then go away to write e-mails with one another about it, receive data-copies to download and burn and listen to late at night, look at computer generated photographs of yourself for the front cover. It's all ether - all of it. By the time you hold a real compact disk in your hand, you cannot get a grip that the album really exists at all.

I tried to tell this to the group of grade 5s who have joined us for these months of storytelling and sharing the process of creating this CD: Momentary Saints. How important it has been to David and me to be able to dodge into their class and tell them the next newest thing that had happened - and play the clip that went along with it. I don't know if they know what I'm talking about - partly because they have each other (real things) to stare at every day of the school-week and partly because their world and mind-set is more ether than mine can ever be, already.

So, when the boxes arrived at our house, we didn't even open them until we went (with cake) to Giant's Head School and held the Ceremonial X-acto-knifing of the CD Box. As you will see, this was a fine (and very real) send-off for my Tenth Album:

with gratitude for your joining us on this journey, too,

Linnea

Instalment VII: The Cover Art

It started like this in Greg Johnson's studio, here in Summerland:

Added to this stock photo:

And Vinicio Delgado turned it into this:

Instalment VI: We Have a Name!

It came to me as I was reading Jay McDaniel's great book about consumerism and the spirit: Spirituality from the Center. Jay says, "But let me be honest. Most of us, myself much included, enter into this depth only in our better moments. A baby is born, a loved one dies, a friend needs help, a crisis needs mending - and we rise to the occasion. But then, a day or two later, we are breathless and uncentered, like prodigal sons and daughters who have wandered... If sainthood means living from the Center, then most of us are but momentary saints. Often we are struggling. (Chalic Press).

MOMENTARY SAINTS..! Yes.

This seems to be the way human life is. Sometimes grateful, awe-struck and grace-filled, oft-times itchy, impatient, controlling, defeatist... Sometimes I get mixed up and try to live life RIGHT, cover all the bases, live by the rules. But, life isnt about trying to live UP to something. It is about living INTO something. Ohmygosh, what IF God didnt give a care about our being virtuous? What if God simply cared that we connected? What if...

Momentary Saints.

Instalment V: Listening, Thinking and Planning (Again)

I have been telling people that we would be following the usual routine - after 10 albums, I can lay claim to being able to say "the usual routine" - in making this new CD. That is – or has been – to record throughout the spring, mix the tracks in late spring, have my photo taken in the summer when I have a tan (or can stand in the lake!) and compile all the wording that will go on the card insert to be printed in August, and receive the finished CDs in September to hit the Christmas rush.

I sang all the vocals to the 12 songs on this album in about 2 days (a miracle) and the overdubs easily done in 4. So, the quickness of the whole recording has us re-thinking our projected time-line. If the mixing (the balancing of all instrumental and vocal sounds) is also done in April, it is possible the album could be finished in May or June. I must do some discerning to see whether it is meant to be out this early. But all indications seem to point to Yes, at this point.

If so, I’m going to have to forego the summer tan and get my album cover created soon. And think of the name.

An album cover
Mr Kennedy’s & Ms Nehring’s Grade 5 classes at Giant’s Head Elementary School have been following our recording journey and graciously assisted us in creating possible album covers. Here are three covers:

My Former Pants

Strangely Blank

Good Music

Send us your Album Title suggestions (by emailing LG at LinneaGood.com). We will add them to this web log – really.

Instalment IV: Day 4

What a last day of recording! I can’t really put into words the experience of having people take a song that I have written, and listening to it become embellished and enhanced with each passing day. The gift that musicians give to composers – and then to listeners – is simply stunning. By this morning, when the strings showed up and turned It’s a Wonder into a major motion picture soundtrack, it all became too much. Everybody wept but me; I simply cried. I feel my career pass before my eyes – how I didn’t even want to make a new album, so tired was I last year. How adrift I sometimes feel in all this work – too much and scatter-focussed. I want to stop everything and shout: THIS IS A GREAT ALBUM! THIS IS OUR BEST ALBUM EVER!

Finn Manniche arranged the 3 songs and he, along with Henry Lee and Mark Ferris, added the angel-wings to It Would Have Been Enough and Wonder. Rain on Snow was made more snowy and rainy with an incredible tremolo.

Then came the horns. Terry Townson had earlier sent my MP3 of Stand on the Rock back complete with an arrangement of synthetic horns, so I could approve the sound. I burst out laughing in my seat to hear it. Now, the real horns arrived with real players, Rod Murray and Steve Hilliam. Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah will never be the same (and it was already the song that I had been told would get me run out of Wales, should I ever perform there..!)

In the middle of things, we went back to the percussion on I am Becoming Peace. Remember how we got rid of David’s brushes-on-cardboard-box train feel back in January, and then put it back in last night..? Well, we axed it this morning, in favour of a shaker and cabassa replacement. I think Dj is trying to get paid double.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent passing each song to a listener CD, so that we could have something to take away and listen to – and so that we could give last-minute reminders to Paul about what the final mix should sound like. David and I will need to start driving home to the Okanagan as soon as this session is over.

I’m going to miss the studio.

String Trio		Terry Townson Steve Hilliam sax		Rod Murray trombone

Instalment IV: Day 3

We put David Jonsson to serious work, with shaker, cabassa, tambourine, guiro and - most importantly - the cardboard box. Remember those two feels on "I am Becoming Peace" that we tried out? We decided that we wanted the "train feel" back and so David battened down the cardboard and played it again.

Dave Sinclair joined us in the afternoon to add guitar. With acoustic folk, laudin (a Spanish lute-like instrument) and electric, he added a wonderfully funky feel to six songs like Stand on the Rock and I am Becoming Peace.

Dj tapes the "box"	Dave Sinclair plays laudin

Instalment IV: Day 2

Michael Creber, who has played on our last 2 albums, joined us again, to throw some keyboards onto songs like Three Tenors and Blessed Are Those. Making a flying leap into the key modulation in the gospel song Stand on the Rock sent the keyboard skidding down the counter, so Linnea took on the job of bracing the instrument for the next take.

Bruce Harding came back for an afternoon session, laying down 4 layers of alto and bass flutes on All Through the Night. It was also a gorgeous moment for Bruce, as he got to record with his new and, as he called it, “luscious” flute – newly acquired. We spent the rest of our time having fun singing more harmonies on the fat singing songs Stand on the Rock and of course The Three Tenors. By the time we get through with David Golden’s song, he is going to kill himself laughing!

Linnea and Michael Creber	Bruce & his many flutes

Instalment IV: Day 1

MONDAY was our final vocals day. We saved the very end for children and adults to join in the singing of La-La’s on The Three Tenors. It was quite an adventure!

Here is: Ben Chapman-Kish, Nicole Jonsson-Good, Patrick Jonsson-Good & Isaac Jonsson-Good.

Instalment III: The Vocals and Early Overdubs

Everything that is recorded after the "bed tracks" is called the "OverDubs" - including the lead vocals.

Much to our surprise, the process of recording our main instruments was accomplished really quite quickly 12 songs in 3 days - and without much pain. [What pain, you ask? Imagine listening to yourself at close range a set of headphones trying to create your critically-acclaimed best performance ALL DAY LONG. It requires nerves of steel and yet the creative flexibility and flair usually only caught in performance]

So, it was an early morning on the fourth day that I was expected to suddenly break into evocative song. On this particular morning, our engineer (and Turtle owner) Larry Anschell had made arrangements to have a replacement engineer take his place for 2 hours. We were already rather attached to Larry after 3 days together, but he assured us that we would like his replacement, Ed Johnson, equally well. Ed turned out indeed to be as able and affable as described, so we began our morning. As it was rather early to give a lasting vocal performance, I decided to warm up my voice in the small booth, while David might record some percussion overdubs. There were many songs that wanted shaker, tambourine, djembe, guiro, etc, but for some reason Paul and I asked David if he would take up the congas we had seen sitting behind the piano and lay down a track on our latin-esque song 'Cast Your Net On the Other Side'.

David reminded us that he was no expert in conga-playing, but Paul and I know him to be somebody who is excellent at whatever he puts his hand to, so we encouraged him to give it a go. Once the door to the little booth had closed with him in it, Ed turned to us with half a smile and said, I guess I wont tell him Im a full-time conga player! Say no more! David came back out of the booth (with no scrape whatsoever to his self-esteem) and Ed laid down a track in pretty much for the first take! He stepped back into the engineering booth just in time for Larry to return, David carried on with other percussion and the song is a keeper!. I LOVE these kinds of coincidences. In fact, I live on them.

Listen to this clip of the bed tracks, conga & vocals on Cast Your Net:

Join us later, friends, when the fun begins for the Producer and us, as we begin to imagine what other instruments will become the further overdubs on The New Album 2008!

Linnea

Instalment II: The Bed Tracks

Welcome to Turtle Recording, in White Rock, BC. Take a wee tour with us in our studio:

The first stage in recording involves putting down what is called the "bed tracks" - the 3 main instruments of piano, bass and drums. This is an interesting process, where we sit sometimes in separate booths, listening through headphones to the collective sound as David is guided by a metronome "click track" to keep us in tempo. We play the song without any vocals, so we rely on our lyric charts and a pretty keen memory of where the nuances of high and low moments lie, as well as variations from verse to verse (which I always seem to have a lot of).

Listen to this bit of the bed tracks for Blessed Are Those:

Linnea talks about recording

David - When something doesn't seem to work

YOU listen to the two feels and decide:

We'll tell you what we decide to do when we go back to the studio.

Join us again when we lay down the "OverDubs"!

cheers,
Linnea

Instalment I: Preparing

Oh, the glamour, the excitement. See the artist at work on her soon-to-be-a-smash-hit album. See her....

Planning which songs will go on the CD		Drawing up a budget		Contacting musical hotshots

Listen to this clip from "It's A Wonder", a song which will go on our CD and which we performed at Woodcliff United Church, in Calgary in the fall of 2007:

What will be on the album?

All Through the Night (trad., adapted by Linnea)
Blessed are Those Who are Called to the Table
Cast Your Net on the Other Side
Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah
I Am Becoming Peace
It Would've Been Enough
It's a Wonder
Patience (from the words of Rainer Maria Rilke)
Rain on Snow
Rivers of Memory (from psalm 137)
Stand on the Rock (from psalm 95)
The Three Tenors (by David Golden davidmgolden@yahoo.com)

The Rehearsal