My new album! "Another Fine Mess"

Well, my album is finally here, and at last available to download. I recently found a site that not only hosts the music, but also allows you to stream the entire songs, download in all sorts of different formats, and, best of all, provide the album to you for free!

All the songs have been updated, fixed, and re-exported and sound better than those that were originally posted here.

For those who haven't been following this blog regularly to know what these songs are like, here's what I wrote about the album on the Bandcamp page:

"There's a new album coming out..."

Greg Whitehead's album, "Another Fine Mess," is a collection of piano and synth-based pop songs with plenty of thick harmonies and catchy melodies.

Recorded over three years (2009-2011), this album is a labor of love and a fulfillment of a longtime dream to finally realize the songs that have, up till now, only existed in Greg's head.

This album's musical style is centered mainly around 80s synthpop, but the 13 included songs also reflect Greg's musical influences from the past five decades.

Some of those artists include:

•   60s: Beatles, The Association, Moody Blues.
•   70s: Queen, ELO, Elton John, Supertramp.
•   80s: Thomas Dolby, Howard Jones, Freiheit, Underworld.
•   90s: Jellyfish, Ben Folds Five, Air.
•   00s: Josh Fix, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., Scissor Sisters, Keane

Full album download includes PDF to create your own CD sleeve.
 
credits
All songs written, recorded, and performed by Greg Whitehead except:
"On an Ordinary Day" - guitars by Jeffrey Whitehead. 
"Marble Madness Medley" based on music by Brad Fuller and Hal Canon for the 80s Atari arcade game "Marble Madness."
Album art by Greg and Jeffrey Whitehead. Photography by Maria Whitehead. 

Please follow the link and download the album, or just listen to it streamed at the top of this post and let me know what you think.  You can even share the album from the Bandcamp site itself.

Album Cover

Thanks to my wife Maria who took my picture, and my brother Jeffrey who graciously lent some extra design assistance, I think I've got an album cover.

Still looking at different possible distribution methods.  At the moment, I'm most likely going to set up a site and offer direct downloads from a page there.  However, it'd be really cool to actually have a physical CD.

New album coming out...

(Not my studio.)

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I now have enough songs that I have created that I am ready to turn them into an album.

My goal now is to go back to tweak and fix each of the songs and get them all ready to put together and release as a full length album.  I don't know if I'll go so far as to produce a CD.  I don't know if I'll even turn it into something commercial.  I'm still trying to figure all of that out.

I also need to produce an album cover.  What good is an album if there isn't some type of artwork that defines its contents?

What I do have, at the moment, is the preliminary album title and initial track-list .  You can find all these songs throughout this blog or on one of my Soundcloud sets here.

The potential title, is perhaps obviously: Another Fine Mess
The track list is anticipated to be:
01. Black Rock
02. Another Fine Mess
03. A Fan's Lament
04. Video Life
05. Saturday Night
06. The Ballad of Bruce
07. Turn Your Back on the World
08. Ordinary Day
09. Infinite In Between
10. Run For Your Life
11. My Dreams
12. Today's The Day
13. Marble Madness Medley*

(*This is intended to be a bonus track since it's not an original song, but merely an arrangement.)

That's every song I've finished in the past two+ years minus "Don't Want A Love Song" which sadly never quite worked for me.

So here I go to make an album.  Let's see what happens from here.

Song: The Balad of Bruce

Greg Whitehead - The Ballad Of Bruce by GWGumby

Gather 'round and listen to the tale of Bruce "Ash" Campbell and his battle against the Army of Darkness. Bruce has to struggle against his complicated problems when all he wants is just to take some time off to enjoy the simpler things in life.

This synthpop song was inspired by the events of "The Army of Darkness" coupled with the musical stylings of some of my favorite late 80s synth-based bands such as Underworld (mk 1), Stan Ridgeway, and even a little Martini Ranch. It also includes the debut of my first acoustic instrument, the jaw-harp.

The song started out as a synth improv a couple months ago, just some playing around to see if anything could emerge. Initially it was just bass and rhythm. I had a melody more or less in mind, but needed to find some lyrical inspiration. I'm not sure what made me decide to couple the music with "Army of Darkness," but right when the first line came to mind, "Crash land on a real long day," the idea of Ash literally falling from the sky and crashing onto the ground coupled itself to the music and that's when I knew I had a story to work with.

So next I recorded some initial vocals and a few synth bits. My initial idea was to do something akin to one of my all-time favorite bands, Underworld. Or, more specifically, Underworld Mk 1--the late 80's version of the techno band when they were more Alternative Synthpop closer to INXS. The chorus and overall rhythm is definitely a cross between two of my favorite songs of theirs, "Underneath the Radar" and "Stand Up." Also, the deeper vocals and a bit of the vocoder harmony hearkens back to them as well.

From this point I fumbled around trying to figure out where to go next. Playing around with different sounds, eventually I found that the more plunky, banjo-like sounds really worked with the music. I hadn't intended to go with the country jamboree-style feeling initially, but the idea amused me. It reminded me a bit of some other synth-pop-country crossovers like "Reach" from Martini Ranch and a lot of Stan Ridgeway's stuff such as "Camouflage" and "Goin' Southbound." So I pushed the song in that direction, adding the banjo, jaw harp, and some extra ambient noises to make it feel like it was being sung/performed around a campfire.

All the synth sounds came from the Korg M3, Roland JV-1080, and Roland FP-9 digital piano.

I now have enough music to put together an album. This will be the final song to flesh out a full release. Unless I get some golden inspiration in the next few weeks that forces itself onto the album. I'm not sure how I'm going to publish/release it. I'm still researching that part.

The video is basically a slideshow of screencaps from Army of Darkness that more or less match the lyrics of the song, especially the verse portions.

Song: Turn Your Back On The World

Greg Whitehead - Turn Your Back On The World by GWGumby
"Turn Your Back On The World" is an instrumental piece that I started writing on the piano over 15 years ago. I wrote it intending it to eventually turn into a full song, but never having the capability to do so (until recently), it eventually evolved into a solo piano piece. Now I've finally taken that piano piece and added synthesizer, drums, and other various noises to make it into something a bit bigger and more exciting.

This piece is inspired by instrumental 70s rock songs by artists such as Genesis, Elton John, ELO, ELP, and Yes mixed with more modern artists such as Air, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and Chateau Marmont.

The sounds on this song come from my digital piano, the Korg R3, and the Roland JV-1080 plus a nice acoustic-sounding drum plug-in.

Once again, here's a static YouTube video alternative.

Song: Today's The Day

Greg Whitehead - Today's The Day by GWGumby
Here's my most recent track for the new year of 2011. It's a little happy spacey synthpop song called "Today's The Day." There's no real story or background behind the song, it's just some ideas and musical phrases that organically emerged while playing around on my musical equipment that sort of capture the hopeful feeling of entering a new year with a sci-fi slant.

I tend to struggle with lyrics maybe coming up with one or two ideas quickly and then struggling to stretch it out to a full song. This song, though, seemed simple enough that I felt like the few ideas that came first were enough to sustain the rest of the song. I wanted the journey to be through the music and harmonies rather than the lyrics, hence the repetition or the lyrics.

While I was making this song, I was thinking it would be a song my wife would really like: a little softer, a little dreamier, and full of arpeggios (she likes those!) She did like it. She says when she hears the line "And when you see us flying overhead" that she pictures people with their arms outstretched flying through the air. So that inspired some of the image for the YouTube video below.

As always, the song was written and performed by me using my standard equipment. All synth sounds in this one come from the Korg R3. The rest from my piano and from plug-ins to my recording software.

Song: My Dreams

Greg Whitehead - My Dreams by GWGumby
Here's one of the things I did over my Christmas vacation. I've got a few more songs in the queue and I'm hoping sometime this year to collect them together and turn them all into an album.

Anyway, this song is called "My Dreams." Once again written, recorded, and sung by me (Greg). The inspiration and idea behind this song came from watching shows like "American Idol" where the people there are so convinced that their dreams of fame and fortune are the most important thing in the world and they'll do anything to make them come true. From that point of view, this song sort of emerged gradually throughout the year in my head and until I finally recorded it last week.

All synth sounds come from the Korg R3. Piano came from my digital piano, and drums from a software plug-in.

Here's the static YouTube video of the same song.