Summer CD Collaboration 1

I am pleased to announce that this summer, I will be collaborating with my good friends, Emily Szal and Neil Chaban, to write and record an album of OUR music! Unlike my personal music endeavors, this isn’t a contemporary classical music album: instead, it is a pop-influenced album of inspirational, spiritual, uplifting music.

Emily Szal is a very talented singer that I met while at West Chester University. Here, she’s a Music Education major on violin, but she has been singing all of her life. Last year, she was a member of the music team for the annual Center for Spiritual Living National Conference at Asilomar in California. She is returning to the team this year.

Neil Chaban is also a student at WCU, and is a Music Education major on piano. He wrote some great songs, and has brought his years of experience as a church musician to the album. Singable, memorable, and uplifting, his style of writing was perfect for the project.

The CD is being produced by Daniel Nahmod, a California-based musician/producer with several CDs of his own.  We are extremely fortunate to be working with him, and to have the opportunity to use his knowledge and experience in this field.

As a composer for several of the songs on the CD, I would like to talk a bit about the process. Over a two-week period, the three of us worked to write the remaining songs and to perfect the ones already written. Working with such time restraints, we were forced to make frequent and rapid decisions, ones that would immediately shape the final product.  Unfortunately, for a long time, we had no idea what the final product would even look like.

As part of the process, we created a demo CD with the tracks that, albeit primitive recordings, represented the general direction we wanted for each track on the album.  Emily would sing as I played piano, and on some tracks, I recorded MIDI instruments (synth, bass, drums- even a sax!) to help us understand exactly what we wanted to happen. As the demo tracks neared completion, we began to discover the shape of the album, writing more songs and abandoning others in the interest of creating a unified CD.

Original Demo CD,
completed June 1, 2013

In late July, Emily (and hopefully myself!) will be flying to California to record the vocals for the CD.  Until then, the three of us are practicing and perfecting the performance of each individual song.  It’s a lot of work, but we are confident that it’s all going to make a more professional, more polished final product.  We couldn’t be having more fun doing it, either.

The last major hurdle in this project is the funding.  To reach this goal, we have set up a joint Kickstarter.  Kickstarter is an online funding tool for small (and large) independent projects from around the world.  Donors make pledges to worthy projects during the campaign, and at the end, the funds are securely delivered to the creators of the project.  In addition, backers of a project are recognized by the creator through incentives at different levels of contribution.  We have decided to offer signed CDs, “Patron” acknowledgements, song-books, and private in-house concerts to those who help us by donating.  Please consider donating to this project, and together we can create something truly special!

Working on the Demo CD,
recording on a MIDI Pad.

It’s certainly going to be a busy summer for all of this as this project moves forward.  In the mean time, check out this preview of a track from the album, Love Swirls Around. This was the first song written.  Wish us all the best of luck, and please think about DONATING to our project!