An acoustic album made up of songs, both new and old, presented the way that I most often play them, by myself.

12 MP3 Songs in this album (40:28) !
Related styles: Rock: Acoustic, Folk: Alternative Folk, Mood: Quirky

People who are interested in
should consider this download.


Details:
Iâve said before, that every time I write a song, I think itâs going to be my last. That no more will follow. Eventually, though, another one pops out of nowhere. And 2010 has seen several written back-to-back.
So of course, I got the itch to record them. To explore them, because I felt like they wouldnât really be finished until I could press play on some kind of electronic device and hear it played back to me; with electric guitars, drums, bass, and any other instrument the song ended up needing. I saw the recording process as a journey, as an adventure. One I was eagerly awaiting.
Our previous recording set-up had been disassembled, and when we tried to re-assemble, we found some very important pieces missing in action. Eventually, after lots of customer reviews, and a couple of months of consideration, we purchased a Zoom R16.
Then we had to learn how to use it.
After about a week of playing around with it, I decided Iâd rather start with an acoustic album. Figured Iâd need to crawl before I could walk. But also because I wanted documentation of the songs the way they sound now. The way they sound originally, consisting only of my voice and my guitar. And really, weâre still a good ways from being able to record drums again, simply âcause theyâre in storage at the moment, and it would not be a safe thing to keep them here.
I didnât want to wait, though. I didnât want to act as if I had all this time, because thatâs something weâre not guaranteed.
Four songs into the project, the sudden death of a long-time friend only intensified the urgency of doing it now as opposed to waiting.
It also had a hand in the name. I was flipping through the dictionary when I stumbled upon raw. Donât get me wrong, I knew what the word meant, Iâd just never read the definitions before. And it felt right. I was especially drawn to the third definition, as found in my Merriam-Webster (2004): â3.having the surface abraded or irritated â. It seemed to describe the state of my soul during the days between August 25th and August 30th. Definitely describes its state during my most recent trip to Davidâs (da-veedâs).
I recorded guitar and vocals at the same time. I didnât use a metronome. The first five songs feature an old and probably purchased-at-a-garage-sale microphone, but for the other seven, I used a new SHURE Beta 57A. It also took me five songs to realize I should see what recording the guitar through an XLR cable would sound like instead of a regular cable. The only effect I used was the compression available in the Cubase software, âcause everyone I know, who knows anything about recording said it was an absolute necessity. I also adjusted the EQ in Cubase. *
To a professional, it probably sounds like amateurish. But to me, it just sounds like me.
Anyway this is Raw Mego; uncooked, unprocessed, a little sore, without much experience (not at recording myself, anyway), and a little coarse (vulgar). **


*A BIG, BIG thank you to Nails, for pointing out that I had to actually turn the compression on, if I wanted the adjustments I was making to do anything.
**Just for the record, I believe that in many, many situations the way a person says something holds more weight than the words which are actually being said. Sometimes a cuss word is just a word; its meaning and use no better or worse than the other 14,999,999 entries in Merriam-Websterâs citation files. But thatâs just what I believe; Iâm just drawing my line in the sand. Feel free to draw your own