Thank You!

I have been really feeling the love from all the Tears For Fears and Psych fans. Thank you all so much for all the big internet hugs! I heart Curt and James, too. Both of them, along with everyone around them, especially Arlene, Maggie, Dulé and Tim have been real game changers in my newly-started music career. It is a wonderful feeling to know people believe in you. :)

XO
Janice

Happy MerryNewYearsBirthdaysmas, Curt!

A few days after Curt Smith's 50th birthday, I said to James Roday, "Man, we should have done a song for him!" Well, that idea eventually turned into a real thing. James chose the song, I started with a first draft, James added input, and we just went back and forth via email about our ideas 'til we had something that we were happy with. This song is, of course, all vocal. If you had told me two years ago that I would be doing a trip-hop a cappella song with James Roday for Curt Smith, I would have laughed... HARD.

The plan was to meet up before Christmas to record James's vocals but Christmas was just too hectic, so we moved it to January. Yesterday, in fact. And I had this *silly idea* that my five year old son Jaden and I would pick up James at the airport without incident (He was SO excited to meet James from "The Smart Man Show"), and we would have a relaxed, fun day at the recording studio. The Gods had other plans. As I got to the airport, my son barfed up banana alll over the back seat. Not being prepared for THAT, I had nothing to clean him up with. So we parked and I took him into an airport bathroom. Then we picked up James in my freshly-barfed-in car. WELCOME TO SAN JOSE! Jaden continued barfing all the way back home. I left James to wander my house and take in the myriad of odd collectibles while I hosed down the car and kid. James was SUCH a good sport about the whole thing!

And THEN we went to Bill Hare's recording studio. (And Jaden barfed a little.)

The actual recording session was smooth sailing. Everything sounded great and James's vocals were perfect. The mastering took no time at all thanks to Bill and visiting engineer Danny Ozment's lightning-speed ProTools skillz. Meanwhile, the newly recovered Jaden was happily playing with Bill's cats and asking James, "Can you stay with us for a zillion days?" and "OH HEY! Where's GUS!!"

"Mom, do we have to give the Smart Man back? I want to keep him!" Well, Jaden, I think we'll let James go home this time. He's probably had enough fun for one day. :/

So, here at last is our song for Curt Smith!

We love you, Curt!! Thank you for being such an awesome and inspirational person in our lives. You *could* choose to be the type of famous rock star who doesn't interact with fans but you embrace us, care about the new people you meet, and continuously put good energy into the universe. We are all the richer for having you in our lives.
XO
Janice and James

Thanks to Revital for making a behind the scenes video out of the footage I sent her!

Enrolling In A Job Training Program

After months of being in the dark about how much unemployment time I have left, I finally got through to a representative. It turns out, if you ask the automated system to tell you your last payment received & go through a few hoops, there's an option to reach a representative that ACTUALLY WORKS (3 minute wait!) unlike the rest of the options to reach a representative throughout their ridiculous rat maze of BS that leads to being hung up on every time. You can actually hear the automated voice flipping you off as it says, "please try again later."

I have been so worried about the future and upset by the idea that I'd have to give up music to work a desk job again. It's been my lifelong dream to be a musician and, after giving up on myself for years, I've come this far with music in just the last two years. It would be devastating to give up now. But between full-time work, commuting, cooking, cleaning and being a fully engaged parent, there just simply is NOT enough time to fit in a music career.

And even when I resigned myself to going back to my old life's routine, I couldn't get a job. I have skills. I scored 100% on my temping agency tests for all levels of office and software skills. I've worked full time since I was 17- fast food, walmarts, law offices, video game developers, universitys, non profits, Fortune 500 corporations... I've been a graphic designer, web designer, database designer... I've scraped the gum off the bottom of Carl's Jr booths while taking drive-through orders at the same time. I'm not a slacker. I am currently the hardest working unemployed person you ever met. But I can't get anyone to even respond to my resumes or emails.

In the back of my mind, there is a tape on automatic loop that says, "How are you going to survive on zero dollars? What happens when we're out of food, money and options? What are you going to do!!!!" I'm 36 years old and went from having a good paying job for years, to now- dangerously close to being unable to care for my 5 year old son. He went without insurance or doctor visits for over a year. I still have no insurance. It wakes me in the middle of the night and makes me search craigslist for jobs. It keeps me working on my album 'til 3am almost every night hoping that *something* will happen when it's done. It will get picked up by someone... It will get played somewhere important... *Something* about what I'm doing will matter to someone besides just me- and it will bring me a little money to survive. I hope. I hope. I hope.

Two years ago for Christmas, I asked for ProTools software and it changed my life. Going back to music and blindly stumbling into what turned into The Smiths Project was the best thing that ever happened to me on a personal and emotional level. This year for Christmas, my family got together and bought me a new Kaoss pad to replace the one that broke right before the last gig I did. (Good thing I can pull a pretty great spontaneous piano/vocal version out of my ass when needed!) I also bought a basic version of Ableton Live with a controller pad to see if I can figure out a live performance version of these songs that normally take months to create in ProTools. I haven't even been able to connect the gear yet. There's just too much going on and I can't physically do anything else. And in the back of my mind, I am constantly worrying about getting a job.


Things have been stressful. A few months back, I received a letter from the Unemployment Office that said, "Your unemployment benefits have been exhausted. You are not eligible for any further benefits at this time." It came as a complete surprise because I was still within the 99 allotted weeks. I couldn't stop crying. When Josh came home from work, I couldn't tell him without bursting into tears. We went to Target and the supermarkets near by and I started applying for jobs that very night. The next few days, we didn't talk very much- we were too worried about the future. Two weeks later, a letter from Unemployment showed up asking me to fill out my weekly claim form. I did, and the unemployment money was somehow, thankfully, back. But ever since then, I've been worried about when the next "surprise! You're SCREWED!" letter would arrive. Still applying for jobs...

Back to this morning. The HUMAN BEING at the Unemployment Office explained to me that I was finishing the unemployment claim from years ago (long before there were 99 weeks available, but somehow those weeks had been extended.) And THAT is what just ended. In fact, my unemployment claim from October 2010 (when I lost my job) has *just now kicked in* and I have 99 weeks to look for work & join a job training program. I, honestly, nearly fainted. I've been given the incredible gift of time to change my life. A chance to live my dream of being a full time musician.

It is with great big tears of relief that I am excited to announce:
Ladies and gentlemen, I have just enrolled myself in the Janice Is A Touring Musician job training program.

I can feel my shoulders relaxing from their upright-and-locked position as I type.

The Making of Trees, my collaboration with Curt Smith

Last year was an amazing year of singing and meeting new wonderful people. It was a real dream come true for me to meet Curt Smith. I was introduced to Curt by James Roday (another great person I met last year), who asked me one day if it was ok to show my music to Curt. As if I'd say no! A month or so later, Curt and I had a chance to hang out for a few hours in San Francisco. We probably spent about 2 minutes of that talking about Trees. Curt basically said, "just do what you do" and his only direction was that he wouldn't mind it being a bit darker than the original. I decided to make it haunting and ethereal but drums just kept popping up in my head and over time it naturally evolved into a sort of haunting synth pop dreamscape.

It was an absolute honor to work on this song although it didn't seem real until I heard Curt's vocals on it. And of course I immediately burst into tears when I heard it. Are you serious? That's CURT SMITH'S VOICE and mine- together!! I still find it hard to believe. I still think of myself as an isolated housewife/mother who sits in the soundproof closet singing to herself. (Oh wait, I am.) But lately my voice has had the privilege to travel to places I've never dreamed of thanks to the success of last year's The Smiths Project, and now thanks to the amazing Curt Smith!


How Trees Was Made

I spent about three months on the song from start to finish. All drums, bass, synths, etc. were made from samples of my voice edited to sound a particular way. I generally never stop to document my process (there's just no time, man!) but this week I decided to go back through the track to pull out some of the elements to explain how I did it.

The intro loops were created by singing along with the original song. I'd sing a melody I liked and then turn it off and record a different melody onto a separate track and so on. I purposely turned off each previous loop so that I wouldn't be influenced by it. And because I'm singing so much so fast, I never remember what I've just recorded! When I had several loops recorded, I turned them all on at once to see what it sounded like. It's my small way of following John Cage's principals for music by chance. Here are a few individual loops, then all of them together.


I used layer upon layer of voice, created quickly by singing each line on a loop until I built up an entire choir of sound. There is a separate loop of Oooo sounds the bend up to a higher note. Each melody you hear was layered a minimum of 5 times to create a full sound. As my son says, "That's a lot of mammas."



For Synths, I sang the melody I wanted, but then I took just one small snippet of each note and placed the notes individually. I set each note's volume to include an attack, sustain/decay/release just like you would if creating a sound on a keyboard, then added a fuzz-wah effect and delay. Here is the clean sound, then added fuzz-wah, then added delay for the final sound.



Bass notes are created in a similar way to the synths, except I drop down the melody a few octaves to put it in a bass range.

Drums were created with basic beatboxing and then each sound is chopped into little pieces. I generally cut off the beginning of each sound to give it a strong clean attack. The drums are placed into a pattern that I copy and paste through the whole song. Then I go back and edit volumes, add variations to the pattern, fills, etc... I don't have any sampling gear or trigger pads, so everything is done manually. Here is a sample of drums and the bass guitar sound.


For the break, I wanted to give it an ethereal angelic feeling a la My Bloody Valentine. I created a choir of vocals and turned them on/off every 16th note for rhythm and variation of tones. I then ran allllll of that through reverb like woa. And then ran THAT through distortion to give it a really washed out wall of sound.


With all this in mind, here is the completed track.

Patchwork Life Kickstarter!

Voice as synthesizers

Here is a clip of what one of my vocal synths looks like in ProTools. Just a few of the 30-ish layers that make up a song.

I start by humming a very high, pinched, thin note into a looper which records for 2 seconds and then continuously layers it to form a solid full pitch. I put those pitches into ProTools (shown here) and manually set the volume of each pitch shown in black lines. You can visually see the notes "turn on" as the cursor moves along the timeline. Each track is generally one pitch each, just like on a keyboard, otherwise things get confusing quick! Once I've set the volumes just where I want them, all of these individual tracks get bounced down to one stereo track labeled Synth and is then mixed into the song.

It begins

I'm sitting here drinking my morning coffee from "my spot" on the dining room table as my 4 year old son yells at Dora the Explorer, "The TAKE-AWAY trick! Subtracto!" and I wonder... where to begin this blog? First let me say, I've just realized last night that the far end of this corner booth is going flat. It's been my office chair for months and it seems that I'll soon be sitting on nothing but the hard wood under the sad, sad foam that used to be here. I hope it's all worth it in the end, though. It's getting nearer to the time that will tell.

The new music I've been editing is made entirely of INTENSELY edited vocals (and in a few cases heavily edited piano samples as well). This album is more of a conceptual art piece than 11 pop songs but I wonder on a daily basis if this concept will be lost on many listeners who just think it sounds like odd synthesizers. None of the parts are simply played and recorded. Each note is a sample of my voice, pieced together to form a melody. The attack, sustain, and release of each note, volume, panning left and right... all created by hand. So, I think it's important as the songs are nearing completion, to pick you up in my car and take you along for the ride. You must know, there will be lots of stops along the way, the car is not registered and smells like burnt crayons, and there will be a continuous running commentary from The King of Random in the back seat.

As I edit the music, I will post snippets of tracks and sounds that make up the music and let you hear things as I hear them every day, in pieces, in groupings, all together, singled out. I'll post lyrics, pictures and daily events relevant to making the music. I'll let you in on what it's like to be an unemployed housewife with BIG DREAMS who's raising a 4 year old and attempting to make a unique solo album while keeping the household insanity down to a category-one hurricane.

"Oh OH!! Mom!! Wait, I have a great idea! Let's ARGUE!!!"

Time to pour more coffee, get Jaden his cheerios, and fire up Pro Tools. Same as it ever was...

Want to hear my first release of 2011?

This is a Tom Waits cover, requested by Paul Campbell as his Kickstarter backer reward. Paul has been so amazingly supportive of The Smiths Project Box Set and I was honored to do this song for him. I also thought it was incredibly sweet that he gave the song to his wife for her birthday, which was also the due date for their new baby. Paul is a really admirable man and I'm proud to have him along Curt Smith and James Roday as the main producers of The Smiths Project box set. He helped make the box set a lot more amazing than it would have been. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Paul!

I was also thrilled that it was a Tom Waits cover because I'm a huge fan of his. I love his music, acting, his garage full of weird homemade instruments... Totally my type of guy. I'm not sure he ever imagined his song sounding so upbeat, but if he ever hears it, I do hope he likes it. He actually lives not too far from me. Perhaps I should ask him out for coffee* to see what he thinks? I'm sure we could spend hours talking about our experimental approach to music...




*To be clear, "ask him out for coffee" = stalk him outside the impenetrable fortress that surrounds his home, wither away after a week with no food, and hopefully end up as a human bone xylophone in his music studio.

First new original song has begun

I have a list of about 25 songs that I would like to do this year. For some reason the very last one on the list called out to me today and so that is where I began. I find that I work much better if I have five songs in rotation at a time. If I get stuck or lose my inspiration on one song, I always have another one to work on. My first priority is the collaboration with Curt Smith, but it's nice to know there are several songs in motion.

These songs have been floating around in my head for years- and some of them have even made it to various stages of recording, but they've never been given the attention they needed to be fully realized. This is finally about to change.

I'm excited to be working on original material this year and I'm curious to see where the music goes now that I am working on my own, without the guidance of fleshed out (and genius!) music as prompts. The melody is now free to go where it pleases...

Bring on 2011

We all know what my new year's resolution was last year. This year promises to be new and exciting adventures in singing songs you've never heard. I have 20 songs on my list so far and an expected CD of new material due out mid year.

I also have The Smiths Project Box Set which is set to be released in March so get your advanced copy by supporting the kickstarter campaign at the $60 level HERE.

So, with 2011 right around the corner, I'm rearranging my studio, setting up keyboards and taking over more of the room as my music studio. It seems I have outgrown the closet! Look out world, here I come!