Behind the Scenes: Banjo and I

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“Silent” is the song that made me get a banjo.

I’d written the song for piano and voice, but I had some orchestral parts in mind also. Strings, flute, clarinet, timpani, french horn, pipe organ and so on. So this song was playing in my head for a while, and one day I was just sitting around in my room when suddenly, still in my head, I started hearing these notes plucking along with the piano chords in the beginning. I liked it. I didn’t know what instrument that sound came from, but I wanted it. Was it a mandolin? No. It bugged me for a few days before I finally figured out that the instrument that would provide that sound is a banjo.

I’d never held a banjo before, but I then started looking into banjos to see if it was something I might be able to play and if it would make sense for me to get one. I ended up getting this extremely lightweight one along with a couple introductory lesson books. It wasn’t that easy finding banjo accessories tailored to small humans, but I was able to get some wee fingerpicks along with a strap that I could pull all the way up to my head if I wanted to. Here I play for you “Worried Man Blues” as it is written in the book Splitting the Licks, which is what I’m looking at in this video.

The banjo came in handy for “This Is It,” also. As for the rest of “Silent,” I simplified the arrangement a lot from what I’d originally been working on. There were a couple songs on the album that I’d made elaborate orchestral arrangements for using a sample library I have, but they sounded too much like fake instruments once I recorded real piano. The other song this happened with is “Desperate Times,” which I wrote with bassoon and english horn playing the counterpoint in the second verse. So I played all those parts on clarinet instead… which I’ll get to in another post.

Behind the Scenes… Part 2

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One of the recurring themes that kept coming up in the process of making this album, which was a process that spanned about six years, was that I didn’t know what I wanted it to sound like overall. This was due to a combination of factors, mostly these: 1) I write a lot of songs that are kind of ridiculous in their variety (this album doesn’t even get into the ”jazzy” stuff or the heavier “rock”-type stuff) and 2) I was terrified that people would think whatever I did was awful and I’d get laughed off the planet. It would’ve been simpler to just not do it, aside from the fact that not doing it made me feel useless and terrible about myself. I don’t like feeling useless and terrible, so I had to figure out how to get this thing done in a way that made sense and didn’t just sound like a bunch of random songs stuck together.

I don’t think of myself as a very good electronica programmer, even though I do it anyway. It’s something I have a hard time feeling confident about because there are a lot of electronica whizzes out there, and I ain’t one of them. I listen to some of them, like Röyksopp. I have no idea how they do this, for example: Vision One
I imagine whatever they do involves a lot of gear, and I have very little gear, as you can see in the previous entry.

So anyway, It’s Always the Quiet One starts off with the electronica song “Wasting.” I won’t go into detail about what all of my songs are about, but this one gets the detail treatment. This was an odd song for me, in that I wrote it very quickly and the production also came together very quickly, and I was happy with the sound after a relatively short period of time. I had just gotten Fever Ray’s album, and it was in the process of blowing my mind. That happens every so often. For me, the Fever Ray album has the perfect combination of being kind of weird and different, but at the same time I find it accessible, melodic and emotionally expressive. Those are usually all the things that come together to make me really get into a particular song, band, album, whatever.

It put me in that mindset where I start thinking, well, these people made this album that sounds weird, but it’s awesome, and a lot of people actually like it. What am I really worried about? I don’t even know. But I’d been afraid of doing it for so long that, even though I felt kind of liberated, I didn’t know what to do with that feeling. I had so much I wanted to say but no idea how to say it, since I’d kept it to myself for so long. All I knew was I’d spent a lot of time worrying about it, and those are years I’ll never get back. And that’s how “Wasting” happened.

Behind the Scenes… Part 1

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I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how I made It’s Always the Quiet One, if I really have a piano in my bedroom, etc. So I thought I’d start a new series where I talk a little about the making of the album. To start, I’ll talk about some of the general stuff, but in future posts I’ll get into some song specifics.

This is what my studio looks like on a good day:

So that’s one half of my bedroom and the computer on which I made the album. That’s the piano that I recorded for it, and a few more instruments are strewn around the area. If you turn around, you’ll see a bed, a dresser, and a garment rack with clothes hanging on it because I don’t have a closet. You can see this in the video I have up on YouTube of my “Long Black Veil” cover. I think I have pictures of my two previous studio bedrooms somewhere, but I still have to find those.

You might notice that I don’t have a mixing board. The program I use for all my tracking and production is Cakewalk’s Sonar, and the synths used on the album are ones that came with the program as well as others. I’m currently using 8.5 Producer. They came out with X1 while I was in the middle of making this album, and I haven’t upgraded yet. My computer is a Maingear Remix that I got about three years ago. It came with an M-Audio Delta 1010LT sound card that I can plug microphones into directly, but I have a separate preamp for condenser mics. So anyway, my mixing is done within Sonar using my mouse (this is tedious). The keyboard to the right of my computer chair is a Yamaha SY35 that was purchased in 1991, I think. I didn’t really use it at all for this album except for the MIDI piano in “Red Wings,” which I recorded in my last apartment bedroom, so that’s why it has stuff all over it as well as underneath it. All the MIDI/synth programming was also done within Sonar using my mouse (this is also tedious).

This is the llama that watches over me and makes sure I don’t do anything it wouldn’t do:

This concludes Episode # 1 of Behind the Scenes with Lauren Edman.

Here it is

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And here we have my first full-length solo album, It’s Always the Quiet One, available on CD through CDBaby and also available on iTunes. If CDBaby says it’s out of stock, they’ll be getting more in within a week.

So there you have it. After six years of talking about it, my album is now a thing that exists.

New things

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My album release date is this coming Tuesday, March 27! I’ll post links of where it can be purchased once it’s up.

In news that is less exciting but still news, this is a new website. At the moment it’s got all the same content as the old website, but it’s much easier to update now and has more potential features. I’m still learning about how it all works and figuring out what all I’d like to put on it, but there you have it.

Previous News

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March 16, 2012

I posted four songs from It’s Always the Quiet One on SoundCloud. You can listen to them if you are so inclined.

February 29, 2012

Okay everybody. It’s Always the Quiet One will be released on March 27, 2012. I’m releasing it through CDBaby, but it’ll be up on all the big digital music stores, such as iTunes, as well as on CD. If you like CDs, this one has real liner notes with lyrics, photos, and a beautiful cover painting. You know why? Because I hate it when I buy a CD and it doesn’t have that stuff in the liner notes. I like reading lyrics without having to go to sketchy lyrics sites that try to get you to sign up for their ringtone scam and make you look at ads of random girls with tight pants. I’m going to be updating this site with some new stuff to look at and listen to over the next few weeks, but for now I just wanted to let everybody know that YES! There is an actual album that is actually being released on a definite date. And for that, I will break out this emoticon. :D

December 15, 2011

For Every Story Untold has its first show since February this Monday, December 19th, at Mercury Lounge in New York City. More information and tickets are available here.

We also have a newly mixed studio version of “Deepest Cracks” up here that I personally am rather excited about:
Deepest Cracks by foreverystoryuntold

In other news, my solo album, It’s Always the Quiet One, is in its very final stages – mastering and liner notes. While it will be complete this month, the release date will be early next year. It’s been a long time coming. I wrote all the songs, recorded, arranged, programmed, mixed, and played all the instruments myself. It is pretty much exactly what I set out to do from the beginning, what I started babbling about six years ago, but was only truly able to accomplish this year. I am excited to share it with the world, and I hope you will find it to be worth the wait. :) I am already looking forward to making another one.

September 15, 2011

My album is very close to being finished. So close that the cover art is now being worked on by an actual artist and is no longer only something I am wistfully picturing in my head. I just have to finish up with the production of a couple more songs, record one more, tweak the mixes, and then send it to mastering. Ay!

During Hurricane Irene a few weeks back, I made my first ever YouTube performance recording. It’s a cover of “Long Black Veil” in which I do some very rudimentary banjo playing. Yeah, that’s my bedroom/recording studio (the studio things are on the other side of the room). That is the natural, undisturbed habitat of Lauren Edman.

July 11, 2011

A couple weeks ago I posted another song that will be on my upcoming album. The song is called “Silent” and it is on my Facebook page. By the way, you do not need to be a Facebook member in order to listen to the songs I’ve been posting. They’re open for anyone to listen to. I’ve just been posting them there so as to not suck up bandwidth here. By the way, in “Silent” you will find me playing clarinet.

So, after doing a lot more work and thinking, I have some more vague specifics on the nature of this thing. For a long time, I’ve been going a little nutty trying to come up with some sort of unifying “sound” to make my album sound more like an album the way albums tend to do, you know, being in a genre and all, but the fact is the idea of sticking to one genre for a whole album makes me want to die of boredom. I don’t mind when other people do that, and in fact I find some of those people highly enjoyable to listen to, but it doesn’t work for the music I write. What this has come to mean is that, as opposed to making a bunch of songs all in the same genre, the album ties together more thematically than sonically. It’ll be pretty clear when listening to it…. I think.

For the release date, I’ve decided on October now because the music ain’t all that summery. As I get closer to the time with getting the mastering done, artwork, and the actual manufacturing and pressing of the disc (which will include liner notes and song lyrics, ’cause I like that in a CD), I can be more specific about the date.

For those of you who know me from For Every Story Untold, don’t worry – we have been on a little bit of a hiatus due to personal developments, but that’s still very much in the works also. We’re hoping to get more shows going within the next few months as well as the band album.

May 6, 2011

I’ve been hard at work on my album, and as proof I offer you one of the songs that will be on it, “Slate.” It is now posted on my Facebook page.

I am aiming for a late summer/early fall release for the album. It will have at least ten tracks on it. The most recent song I’ve started production work on is “She’s Not Here,” which I wrote maybe three years ago while living in my very tiniest bedroom. Yesterday I spent the night laying down some piano, guitar, banjo, and glockenspiel parts to see how I want it all to go together. This song will have some clarinet, too, but I haven’t yet had the nerve to face my forlorn, neglected clarinet. I’ll get that done in the next few days.

I can offer some details about the overall production of the album. Some songs will have mostly electronic production. The first track, called “Wasting,” is all electronica. Others have only acoustic instruments, such as the aforementioned “She’s Not Here” and also “This Is It.” Others, like “Slate,” will have a mix of both. So yeah, it’s going to be an eclectic album, but 100% Lauren Edman. (With the possible exception of someone else playing some lap steel for me. TBD.)

February 15, 2011

The last few months have been really busy. I performed with For Every Story Untold three times in New York City, and now we’re working on a full album. The Hideout EP is still available on iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, and probably anywhere else you like getting music files from. I’ll be working on my own album at the same time as the band one, and hopefully both will be done this year. Exciting and new!

December 4, 2010

For Every Story Untold is headlining at The Mercury Lounge in New York City on December 5! Come see us bring our songs to the stage for the first time.

Sun 12/05 @ Mercury Lounge
217 East Houston Street
New York, NY 10002

We’ve got a couple other NYC dates coming up in January and February.

October 17, 2010

Now that there is actually some news regarding Lauren Edman, the news page has been reinstated.

To bring everyone up to date, here is what is currently happening as well as what has happened recently: I became the singer of a band called For Every Story Untold. We released our debut EP onto the internet in August. I have some clips up on my Discography page. Links to buy the EP, or to become our friend on your social network of choice, are on the band’s website.

We’re gearing up to play a show in New York City in the coming months. That will also be posted on the band site, but I’ll probably mention it here too.

People who’ve been following me since the days of Sleepthief‘s The Dawnseeker are aware that, for a few years there, every so often I would make updates on my previous news page about some mysterious solo album that would be coming out at some mysterious time. I’m still working on that, the actual news portion of this being that I’ve finally reached a point where I am creating things that still sound good to me 24 hours later. That being the case, I’ll be posting stuff of my own up here relatively soon. I plan on finishing a full-length solo album in 2011.