Click here to download.
One of the many projects I’ve got bouncing around in my head is a Christmas album. In fact, I’ve held onto the longing to do a Christmas album for 20+ years now. I’ve got a track list, a brief description of the style/characteristics of each song, full lyric sheets, partial album credits and even some original music written for the project. About the only thing I don’t have planned out yet is the title/cover art for the album… pretty out of character for me, actually. ANYWAY…
In contrast to my planned method of recording & releasing albums one song at a time to eventually flesh out an entire album, I’d entertained the notion of recording this unrealized Christmas album in it’s entirety, and releasing it as a completed project.
Yeah, right.
I am nowhere near patient enough to sit on completed recordings while I work on the rest of the album. When I do something, I’m pretty proud of it. And I want to share it with the universe as soon as possible. I’m funny that way.
So realistically, I’m looking at a year-long recording project to do this Christmas project AT BEST.
With that in mind, about two weeks ago I got a sudden urge. I REALLY wanted to crank out my planned version of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing. And release it on or around Christmas Day. Insane? Well, considering the amount of time each project has been taking me, absolutely yes. But since you never know until you try, I loaded up the DAW and had at it.
I did several things differently on this recording, and I’m pretty thoroughly thrilled with the results. The rhythm guitars are a blend of my mic’ed live rig (as described on the equipment page) with Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig. I used a new plugin for mastering called Kotelnikov which dramatically reduced my mastering time.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy my recording. I am totally in love with Christmas music, and I hope this reflects that.
Merry Christmas, and God bless!