Excellent review by Gene, colorful like the music itself.

Greg paid the greatest compliment. "The Stick is a "high-speed idea conduit", an improviser's dream axe...". Immodestly, I know this to be true. It was the impetus for the creation of the special two-handed technique on my 9-string guitar (back in 1969).

This seminal trio, besides the musical mileage that lies ahead, defines the Stick's role in an improvising ensemble - very close to my heart (it is my heart). His "idea conduit" has full control of the harmonic element (chord progressions from the bass on up) as well as mood, texture, orchestration, counterpoint and full out lead solos.

And The Stick is a time machine, interacting so nicely with the percussive nuances of Caputo's drums. Am I envious? (You bet!)

Just received today this small package from SE... Pretty excited!!!

I just bought this via iTunes and I'm really enjoying it. Sort of like a more stick oriented and more free-improv based version of Cloud About Mercury. I like the production values a lot, too.

Emmett, My thanks for your kind words, and I'm always thinking about you and your improvisational instincts when I play, especially in this context. Your early work with Les DeMerle is especially inspiring in this regard. The Stick/drums/horn combination is the best kind of musically equilateral triangle. Each player has such distinctive sonic space to to work in, we can hang out on different harmonic and rhythmic planes and still mesh.

Steven, Thanks for downloading the music. Just out of curiosity, do the last three pieces play as a continuous piece on your player or is there a "gap" between them? I know there is a way to set things up on your player so that there is no gap, and that's how these should play. I love "Cloud About Mercury". I think it's one of the best examples of the Stick sound, and Tony's playing is truly stellar. All four players on that record are such sonically distinctive musicians in their own right. What a great combination.

and Bruno, you are a true fan of Stick music in all its forms. I look forward to hearing what you think of the CD, and of Dale's, too.

Listened to the disc four times within the last 24
hours. What a great recording! A couple of tunes did not catch my attention, but there are a lot of nice ideas hidden everywhere. My favorite is still Tear Jay with that brilliant sad melody, Wave after Wave, Night Birds and Seared. Both colleagues are awesome in their respective places, are really first class musicians. Congrats Greg!
I had a couple of questions while listening yesterday evening...
Do you know how many different presets you used for that recording? Some of them are really beautiful!
And did you considered working in your studio on some of these improvisations to use some ideas developped during that recording and build some "real" tune?

Greg,

I bought the album directly from iTunes on my iPhone, and it is indeed gapless where it's supposed to be gapless. Should be the same on the computer, though I haven't tried yet. I'll try to add a review on iTunes when I get a chance: I work 2 jobs and work 7 days a week, so time is tight (that's life in the Bay Area)...

P.S. Which pickup are you using on the album? And was this recorded/mixed in Logic?

Hi Bruno,
I'm really glad to read your reaction. I think this music speaks not to everyone, but to those it reaches, it makes a strong impression.

My effects rig is set up in layers, so there are multi-effects patches on the SE-70s, of which I probably used 5 on the melody and two or three on the bass side.

But then there are also filters and distortions on the TC Fireworx, Pigtronix OFO, and Metal Zone I add in before the melody SE-70, and for this session, I also had the Eventide Time Factor set up after the melody SE-70. There are some fun ringmod tones on "Wildlands that are coming from the "Octave" part of the OFO (which stands for Octave, Fuzz Overdrive), a really interesting box.

And then, there is the ability with the StepABout to send the combined signals through both paths, so the density of effects is expanded further. It's a complicate setup, but it offers me a lot of flexibility in the moment. The beginning of the record is one such moment, where both sides are going through both paths. It might be fun sometime to have a chat about what is happening in the effects path on one of these tunes in one of Gene's google chats...

As far as playing the tunes again, sometimes I find myself in a place in an improvisation where something similar to the record is creeping in. My reaction now is to resist it and look for something new at that moment. The magic of these little themes is in their appearance and then what we do with them in the moment.

I once had a dream of asking a music student to transcribe Water on the Moon, because I think there is such a strong thematic development in that piece. Maybe it will happen someday.

Please share your reaction with your friends in the AFSTG and on Facebook. Our little Stickist.com community is great, but I need this music to reach out into the world, and it can happen best through the ears of others.

Hi Steven,

Thanks for letting me know the download worked as it should. It would be great if you were post a review on iTunes. Sometimes a review is what it takes for people to take a chance on a record.

The pickup on this Stick is a custom hybrid Stickup bass with EMG-FT melody. It's not an easy thing to make as the Stickup housing has to be cut, the depth of the pickup channel has to be increased, and it doesn't have room for both he battery and volume controls. I don't use volume controls on the pickup, so that's not an issue, but there were too many complications to make this a stock item at SE.

The recording was made in Logic 8 (not sure what the interface was on the tracking side at the studio), and the only effects added besides some eq, image and dynamic processing was extra reverb on the trumpet at times and and on the drums. All the other effects including most of the trumpet ambience and the trumpet harmonizing, were tracked in the studio.

It was all recorded at 88.2/ 24 bit, and the plugins I use are a mix of the Logic plugins and Waves.

Have you checked out Melodyne? It won't exactly "magically" turn audio into MIDI, but it would be pretty close to that. You'd probably be trading manually entering in MIDI notes vs manually removing audio artifacts from Melodyne. I'm honestly not sure which is more time-consuming, but it might help speed up the transcription process.

This CD makes excellent background music for holiday food preparations and piddling....just sayin'