(Alright, to those who just joined here later, I’d recommend to read my previous 3 short blogs first, in order to get the big picture behind my new recording project.)

blog 1 – click here to read this
blog 2 – click here to read this
blog 3 – click here to read this

Getting started

After many hours of improvising on my guitar, the musical ideas started to pile up, so I decided to record a few basic tracks. In most cases I started by creating groovy loops to work on. Instead of looking for certain formats with eventual complex chord changes to make it sound ‘impressive’, I chose to focus more on basic chord structures just to leave room for extra input. So once I got a nice groove and a few harmonic directions, I began to hear all kinds of musical colors in my head to add on top.

Inviting friends

At that moment the idea was born to invite other musicians instead of me filling in all the ‘canvas’ myself. I needed strong personalities of whom I thought would not need much explanation. In most cases I’d just let them play whatever came to their minds first while recording a track. It’s just a matter of having that confidence I guess. And there it was, the unspoken rules of making music together, by just listening to one another and add musical parts where they were most welcome. There was no room for any ego, no unnecessary restrictions, but just plain musicality in the most pure sense.

‘Partners in Passion’

The album title: ‘Partners in Passion’ came to my mind as most fitting, while listening to all the recorded material. The feeling of ‘togetherness’ on all tracks and the mutual respect among the musicians made that a justified claim I believe.

Video album

The whole process of recording ‘Partners in Passion’ shows that you can record an album without having all musicians in the same room playing together and still without losing the feel of that ‘togetherness’ at the same time. Of course, this is not a live album, but nevertheless a mix of great musicians communicating with one another just the same. To me that’s all that matters to create ‘real music’..

Each track on the album has not only been recorded, it’s all been video taped as well. So you will only get to see the real thing happening here during the whole recording process, including shots from distant locations from where some of the video and audio material was taken. In any case you will be in the front seat of my virtual stage.

Credits

In this first video trailer I am happy and proud to introduce to you: Alain Labrie on classical guitar, Onno Kuipers on the accordeon & last but not least Rory Ronde on electric guitar. The song is obviously, like most material on this video album, an instrumental and it represents what I call, the land, the water, the weather and a whole lot of shared musical happiness.

For now, I really hope you will enjoy this first short trailer of a piece called: ‘The Ride’. I will post an extra blog about this video album next week as I will talk you through the steps you need to take, in order to get to see the whole thing.