the brief
a practiced practice
You could say that gordon channels by 'singing the songs forward', meaning he sings the songs over and over — usually starting from just a title, a bit of lyric, or a glimmer of story — gradually 'getting' the lyrics and learning how each song is to be sung.
When he's home, gordon's practice is to sing each day, usually first thing in the morning, and record the songs of each session on his Ardour digital audio workstation.*
These daily sessions are spent learning whatever new songs are coming forward, mastering recent new songs or improving their recordings, and relearning the delivery of the first and second phase songs with the increasing vocal capabilities of his developing voice. The numbers go up and down a bit, but gordon generally records 10-12 songs a session.
These are highly 'practiced' sessions, following a routine built over many years that lets gordon do the mechanics of recording and filing the takes between songs but stay in the channeling space.
Each take is dated, rated and notated with comments on the delivery, any new lyrics or phrasing and insights. A copy is made of milestone or potentially useable takes, while the original takes are filed within Ardour by date.
Overtime, the Ardour project for each song becomes its own substantial archive of takes, each take channeled, ranging from the barely-started to the as-fully-mastered as he could manage at the time. From stumbles, misses, coughs, and senior moments to worth a darn. From offal to gastronomic delight.
Along the way, some of those potentially useable takes are prepped, mixed down and 'released' to gordon for his own listening away from his digital audio workstation and to this archive. (Some songs are inflicted on a select few others.)
Sometimes it's a milestone release such as when lyrics are first felt to be complete, or when the delivery is first felt as mastered. Or when gordon has managed a new! better! version of an existing song.
These are many of the recordings that appear in this archive from the start of the 3.1 set.
Many of the other 'releases' from that set and later were made for gordon to listen to while he was overseas for the winters. These are usually dated around mid-November when gordon was closing his house for the winter. Many of these are snapshots of unfinished songs, with large gaps in the lyrics and sections where gordon goes silent trying to pick out the lyrics, or does "ta da dahs". (These are vocalizations that gordon uses to connect with the lead instrument his singing tracks, or find the vocal pattern of the lyrics outside of their semantic meaning.)
snapshots in time
The recordings are snapshots as well of the song's lyrics coming into focus and the song's delivery being drilled into gordon's still-thick musical head. They're not studio quality. They're seldom free of errors, throat clears and other noises. They've only been minimally processed for clarity, not 'produced'.
They are snapshots as well of gordon's development as a singer, within each song and within his overall growth under the lessons given through the songs. How gordon sings any given song on any given day is specific to that day and that song and his changing voice.
That — in a gumshoe — is why a date or period is usually given for the recordings that appear in this archive, both for the specific context of the song and for the larger context of the singing lessons. (There are exceptions that prove this rule too.)
That — in the other gumshoe to fall — is why the recordings in the song vaults appear chronologically from the earliest to the most current (and yeah it's the sensible way to present them anyways).
The recordings are also snapshots of another process, the growing complexity and sophistication of the songs from one phase to the next, even from one song to the next within a phase.
And that completes the gumshoe tripod. For the playlists, where recordings of multiple songs appear on the same page, the songs are presented in the order they channeled.
how gordon rates his takes
Gordon rates his daily takes and 'releases' with a scale of his own making. It's entirely arbitrary, purely subjective but it helps gordon know how a new song is progressing, and prioritize which existing songs to keep working on improving, looking for that ever-elusive 'keeper', a solid [8] demo (the most he ever realistically expects to achieve).
[10] — won't happen until song is recorded by a real singer
[9] — as good as gordon can ever theoretically achieve
[8] — good enough for demo, could still be improved
[7] — close, not quite good enough for demo
[6] — serious problems, only useable if no better version
[5] — still channeling, or just awful offal
These [g]-ratings are included for most recordings in this archive. Exceptions apply.
You will find recordings with all ratings except [10] which gordon is not capable of by definition. Yes there is even a [5] because that's the only extant recording of a song. There's just nothing better available.
You see it's like this. Gordon acknowledges and even takes a certain pride in his OCD. It's often a useful thing. It's great for producing and project managing, skills gordon used throughout his career.
Trouble is, gordon hasn't always been good at his OCD. He's had his stuggles with it, tried to improve but you know we all slip at times.
The recordings from the first and second phases show this weakness.
* That's with the exception of the first phase of course, and oh yeah the 3.1 set when gordon's recording gear was in storage, and yeah right the subvocal start of the 3.3 set during the pandemic winter on Lake Erie, and yeah the odd blue moon phase . . . hmmmn, I guess that makes this the exception that proves the rule that rule-proving exceptions are generally not plural.
the 1.0 cassettes
the 1.0 cassettes
In the first phase, gordon had an old omni-directional microphone from his video production days that he'd plug straight into a cassette deck, recording himself as he played guitar and sang. Real basic.
The first of these sessions was just two weeks after the songs started, back in January 1989. Over the next year-and-a-bit, gordon recorded multiple sessions on about a dozen (mostly reused) cassette tapes. The only notes were on the cassettes themselves.
When that period ended in breakdown, the tapes were put into one of those 4th dimensional boxes that shadow your life but never really exist in this plane until the next time they need to be moved.
Gordon always intended to. . . well, you know how it is, life happened, kid threw up, look a squirrel! And he did try to start digitizing them in the later second phase but. . . technical problems, life, look a squirrel!
The tapes sat in that box until January 2021, the pandemic winter on Lake Erie, when they were finally digitized as part of developing this archive. Gordon listened as the sessions were digitized, building a comprehensive spreadsheet of sessions and dates, songs sung in each session, notes about the takes etc, their quality, completeness, oddities.
It was pure OCD bliss at one level.
At other levels though. . . well, it was painful. Embarrassing. Different to what he remembered. The same. There were complex emotions at play to hear those songs again, some not heard for three decades and long gone from gordon's memory. Complex emotions to hear his younger self singing too, his starting point all those years ago. Faint praise but not always as bad as he remembered. Many takes every bit as bad.
At still other levels... well, it was revealing. Gordon only began to see the songs as a body of work had begun to see the songs
And it was boring as hell too. Especially having to listen to 29 different recordings of the song that started it all — Transformation, a droning 15-minute near-spokesong on guitar that he played poorly and only ever sang ok. There were only 10 recordings of the other song that started it all, Proposal, and it was just half the length. So just one sixth the chore.
Gordon hoped to find recordings of some sort for all of the 1.0 songs, even if just partials. He didn't. There were a few recordings for another five songs, but no recordings at all for three (Just could never feel, Teddy bear and The nightmare run). Nada. Sadly, gordon has no memory of how to play or sing the first two, so those songs are gone unless the energies choose to bring them back.
Stranger things have happened.
The quality of the recordings from those sessions was ahem variable from a low bar. Gordon has not tried to do any magical audio cleanup because the recordings serve their purpose as is. And gordon's just not good at that kind of audio work anyways.
2.0 recordings
the spokesong & 2.0 recordings
Unlike the first phase, when the songs were only sporadically recorded, recording became the primary channeling method for the spokesong and then second phases. The method developed over time but its roots were in gordon's career.
As a tv cameraman and video editor, gordon already had a basic skill set in audio recording. Further, as a writer for the spoken voice, gordon had grown used to reading his video scripts out loud as he wrote, and then recording his voice as a 'guide track' for offline editing.
(The guide track would be replaced with a professional voice in post-production although once, for a farm safety CD-ROM, the clients liked gordon's guide track narration so much they said to use it in the final product.
They may have been pulling gordon's manure wagon, but they said he sounded like a real farmer.)
Around 2008/09, gordon felt a growing desire to do something with the lyrics of the 1.0 songs. He had little memory of them by then and thought the only way to save the songs, and save the experience of channeling them, would be to record their lyrics as spoken poems.
During the same period, gordon had got into Linux and open source software through a friend at work, and had built his first Linux machine.
spokesong
The ten original spokesong recordings were made using the open source audio editor Audacity, a usb microphone and just a normal sound card on the motherboard. Gordon recorded and re-recorded each song as though it was a poem he was reading on stage. Even in those first days, gordon's preference was for complete even if imperfect takes, and Audacity suited that style.
Gordon's first very basic recording setup.But it didn't suit the next step, when gordon thought he'd try adding 'background music' to the recorded spokesong lyrics. The goal was not to turn them into 'songs' per se, but to add mood and flow to the narratives, possibly building towards videos using my own photography.
(Being able to find and select good music for narration and editing was pretty much the one musical skill gordon gave himself credit for).
After searching and testing out the available open source daws (digital audio workstations), gordon settled on Ardour, a well developed and solid piece of multi-tracking audio software.
And with that in place, the second phase was ready to start. If you haven't already, check out the Transformation / Awakening songsheet for the tale of how those two songs spontaneously channeled and kicked the second phase into gear.
2.0 recordings
It was Awakening established recording as the method for singing the songs forward. Sing it over and over. Get the lyrics. Get the delivery. Record it every time.
They weren't great recordings. The setup was too basic. There was no pop screen. Ambient noise was high, audio levels were low.
But it was exciting. Exhilerating. Intoxicating. Even though he cringed at the sound of his own voice played back, gordon had no choice but to see where it went.
mixing / releasing
It's a truism that first-born children get all the parental attention, all the photos, all the video memories. Second-born get less attention, third even less. (By the fifth-born, it's all become so ho-hum for parents, you're lucky if they even remember your name.)
First-, second- and third-born songs for their part get all the mixes. After that, not so much.
Full of early enthusiasm, gordon exported many mixes of the first four 2.0 songs — Transformation / Awakening, It was a gift and Away is no longer there.
But gordon found the editing, cleaning and mixing process tedious and had trouble getting the vocals to stand out from the music. And he really didn't like the sound of his own voice. So he gradually made fewer and fewer mixes of each new song. And only haphazardly when he did, or when he was about to do a long trip.
By Proposal, the last of the 2.0 songs to channel, he was pretty much just recording and not doing any exporting.
(Gordon had forgotten how little he was exporting in those days. It was going back through all the existing mixes for this archive that revealed this changing pattern.)
Towards the end of the 2.0 songs coming forward, gordon began to improve the 'studio', first with a pop screen on the microphone, followed by an audio interface, studio quality condensor microphone and studio speakers. And those upgrades prompted gordon to research and build the ultraquiet computer that is still at the heart of his channeling process.
caveats
caveats
To be clear, the recordings on the songsheets and other pages of this website are not for download or release. They are only low resolution, low quality demos of the songs that gordon has channeled into this existence.
Further, they. . .
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are home recordings . . .
They have been created in gordon's 'home studio', a desk with a computer, audio interface, microphone and speakers, using the open source digital audio workstation Ardour and the open source audio editor Audacity, both running on Linux.
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are what they are . . .
This is the way they channeled, with these lyrics, with these melodies, with these versions.
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are works in perpetual progress . . .
Each song has literally taught gordon how to play it, how to sing it, and that process continues for every song as gordon's vocal ability improves. Any particular recording reflects gordon's ability to sing that song at the time the recording was made.
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are not sung professionally . . .
Although improved by years of channeling, gordon's singing voice is at best ... well, you can best decide how best to describe it. He looks forward to hearing the songs performed by real singers and musicians.
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are not 'produced' . . .
When it comes to gordon's vocals, what you hear is pretty much what the microphone got. Beyond basic processing and mixing for clarity, no effort has been made to 'sweeten' or 'correct' gordon's vocals.
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will always be their own worst versions . . .
When, hopefully, real musicians and real singers find these songs of interest, they will inevitably create better versions by adding their own musical skill and personality to the bare structures gordon has channeled.
The various recordings on this website are not for download or release. They are just low resolution demos of the songs gordon has channeled into this existence. They long for a real singer to release them from their idiot musant prison. Interested parties can contact gordon @ this website.
