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Fun In The Snow

This is coming a couple of weeks late, but I wanted to share a video Hannah shot of my failed attempt to make a snow angel in the nearly 2 feet of snow we received on February 9th. I suppose many of you also got hammered with at least one of the two systems that moved through the midwest around this time. The week prior to the two foot system, we received approximately an inch of ice and seven inches of snow. Having lived in more northern places for most of my life, and with the fact that my family spent five years in Chicago, I never thought the biggest snowfall I'd experience would be in Northwest Arkansas! So, without further ado, check out my fail angel!

3 Completed Tunes

Welcome to 2011, my friends! What a crazy year it has been for Hannah and myself. My full-time job ended back in the beginning of February. Since then, I've been working odd jobs and doing contractual work. It's been fun because I have been doing a wide range of things from video editing to website design to helping a friend start up his recording studio and serving as an interim worship leader again at Faith Journey Fellowship in Bentonville, Arkansas. Hannah has now been working at Cobb-Vantress for over a year and a half. The weeks leading up to Christmas were extremely busy for her as they moved to a new lab. Fortunately, it was built on the same campus, but the challenge of moving was still daunting. On top of this, Hannah and her sister Melissa decided back in October to make a quilt for their parents as a Christmas gift. The process took longer than either of them expected, and they finished at 4:30 on Christmas morning. The final result was stunning! But, needless to say, I am so glad to have my wife back!

Regarding the holidays, I have had the privilege of leading a Christmas Eve worship service as well as morning worship the day after Christmas. Christmas itself was a relaxed day in the midst of much busyness as we spent the day with Hannah's family in Siloam Springs. Her brother, John, who moved to Los Angeles nearly a year ago joined us as well. I am so thankful for having such a wonderful extended family; I truly feel blessed.

Regarding the record, we have ten songs completely mixed and have just two more to go. I've posted three completed songs for you to (hopefully) enjoy. I won't say much about the album in this post because I'd rather let the music speak for itself, so be sure to check out the three recordings that I have posted here either in this blog entry or on the audio player on the main page of the website.

From both Hannah and I, please know that we are truly grateful for the immense support we continue to receive from all of you. We look forward to hearing about and sharing the challenges and victories this new year will hold.

Tunes In Tulsa

Greetings everyone. It's been a little while since my last post, obviously, but if you've been following my Twitter account (@jeremiahrich), you know we've been busy mixing. I've completed my work with David Teegarden at Natura Digital Studios, and have moved on to the final mixing stage with a gentleman named Joe Kane. The original intent was to finish at Natura, but the cost would have been too great. Joe has done an outstanding job so far, as we now have two songs fully completed, as in ready to go directly to mastering! I spent today (technically yesterday) in Tulsa Oklahoma working on the second song with Joe, and will be working with him tomorrow as well. Joe's mixes are by far the best anyone has produced, and he has been able to complete them in the shortest time and the lowest cost. That's a very amazing and rare combination indeed!

I know many of you have been concerned, and rightfully so, that I would never be content with the songs and the mixes. It is certainly difficult, as I am a major perfectionist. Through this process, however, I've learned that a CD cannot ever be completely perfect, but the project is finally at a point where I am 100% satisfied ecstatic about our work. Our delays in the past have either been due to the cost of the mixing, or in other cases I've been unhappy with the results. Neither scenario is the case this time. When Joe and I first met and discussed finishing the mixing together, we decided we would start on the song that has been the most difficult mixing: All For You. This song has now been completed for over two weeks, and I am still just as pleased as I was when we first finished it. I waited to post this entry as I wanted to be completely sure before I did. Perhaps I've finally learned my lesson on jumping the gun with this kind of news.  After completing the second song today, Restore, I am extremely confident in Joe's ability to knock this out of the park.

Now to answer the burning question: what is our timeframe? While I cannot yet offer an exact release date, we've recently been blessed with the financial resources to complete the mixing. This is a huge answer to prayer and a major encouragement that we are continuing down the right path. Due to this and the satisfaction I feel with our two completed songs, I expect to be finished with the mixing by the end of September. Once the mixing is completed, we will master and duplicate the album. The album art is already finished, so there won't be any more creative barriers to hold us up. Concerning the mastering, I will be working with a gentleman named Bob Katz. Bob is renowned as one of the top engineers in his field (read: in the world!), and has graciously spent much time communicating with us already by listening to mixes, and providing constructive feedback. I feel extremely blessed to be working with such talented individuals who have been and will continue to deliver amazing results.

Back to today's (again, technically yesterday's) session, Restore took us approximately thirteen hours to complete. Not only is Joe mixing, he is adding some other final touches as well. For Restore, this included recording tambourine, nylon guitar, electric guitar, and a percussion instrument known as a Cajón. I could go on with several more details, but we begin again at 9, so I had better get some rest. I will be sure to keep the blog updated as we go through these final steps. There is much happening, so there will continue to be much to share each week. Thank you for keeping up with our journey, it means more to both Hannah and I than you will ever know!

State of the Record

Greetings all! Figured I would pop in and post a quick update about the record. Yes, we are still working on it. Yes, it will be done soon. Of course, soon is a relative term. I think it's important to clarify just exactly what is taking so long: the mixing process. I am more than pleased with how everything is sounding, so the delays have nothing to do with my satisfaction with the material. I am beyond amazed with how great everything is sounding and am eager like nothing else to let you hear the results. It took much longer than expected to find the right people with whom to mix the record.

Mixing costs money and it takes time. In addition to finishing the record, I am of course working… a lot. Fortunately, for my sanity, we are chipping away at what is left constantly, and I am doing some of the work from home. I really cannot complain about where things are. I am trying to stay patient, but, after more than three years on the same project, I am pretty eager to get this finished and out there. I have so much new material that I cannot wait to share, and I cannot do that until this record is completed.

Next week, I will be meeting with Lendell to do some backup vocal work. It has been the plan all along that once we had several songs nearly finished that we would put on the final touch of some backup vocals. I can't wait to see how they finalize the tunes.

Computer Tunes

Yesterday I said I would put up some new tunes today. I have posted them at the beginning of this entry, so feel free to listen while you read along. First, some background. For quite some time I have been wanting to jump outside my comfort zone and get back into the piano. I like playing guitar just as much as ever, but there's only so much I can do with one instrument. Through working on this record, I have discovered a love for arranging music and composing, though before Saturday I had not really given it a shot. I spent the weekend writing 4 songs. Since then I have written three more. The two I included here I feel are the best of what I have done, though I definitely have a lot to learn.

The first song is titled Tweetie Learns To Fly. The idea of this tune is probably self evident. After I started writing it I just felt the name fit, and did a nice job conveying the feelings I was trying to get across. This kind of tune is something I would consider using for a videogame if the opportunity were to arise.

The second song is a song of comfort, of peace. It can be interpreted many ways, but I like to think of it as looking back to my childhood at the fond memories. I remember the joy I felt when my parents tucked me in at night. I felt so safe. I remember the sound our furnace used to make when it came on in the winter, and the strange sadness I would feel when it turned off and the quiet returned. There were several Christmases where we were warm and cozy inside as a snowstorm raged on. Not all of my memories from childhood are pleasant of course, but I hold on to many things that bring me comfort. So the river I refer to in this song represents the memories in my mind. The words are incomplete, but will work until I have them finalized.

Obviously these tunes are quite a different kind of endeavor for me, but I am finding myself having a lot of fun putting them together. I hope you enjoy them as much as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

New Site

Once again it has been a bit of time since my last update. My excuse this time is that I have been designing a new website, part of which you are seeing now. I say part of which because the design is not complete. A lot of my time was spent behind the scenes, updating the code that runs the site. My old design was based on code I had written over several years, so things were nothing short of a mess. I decided to move to something called Expression Engine, and I am absolutely loving it.

I can now easily update every part of the site. Pictures can be added effortlessly, as well as video, audio, etc. Over time I will be introducing new features, including ones that relate to building a fanbase/community. You will notice two links at the top of the page: "Register | Login". Go ahead and hit register to create your own account for the site. This will work for commenting, for the forums, etc.

All of this goes to say, please bear with me as I continue to work on the site. Some things might be broken, content will be missing, etc. This will still be better than what has been up for the last several months, however. Hopefully this will be enough incentive for me to post more often.  In fact, make sure to check back tomorrow, as I will be posting a few song files from a project I've been working on!

Collaborative Effort

I've been making quite a bit of progress on many aspects of the project in the last several weeks. The mixing is coming along really well. We've worked on seven tunes so far, and are at, or nearly, the halfway mark in the mixing process. In the photography department, my good friend Matt Feyerabend has finished shooting the photos we will need for the album design. We've had a total of at least five shoots, and it is nice to finally have things nailed down.

Now that I've outlined where we stand on mixing and photography, I'd like to touch more deeply on the subject of album art. This is an area over which I've had much anxiety. Despite the digital bliss that can characterize much of today's music distribution, I find myself mainly purchasing physical copies of music. To me there is nothing like opening up a new CD (or vinyl when available), firing up my speakers, and enjoying the album art while I follow along with the music. Dave Matthews Band's latest effort, Big Whiskey, is a great example of this. I purchased a special edition vinyl version of this album and spent hours looking through and enjoying all the nuances of the artwork. Much like their music, the artwork provided something new to discover on each viewing.

The album artwork/design is the first taste a listener will get of an album and can make or break the beginning of the experience. My last album left much to be desired in this area, not to mention sonically. Three and a half years have been put into The Sun Still Rises so far, and it is critical that the album cover shows this. While still unreleased, it has quite a history. The album art must convey the amount of thought and work that has gone into every moment of this record.

With these things in mind, I wanted to find someone who has had experience in this field and shares a common love for great album artwork and design. I've been working closely with Short Handed Studio (John Holcomb) on the design of the album art, logo, and new website. The album art is being created entirely by hand. The only role that computer based image processing will play is with the text. I am blown away with how great the art is looking and can already envision myself opening up a copy of the album and browsing through while I listen. John spends a considerable amount of time thinking through his work and making himself familiar with what has already been created. It has been amazing to work with someone this knowledgeable, skilled, and who loves what he does to such an extent.

As I began to work on the list of credits to give to John, it struck me just how many people have been deeply involved in this project. Counting only those involved directly on the music side (audio engineers and studio musicians), the total comes to around seventeen or eighteen people! The final total will be well over twenty once we have hired the final musicians, include mastering, and the designers and photographers are added into that figure.

Let's go back to something I mentioned earlier in this post: my previous album. A total of four to five people were involved in that effort with me as the only musician. I remember taking pride in the fact that I did all of the recording, mixing, editing, mastering, songwriting, album design, singing, and playing. While it was fun to get to do so much, I realized that to make a great album, I couldn't just do it all myself. Besides the pride factor, I have historically found it very hard to trust pieces of my projects to other individuals.

We could have released what was finished in the first three months of recording, but it would have been much too similar to the last album by lacking an improvement in quality. At this point (May 2007), a total of three musicians had been involved and there was not very much diversity in the sound. I remember feeling worried when Lendell suggested the idea of putting some pieces into the hands of more competent people. While this kind of trust is still something I struggle with, I think tremendous growth has taken place. Looking back, it is easy to see how this album would not be nearly what it is without the many contributions of these incredibly talented individuals. This lesson is one I will continue to learn, and must learn if I plan on taking this where I want to some day.

I envision getting to work with a full orchestra and band live. To do this, the production team alone will be pretty large, not even taking into consideration the number of musicians! I feel that the experience of making this record has prepared me for what is to come. I must thank so many of you for being patient with me as I slowly learned these lessons. Thank you for your continued patience, I feel it is truly paying off!

New Website

For the past couple of months I have been working on a new website. I like to call it my “Dream” site, as it incorporates many features I’ve always dreamed of having.

Photo uploads are majorly streamlined and work in a way that will let me effortlessly update the site’s design. The website takes care of any relevant image resizing. Simply uploading the existing images (~24) and associating them with the proper entries took a significant amount of time. The goal is that I will never have to do this again. Ever.

In the past it was a significant undertaking to add audio and video files, especially to blog posts. I already have the audio part figured out, and am hammering away the video details.

*Disclaimer: If you are put off by technical details, my feelings won’t be hurt in the slightest if you choose to skip the rest of this entry, though it’s not as if I will have any way of knowing anyway!

The “holy grail” of website design has been, to me, having my own custom video system very similar to Youtube. I want to be able to upload a video file, associate it with my blog entry, and let my server take care of any relevant conversions. For all of you Unix nerds out there, the best command line tool to do this is called Ffmpeg, and it is a royal pain to install and get running, due to a huge number of dependencies. I’ve tried several times (unsuccessfully) to get Ffmpeg installed on my server. I am with a hosting company called Dreamhost and as it so happens, they go ahead and install a default version of Ffmpeg for use.

I’ve tried their built in version in the past without success, but that was a couple of years ago. After a failed attempt to install a custom version this evening, I figured what the heck and gave the built in version a go. To my amazement it knew exactly what to do with my X264 & AAC encoded video file.

This leaves one very difficult step: creating a shell script, scheduled via cron, to automatically convert video files when they are uploaded.

I have come up with the following system:

1) User goes into control panel of website and creates a new video “entry”. They can either upload their video file there, or choose a file they have previously uploaded to the server via FTP or SFTP.

2) The user posts this entry, which includes any information they deem interesting/necessary about the video file. A “Flag” is set automatically that categorizes the entry as Queued.

3) A shell script that I mentioned previously runs every x minutes (I am thinking 1 or 2). This script checks the database and sees the Queued flag. Since the file is associated with the entry, it knows exactly where to find it, and it is assumed the file is complete (As in fully uploaded).

4) The shell script runs the file through Ffmpeg as many times as necessary. I am thinking I will have a High Quality, original resolution version (up to 856x480), a compressed version with the high resolution, and then a lower resolution version. That will require three conversions. I might also in the future offer a couple of download versions, but for the immediate future, 3 conversions should be more than enough.

5) Once these conversions have completed successfully, the shell script updates the entries’ status to Open. This will tell the CMS that it is ready for use. I am hoping to use related entries to hold up the publication of any blog entries associated with the video until all relevant processing is complete as well, but I still need to think through this step.

So that’s what I have been hard at work accomplishing in my spare time. The next steps will be to finish the video feature , build out a couple other small areas of the site, and then begin finalizing the design aspect. If anyone has had experience in the video conversion field, don’t hesitate to get in touch, I am sure I will greatly benefit from any help you might be able to provide!

The goal of this redesign is to make it much easier for fans/users/people to stay up to date with what is going on with me. I’ve often passed up opportunities to post media to the site simply because I didn’t have a very good system in place. I am very excited to see how this new website will help foster community and how it will stand the test of time!

A Substantial Update (Finally!)

Well, it’s been a long, long, long time, but I am finally ready to post this substantial update. My last entry, way back in June, stated that I had begun looking for help with the mixing. Over the last couple of years, I’ve tried sending the album off to be mixed with less than acceptable results, tried mixing it myself, and tried working with a few other individuals. Unfortunately, for some reason or another, none of these attempts yielded what I consider a professional result. After spending three years on this record, I have a pretty good idea of how I would like the songs to sound but lack the skill and experience to get them there. It was clear to me that I needed to seek out someone who has had years of experience.

For the last couple of years, I have been building a friendship with a gentleman named David Teegarden. David has had many years of experience. He has worked with musicians including JJ Cale, Eric Clapton, and Bruce Hornsby to name a few. He was also the drummer for Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band and won a grammy for their 1980 release entitled “Against The Wind”.

We had our first session on November 15th, and things have really been coming together. This week, we had our third session and made a ton of progress. We mixed “Waves” and nearly finished “Perfection”. This means we have three songs complete. For the first session, I chose to have us start with “All For You” which has quickly become the most difficult song to work with and has caused the most trouble mixing. The combination of a very dynamic arrangement and several instruments has made it a chore to mix (but it sure is sounding incredible).

Anyway, I will be sure to keep you updated here through the site and especially Twitter. I am in the middle of overhauling the design, but, hopefully, it will be back up shortly. Thanks again for the incredible support. It means more than I can ever say!

Where we’re at

Wow, where to start? Lots has happened in the past couple of months, so I will just start at the beginning. Hannah graduated in March and found a job at a local company called Cobb. Cobb is in charge of quality control for Tyson, a huge supplier of chicken. She is thoroughly enjoying the opportunity, and we are so thankful she found work in her field in such a difficult job market! (Plus the high honor of helping bring this fabulous food to plates across the country!)

I spent the first week in June helping my family move into their new house in Overland Park, Kansas. I also had the chance to reconnect with some old friends who moved away from STL years ago and just happened to end up in KC. What a wonderful week it was!

Unfortunately, the week did not fare so well for our 1990 Honda Civic. I felt it was time to have a mechanic look it over due to some sounds I had been hearing, and thank God I did! Turns out the entire steering system was shot and would come apart at any moment! It’s amazing I made it safely to KC! Unfortunately, this was just one of many issues the car had been developing. The clutch is just about worn out, it leaks over, there are multiple problems with the brakes, a rear wheel bearing is going out, etc. Long story short, it is far from feasible to fix.

Fortunately, my lovely wife was able to come during the weekend to rescue me. This actually opened up a fun opportunity for us. My younger sister, Charis, has been working all summer on artwork for a film entitled Works in Progress. Turns out, they were shooting some major scenes, and they needed extras. Our moment of fame comes when Hannah and I, hand in hand, cross in front of the main actors. Hopefully, the scene will stay!

Anyway, we were a bit bummed as this was our only vehicle with functioning A/C. Then again, we payed only $580 for it (with a full tank of gas!), and drove it at least twenty thousand miles. We would have preferred this to happen at the end of summer when it would have been more affordable for us, but at least it wasn’t when Hannah was still searching for work and needed a car throughout the day.

Fast forward to the next week: I was on my way to Fayetteville for a recording session with Lendell (yes, we are still working on it!), when the engine went out in our remaining car, our 1993 Sidekick! Two cars in one week… Ouch! Hannah’s folks are letting us borrow one of their vehicles while we work something out. Really this is a blessing in a lot of ways because we need something more reliable. Ultimately, we do need two cars, but we can manage on one for the time being, so we could certainly use prayer for this minor setback. However, we are confident things will work out. The Lord will provide!

On the album side, Lendell and I are continuing to chip away at the remaining pieces. The vehicle situation has certainly slowed us down but will not stop our progress. We pretty much HAVE to have the rest of my vocal and guitar work done soon as Lendell will be moving to Oklahoma City to begin teaching at OCU as he was recently hired on as their Professor of Composition and Film Scoring! In the last two years, he has had the opportunity to score a couple of films as well as increase his exposure on television, both on the local and national level. This is a huge step for him, and I am so excited to see what opportunities will come as a result!

Let’s see… I suppose I can also give an update about mixing. Several of the songs are now as close to final as I will be able to bring them. While I feel everything is sounding good, it is not yet sounding great. My limited experience only allows me to do so much. Because of this, I am seeking some professional help outside of those we have already worked with. Another reason for this is to bring fresh ears to the table. After two and a half years of constant work, I am finding myself unable to be as creative as I otherwise might be. I’ve listened to partially mixed versions of these songs countless times and need to be able to think outside the box more. I will be certain to post some updates when we have figured out who will be able to help us.

Thanks for continuing to follow our progress as slow as it may seem. I will be the first to admit that it has been a long, difficult journey — one that I certainly never imagined. There are many days when I feel burned out; I feel like quitting. I think, “There’s no way this will ever sound good or even be done for that matter!” Then we have an incredible day in the studio, and all of my worries disappear. While I often find it hard to hold on to hope, I am not giving up. We’ve come way too far for that to be an option and are so close! I take much comfort in the words of the Psalm 139 that the Lord knows every single detail about me. He has lead us down this path and has yet to let us down. What excitement awaits us when it is finally finished!

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