Barely Treason

This post’s title may seem a little odd, if not alarming… It was a bit of a stretch for me to create anything approaching a clever parody of Fleetwood Mac’s (copyright, 1972) “Bare Trees” album art. I created the bare trees that are intended to invoke the spirit of the ones on the Fleetwood Mac album cover, using the “Bryce” 3D modeling app. And, (not by coincidence) my colleague, Jason Pike and I both use (Apple) Macs for our musical work.

The Danny Kirwan composition, Sunny Side Of Heaven was next-up from my bucket-list of songs and pieces that I intended to eventually record. Like Keith Jarrett’s “Pastel Morning,” this is one that I planned to record for more than thirty years. When I was unable to find a recording of this piece online, I ordered the CD from Amazon and transcribed the piece from recordings of my purchased CD.

Jason Pike channeled the spirit of Mick Fleetwood’s stylized, lyrical drumming while I attempted to channel the spirit of Danny Kirwan’s guitar solo to record tracks that were synchronized to the same audio track (and, therefore synchronized together). Unlike our previous collaborations, this project was the first where Jason provided me with MIDI drum parts rather than audio drum recordings. For our performances, each of us (separately) played along with the Fleetwood Mac recording as a guide to record our parts. Our rendition uses three electric guitars, acoustic guitar, Mr. Tramp (Wurlitzer electric-piano emulation), Synthogy Ivory grand-piano, electric-bass, and Jason’s MIDI drums.

For future projects, Jason provided me with recordings of each of his drums. We plan to use his (future) MIDI percussion performance to trigger audio samples of his actual drums that were extracted from his recordings, and that have been carefully staged for our evolving, recording-workflow. In this recording, the MIDI notes that Jason played are played by sound-programs on my Kurzweil PC3K8.

Special thanks to the departed Danny Kirwan for composing this song—and, to Jason for his always-excellent performance. We hope that you enjoy listening to our version.