Neil Fein's Blog

From the old Welcome Home project blog:

Search results at The National Institutes of Health

The Autism Society of America Home Page

Autism Resources page

Page at the National Institute of Mental Health

More to follow as I find them. Thanks to Lester Turner for some of these.

From the old Welcome Home project blog:

Looking over what autism is, and how it arises, I don't think Ellen is going to develop autism. I'm going to change the story a bit. (I imagine this will mean researching other neurological and psychological conditions.)

I did two trial mixes of Tell Me How You Feel through headphones last night, more to get a feel for the song than to get actual mixdowns. It's looking like I'll have to send it out to the band without the guitar solo on it, as I have nowhere to record electric guitar.

The song is a rather active mix, but no more difficult than anything else we have. Dance In My Kitchen will be more difficult. Neither "Headphone" mix is really any good for anything (they sounded horrible in the car) but doing a mixdown is never wasted; learning the quirks of the song is, I'm discovering, a necessary part of this process.

From the old Welcome Home project blog.

-- Act 1 --

Song: Intro/Thank You

Song: Welcome Home (1)
The story starts with Loretta and Jacob, moving into a new house. They're a two-career couple, and have been married for not too long, now. Loretta is far more driven than Jacob; for the moment, this gulf is actually a source of balance between the two.

Song: Push
They have a daughter, Ellen. The delivery is fairly straightforward.

Song: Time Runs Ahead (1)
After the delivery, Jacob starts wondering what the future will bring as he watches Ellen grow. Time passes and we segue to:

Song: Blow Out the Candle
Ellen is 4 (?) years old, and hasn't started speaking yet. They take her to several specialists, and all of them deliver the verdict that Ellen is autistic, rertarded, partially deaf, and so on. Jacob is crushed by this, but learns to deal with it. Meanwhile, Loretta has continued to take Ellen to various specialists, and finds one speech therapist who specializes in autistic children. He manages to get Ellen to start making rudimentary sounds, then words, and eventually phrases, using the simple technique of having these sessions in the morning and letting her eat when she speaks. Things are looking up, but Ellen isn't out of the woods just yet.

Need to research Autism.

-- Act 2 --

Song: Intro/Thank You (Blues)
Uses the progression from the guitar solo of Thank You, segues right into (and will likely be recorded along with):

Song: Thank You [Working Title]
Some time has passed. Ellen is graduating from high school. the gist of this song is that Ellen is going to be giving a graduation speech, having placed first in her class. She's on her way to a well-known school, and she recounts, in her speech, the story of how her Mom dedicated herself to tutoring her autistic child, to the extent of first taking time off of work, then quitting her job to devote herself to her daughter; something Loretta had sworn never to do, since her Mom (Ellen's Grandmother) gave up a promising career when she got married. The speech is very well written, and the only reason Ellen is consulting Jacob about it, as he's been a bit of an absent father in the years since Blow Out The Candleis that she wants it to be a surprise to her Mom. Jacob of course is barely mentioned in the speech as he's not relevant to the topic; ellen is very, very focused -- like her Mother.

Song: (She's Got A) Plastic Dad [Working Title]
From classic rock, we go to psycadelic funk, as Jacob puts Ellen through college. Lori is always very proud of Ellen, but here we learn the reason for the distance between Jacob and Ellen -- or rather, the distance Jacob puts between them. Jacob was wrong, and if he had succeeded, Ellen wouldn't have gotten the help she so badly needed. Jacob extends this boundry to exclude everyone, Lori, his friends, people at work, and so on. He does this by sinking in to self-pity mode. As Ellen's friends in college reinforce this, the gulf between Lori and Jacob (see Welcome Home(1)) now becomes a source of resentment on both their parts.
Note: Use the verses from that I Write Too Much song for the melody.
Note: Choruses are sung by Ellen's friends, then Lori, then Jacob himself as he succumbs to group pressure.

Song: Time Runs Ahead (2)
Jacob gets a new job, but one that requires him to be on the road a lot. He spends his time in the car wondering about what might have been. He sings the chorus to Ellen, then to Lori.

-- other songs --

Song: I Found What You Did Wrong
Confrontation song, possibly Ellen confronting Jacob, or Ellen and Loretta confronting Jacob.

Song: Untitled
Song will outline either the break of or the reconciliation of Jake and Lori's marraige.

other stuff

Song: Welcome Home (Finale)
The final, narrative-driven closure. Short.

Note: I'll be adding to this entry as I work on the outline. Eventually, I'll move this to another page; this is as good a place as any to keep it for the time being.

Note: The story is from the viewpoint of Jacob. See the dramatis personae (not yet up) for details about the characters.

A note as to the song-title nomenclature. I'm entering individual songs as Welcome Home (1) and Welcome Home (2) and so on; the numbers won't end up on the final titles, and I'll probably append one of them with Reprised or some such. Also, I'm entering as individual songs sections that will run together and may even become a single song. That's because I'll write them that way, as individual episodes in the story.

We've planned a second weekend of "Calvert" sessions, on April 13th and 14th.

We had a good session last night, ending up with a nearly perfect take of the flute track for Dance In My Kitchen; the flute really makes the song. Jackie's improv skills are improving.

Having learned about isolating a performer at the "Calvert" sessions last week, I set up a mic in the bedroom and used it as an isolation area. It's not as echoey in there as the living room, and is less cramped in any case.

Jackie was doing well, having just warmed up to the part and was starting to record some decent takes. We started in on a take and She told me to stop, there was a problem. I pulled off my headphones and headed into the bedroom; Jackie pointed out that there was...ahem...background noise. I assume the neighbors were having fun making it. I decided to continue with the take, as there was no better place to put her, and there are no "quiet" sections in the song where we'd hear screams of ecstasy punch through. I was also using a close-in mic to record.

Honestly, I think it ended up helping; Jackie relaxed after having a good laugh, and stopped making mistakes; we got the final take in by 9pm and I sent her home with a rough mix.

How in the world did I ever get along without them? After the Calvert sessions, I've realized my equipment takes up much room and is difficult to pack. Rather than packing the cables, cable ties, power boxes, et cetera, it would be nice to just grab a case that contains the CD burner, the effects, the headphone amp, the output switcher and maybe even the mixer...? I'll still have to pack up the microphones, stands, instruments, and so on when I do mobile sesisons, but this would make life easier.

I'm in the process of turning multiple pieces of small equipment into a few rack-mountable trays. The Nanoverbs are 1/3-space single-height pieces, so that's no issue. I can fit the switcher (switches between the headphone amp and the monitors) in the third slot if I squeeze. And the CD burner will fit comfortably in a tray, the only issue there is keeping it both shockmounted and secured on the tray.

The issue of future expansion is, of course, the whole point. I forsee the purchase of a decent power supply down the road, especially if I can find one used.

I had to re-post all of the blogs late last night after bringing over the old log posts from the website, to get the studio log all in one place. The upshot here is that the blogger-assigned dates are inaccurate, so go by the dates I've embedded in the posts, such as

19 March 2002

that one. I did post them all in the correct order so they'll sort in correct chronological order, they'll just show up in the archives as being all posted on the same day.



Note: Blogger has added the function of changing the date of a post. I went back and changed all of these to their proper post dates. If this is working, all should be well.
--Neil

From the Welcome Home project blog:

Craig and I were at a party and got into some discussions about what the next album might be, after we finish this one. As this one is all mellow and, frankly, depressing music, it would be nice to move to some more upbeat material. I don't know how this impacts Welcome Home, nor if that will be a Ten to Nine project or a solo bit. But it's something to think about.

We redid most of the vocals for "Dance" and added some more harmonies to "Tell Me". That sounds like not very much; it was quite a little project.

I'm wavering about "Dance"; the vocals we did work wonderfully on the chorus, but I can't help but think that the verses Craig did are too over-the-top. (He's singing in a faux Texan accent, it's very strange.) But it's certainly better than my guide vocal was!

We recorded for a full day Saturday, half a day Sunday. 12 hours of recording, not counting the time to set up and break down. It was a pain in the ass, and great fun.

We're hoping to have future Calvert sessions; I need to check with Dan.

After a late-night setup on Friday night, Craig arrived Saturday morning, ready to record. We took a while to get into the swing of it, and Craig's voice in particular took some time to warm up. But we got some good vocal takes on "Tell me How You Feel" and "Dance In My Kitchen".

They're not perfect, but they sound good. We're having a second "Calvert Studios" session tomorrow morning.

From the old Welcome Home project blog:

Welcome Home started as a song, a very long song I wrote back in 1996 or so. The melody was inspired by the new house by then-inlaws had just moved into up near Boston. Initially, the characters of Jim and Susan were pretty much them and I wrote the song to follow what they had done and what might happen to them.

After the song was finished, I played it for Craig and realized, this song was damn good but damn long. Ater playing it live a couple of times, it was apparent that this song (anywhere from 7 to 9 minutes long) would need to be pared down.

What do I have against long songs? Nothing, in fact I like them. But when the melody is a simple verse-chorus-bridge structure, a song of this length can't sustain the listener's interest.

At the time, I was searching for what I called "epic" songs, songs that were more than just love songs (or breakup songs). I had such a subject with Blow Out The Candle, and in that case the music was up to the task of keeping a listener's attention through a song of that length.

I soon decided that Welcome Home would have to either be drastically shortened, or expanded into a very large arc or songs. This log will detail my false starts, my succeses, and generally tell the story of telling the story of Loretta, Jacob & Ellen.

We packed up the studio last night, getting ready to drive down tonight to the DC sessions with Craig. There's an awful lot of just plain stuff involved in recording; cables and cable adapters and power cords and mics and poxes and cable junction switches and, oh yeah, don't forget to gring the music itself! (That actually happened, I almost forgot the box o' minidiscs.)

For posterity, and more for me to laugh at when I upgrade when this album is over, here's the current rig:

Yamaha MD8 Minidisc Multitracker
Consumer-grade CD-R Audio burner
(2) Alesis Nanoverb effects units
(2) M-Audio SP-B5 Studophile Powered Monitors
(2) Celestion speakers for "cheap" monitors
(2) Shure SM-57 Mics
(1) Shure SM-58 Mic
(1) Marshall 2001 MXP2001P Condensor Mic
(Too Many) cables, stands and boxes

I can laugh at this list in a year or two.

Ookay... I cut the bass track for "Tell Me How You Feel" (See entry for 17 February 2002) and finally, finally got a set of decent drum tracks down. But I can't get the bass to be in tune with the guitar, I think the guitar sunk a little between when I tuned and when I played. That'll teach me to trust electronic tuners.

Jackie and I orchestrated the flute to "Dance In My Kitchen", we have a session scheduled for next week to record it.