My Musical Advice Column

I started an advice column (where the advice is in the form of a song) with a friend of mine and thought I'd share.

Jeff and Elliott Save the Day (http://www.jeffandelliott.com)

Let me know what you think.

p.s. Just recording it at home, and I'm still a rank amateur when it comes to that!

Awesome. I love the breakdown. I bet this is a really great songwriting exercise.

Thanks! That's sort-of how it started. I always start writing songs, but run out of ideas before they get anywhere. This way it's like prompted writing, and it needs to be relatively short, so you have to try to be concise. It's a lot of fun.

I did an interesting project a couple of years ago you may have heard of: The RPM Challenge. The challenge is to write and record a complete album in the 28 days of February. I got together with my wife, who I play in a band with, and a friend guitarist, to undertake the challenge.

We decided to do a concept record, which was convenient, since it gave us the chance to outline what it was we were going to do. Once we had a storyline together, we got together twice a week to write and record. We recorded 8 songs for just over the required amount of music.

The constrained time limit, and the accelerated pace of songwriting, meant less second-guessing decisions and resulted in a really cool record that I'm way more proud of than I thought I would be. You can download it if you want to check it out. (http://www.whitneyb.com/whitney/music/whitelight/the_rise_and_fall_of_an_i maginary_empire.zip)

that was pretty damn good. i was pretty impressed with the singing. good content too - i could picture that song being use for sesame street or something with a whole animation to go with it. and actually the last 4 lines made a lot of sense. and i know my rambling and piss poor writing makes me sound high, but i'm not. so it's not marijuana that likes your song, it's sober steve.

what chords were those?

Thanks! Which song are you talking about?

Cool idea man! I like it.

Thanks! Which song are you talking about?

the etiquette one. i didn't see others on the site - i'll go check it out again

I guess I really should've known from the context of your earlier request :) . I'll have to ask the other guy - he wrote that one.

Also, there are "Next Post"/"Previous Post" buttons under the audio player at the bottom.

I did an interesting project a couple of years ago you may have heard of: The RPM Challenge. The challenge is to write and record a complete album in the 28 days of February. I got together with my wife, who I play in a band with, and a friend guitarist, to undertake the challenge.

We decided to do a concept record, which was convenient, since it gave us the chance to outline what it was we were going to do. Once we had a storyline together, we got together twice a week to write and record. We recorded 8 songs for just over the required amount of music.

The constrained time limit, and the accelerated pace of songwriting, meant less second-guessing decisions and resulted in a really cool record that I'm way more proud of than I thought I would be. You can download it if you want to check it out. (http://www.whitneyb.com/whitney/music/whitelight/the_rise_and_fall_of_an_i maginary_empire.zip)

Wow. That sounds great! I especially love the interlude. That trumpet has a very nice sound. I think this may find it's way onto my Zune.

That's hilarious. Sass, my wife, and the singer on that record, absolutely hates that song, and skips it whenever we listen back :)

I have an updated mix of it somewhere with a less obtrusive trumpet, which is what she complains about. I think it's a cool song.

Thanks for your comments. Hope you enjoy the rest of the record. There's a couple of songs that aren't so good but a couple that turned out way better than I expected. We still play Ivory Towers.

I have since grown to really, really like placing limits and constraints on both myself and the people I manage - it brings tasks into focus, and the craft to the art :)

New post/Song if anyone is interested.

Jeff and Elliott Save the Day (http://www.jeffandelliott.com)

You guys are great. Any serious recordings with a band?

Thanks! We were in a ska/punk band together in high school. We've got two albums from that (although it's probably only one album of good songs). And we were in an acoustic trio earlier in college. I can host those if you're interested.

Of course I'm interested!

Okay! Well, I zipped up two albums - the first one our ska band (called East Broadway) released and the only one our trio(called Terzetto) released. They're here Index of /misc (http://jeffandelliott.com/misc/). (Turnabout is the acoustic album). They're big files (27 and 50 MB)!

I'm getting a kick out of some of these tunes on Turnabout :bigthumb:

Thanks - glad you like it! :D

I am in love with Going Classical hahaha. I wasn't crazy about how it ended but everything else was pretty epic hahaha.

Very well done, and what a great idea for a site!

Thanks! It's growing bit by bit. We just broke 1000 hits for the month. :D I know that's small in intarweb standards, but it's the most successful site I've ever created.