My friends and I just finished an elaborate video using a technique called light painting. In ultra-slow motion (4 hours!), Maia Hamann played Bach's Fugue No. 2 in C minor, while I took long exposure pictures of our friends Oanh, Peter, and Pat "painting" with colored LED lights. I took one photo for Continue reading... 
After a grueling but supremely fun month of writing and recording, Nick Syman and I finished our album for the RPM Challenge. The album spans a ton of different sounds and genres, and even eras. The one-month limit forced us to work with ideas we might have otherwise thrown away. And I'm glad we kept Continue reading... 
Less than a week to go in the RPM Challenge, and Nick and I have 11 tracks in progress. I still have a ton of mixing ahead of me, but I thought I'd share some of our demo songs (titles pending):
The Day Breaks Fast...
[audio:https://www.charliemccarron.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/cagetones-the-day-breaks-fast-demo.mp3]
Nick Continue reading... 
Here's yet another sneak preview of our RPM Challenge album:
I started this track with the underlying synth chords, and brought it to Nick on Sunday to add some tuned percussion, including vibraphone, crotales, tubular bells, a gong, and glass shards. The final mix may end up with even more instruments.
This Continue reading... 
Nick and I got together again on Wednesday and recorded a trombone trio he composed for our RPM Challenge album. I wasn't totally convinced when he first played the idea for me on a MIDI keyboard. It sounded sort of interesting, but the harmonies seemed kind of random. As soon as we started recording Continue reading... 
Nick and I ended our session on Saturday by trying to co-compose some music for our RPM album. But it was kind of a slow and not-very-fruitful process, compared to our improv jams. So we came up with a new plan for our next meeting: we would each create a background music bed for the other person Continue reading... 
After our first RPM jam session, Nick Syman and I went off on our own to do some songwriting. I came up with 3 half-songs. Here's one of them, filmed by Jeffrey Schwinghammer:
This is a totally different vocal style than anything I've done before. Where I'd normally sing phrases that have the Continue reading... 
It's official. My friend Nick Syman and I are crazy. We've taken on the RPM Challenge, which means we're going to have to write and record an entire album in the month of February. We had our first jam session on Wednesday, and Jeff Schwinghammer was there to film the process:
We hadn't really Continue reading...