Another big thanks to everyone for all your kind words and support. We really appreciate all of you. Below I’ve posted a youtube stream of the song “Birthright” from the March Ep. Please feel free to embed the video anywhere you would like. Anywhere you think other people might enjoy listening. While we’re on the subject of Youtube… Here is a link to our Official Youtube Channel. There you will obviously find all the videos we’ve posted but also something we try to do is whenever we find a video of someone doing a cover of one of our songs we add it to our favorites. So if you look in the favorites you’ll find a bunch of our very talented listeners doing renditions of our songs. If you’ve done a cover and don’t see it in the favorites, leave a link in the comments here and we’d love to see it and add it to the list.
On a completely unrelated note… Yesterday Disney released “Bambi” on blu ray. We’re both big Disney fans and ever since I saw their first blu ray release, “Sleeping Beauty”, and was totally impressed, I’ve made it a point to get all the blu ray releases of the classics. It’s amazing to see these classic animations totally restored and probably in the best condition anyone has ever seen them. I don’t really remember watching “Bambi” a ton as a kid, but after watching it last night I was totally blown away. It’s so beautiful. The artistry is just amazing. The movie came out in 1942 but I think if it came out today people would be flipping out at how amazing it is. Just to think that every frame of that movie was drawn by hand. They capture the realistic movements of the animals so well and the painted backgrounds are just amazing. It’s really interesting too how simple the story is. There is really very little dialogue and the only real villain is man, who is only present in a couple scenes and the story is largely moved forward by the beautiful score. It really just follows life in the forest from birth to death to birth again. To call the movie a cartoon really undersells it. It’s art. The voice casting is so perfect. Hearing all those cute little voices just makes me smile. I have to go on record and say that I think several scenes in “Bambi” are the cutest things ever drawn by people. Anyway if you have a blu ray player and enjoy Disney movies you definitely shouldn’t miss this one. Here’s a ten dollar off coupon even.
today has been such a fun release day! over the last 6 months, we’ve so looked forward to the first of each month, to release the new songs we came up with! feels so very rewarding to see such immediate feedback. means a lot to us. so thank you so to those of you that have listened, downloaded, tweeted, commented, emailed, etc! you’re giving us our second wind for this next half of “yearbook.” excited to create lots more music!
here’s a stream of a song from the “march” EP… “pacific.” it’s an instrumental – it was inspired our love love of film scores.
tomorrow our plan is to hit the ground running on songs for “april”… can’t wait to hear what will unfold! hopefully good things.
tomorrow may be interrupted by apple’s keynote, announce the new ipad and such… very excited about this. the ipad, as i’ve yelled from the roof tops, is a favorite gadget of mine (only 2nd to the iphone) and i’m looking forward to see what else they can cram into the thing. gonna be rad.
talk soon, gang! much love to you.
love, ryan
p.s. if you’re not already addicted to this game, you should be…
We are so very pleased to announce that our brand-new Yearbook EP, “March” is available right now!!
This EP is a special one for us, as it marks the halfway point of our Yearbook project! We can hardly believe it’s been 6 months already… (as they say: time sure flies, when you’re writing 3 songs a month… or something like that) We’re very proud of this EP – it includes an instrumental inspired by the Pacific ocean, a song that originated from melodies created on an iPhone and a Sleeping At Last first: a duet of sorts with a very special guest (see below!)
If you want details, we got ‘em:
“MARCH” SONGS:
1. Pacific 2. Outlines 3. Birthright
“MARCH” SPECIAL GUESTS:
JON FOREMAN - “BIRTHRIGHT”: We’re thrilled to announce that Jon Foreman of Switchfoot lent us his incredible voice on the song “Birthright.” A couple months ago, Jon graciously accepted our invitation to be a part of Yearbook at some point. When “Birthright” was written, we felt like Jon’s voice would be a perfect fit for singing half of it – Jon was up to the task and did a remarkable job! We couldn’t be happier with how it turned out, which further proves the widely known fact: Jon Foreman is awesome.
We’ve had the privilege of calling Jon a friend for many years now. We are truly inspired and grateful to have gotten to know such a genuine and talented dude throughout these years. In fact, Jon and the entire Switchfoot gang have been an incredible support and encouragement to Sleeping At Last in so many ways from the very beginning of our music-making endeavors. (ie: Back in 2003, Switchfoot was kind enough to invite us to tour with them, on what became our very first Sleeping At Last US tour. Spoiling us rotten!) We consider their kindness to us over the years as an enormous gift.
As many of you probably already know, Switchfoot is currently in the process of recording their next full-length entitled “Vice Verses” … Can’t wait to hear it! A HUGE thanks to Jon for taking time away from recording to sing with us! Privileged.
JASON TOTH - “OUTLINES” & “BIRTHRIGHT”: One of our favorite drummers in the world, Jason Toth played brilliantly on both “Outlines” and “Birthright.” This is the 2nd Yearbook EP to feature Jason’s incredible playing and it’s always a pleasure to work together. In addition to being a Yearbook veteran, Jason handled all of the drums/percussion on our “Storyboards” record. We’ve admired his drumming for many, many years now so it is a great honor to make music together! You’ll be hearing more of his excellent playing in upcoming EPs, we’re sure!
Per usual, each Yearbook EP is $3 on it’s own, or you can subscribe to ALL 12 of ‘em anytime for $30. (Saves $6!)… learn more here!
“March” will release on iTunes (& all other digital music stores) on approx. Mar. 15th ( FYI: each of the previous Yearbook EPs are all on iTunes now! Click here to get ‘em)
Well, we sincerely hope you enjoy “March,” and the entire first half of our “Yearbook” project! This has been such an amazing experience and we are so grateful for your kindness and support over the course of these last six months. So excited for the 2nd half of Yearbook! Thank you for giving us the opportunity to do what we love.
Tonight’s the night. Our Yearbook EP for March releases tonight for subscibers and tomorrow morning for individual sales. We’re super excited to have you all hear it. If you follow us on Facebook or Twitter you might have seen that we have a really exciting guest on this EP. Our super talented pal, Jon Foreman from the band Switchfoot lends his beautiful voice to a verse on our song “Birthright”. We’ll be sending out an email later tonight with more details but needless to say we’re super excited to have him be a part of Yearbook.
In non Yearbook news, I just finished the first season of “The Wire”. It’s great. I’ve heard over and over again how great the show was but it’s taken me a long time to get around to watching it. I will say it took me a little while to get into it. It definitely starts slow and I wasn’t really sure what all the fuss was about but I stuck with it and just like a good book or movie, that slow start gives the characters time to develop so that events later in the story are much more meaningful. I can’t wait to watch the rest of the series. Thanks for reading and I hope you all enjoy the March EP.
anyway, wow – what a month! february was by far the most challenging of all of the yearbook months thus far… creating/writing songs wasn’t the difficult part – it was timing. i mentioned before that between this month being a shorter month, a few prior commitments and lots of unexpected stuff, it was the tightest schedule thus far! yikes. but, we made it! i finished the lyrics to a new song (which will of course be on “march”) called “outlines” and it is the final song for this EP in the capable hands of john goodmanson, who will mix it. we hope to hear a mix today and get it dialed in by tonight, where it will be immediately tossed to mastering, to be mastered first thing tomorrow AM, and will release tomorrow at midnight. yikes.. talk about some fast turn around, eh?
so “march” marks the halfway point of the “yearbook” project! crazy how fast that went by, but wow it was certainly a healthy and hefty amount of work! excited for the next 6 months too… this has been such a great experience for us. thank you so much to each of you for being a part of it, by allowing these songs to be a part of your world for even a moment. truly means a lot to us!
well, today is a “breather” day… which means i am going to get the studio cleaned up, take care of some emails that have been long since waiting for replies and get all sorts of other stuff in order before we dive back in for the “april” EP!
have a great oscar day!! any predictions??? i predict (based on zero knowledge)
best actor: colin firth (even though, i feel like geoffrey rush should have been nominated for best actor rather than supporting… colin deserves it.)
best actress: natalie portman
best director: david fincher
best picture: i feel like the social network will win, but i wish “inception” or “kings speech” or “toy story 3″ would take it. there’s a decent chance for king’s speech, which i’d be quite pleased with. social network was great, but i don’t know… doesn’t feel like picture of the year for me.
how about you guys??
love, ryan
p.s. ummm… this kid’s awesome. and apparently, we have pretty much the same predictions. ha)
As I mentioned before, I just read the book “Lonesome Dove” recently. I also mentioned that I thought it might be my favorite book. Well tonight my Wife and I just finished watching the made for TV mini series based on the book. I was pleasantly surprised that it was great too. If you’ve ever read a book before seeing the movie of it, you know that the movie is never as good as the book. But with that said, this faired pretty well. For adapting a 900 page book they did a really good job. I really don’t remember anything important that they left out. It is six hours long so that helps, but they really did a great job at bringing it all together. It won 7 emmys the year it was released. I don’t think you could get better actors than Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones to play the two lead characters. Particularly Robert Duvall as Gus. He’s so good. For the most part it’s hard to believe that this was made for TV. There are only a scene or two that reveal the lower budget (the dust storm in the first episode, yikes!). I can’t imagine something like this would ever be made for network TV today. Anyway, I feel like I’m rambling, am I rambling? Sorry… In conclusion the movie was great, the book was very very great. I only recommend watching the movie though if you have no intention of reading the book. If any of you ever do end up reading the book I’d love to hear what you thought of it on here. Take care.
Tonight was the last night of the Friday Night at the Movies series with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I’ve blogged about the series before if you’re curious. Tonight’s theme was a tribute to Chicago film critic extraordinaire, Roger Ebert. It was a really special night. They played pieces from Roger’s favorite film composers and favorite movies. I won’t go through everything they played but some highlights were “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Gabriel’s Oboe” by my favorite Ennio Morricone, and “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. At one point they brought out a zither player to play the theme from “The Third Man”. I had never seen a zither played before and I still have no idea how they’re played. It’s crazy. Check out the video below. Another highlight was when they played the score that was originally written for “2001″ before Kubrick decided to use what had just been temporary music instead. He made the right choice. It just wasn’t the same without “Also Sprach Zarathustra”. But the best moment was at the end when Roger Ebert came out on stage to a standing ovation. He’s been through a lot over the past several years so it was great to see him shown some love from his hometown.
I’m a huge Beatles fan. But you probably already knew that. You probably are too. Let’s face it most human beings are. The reason is because they are the best. I could probably end my post there, case closed, but I won’t. I just came across this blog the other day called “Let me tell you about the Beatles“. It’s a pretty fun idea. These two Beatles super fans decided they would go through each and every Beatles song and do a post on a song a day. When I search Beatles in my iTunes it comes up with about 220 songs and I’m sure I don’t have all of them. So this project will take these guys the better part of a year to finish. May I also point out that the Beatles first album came out in 1963 and their last in 1970, that’s roughly 30+ songs a year. That’s crazy. But anyway on the blog they go through some facts about the recording and just their opinions on the songs. It’s kind of funny when you read through the ones they have so far because for being such big Beatles fans they’re not afraid to call songs terrible. On a few posts you would think they downright hate the Beatles. It’s a fun read for all you Beatlemaniacs out there.
as dan mentioned, we’ve been working like crazy getting this “march” EP completed! we’re so very close to wrapping things up.
song # 1, which we’re calling “Pacific” is already sent over to mastering. feeling great about how the mix turned out – excited for you guys to hear it! it’s an instrumental, named after the pacific ocean, of course. my plan is to follow it up with another instrumental later in yearbook that will be called “atlantic.” excited for these watery-instrumentals!
song #2, called “birthright” is totally done on our end… it’s being mixed right now. we’re waiting on a friend to do some guest vocals, but not sure if schedules will work! fingers are crossed. either way, this song’s in great shape and we can’t wait to hear the mix. i played this song at the recent TWLOHA events i played at.. excited with how the recording turned out.
song #3 is pretty much finished, musically. feeling great about the song as a whole… just wrote vocal melodies that i like a lot too… the ONLY set back on this one is lyrics… my brain has been a little overloaded lately, so i’m having a bit of trouble pulling this one together fast. hoping for a good night working on it, as well as a solid next couple days of progress. it’s sort of the last piece of the puzzle – so my brain is echoing that all the time. ugh. lots of ideas for lyrics, just have to bend ‘em all into shape. and fast. really fast.
all in all, this EP’s nearly done and we’re really excited about it! a lot of work went into this, against a lot of unexpected schedule challenges and still, we couldn’t be happier with it. (well, if i had lyrics for song #3, i would probably be happier right now… ha)
speaking of lyrics, i should be writing them now. see ya guys!
Hey everyone. Sorry we’ve missed a few days here on the blog. We’ve been super busy finishing up the songs for the March EP. To make it up to you here is 100 pictures of little bunnies. Are we square now? Good. Like I said we’ve been super busy finishing the last two songs for this month. On Sunday we got together with our pal Jason Toth to record drums for the two songs. Jason played drums on our “Storyboards” album as well as the “December” Ep. He’s a great drummer and did an amazing job. We can always count on Jason to help us bring the songs to a new level. Then yesterday after working separately through the morning Ryan and I got together to sign off on one of the two songs, called “Birthright”, and sent it off to mixing. Which now leaves us with one song to go. Ryan is working hard on the lyrics while I’m at home working on the instrumental side of things. I think we can definitely wrap this up by the deadline but it’s definitely going to be down to the wire. I’m pretty excited about this batch of songs. I hope you guys dig them too. Thanks for reading. Take care.
;)
