I'm in the process of building a group that's going to play original music only, an antidote to the myriad paid covers bands I've been a part of over many years. I'm sitting probably on a few album's worth of material already; one of the advantages of being a prolific writer, and I'm really just getting started. Some of the songs are already going through good quality demo stage - for example I already have 3 tracks that have all the guitars and vocals down and semi-completed mixes, just need drums added (on that already) plus some other parts, and I have placeholder organ/piano parts too as I play enough to get by in a mix. Also there's a bunch of acoustic demos that I want to turn into fully-fledged arranged songs. The project is only 3-4 weeks old but I don't mess around when I'm passionate about something!
Influences wise, it's pretty diverse. I wouldn't mind saying it's very Elvis Costello, Beatles, ELO at the more pop-rock end then Killing Joke, Catherine Wheel, Nirvana, Soundgarden at the hard-rock/grunge end but also includes stuff that's a lot more experimental or jazz, including Talk Talk's Spirit Of Eden and Steely Dan's Aja albums. Obviously this is a pretty broad list but what they all have in common is great arrangements, including brilliantly written and played parts that all interlock perfectly to make sonic soundscapes, sometimes dense sometimes sparse depending on the piece.
There's a limit to what I can play - guitar wise sure, I can cover that, I'm a good vocalist who can record/hamonise myself without cheating and using autotune, etc, I can do some keys work, I can produce/mix/master fairly well, that's fine. Yet for some of the songs I'm writing it needs more parts that are quite important and are going to include string sections, hopefully. I could program the strings using some kind of orchestral plugin, I'm sure, but to be honest collaboration really is in the spirit of this project. Plus, my ear is a bit tired of pop records with programmed everything - I'd like to literally keep it real, if possible. I've also considered that someone who is more classically trained is naturally going to bring in a separate and distinct set of talents I don't have, who is able to pick out different harmonies and counterpoints than someone like me who has mostly rock music roots in the writing and playing.
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TL;DR
That's why after this longish wall of text I'm politely asking if there's anyone here who can play any of the following :- viola, violin, cello, double bass or similar - think string quartet type stuff (hence the mention of ELO earlier). Perhaps a soloist who is comfortable multi-tracking their own parts as I do with guitars. I want this to be a true collaboration where creative contributions are heeded and tried, not dropping a score in front of someone, otherwise that's just session work. Someone who wants to make diverse, interesting, catchy pop records with a decent layer of sophisticated melody and harmony like they used to, before it all got dumbed down to lowest common denominator Swifty style I-VI-IV-V simplicity. My argument is yes you can do that now and then, but at least dress it up a bit!
So if anyone's interested please let me know. If you're UK based there's a good chance I can record with the person in question directly, if not doing it digitally and sharing mixes via Dropbox or Google Drive etc would be fine. I'm flexible. I don't really expect many if any replies; not being pessimistic, just realistic, but I figured it makes sense to start looking now, at the start of the project, and this is the first step.
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