PilgrimsProg status

Here are the songs so far:

Act1

Dream - MP3

Seek the Gate

Slough of Despond (SOD) - MP3

Help - MP3

Gatekeeper - MP3



Act 2

Believe

Overture - MP3

Beautiful - MP3

Confrontation - MP3

Faithful's Theme

Vanity Fair - MP3

Faithful Must Die - MP3

Giant Despair

Celestial City/Farther up, Further in

Compline

Vanity Fair

After Apollyon, Christian meets Faithful and they go to Vanity Fair on their way to the Celestial City. Vanity Fair has everything for sale from everywhere. The ultimate in hedonistic pleasure as well.

They stir up Vanity Fair because they are not interested enough in "wine, women, and song".

Vanity Fair MP3

This song is the first song where I use Digidesign's Structure sampling plug-in. I use piano and 70's organ and other things. Violins are Miroslav Philharmonik plug-in. The drums are manual drum hits with the Alesis Control Pad and BFD drum plug-in. Some of the drums still need to be fixed.

The vocals are done with the Electro-Harmonix Voice Box with the girl voices octaves.

This is the first song that I have written in 3/4 time.

Faithful Must Die

After Apollyon, Christian meets Faithful and they go to Vanity Fair on their way to the Celestial City. They stir up Vanity Fair because they are not interested enough in "wine, women, and song". They are put on trial and Faithful is killed. Christian is thrown in prison.

Faithful Must Die MP3

I made Faithful a girl and used the Electro-Harmonix Voice Box to create girl vocal parts. Cheesy but necessary.

The judge part is using AVOX DUO vocal plug-in which adds a lower vocal part. I also use that plug-in on SOD.

The crowd parts are from Freesound.org

The idea for the title came from the Star Trek episode City on the Edge of Forever, where Spock says "Edith Keeler must die". I guess that this became a T-shirt saying at one time.

Overture

Overture is an experiment with the appregio feature in Xpand, mixing the different patterns to make the piano parts. Then I overlaid guitar and choir.

Overture MP3

This is my friend Kevin Brubaker's favorite song of the project.

Confrontation

The Confrontation is Christian's battle with Apollyon. It is an instrumental that I wrote in November 2007.

Confrontation MP3

This was originally an experiment with strings. It was also an experiment to try different sections with different moods.

The drums started as a click track and were filled in with manual drum hits using an Alesis Control Pad, using BFD drum plug-in.

The violins are Miroslav Philharmonik plug-in. The fast guitar part at the end was written and played by Gary Heitz.

As I wrote this I laid it out using markers in Pro Tools and tried to write it in sections to fit those stated typed-in moods.

Beautiful

In the Pilgrim's Progress story, after conversion Christian goes to the House of Beautiful, which is supposed to resemble the church. It is where he is equipped to later face Apollyon.

Beautiful MP3

This is a fairly simple song and was actually a worship song that we sang in a home church that I belonged to last year.

Gary Heitz plays lead guitar in the beginning and middle. The beginning has a vocoder part.

Gatekeeper

The next stop along the road is the Narrow Gate. The Gatekeeper asks Christian why he should let him in.

Gatekeeper MP3

This song started as an experiment, and I have been working on it since late 2006/early 2007. It is basically in alternating 5/4 and 6/4 time, with 4/4 in the chorus.

This is still not optimally mixed and mastered.

The guitars use the POD and Johnson J-Station. The acoustic guitars are my Taylor. The lead guitar is through a Mesa Boogie F-50, which I just bought a couple of weeks ago.

The drums are Beta Monkey Music drum loops.

The background harmonies are created with the Electro-Harmonix Voice Box, which is awesome in its own right. I plug in my mic and guitar and sing the root. It figures out the harmony from my guitar and I can mix the dry and wet (harmonized) versions. This song has high harmony, a multi-harmony, and an octave. I highly recommend this little box!

Help

In the allegorical story of Pilgrim's Progress, the character Help pulls Christian out of the Slough of Despond and puts him back on the road.

Help MP3

This is mostly an instrumental, with spoken word in sections. The underlying beat is created with Digidesign Hybrid. The choir and violins are from Miroslav Philharmonik plug-in for Pro Tools.

Slough of Despond

In the PilgrimsProg project, our character leaves the City of Destruction and heads toward the Celestial City. He gets mired down in the Slough (swamp) of Despond. He's trying in his own strength, and that ultimately leads to depression.

Slough of Despond MP3

This is one of my favorite songs. It is in drop D. The guitar tone is the Boogie patch in a Johnson J-Station. The offsets parts are piano and CX3 organ. It uses drum loops from Beta Monkey Music.

Dream

Dream, the first song in the PilgrimsProg project.

Dream MP3

This song, as many of them, started as an experiment. This was an experiment with Xpand - a swelling string section at the beginning of this song.

It also includes a quote fashioned after Ovid's Metamorphosis: "They were lifeless, face to the ground, and they cared not for God or man". Ovid said that men are different than animals because animals have their head down but man is constantly looking up, essentially questioning the gods.

I took it a step further and said that the main character in Pilgrim's Progress, Christian, is different from his fellow men because they are lifeless, face to the ground, fascinated and stuck in this world, but "he stood patient, face to the sky, and with his voice he cried out to heaven" and said "is this all that there is?".

You have been working on this project HOW LONG?

Welcome back to Pilgrims Prog. This is a progressive rock project that I started in August of 2006 - almost three years ago. And I have been working on it (minus a six month break in early 2008) for that entire length of time.

This project started as demos for a recording project for my band. Unfortunately the band didn't like it. They thought that some of the early songs were too dark, or too much of the "devil's advocate" spin, or my demos were too extensive and would require too much work to adapt them. So it has remained as my own project.

I use Pro Tools LE, and I just switched to version 8.

This project has turned into a series of experiments. Many of the songs started as experiments, either with a technical idea - write a song in 3/4 (Vanity Fair), or 5/4 (Gatekeeper), or in drop D (SOD) - or I got ideas from plug-ins in Pro Tools (such as the XPand intro to Dream). They have flaws (such as my voice), but the flaws have taken on a life of their own and represent the sign posts of the journey.

I got depressed about half way through, especially with the backlash from the band. And what is it all for? Why spend almost every Saturday recording? Who will ever hear it and who really cares (hence the depression)? I do it because it is fun, it is my version of art and my self expression of faith.

So where do I stand now? Most of the songs are done. Many are ready for final mix down. And I will begin posting the updated versions and, once again, blogging about my experiences.

Pre-Pilgrim's Prog - Some historical perspective

The end of the year always leads to reflection and reminescence.

My friend Gary and I have been playing, writing, and recording together for over 10 years now.

One of our previous bands, Beyond the Veil, was a praise band that also did summer concerts. Here are two songs from 1997:

Here I Am MP3

The Gift MP3

So, why Pilgrim's Progress?

Many people have asked me - why write a progressive rock project (a "rock opera") about Pilgrim's Progress?

I love progressive rock - Dream Theater, Kansas, Neal Morse, Spock's Beard. I'm also a Christian and have played guitar in several local Christian bands, both in church/worship and outside.

One of the drawbacks of being in the Midwest is that many churches do not like Christian rock music of any kind. There is often the belief that rock music can be used for evangelical outreach to youth but somehow you are supposed to "mature" to liking Country or something (most have no problem with Country). In addition, many churches in the Midwest Bible Belt believe that guitar solos or extended vocal solos (anything that is not "corporate" or group worship) is "showing off", "prideful", or inappropriate. This presents a problem to a 40-ish rock and blues guitar player. This leaves the options of playing acoustic guitar in church or playing in a bar band on weekends until 4 A.M. for peanuts.

I believe that music is an artistic expression of faith and the struggles of everyday life. I also really like prog, so I decided that "I'm not playing anywhere anyway, so why not just do my own thing?" I bought my own studio equipment and began creating my own project. And I started posting my progress journal to a blog so that my friends can keep up with it (it also saves me the trouble of sending MP3's via e-mail). If anyone else sees or hears it, that's a bonus.

Soft Synths

I was watching the videos on prog band FROST* website. Jem uses the Korg Legacy Collection Digital soft synth. Cool. So maybe I will get this instead of the upgrade to Reason. I like Reason, but some of the patches in the Reason Adapted just don't have enough "play" in them, and they do stupid things when I don't want them to.

I also loaded up SampleTank2 SE and Xpand! that came with Pro Tools LE with my MBox 2. I really like Xpand!, and the pads sound very life-like. The bass samples sound the best, so I am replacing the bass in my existing demos with tracks using this sample.

BTW - Frost* Milliontown is great CD!

At the Gate demo

This is a demo of the Wicket Gate. Christian reaches the Wicket Gate and is let in by the GateKeeper.

At the Wicket Gate MP3

This has two electric guitar tracks, one using the Rectifier patch from the Johnson J-Station, and one using Amplitube. It has three acoustic guitar tracks recorded direct with my Taylor 714CE into the XLR. All synth tracks are GR-20 guitar synth and Reason Adapted. The beginning piano is kind of simplistic because it doesn't have anything over it yet. And some of the acoustic guitar tracks are sloppy and tinny (I also need new strings). That's why they call it a demo. This was written and recorded in about seven to eight hours yesterday.

All songs copyright Scott Miller, 2006.

Burden demo

Here is the basic beginning demo for Burden - an instrumental. It has two guitars and a keyboard part.
Burden mp3

All songs copyright Scott Miller, 2006.

In the studio 9/23/2006

Well, studio is my computer room/office, which doubles as a music studio and practice room.
Today I wrote an intro to Slough of Despond. Very Dream Theater-like chords and some different time signatures.

I like Pro Tools so far. I use Pro Tools LE on a Windows box. I have used Cakewalk in the past, but the Digidesign MBox and Pro Tools LE is a nice platform. Gary (the other guitarrist in my band and my writing partner) has Pro Tools on a Mac. But at this time I have a bad feeling that our files are not compatible. I can't open or import any files that he has given me.

In Pro Tools today I learned how to record a backwards lead guitar part. This may seem very simple to you, but I didn't know how to do it previously. After recording the part, I selected the audio part with the hand/grabber tool, chose the Audiosuite->Other->Reverse menu. Simple, but I had to look it up online to find out how to use it.

Influences

Any question about songwriting or prog ultimately comes down to influences - who influenced you and who do you sound like?

This is a difficult question because I ultimately sound like me. But the bands I like and listen to alot ultimately influence the project - not that the prog project is even remotely like any of these.

I really like Ayreon's Human Equation. In telling a story like Pilgrim's Progress, a key decision in songwriting is whether to tell the story in first person or third person. In Human Equation, Arjen uses different voices for each player/emotion. Although I don't have multiple singers, I wrote Seek the Wicket Gate as first person from Christian's perspective. I inadvertently used first person again in Worldly Wise Man, telling the point of view of Worldy Wise Man pointing Christian from the narrow road off on the road to Morality.

Other influences musically are Neal Morse (Testimony is one of my favorite prog albums), Dream Theater, Kansas (which is a huge influence), King's X, and even a local band called Room Full of Walters that had two regionally popular CD's.

Therefore, it is not surprising that my top 5 favorite prog CD's of all time (in no particular order) are :

• Ayreon - Human Equation
• Neal Morse - Testimony
• Dream Theater - Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
• Kansas - Leftoverture
• Dream Theater - Scenes from a Memory or Symphony X - V

Song list and progress

Pilgrim's Prog is based on Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. The songs only cover Part 1 of the books (Part 2 is a retelling of the story with Christiana following her husband on the same path).
I have laid out the songs as follows, and have included current progress.
Act1
Burden (instrumental) - Writing in progress
Seek the Wicket Gate - Songs and chords written. First demo done.
Obstinate - Partially written
Slough of Destruction - Wrote the basic chord intro today!
Meet Worldly Wiseman (prog instrumental) - Ideas demo'd
Worldly Wiseman/Morality - Writing and demo done. Adding more parts.

Act 2
Wicket Gate
Interpreter
Beautiful
Apollyon/Valley of Shadow of Death
Faithful/Vanity Fair
Hopeful/Giant Despair
Celestial City/Farther up, Further in