Posts Tagged ‘Invisible Paradise’
Recording Update 1
Day one of the Invisible Paradise session was a success! We tracked basics for movements 3 and 6 and I did guitar overdubs for the rest of our next next album Freak Machine. 
Today our goal is to track basics for the rest of the movements, nail some piano overdubs, and do ALL OF THE GUITAR!! Good thing I have been practicing this music for over a year.
-Ben
Ben Levin Group returns to the studio
For the next 72 hours, we will be recording our next album Invisible Paradise and finishing some of the tracking for Freak Machine and Bent Knee’s first album. Invisible Paradise is my most classically influenced piece and it really stands out from everything else I’ve written. I am excited to start tracking! The recording schedule for the next three days at “The Record Company” in Boston will be really intense, check it out:
Recording/Graphic Novels
Hello! I just thought I’d give you an update about what has been going on in the BLG universe lately. Today Vince Welch, Courtney Swain, and I will be heading to a new studio in Quincy, MA to track some guitar, violin, and voice for the new Ben Levin Group and Bent Knee albums. We have been in the studio a lot lately because we are recording two new 40 minute epics “Invisible Paradise” and “Freak Machine” both of which have a lot of layers and orchestration. We won’t be releasing those for quite a while but in the mean time, Greg Bowen, the BLG album art guy is working on the “Pulse of a Nation” graphic novel.
I have been obsessed with comic books and drawing lately, and I am really excited to be able to translate the Pulse story into a graphic novel. I love Greg’s style and the finished product is going to be a beautiful piece of sequential visual art that will go really well with the music. You can see the introduction to the book on the website now. The second half of the graphic novel is going to be drastically different from the introduction but I don’t want to ruin the surprise!
Please leave a comment and let me know what you’ve been up to. Please feel free to share links to your own albums or art work in response to this post!
What I Learned on our First Tour
What I learned on Ben Levin Group’s first tour
(Stuff I wish I had known, and stuff I’d like to share)
A few weeks ago, my band “Ben Levin Group” went on tour for the first time. It’s funny to me how the phrase “going on tour” has this magic to it. It paints a timeless picture of musicians on the road. It incites curiosity, excitement, and envy in others. It implies that people all over the world want to hear your music, and it is an experience shared by the music legends who inspired us to pick up our instruments in the first place. And because of all the hype, I had never actually questioned why someone would want to go on a tour. I just planned on going, set it up, and away we went. My band doesn’t have any management, representation, or road crew, so it was our job to book and promote our shows, find rehearsal space, rent vehicles, transport equipment, and deal with the inevitable chaos that comes with trying to organize just about anything. For five days in a row we worked constantly, barely slept, played hours of incredibly challenging music, endured millions of “that’s what she said” jokes, and had to spend a lot more money than we could possibly make back. After hours of driving and hauling gear, we would play like madmen, sometimes to a nearly empty room.
At the end of the day I could barely stand up straight.