Damon Fibraio: Blog

Welcome to 2011. I actually plan on using this blog on my web site to promote things I am doing and discuss my thoughts on whatever comes to mind. with that, here we go...

Preparing for a show with Visions is always an interesting affair. What you will see if you attend the Gin Mill show on January 29, 2011 or any other show is only the tip of the iceberg. From the keyboard department, anyway, it is more than just learning the songs and putting a set list together. Travel with me as I take you through the preparation process.

Before every gig, we determine how much time we have to play, then we estimate how many songs we'll need and we start assembling the list. We try to balance between songs we like to play and songs you want to hear. Once the list is assembled, it is not in its final order yet, generally. wE start to learn the arrangements. For me, this is more than learning notes and chords and figuring out who is taking what solos and what backing vocals, if any, are needed. I have [...]

The latest song I just put up, called from Your Angel, is an exercise in frustration. I don't want to get into the meaning behind it, as the lyrics are very direct and obvious, however, the process of writing this took place over months. Let me explain.

This song started life in 2002. I still have the rough demo of it which is even longer than the 7 minutes and 23 seconds it is now. It did not have a bridge section that you hear after the second chorus in its demo stage. It only had one guitar track as opposed to two and it was much lighter of astyle, mainly because I didn't like my guitar sounds. And of course, I wasn't playing to a click, so the rhythm is off badly.

I took this song and thought of lyrics. The lyrics alone took a long time, as I don't fancy myself a real lyricist. I went through a few tens of drafts before settling on the ones you hear and even then, a few modifications were in order, adding a line shifting words, etc.

Christmas day, I began laying the tracks. It is [...]