Church of Hed The Fourth Hour

Church of Hed Live Stream Coming Soon

May 21, 2020 by pwdood@quarkspace.com Leave a Comment

Howdy! Sorry for the lack of an update during the difficult, uncertain, and simply strange times due to the Coronavirus pandemic. Rest assured we are staying healthy and active musically and hope you are also keeping well.

PaulKAT — My TrapKAT and I transverse the sky in rehearsal for a live stream performance. Photo by Angela Williams.

I just updated The Fourth Hour page with some fresh reviews that arrived over the last few months. Check them out and consider downloading the album from our Bandcamp page. It’s still quite a psychedelic album.

Live Stream(s) on the Docket

Around the Holidays I picked up a Zoom Q2N-4K camera for recording studio performances and potentially doing a live stream. As of yet, I only made one recording of an improv session potentially titled The Fifth Hour. Here’s the YouTube video.

Fun with astral butterflies.

I also began considering a live streaming performance, hopefully with Dink, within the next few months. Then the pandemic happened, with the entire live music scene forced to cancel public shows and tours. A smattering of streaming performances took place in their wake.

Dink works on the front lines of the grocery industry. He’s staying healthy and hopes to come down later in the summer. So I forged ahead with rehearsing a set list performed by myself. For those who may have forgotten, I haven’t played out publicly as Church of Hed since 2004. Quarkspace’s last public gig was in 2001. It gon’ be fun! And weird.

Rehearsals are going well. Doing live versions of tracks with a host of overdubs is challenging, but fun. My studio is setup for recording, not performance, so there’s a lack of ergonomics. We persist nonetheless.

Expect a hearty dollop of Hed material sprinkled with some tasty Quarkspace classics. I am not singing — this time. A couple of tributes to musical giants we lost this year are also planned. McCoy Tyner’s death hit me especially hard, but my ham-fisted drummer-first piano chops can’t come close to paying tribute to that master. So Mr. Tyner isn’t one of the tributes.

So stay tuned. Expect the streaming shindig to take place in mid June. We’ll let you know when it’s scheduled. I plan on doing at least one per month. Since my camera’s mic spits out 24-bit audio, I also plan on doing live recordings with higher-fidelity audio. Streaming audio lies at the crappy MP3 level — 128 to 160 kbps.

Construction of The Father Road Continues

While rehearsing for a live show, I am still hard at work on The Father Road — the next Church of Hed album. The entire road is partially recorded, meaning I have compositions partially recorded for each section from San Francisco to New York City. I think there are 21 tracks in total. Currently the focus lies on drum tracking. The energy of a live performance — and the extra rehearsal time — hopefully informs those takes.

Part of the reason I have extra time to rehearse a live show involves the release date of the album. After releasing The Fourth Hour during the Holidays, I resolved to never repeat that mistake. I am too distracted and my already lackadaisical promotional efforts suffered even more.

At the rate I was working, the new album was going to be finished right around the Holidays this year. So I figured I’d ramp up live rehearsing and practice the hell of the drum tracks for The Father Road and record them after the first gig. With that delay, I plan to release the new album early in 2021.

Stay tuned for updates throughout the recording process this year. We also hope you tune in for a regular live streaming activity over that same period moving forward. Thanks for listening!

The Fourth Hour is Officially Released!

November 21, 2019 by pwdood@quarkspace.com Leave a Comment

Indeed, the news is true. The Fourth Hour was officially released this week. Check out our convenient page if you need proof. In fact, that same page is laden with links to the Bandcamp page for the release, as well as CD Baby, Apple Music, and Spotify. We’re simply here to help!

Of course, it was a fun project to complete. Reaper worked beautifully as our new DAW, enabling us to finally move on after nearly two decades of Pro Tools. We also mastered everything “in the box” using a full array of cool plugins that essentially sound the same as our outboard gear.

Work on The Father Road Continues

It’s nice to be able to work again on The Father Road. I am currently porting everything over from Pro Tools to Reaper; the ADAT light pipe cable is shining. After that effort is complete, we move on to recording drum tracks, followed by melodic and spacey overdubs. The Lincoln Highway was never this psychedelic!

Expect a CD release some time in the latter half of next year. We can’t wait. After that, look for The Fifth Hour (yes, The Fourth Hour is the first release in our own “Spacefolds” series), as enough high-quality improvisational material is ready for overdubs. Dink and I went hard. Then Cycle comes next. As always, we’re keeping busy.

We appreciate your continued support. Consider supporting us with a download of the new album from our Bandcamp page. Sure, streaming is available, but it’s more fun collecting your own music, isn’t it?

Once again, thanks for listening!

Our New Single, Q Ching is Released

July 5, 2019 by pwdood@quarkspace.com Leave a Comment

We finally released our new single, Q Ching. Check it out at Bandcamp, Apple Music, or even Spotify. It’s also available on CD Baby and a host of other digital media sources – some feature streaming, while some provide downloads. Musically, picture a spaced-out mix of Manuel Gottsching and Ennio Morricone.

Q Ching Single — The Q Ching single cover, inspired by single covers through time. Image copyright, Eternity’s Jest Records, Inc. So there.

We prefer you support us with a download, and Bandcamp is the best place for that, as they offer the lossless FLAC format derived from our 24-bit master. Note that even though Q Ching is from our next album, The Fourth Hour, this single version of it won’t be on that release. It’s shorter than the album track, obviously, but there are other differences as well.

In short, don’t miss out on this unique release!

The “finally” in the first sentence is also notable. As I’ve rambled on about in the past, we recently switched from Pro Tools to Reaper as our digital recording software, after two decades. Every Quarkspace and Church of Hed release from Drop onwards used Pro Tools.

Needless to say, I’ve been experimenting with different effects plugins as part of the recording and mastering process, let alone getting used to Reaper’s interface. Things are going well, but the process just takes a bit more time.

We’ve Reached The Fourth Hour

Now I am working on getting The Fourth Hour ready for release. This includes adding some drumming and other overdubs here and there. The album version of Q Ching features drumming and a different “verse” melody. Other surprises abound, and every piece is longer than seven minutes, for the psychedelic voyagers among you keeping track.

cat speaking on synth — Listen ye, whilst I pontificate on our upcoming projects. Image copyright by someone very cool on the Internet. I just found it.

The Fourth Hour is the first release in a series of more immediate albums, not unlike the Quarkspace Spacefolds series. I tend to get tied up with larger musical projects, like The Father Road and Cycle, so having room for spacey krautrock improvisations is necessary for one’s musical sanity. In fact, Dink was just at the studio helping out on The Father Road, and we laid down some improvs for the next release in this new series.

Expect to see The Fourth Hour released later this summer, but things might get delayed due to technical exploration with Reaper and other new plugins. Either way, stay tuned!

Updates on The Father Road and Cycle

As noted earlier, I decided to put The Fourth Hour out before The Father Road since it provided the opportunity for a smaller project to learn Reaper. This approach fits nicely within our workflow, as The Father Road’s material requires more work writing melodies and drum parts, as well as the time to nurture and learn how to properly play those fresh ideas.

Recording the drums is the next big task; scheduled to take place after The Fourth Hour is finished. At that point, everything then gets transferred to Reaper with full melodic overdubbing to follow. A 2020 release should be easily attainable.

I practice the piano parts for the last two sections of Cycle on a daily basis. Full recording work on this project is scheduled to happen after The Father Road is released. Expect another release in our new Spacefolds-esque series around that time as well.

We are staying busy and appreciate the support you all give us. Thanks!

New Church of Hed Releases Coming Soon – Spring 2019 News Update

April 2, 2019 by pwdood@quarkspace.com Leave a Comment

Welcome to the latest news update from those intrepid travelers at Eternity’s Jest Records. With an emerging Spring now upon us, our thoughts turn towards a few upcoming Church of Hed releases. Let’s dive into the details!

But wait! A quick note to let you know Brandenburg Heights, formerly a Bandcamp exclusive, is being distributed to other digital providers, including Spotify, Apple Music, CD Baby, and more. We’ll do a quick post whenever the album is available.

Now we can dive into the details!

New Church of Hed Single and Album are on the Docket

We are hard at work on multiple fronts here at the Church of Hed. Our next three albums happily reside in various states of completion. We’ll look at each following their expected order of release.

First off comes The Fourth Hour, an album focused more on the immediate and the improvisational – it’s almost Spacefolds-esque. We figured this album would come out after The Father Road, but the fact we recently switched from ProTools to Reaper as our DAW (recording software) of choice – after nearly 20 years – rearranged things. The Fourth Hour requires less production than The Father Road, so it makes more sense to finish this one as a project for learning Reaper.

Q Ching in Reaper — The beginnings of the Q Ching single in Reaper. Image by author.

A release sometime this summer is likely. So expect more news on that front in a month or two. In the interim, a single derived from The Fourth Hour sessions, titled Q Ching, is slated for release later this month. Once again, this approach provides us a great way to learn Reaper as well as a robust array of recording plugins, including a ton from Eventide.

Obviously, we’ll let you know when Q Ching and The Fourth Hour are ready for your ears. Expect digital-only releases. Stay tuned!

Driving The Father Road

At the same time as The Fourth Hour, we are also traveling hard down The Father Road. Currently, drum parts are being written and recorded – still in Pro Tools – and when that process is finished, everything gets transferred to Reaper. At that point, the process of finalizing melodies and other “trebly material” is scheduled. The album is coming together fantastically, and since this is a much more complex project from a production standpoint (and twice as long!) it makes sense to release The Fourth Hour first.

There’s still a chance The Father Road might be ready by the end of 2019, but a 2020 release is more likely. We’ll keep you in the loop. Expect a CD and digital release.

Other Church of Hed Projects in the Oven

Every time we enter the studio, piano practice ensues. Over the last two years, two new pieces appeared during this practicing and are gradually being developed. These two compositions, when paired with two other previously released tracks are slated to make up another Church of Hed album, called Cycle.

Cycle is likely to be released sometime in late 2020 or early 2021. Of course, there may be other albums before that happens, perhaps The Fifth Hour or even The Sixth Hour? Stay tuned and thanks for listening, we’ll keep writing and recording new music for you.