2 down, 19 to go.

It has been a dream of mine for a long while to record music. Ever since I picked up the guitar in high school, I have wanted to start something. A band, yes. But it was more than that. I wanted to complete a dream, to see that dream pass on to other people, and have them benefit and enjoy what I have created.

This week I moved one step closer to that dream. My good friend Ryan Trammell (whose blog you can find here) was up from Florida for the week, and we took advantage of my time off to record some music together. Usually, when I get together with Ryan, our sessions bring out the softer, more mellow side of my playing, because that's Ryan's style and I enjoy making that type of music. So we recorded a few things, a beachy tune, a bluegrass song, and a dark lullaby sort of thing. We were happy with all of them. But we still had some time left and we didn't have any ideas to work out together, so I asked Ryan if he would be interested in helping lay down a song that I've been working on for the better part of four years. I wrote the main riff I believe my freshman year of college. So we went with it.

The song is called The Phoenix, and it is my favorite thing that I have ever recorded. It is so fulfilling to finally see and hear a vision of mine come to fruition. It turned out so much better than I thought it would. We recorded it in his parents basement using Garageband and a simple recording box, a mic-ed amp, and a custom guitar that was designed and built by the younger Trammell brother, Kent (I have since purchased this guitar from him, and we are both very happy - him for having sold it, me for having gained an amazingly beautiful guitar that has a smooth, thick sound, that was made by a friend). Using these simple tools, we were able to create a piece of my dream. Kent described it as the "definition of epic", which is certainly what I was going for. So I am very pleased.

Another friend of mine, Jamie Newman, and I recorded another song my sophomore year, called The Storm, and that song along with The Phoenix are the first two pieces of an ambitious puzzle that I have named Mythic. Mythic is the name that I came up with a very long time ago for a band, if I were to ever start one. As time went by, Mythic became more and more a personal project, involving artwork, music, and a story, all woven together in different mediums to create a cohesive whole.

So I guess this is the humble announcement of the beginning of MYTHIC, a project by Andrew J. Clark.

Mythic will be three cd's, or EP's, each with seven songs each. This trilogy will have accompanying artwork, and a small amount of prose to flesh out the story as I see it. The entire music project will be instrumental, and will sonically reflect what the story is about.

It doesn't take much to make me happy. Making music and recording it is one of those things. I don't have to sell copies. I don't need a lot of people to be interested, because a lot of people won't. They won't like the instrumental aspect, they won't like the heavy nature of the music, and this project might be deemed "pretentious". That's okay. It's a personal project. I would love for people to take it and make it their own and love it, and if that happens, great. But that is secondary. I am doing this because this is what I want, what I have dreamed of doing, what I am passionate about. If people pick up on that passion and use to fuel their own, then my dream will have come true.

As soon as my mountain of bills diminishes (brakes on my car, rent, electric bill, credit card, student loans, other debts, feeding myself), then I will be buying my own program and my own recording tools so that I can flesh this project out more and more. But for the time being, I have two songs done.

Only 19 more to go.

Welcome to MYTHIC.