After 18 months of joyful toil, stereotypes released its debut CD "penny earned" just prior to Christmas. As I have documented the evolution of the project I wanted to pen one closing submission to capture some of the final impressions of the experience.

When I last left off, we were entering the final stage of recording and production. What I didn't have at that point was a complete view of how time consuming and detail oriented that process is. We initially approved a list of 18 songs, four of which did not make the final cut, either because we weren't happy with the quality or ran out of time to get them to a level we were pleased with.

The process was ultimately owned and managed by our producer (and drummer/keyboard player) Roy. He spent most of October and the early part of November re-recording guitar, bass and vocal tracks that were either missing or needed to be redone. He then spent countless hours over the course of 5 weeks (after working his day job) arranging and fine tuning the audio tracks. As part of that exercise he converted his apartment living room into a working studio by using sound baffles and a monitoring system that detects and corrects any ambient distortions caused by sound bouncing off of surfaces.

As we worked through the songs, we decided we needed some additional musical support to complete a few of songs to the standard we wanted. For three songs we brought in a Canadian keyboardist Andrew Jankura who owns a music supply store in Dubai (actually I bought my electric guitar from him which is how I met him  http://musicianssupplydubai.com/about.php) and plays professionally at a number of local hotels/bars. We visited his shop and he laid down Hammond organ and piano tracks for "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Just Because" and "Help me make it through the night".  To finish off the latter song, Roy tracked down and contracted Adam Ollendorf, a Nashville-based musician who played at last year's Grammys, to record guitar and petal steel to make it an authentic country tune. (for more info https://myspace.com/adamollendorff )

As for vocals, my daughter Bianca sang back up on six tracks and considerably enhanced our sound. She has an angelic and pitch-perfect voice and recording with her was an incredible experience, one I will always cherish.

Once the arrangements were finalized, and the 14 final tracks produced by Roy, we had to have the tracks/CD digitally mastered. That is a process which adjusts track levels to ensure continuity across the CD and to optimise quality on the various devices it is played on as well as the digital files that play on computers, mobile devices etc... For that, Roy researched options and contacted Andy Jackson who agreed to master our CD. Andy is the sound engineer who worked on most of Pink Floyd's material including "The Wall". (for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson_(recording_engineer) )

We then took the finalised artwork and sound files and had CDs produced with a local supplier MT2 (thanks go out to Dadi Motwilla and Antony for their help) who were kind enough to produce 40 rush copies to take with me to Toronto when I went in mid-December. Some are in Chapleau with my Mom. Some I  mailed to friends in Ontario while I was there. Others I handed out in person to those people I managed to see while in Canada. Many others have yet to be done (so please bear with me). The next wave of distribution will take place over the next months...a key element of that will be a CD promotion run in conjunction with the good folks at Kamazooie...stay tuned for more details on that!

The response, from those who have taken the time to listen and forward on their comments, has been positive and I thank all of those people for their kind words! My grandmother in law and mother in law's responses were particularly special as they played the CD continuously and were genuinely and visibly touched by the songs in which Bianca and I sing together. I would like to send a special thanks out to them as well as my wife Elena and daughters Bianca and Sierra whose feedback, support, understanding and patience throughout this project have been greatly appreciated. On behalf of the band I'd like also like to send a shout out to Steve Polak (photography) and Rich McCausland (design) who gave generously of their time and talents to produce some great  artwork. Also thanks to Brian Ritchie for his valued input and support and to Kevin Walker and Ken Lane who gave their feedback as the music was being developed. Hope I didn't leave anyone out, apologies if I did!

Over the next few weeks Jim, Solle, Roy and I will be discussing ways to promote this CD/music and we will also discuss our next project. We have learned so much from this one we are anxious to see if we can improve further.

Anyway that's about it.  Thanks very much for taking the time to read these submissions. Take care!