From ccmacdon@rogers.com Mon May 02 05:45:24 2011
Subject:Re: ...11 "Steps" An Anagram in the making..

Goff thanks for the kind words re the 11STEPS CD.. We're very proud of it, and it's got lot's of hammond in there.. (that's always been my primary instrument). I wrote or co-wrote 10 of 12 songs on the CD, and this was a my first time doing so.. I've been a player for a long time, but never really took song writing seriously. So for me this was a major accomplishment. We've gotten a lot of positive comments that the CD has a vintage feel to it and we're hoping that people sit and listen to the whole thing from start to finish, the way we listened to albums as kids!!

Re the intro to "I Need Shelter".. it starts with a Cathedral Organ patch and for this I used a software VST called Soniksynth 2, along with some soft strings from Cakewalks Dimension Pro VST, and then there's two B3 tracks that come, the first is a straight chord pad that builds (and adds some grind), and then there is the arpeggio part.. That's basically it. It is a bit of a challenge to recreate these multiple tracks live, and to do so, I have to layer a bunch of sounds across my double manual NORD C2, using my Roland SonicCell but I think it works OK.

There's also some nice grind in the bridge of "Let It Go" at around the 3:50 mark.. just a couple of seconds of it, but it sits there almost by itself in the mix which I love.

I'm not sure of the "NWO" acronym, did you mean "New World Order"? The cover is pretty neat, and it was done by our guitar player Pete Faragher who is not only a great guitar player but a terrific artist and a designer as well.. It contains a number of interesting elements.. first are the circular steps, and in the background there is a nuclear mushroom cloud. These two elements relate to the true meaning of the band name (11STEPS name came from a government document from the 50/60's entitled "11 Steps to surviving a nuclear fallout"). Then there is the business man (actually our singer Brian Mitchell was photographed for this), and he is oblivious to the baby carriage falling down the stairs, and the atomic bomb going off in the distance.. WOW is that deep or what?

Again thanks for the kind words, the CD Can be listened to in it's entirety on the CBC website, and also on our myspace page:

www.myspace.com/11stepsband

Thanks again Goff!!

Craig MacDonald