March 21, 2020: "Anatomy of a Collaboration"

"Anatomy of a Collaboration"
Featuring the song "Morning Mist"
by Randal L Meek (Guitar) & Ken Smith (Piano)
Released March 27, 2020
by Randal L Meek"www.randalsview.blog"

If you've ever wondered how two music artists thousands of miles apart manage to write a song together, here's the story of two artists' journey down "Collaboration Road".  The picture above shows Ken in his studio composing the piano to my guitar work that he is listening to and watching on the monitor in the background.

In early 2019 the talented Ken Smith approached me about doing a collaboration incorporating my guitar and Ken’s fabulous piano. Having never done a collaboration before, indeed never having played music along with another musician in any capacity, ever, I was basically terrified of the idea.

Ken explained the process, what he envisioned, what his technical sound engineer skills would allow him to do and even took some of my existing recordings and added some piano to it as an example. Even with all of that, I still had no idea how to proceed. I was frozen in my tracks and didn’t know what to tell him. So I sat there “mulling it over”. With no movement on my part for a year, Ken sort of lost hope, and I could feel that from across the “big pond”. But I simply did not know how to proceed.

A year later, while in Maui, Tommy Berre suggested a collaboration with his moniker "Elgafar" and told me the type of song he had in mind: “folky & laid-back”. Well that sounded right up my alley. Still terrified of the idea, I did not tell Tommy that I had no idea how to do a collaboration. So in order to preempt Tommy from sending me something to work on, I sat down on the lanai and put together a sparse “folky & laid-back” track, pulled out the IPhone, recorded and sent it to him. He did his thing overnight and added the lead and counter-melodies and added them to my video: I was ecstatic and hooked on collaborations! We had created something that I could not have created on my own! The result was “Makena Morning” that was released today.

A few weeks before this, I had a tune rattling around in my head that was unusual for me, kind of “jazz-like” in quality, but it was a little sparse for a solo tune. I immediately thought of Ken’s great piano work and decided this was the one for us. Pulled out the IPhone, and recorded my part. I sent it to Ken, who said he loved it, and I waited. A week or so later, he sent me back a brilliant and lovely jazz-style guitar & piano piece that brought a “Wow” to my puzzled face. My reaction was “Wow, I wrote that?”. Well, I didn’t really, I had provided Ken the framework within which to create a wonderful piece of music. In fact, I barely recognized it as the piece I had sent to Ken: he had taken my guitar, added lovely jazz piano and turned it into something absolutely wonderful. Ken’s technical brilliance along with his compositional skills were on full display, the guy is multi-talented and brilliant! Voilà: "Morning Mist" was born!

Ken wrapped it up, mastered it and we are releasing it Friday March 27, 2020. From conception to release took just over 30 days! So that you can see/hear the development, or the “Anatomy of a Collaboration”, I have attached the video (link below) that I originally sent to Ken. 

When the song drops Friday, if you presave it now, you can see what wonderful things Ken did to my bare-bones guitar. Presave link is attached. Thanks for all your support and hope you enjoy the journey with us!

This piece should fit any slow-medium tempo folk, jazz, guitar, piano or combined playlists. Thanks!

Original solo guitar video link!

Presave link for "Morning Mist"!

By Randal L Meek

You can find our music here: 

On Spotify: Ken Smith
On Apple Music: Ken Smith

On Spotify: Randal L Meek
On Apple Music: Randal L Meek