The process of recording the music for Mile… Mile & A Half was very fluid.

We would start with an idea, then collaborate with such ease that soon we forgot where an idea started or who played what instruments on each track.  It became an amorphous thing in and of itself, the songs are such a blend of our writing and playing styles, they became ours in the truest sense.  So it seemed natural to also title all of the songs collaboratively.

Opus Orange was flying out to Austin, TX to play some shows during the SXSW music festival. We all met at the studio, where Will, the engineer was finishing up the mastering on the whole soundtrack project.  It came time to think of this thing as a whole, from start to finish, with it’s own musical journey.  We had to come up with titles for all the songs that made sense in the scope of the whole project, titles that have logic and an order, but that also told an emotional and expressive story. We wanted the titles to connected to the sounds and to the places that inspired those sounds along the John Muir Trail.  We listened one last time in the studio then PB and I agreed that we would sit next to each other on the plane ride to Austin and finalize our decisions on titles for the songs on the soundtrack.

After much brainstorming, the one thing that we were both thinking about with titles was the sequence of the songs as they related to times of the day; Starting with early dawn and moving through the day and into the night. I love limitations and challenges, they can force you to create something that you would not normally make, and when you collaborate with someone, this can be really exciting.  I went into Professor-Chadwick-mode and created the rules.  We listen to all the songs together, and while we listen, we are to write down any thoughts that come to mind, images, descriptive words, stream of conscience, whatever.  Then after we had gone through all the songs, we would trade papers, and pick our favorites for each, focusing on the words or titles that we both liked.  If we were not satisfied with either of our ideas on that song, we had to come up with one on the spot that we both liked.  We both agreed to the terms and conditions and started working. By the time we landed in Austin, we had all of our titles.

Don’t miss the Mile… Mile & A Half Soundtrack release party & Opus Orange show at Hotel Cafe on May 24th. They go on at 10pm.