N.E.F. -- music that grows on you

Who?

Dave Bronson and Doug Riley

What?
Well,.. N.E.F. is a recording project. So far consisting mostly of the work of Doug and Dave. We have had some help wth the odd harmony, and guitar. (We hope to work in even harmonies and bass in the future) But, frankly it is a lot easier to get two guys together than 4 or 5.

The typical planning session is a 34 second phone call that goes something like this...

Doug: Ya gonna be home this evening?
Dave: Yeah.
Doug: Feel like playing?
Dave: Yeah.
Doug: 6:30 too early?
Dave: Nope
Doug See ya then.

When?
Late 2001. After spending many happy occasions jamming together at a mutual friend's place,... Dave and Doug finally make good on the often expressed idea.... "You know we seem to have a pretty compatible style we should get together sometime." After a couple sessions, we started recording on a borrowed 4-track cassette box. Shortly after that, Dave picked up his 8-track reel to reel recorder from a previous recording project location. Shortly before Thanksgiving 2002, Dave got the Yamaha AW4416 digital thingie that we now use.

Where?
Down by the Susquehanna river. Dave's house. The third floor used to be an apartment, now it is the studio. Enough room to separate acoustic instruments into microphones. I nice relatively sound proof closet for the Marshall cabinet. A kitchen sink for water, a bathroom, and a cabinet to keep the cognac in.

Why?

Cause it's fun damn-it!!!

BTW, Whats with the name change?

WHAT name change?

The Music
N.E.F. is a recording project. So,. What does that mean? Well,... It means that we play and record. I guess the biggest difference betwen N.E.F. and most musical endeavors is that we didn't start with a plan to perform. It is certainly a cool thing to not have that pressure. At any rate, we started playing just to play. But it was soooo much fun.

Actually the begining was entirely improvised on the spot. That sort of thing still happens sometimes. Those sort of tunes end up in the back room. Truth be told, Doug still really likes that way of playing. Doug is an old deadhead. He loves the thrill of playing and not knowing what is going to happen. The studio is a great place to do that (if you aren't paying someone else ungodly sums of money to use the studio) because if it works out you have a starting point for something. Pure improvisation takes us places that sometimes we have no idea how it is that we arrived.

As we got better at what we were doing, we moved forward to the point where Dave stared staging songs on the machine for Doug to stop in and put parts on later. Much to Doug's suprise, this has worked out just fine. These tunes tend to be less random. Not to mention, there are far fewer mistakes in these. Most of these tunes end up in the front room.

General note about our music:
These songs are finished... They are not without blemish. They display a definate movement over time toward better,.. better technique, better microphones, better planning, better, well,... lots of stuff.

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