The Review that Left Me Speechless--And That's a Good Thing

I'm speechless.  Really.  Honestly.  Truly.

Late yesterday, Christmas day, Stubby's House of Christmas published an incredible review of Jazzy Christmas to You II.  I hope you read the original.

Here's an excerpt:

"Now ["I Wonder As I Wander"] is where things, for me, got real interesting and "Jazzy Christmas To You II" took a hard turn towards true greatness and Jillaine, from my limited perspective of her work, blossomed into the fully realized Jazz singer she's destined to be.

"I Wonder As I Wander" is not just one of my favorite Christmas songs, it's a song that separates the posers from the artists.  It's a song which is as much about what's not there as what is, about what you add to it, about the spaces between the notes as much as about the notes.  It's a song that's much more about the passion you put into it than about the notes on the page...Jillaine sings "I Wonder As I Wander" as though she were born to it.  I do believe, and it's a risky thing to say this sort of thing, Jillaine's version of "I Wonder As I Wander" is the single finest version I have ever heard...Jillaine's voice flows freely and easily through the song, unrestrained by the music, undaunted by the obstacles.  She's not playing by their rules anymore.  Jillaine becomes the song.  Oh, God, I wish there was some proper metaphor to describe the bliss her vocal performance creates.  What do you do when you work with words and the words fail you?  All I can say is that her performance of "I Wonder As I Wander" is the very definition of the very finest Jazz.  And, hey, guess what, you lucky, lucky people?  This is the song Jillaine chose to make a free download."

With gratitude and humility, I thank Stubby's House of Christmas for his magnanimous and gracious Christmas gift that totally took me by surprise this morning when I read it.  I am still speechless.

Thank you.

*Note: The free download is not available through my website here.

FREE SONGS and Labor Day Adventures!

In honor of Labor Day I've put six--yes, SIX--of the songs from my latest album As American As Jazz: A Patriotic Celebration of the USA up for free download! All you have to do is like my Facebook page, click on the My Band tab, and share the music to download SIX FREE SONGS!

What else have I done for Labor Day? Actually, it's been a pretty relaxing day!

I got up and made wheat bread and rosemary focaccia breads with my sister and my mom. We already knew the focaccia would be amazing as we've made it many times before.

The wheat, also amazing, turned out well...even though Amy, my sister, had to mix the wheat dough by hand since we didn't have a bread hook attachment for our mixer!

These amazing recipes came from America's Test Kitchen, my new favorite cooking show! I even have the complete recipe book...an incredible buy!

I also played Ticket to Ride Europe with Amy, I think, a total of five times. As a family, we love Europa board games. They just have so many different elements. Definitely have lots of replay value!

Tomorrow school starts up again. It was nice to have a break...even though I've only been in school for five days. But sometimes that break is still nice when I am longing for the fun of summer!

Actually, the way I relax is to knit. So I also knit a Harry Potter-look-alike scarf!

As you close out your Labor Day, enjoy downloading any or all of the six songs available free to you!

"My World" on iTunes!!! (FREE download on Facebook)

Today, my first single is...RELEASED! "My World" is definitely an invitation into, well, my world! (That pun was TOTALLY intended!)

Get the FREE "My World" (Radio Edit) on my Facebook band page. Hurry, it will only be around for a limited time!

Fortunately, though, a blog is forever!

Yesterday, I blogged about how the lyrics of "My World" came to be. And, as promised, today is all about the mixing!

After fixing timing issues (we wanted it to be perfect for slow dancing), we set about creating the sound of the song. Not just the sound of each track, but really how we wanted to whole song to blend together.

We experimented with Antares Harmony efx on the lead vocal to add back-up vocals, but the sound wasn't quite right for this song. Though we did like the effect itself and plan to use it on future releases.

Next we tried chorusing within Pro Tools. We knew we wanted that effect, but the plug-in was giving a metallic sound to the vocal so we looked further. Little did we know we had a wealth of chorusing effects within our Kurzweil KSP8 outboard effects processor. After some experimenting with different kinds of chorusing, we settled on one that added just the right amount of depth. Then Erik programmed the delay to correspond with the tempo and triplet feel. We were making headway!

We applied a similar chorusing effect on the instruments, but something was still missing. We thought it was in the synth, so we searched for the right synth patch and found it in Synergy. Unfortunately, there was still something missing.

Erik then had a brilliant idea...I should play a harp part! I was a little bit wary of his idea, but decided I should give it a try. This isn't an ordinary harp you hear.  It is electric.

So Erik got my Camac Big Blue all plugged in and we literally composed an additional track.  Yes, Erik would sing what he wanted while I played what I heard him sing!  Frankly, it was hilarious! I play harp on the choruses and bridge. The upper registers on the harp add just the right scintillating touch to the song!  Harp will be included in upcoming releases!

And that's our mix down of the process we used to bring you "My World."

Until next time!

6 FREE Christmas Songs!

My gift to all my fans this year is a free Christmas sampler!

Download from Facebook by going to my Facebook band page www.facebook.com/jillainerecords and going to the "Free Songs" tab or by clicking here.

The FREE songs are:

Jingle Bells
Deck the Halls
Fum, Fum, Fum!
What Child is This?
Silent Night
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day


Please download the songs and tell your friends so they can download, too!

Merry Christmas!

Vote for Jillaine in Sweetwater Song Contest!

Click the link below and download my free song, "Confusion."

www.sweetwatersongcontest.com/BandDetails.aspx

Only one download per email allowed. Download notification will come to YOUR email.

Your download is a vote for Jillaine!

So download and send the link to your friends. The contest runs from May 3-31!

Enjoy and thank you!

Thank You!

Thank you to everyone who voted for the band and me! We appreciate all your support!

New pictures, free download, and YouTube video coming soon!

Free Download on Facebook! See the YouTube Video!

So this is pretty awesome: "Doubts (Live)" is available for FREE DOWNLOAD on my Facebook page!

And to make this even more exciting, I'm also concurrently placing the video of the live performance of "Doubts" on YouTube!

Can life get any better than that?

YES!  How?

I'm going to release three more songs for FREE DOWNLOAD just like "Doubts" for three weeks. That evens out to one FREE song per week! They will also have concurrently released YouTube videos.

I'm on Twitter!

I'm on Twitter!

Now you can have access to the latest news about recording for my next album, performances, release dates, free song downloads, YouTube videos, and much, much more!

To follow me (you know you want to!) go to http://twitter.com/Jillaine.