Thursday, January 20, 2004
Yesterday we spent some time tightening up the songs we'll be playing on Saturday. We're mostly back up to date after basically taking the fall off. Oryx is sounding fantastic - that song is just so much fun to play. One good thing about the new jam hall is that I'm finding vocals a lot more audible... the interplay between Sasha's vocal melody and some of my guitar lines creates this very cool atmosphere.

Monday, October 11, 2004
The new jam hall rocks! It seems pretty conducive to random jamming and creativity. We wrote something kinda crazy and cool on the fly. I love dissonance.

We actually had a good sound in that place on Saturday... the last jam we had there, everything sounded murkey and undefined, but we've positioned everything in a way that seems to work. Drums at one end of the room, the guitar amps beside one another at the other side of the room, and the bass amp pointed sideways on a wall in between the two. We seem to be able to hear everything clearly. 'Tis good.

Sunday, September 26, 2004
We broke in our new jam space yesterday. Quite fun, I must say. :) Nothing really new song-wise... we're just getting everything that we recorded really tight. We had a few random jams also. Sasha seems to be starting to like noise as much as I do.

Sunday, July 18, 2004
Yesterday's practice was pretty productive. We basically arranged and tightened up a new song (I dunno, I think we're at Untitled 12 or something like that numbering-wise). That one will likely be ready for our next show. It's sounding pretty cool. It might make our upcoming CD.

Speaking of which, the next Fervid Whisper recording sessions will likely begin in the next couple of weeks. We're basically recording everything we currently play in our sets. We have a priority list of songs to start recording drum tracks for, so I'd expect our first session would get Ode to Spoon, Untitled 17, Oryx, and Silent Sodomy done. That might be wishful thinking though. We shall see.

After some recording talk, we went back to working on one of my songs, which is far from tight enough to play live, but still working well enough. We have a new instrumental song in the works, but we didn't work on that at the jam (Sasha wanted to save it for next week).

Sunday, April 11, 2004
The new song is coming along pretty well. We aren't screwing up all the tricky transitions anymore, but it's still very rough around the edges. We really want to have it in the set for next week's show though, so we'll jam it at practice before the show and hopefully it'll end up ready. It'll be nice to have another Untitled 9ish song in the lineup.


Sunday, March 21, 2004
We spent our jam yesterday working on a new song. Probably the most technically demanding song we've ever done. It's a bit all over the place, with a lot of cool riffs and time changes. It'll be pretty sweet once we actually pull it off.


Sunday, February 1, 2004
Yesterday's jam had us sounding possibly the best we've ever sounded. We just ran over the set for our show in Welland next week twice, and it was all sounding really good. Now that Sasha has a nice new guitar, the guitar interplay between us is so much more well defined. We're pulling out Naked Souls Embrace for the set next week, and even that was sounding great. Oryx and Untitled 9 - the two newest ones we're gonna play - are also really rockin'. I think we're all pumped for next week.


Sunday, January 25, 2004
We jammed yesterday.

Sasha came up with a cool riff that sounded like the type of thing that would be the intro to an old Metallica song. It's cool - we'll probably make a nice groovy mellow track based around it.

I tried out some vocals through a distortion pedal, which was interesting.

We had milkshakes. They were good.


Monday, December 1, 2003
This past Saturday's jam, T-Guns brought in a tape recorder so we could record some of our newer songs and see how they sounded. We basically recorded everything we didn't have recordings of (meaning Untitled 3, 8, 9, 10 and 17, Hangovers in Schizophrenia, and Infinite). Untitled 17 sounds pretty sweet, if you ask me. When we record another EP, I could see us using that one as an opening track. U8 and U9 are both sounding decent. U8 is basically ready for shows, and if we can tighten up the end of U9, that might be as well. There's a simple little bit at the end where T-Guns is playing in 4/4, and the rest of us are rockin' in 3/4 that we screw up every time. As Ethan was noting, it seems the simpler parts in songs can often be the hardest to get right. I mean, we switch between 4/4 and 5/4 effortlessly (at least as of Saturday's jam), but when we're doing some simple metal-ish palm-muted power chords, we fuck it up. Ah well...

Monday, November 3, 2003
We had a short but sweet jam last Saturday. We finished putting together a cool song Sasha wrote that's packed with a ton of riffs and a bunch of time signature changes. We've learned to groove in 5/4, and it's fun. :-) It's not so tight yet, and it still needs some backing vocals and more creative riffs from me in some parts, but it's definitely cool. I think we're at Untitled 9 now, so that's the working title, until Sasha comes up with something.

We also ran over Untitled 8 a few times. It's basically a jam song, 'cause it's based around two main riffs and goes on a while, and it includes two noisy guitar solos. The end is a bit too chaotic right now, so we'll have to work that a bit more to get it perfect, but I think we'll be able to pull this one out at future shows anyway.

After we ran through those, Ethan looked like he was about to die from lack of sleep and a hangover, so we called it quits, and Guns, Sasha and I went to Encore and blew a bunch of money on CDs. (For those interested, Guns purchased all three Do Make Say Think he found, Sasha got Bjork/'Debut' and Slayer/'Divine Intervention', and I got Sonic Youth/'Daydream Nation', The Dillinger Escape Plan w/ Mike Patton/'Irony is a Dead Scene', and Prefuse 73/'One Word Extinguisher'.)

Friday, October 17, 2003
Goddamn... we just played our worst set in ages at UW. Sasha hadn't broken a string in a long long time, and of course one broke during the first song. Then we did probably the least tight rendition of Infinite possible (without Sasha) to fill in some time... We played Hangovers and Ode to Spoon like garbage (not to mention the monitor mix on the cramped stage was horrible) and then managed Lullaby fine.

At least we couldn't possibly have a shittier set than that, so next show will be better. But man... I wanted to apologize to our audience.


Wednesday, October 8, 2003
Last Saturday we learned to groove in 5/4... it was fun. :-) Good old Sasha with his progressive-ish songwriting. Oh, so many riffs. So many possibilities. So many easy-to-miss cues...


Monday, September 15, 2003
Saturday's jam was pretty productive. Untitled 8 is basically put together. It's basically a couple simple riffs that are really souped-up with all the other instruments. We also started working on a really mellow song; it's too early to tell how that one's gonna sound by the end. I hear strings in that one.


Sunday, September 7, 2003
Yesterday was more of just a fun jam, running through a lot of our newer songs. Untitled 8 was the only new thing we worked on. It looks like it has somewhat of a structure now. We'll be a bit more productive when we have some more new songs to work on.


Saturday, August 2, 2003
Hangovers and Infinite don't sound messy anymore, as of today, which is good. We ran over Untitled 6 and it seems to be getting better, and Sasha says his throat doesn't hurt at all after all that screaming, which is good. We spent a bunch of time jamming a song based on only a couple riffs (let's call it Untitled 8). It gives everyone a lot of space to experiment; we finally got it sounding like a proper song this week. It's not done, but it moves well right now... the ending sounds really cool. I'm kinda inspired by Radiohead's song Blow Out when I rock out at the end. Ethan and I do something kinda cool at one point where we're both sliding all over the place in sync.


Sunday, July 27, 2003
Today's jam was basically spent running through all our songs. We spent a little extra time on Untitled 17, Untitled 3 and Untitled 6. I'm surprised how quickly Untitled 17 has come together - we only started it last practice and it's already together and pretty tight. Untitled 6 is actually sounding really cool now that everyone seems to know how the song goes.

We'll likely be doing some new material next week, now that we have most of our existing songs sounding pretty decent.


Wednesday, July 23, 2003
Guess I haven't updated this in a while. We've been jamming, I've just been lazy with the Jam Diary. :-)

This past Sunday's practice was pretty cool. We basically focussed all our energy on a new song, Untitled 17, so that it'd be ready for our August 16 show. It's weird - Fervid Whisper has some short songs now... this one's only about 3:30... It rocks though, and we've needed more upbeat songs like this one and Ode to Spoon to balance out our more midtempo stuff.

The song definitely has some metal influences, although it's not really that noisy. We have a cool little breakdown (that Sasha came up with on the spot) in it though. It was kinda cool how we managed the awkward time change with minimal difficulty.

We ran over a few more songs and called it quits. I think next week is when we'll be working on polishing up material for the show. Stuff like Hangovers in Schizophrenia and Infinite is still a bit messy.


Sunday, June 15, 2003
Sasha couldn't make it today, so we assembled ourselves as a 3-piece and played a few of my songs. Infinite is getting pretty tight now; if we have time in the setlist, T-Guns suggested pulling it out at the show on the 29th. Grace hadn't been done in a full-band arrangement since we had our previous drummer, so we played that one a bit. Untitled 6 sounds like a big mess right now, but I'm sure we'll get it in time. We were all pretty tired, so we basically called it quits after going through those songs (we had a brief improv jam on top of that though).


Saturday, June 7, 2003
We mainly practiced the stuff we're gonna be doing for the CKMS competition Thursday night (The Darkest Skies, Untitled 4, August in the Rain). My guitar seemed to get annoyed with me when I made lots of noise with it at the end of The Darkest Skies a few times. The first time, it let go of my guitar strap and crashed to the ground, and now one of my pickups is kinda falling out of the guitar; I'll have to get that fixed up. Then later when I made some noise, the strap again was released; luckily, I was holding onto the neck this time and it didn't fall. Stupid guitar.


Sunday, May 11, 2003
We're entering a contest, so we were getting stuff ready for that. The Darkest Skies and August in the Rain are sounding decent. We're trying to have Untitled 4 ready for it, 'cause it's really fun to play and it's nice and upbeat (T-Guns tells me it's his favourite one right now). The song with Sasha screaming (which I'm calling Untitled 6 now) is now fully written (and lyrics are up for it), so we just have to work on getting it tight. It's easy to get lost with the song going in various directions (despite its short length), but it should be fine with some practice.

Infinite has a revamped second verse now. I think it really adds a lot to the song. There was a riff I used to play in that part, and now both Sasha and I play it palm-muted with distorted guitars. The song as a whole sounds very messy and it's not tight at all, so we'll have to work on that.


Saturday, May 24, 2003
Today's jam was so much fun, even though we were messing around a lot. We broke into a 10 min improv jam on one of the riffs from The Darkest Skies; it sounded pretty decent too. We tried a jam like that after Lullaby but we couldn't recreate the magic of the first one.

Untitled 4 is finally coming together. It's one of our more fast-paced tunes. (My neck still kinda hurts from headbanging during the song.) We really screw up the one part when the song breaks down, but other than that, it's going well.

We jammed my little as-of-yet-untitled hardcore creation some more; Sasha hadn't actually screamed along with us while we did it before, so it was sounding really cool today. (That scream you hear in the middle of The Darkest Skies is only a small taste of what Sasha is capable of.) After we jammed that, we got Jake to pick up the other microphone and we faked our way through some death metal with some crazy screaming from Sasha and Jake. Ah, noise.

It's not like we've gone all heavy on you guys though. :-) Untitled 3 is one of our most subtle songs, with most of the song having Sasha's vocals accompanied only by his guitar (with a few little things here and there from the rest of us). August in the Rain, to me, is to Fervid Whisper what The Picnic Table Song used to be for us. I really love that one.

Well, I've rambled on enough. I'll just stop typing now.


Sunday, May 11, 2003
We worked on some new songs at practice today. Untitled 3 sounds cool, with a bunch of subtle little things thrown in. Untitled 4 sounds like a big mess, but I'm sure it'll be alright in a few weeks.


Monday, April 28, 2003
Saturday's practice was interesting. Untitled 2 and The Darkest Skies sound great. I realized that if I put my distortion pedal BEFORE the wah en route to my amp, the whooshy noise I make in The Darkest Skies is way cooler.

I thought the rest of the stuff we played sounded a bit shitty. I guess we have our good and bad days. As quickly as stuff is getting put together I guess we do still need practice to be consistently tight. (I guess having everyone tired and/or hungover for practice didn't help tightness.)

Sasha was pretty dead after we ran through our songs once, so the rest of us jammed on this dissonant little piece I wrote. That was tons of fun. We actually were really working well together for that. I'm very very optimistic about the future music this band will do if we can pull out that kind of creativity so easily on the fly. Time signature changes and time signature overlapping took a bit of effort, but never has it been so easy to just write together like that. :-)


Monday, April 21, 2003
Things are coming together. Untitled 2 is sounding great - probably our strongest song at the moment. It was one of my personal favourites for our acoustic sets, and it's translated to the full-band beautifully. I didn't know I could get so energized playing a song with mostly clean guitars. I suspect Sasha feels the same way given that he seems so into it and his vocals are so great whenever we play this one.

Hangovers is a little rough around the edges, but is still sounding good. The Darkest Skies sounds almost identical to how it was before, which should please you Fervies. Lullaby has more of a punch to it the way T-Guns is playing it. The Picnic Table Song and Infinite both sound like crap right now; we need to work on those a bit more. Oh, and we played Naked Souls Embrace too, and that sounds the same as always, although I think we've learned to do it a bit better than before (most auditioning drummers learned that one, so we'd actually been playing it for the last month). I think we're moving along well; 7 songs put together in 3 practices is more than Fervid Whisper was ever capable of before.



Saturday, April 12, 2003
T-Guns is fitting in really well. We spent a lot of time on Untitled 2 and Hangovers in Schizophrenia. Hangovers sounds pretty interesting... very busy with the drums involved and the electric guitars going clean and distorted and back again all over the place. The Darkiest Skies still needs a bit of work, but I suspect next week or the week after that it'll be up to par.

It's so refreshing to be playing new songs with a full band again.


Sunday, April 6, 2003
The rebuilding process has begun. Our repetoire has temporarily been decreased to Naked Souls Embrace, Lullaby and Untitled 2. We're working on The Picnic Table Song and Hangovers in Schizophrenia.


Sunday, March 16, 2003
Yesterday, we had our first drummer audition. We tried to keep it informal, so we just kinda jammed some Naked Souls Embrace EP songs, showed the guy some non-EP songs from our video of the CD Release Party and played those, and then just jumped into a couple new ones like Hangovers and Untitled 2. We had a lot of fun playing lots of songs with electric guitars, and the guy did a decent job with most of our material.


Monday, February 24, 2003
We had jams both Saturday and Sunday. We just ran our sets (there will be two of them) for the show this coming Saturday. Tessa (who plays djembe for us now and then) jammed with us on Sunday, and it was sounding really good. She adds a lot. I'm really excited about playing all these songs for you guys with some groovy percussion.


Monday, February 17, 2003
The jam this past Saturday was fun. :-) Fun and repetitive.


Sunday, February 9, 2003
We're still jamming every week; there just hasn't been anything worth mentioning for a while. We go to Sasha's. We practice our songs. That's about it. :-) Same deal this week (we jammed yesterday), although we started working on another new song.


Sunday, January 19, 2003
Ethan was working, so Sasha and I just had a useless fun jam yesterday. We pulled out our electric guitars and just played around a bit. Sounded kinda shitty lacking the bass and drums and all, but oh well (it just reminded us of how much we want a drummer! Sasha's written this cool fast-paced heavy-ish tune - Untitled 4 that's so much fun to play, but it can't sound right without a drummer). We'll probably have a more serious jam next week.


Friday, January 3, 2003
We jammed yesterday. Nothing much to say. Just running over a bunch of newer stuff. Sasha finally wrote set lyrics to a lot of songs. I found out I had the title to Hangovers in Schizophrenia wrong for a while. Then we got tired of playing and watched Seinfeld. Then Sasha broke a string the next song. Then we were done.


Saturday, December 28, 2002
It was just Sasha and I jamming yesterday. Not too much to mention. We just went over the stuff we were doing last week. In The Arms Of Sleep is gonna need a lot of work, as will Vision, but things sound good otherwise. I'll call the two new Sasha songs Untitled 3 (the softer one) and Untitled 4 (the aggressive one), for lack of something better. So yeah, Sasha taught me Untitled 4 and we went over that a couple times. That'll be a nice aggressive tune once we get it together in a full-band electric arrangement.


Sunday, December 22, 2002
With our finals behind us, we were ready yesterday to start working at perfecting a more ambitious setlist for our set for the next show. The setlist will not really resemble our past few, as we plan to debut new songs, play a new version of an old song, and also do what we thought we would NEVER do: play a cover during a set.

Doing so isn't really to be taken lightly, as frankly, we do not sound very polished working through this material, as it is stuff we haven't rehearsed much. The songs to be debuted are Hangovers and Schizophrenia and Infinite. The former we've been practicing for a long while now and I think it's time we bring it out. I love it myself, and it's always fun to play. The latter is one of mine, and we were working on it until Lawrence left us, and then it was just gathering some dust as we eased ourself into our acoustic form. It's being dusted off now, and it sounded pretty good for something we haven't played in a while.

The reworked song is Vision. In its acoustic form, it only vaguely resembles the aggressive version on our CD. Frankly, I think I like the acoustic version better. I think Sasha's vocals seem more suited to it, and its message, in my opinion, is delivered more appropriately.

Ethan had been wanting to cover the Pumpkins' In The Arms Of Sleep for a while, and I suggested we actually go for it this time. It's VERY messy right now. But I think it'll be fun. And it'll be nice to see how many people in our audience recognize it.

Other than that, we're gonna throw in Untitled 2 if we have enough time in our set (I have yet to learn the details of the show). We haven't played it since the Acoustic Warehouse because I think we're a bit sloppy with it. But again, in the interest of pushing ourselves towards some fresh music, we're gonna try and perfect it. The addition of the djembe to the song will likely improve it (it was only the three of us playing yesterday).

Near the end of our productive jamming (we kinda lost interest after running through all that stuff), Sasha played us two new songs of his. I think both are excellent and are definitely signify Sasha's development as a songwriter. One is a short, more subtle song that will likely be performed solo acoustic through most of it. The second is something we'll have to save for when we have a drummer and are plugged in, but it's got a great energy to it. I can envision the distorted madness it will be. :-)


Sunday, November 24, 2002
Yesterday's jam was awesome. We're having a guest djembe player join us for our show on the 29th of November (you all gotta come!) and so we jammed with her. It sounds amazing. We've been playing just with acoustic guitars, and even though the sparse sound can be cool, it does sound a bit too empty sometimes. With the temporary addition of the djembe, the songs sound very full. I think the version of Naked Souls Embrace we'll be playing sounds particularly cool, as I came up with a new electric guitar part for the end of the song.

The djembe player had to leave eventually, so we ran through Hangovers and Schizophrenia (the reason we can't play this for anyone at a show yet is that it requires drums), and then we started filming for a Fervid Whisper documentary that is in production (I'm making that sound official, but it's really a school project for a friend of mine at Sheridan for his Media Arts program). So we were interviewed on camera about various aspects of the band, and didn't really hold back in our answers. So there will be a 5 minute version that my buddy at Sheridan will hand in for credit, and then a "Director's Cut" that he will make for us. We're thinking about holding a show and then showing the documentary at the show before we perform.


Sunday, November 17, 2002
I've been working on my programming assignment for about 10.5 hours now today, so I guess I can take a break and write in here. We thought about what we're gonna play at the Bandwars show yesterday, and played a bunch of that stuff (although we're still mainly focussing on Hangovers and Schizophrenia). I thought to vary the tone of the set a bit, I'd plug in for a song or two, so we did this ultra-mellow version of Naked Souls Embrace with me playing with a clean electric guitar. The end might need to be spiced up a bit (it doesn't have that same kick as the full band version with the heavy electric guitars). The acoustic version of The Darkest Skies sounded a little better than last week. Well, really, there's not much to report, so I'm just gonna cut it off here.


Saturday, November 9, 2002
Today's jam focussed on Hangovers and Schizophrenia (we got to Sasha's and just started playing it over and over), and it's still messy, but sounds better each time. And I think Ethan and I actually understand how it goes now! Sasha wanted to attempt an acoustic rendition of The Darkest Skies and before we started, I was skeptical that it would sound good, but it actually was kinda cool. The next acoustic show we play will probably include it in the setlist. We have to work on what to do in the part that is heavy in the full band version though, 'cause it needed some extra flare that we couldn't give it with the acoustic guitars today.

Other than that, we just played some more stuff for fun, like an acoustic Lullaby (which is such self-indulgent nonsense in an acoustic form - and perhaps even in its full band form - but still fun to play!), and the acoustic version of Vision. The acoustic Vision isn't really that bad; we'll play it at a future acoustic set. It's not aggressive; pretty mellow. The vocals in it are probably more suited to this version.


Saturday, October 26, 2002
Midterms and birthdays threatened to stop us from jamming this weekend, but we managed anyways, getting up nice and early to Sasha's for 10 AM. I'm a bit sick, and Ethan and Sasha went out last night, so our energy level wasn't exactly 100%, but we were surprisingly productive. We ran our set for a Coffee House we're supposed to play at UW next Saturday. We're gonna play one of the newer Sasha songs in acoustic form there, which should be fun. After that, Sasha taught Ethan and I his new song. I think he's calling it Hangovers and Schizophrenia or something like that. A couple of the bits are really tricky to play, so right now it sounds like we're a bunch of amateurs doing it, but in a few weeks it should be fine. I'm looking forward to when we can pull it off properly 'cause I'm really liking the song. It's kinda in the same vein as The Picnic Table Song. Anyways, I should get back to studying, so I'll cut this off here.


Monday, September 30, 2002
We had an acoustic jam yesterday that went very well. Prior to that jam, we didn't sound too great with our acoustic arrangements, as they didn't all feel comfortable yet and were a tad messy. I think we finally did it right on Sunday. Sasha was wary of debuting his newest song at the Acoustic Warehouse (despite the rest of us disagreeing), but I think he finally agrees, as that one sounds good now (and is a lot of fun to play!). Reflections could use some cleaning up, and the new Sasha one still has some timings a bit off, but everthing else is ready to go for the show I think. It's a shame we don't have a longer set, 'cause there's other songs that would be a lot of fun to play acoustic. I asked the other two if they felt like running through Sasha's 2nd-newest one (the one with lyrics under "Untitled" in the lyrics section) for fun, and so we did, and I love how that one sounds with acoustic guitars. We recorded that one on tape and listened back and it just sounded so cool, and had the recording quality not been shit, I'd have put it up on this web site.


Wednesday, September 17, 2002
This past Saturday's jam wasn't particularly eventful. We did a lot of work on Sasha's newest one; there are some awkward time signatures, so we did those bits over and over. Also, Sasha's got this simple heavy riff we keep jamming off of. There's not much there right now, but what is there sounds really cool. It's the first song we're playing in Drop D since Nightmare. Sasha (more or less) finished writing another song too, so we should be working on that next practice. Oh, and the song that's labelled Untitled in the Lyrics section actually has a title as of this past Friday, and it was made 'official' at the jam, so I'll have to update that.


Sunday, September 8, 2002
This past Friday, we had an acoustic jam. We probably still should do some work on the acoustic arrangements of some of the songs, but it sounds alright as a whole. Grace and Removed are sounding pretty good. I remember a time when I preferred those sounds as acoustic songs. Grace was written as a more ballad-ish type of song, with a capoed guitar strumming over the main rhythm part - Fervid Whisper rocked it up good. And I specifically remember this time when the band was waiting to soundcheck when we played WCI's Battle of the Bands way back when, and Sasha and I warmed up on some stairs with an acoustic Removed. Good fun. But anyways, come to the acoustic show and you'll see us have our fun with some songs played more as they were written than how Fervid Whisper interpreted them.


Sunday, September 1, 2002
Yesterday's jam was one of the best ones we've ever had. Two new songs, an untitled one of Sasha's and one of mine (Infinite), are pretty much put together with the band. They're still messy, but it's looking like both will sound very cool. I'm pretty sure the new Sasha one will get debuted at the acoustic show, and Infinite at the next proper plugged-in show.

Other than that, we just tidied up Reflections (as it got butchered at the first two shows it was played), and ran through a better-than-usual Darkest Skies. Everything just seemed to sound good yesterday.


Sunday, August 25, 2002
Our jam yesterday wasn't particularly eventful. I stood in front of the band, facing them for much of the practice so I could hear how our our levels were when we played (and if we should change them to improve the balance of all the instruments). They still need some work. Also, both Sasha and I plan on purchasing some new equipment to improve our sound, so we'll go shopping sometime for some stuff. I might pick up a volume pedal or EQ pedal to become a little more versatile. Sasha's thinking about a new electric guitar.

We did go through a little bit of new stuff, although we'll need to be more productive next week. I taught Sasha my song Infinite, and he played me one of his new ones. We also jammed on a new heavy riff that Sasha had, and I think that song will end up having more balls than Vision. It's simple, but some aggressive drumming from Lawrence picked it up.


Sunday, August 11, 2002
I haven't been updating the jam diary much as of late, since nothing special had been happening at practice.

Practice itself wasn't particularly interesting (other than me getting worried that I'm losing my hearing at age 19). Oh yeah, Sasha played an early version of a new song of his for us. He's working some nice falsetto vocals into it. We are tentatively planning it to be a song with no electric guitars, which will be a first. (Frankly, I think it might even be better as a solo acoutic number.) Anyways, the show 3/4 of Fervid Whisper went to see afterwards was very interesting.

The show was to feature Rizen Underground, Mutiny, Ophelia's Mask, and Kotadive. OM had decided to pull out a few days before because a link to a white supremacist site had been found on Kotadive's web site. Many then planned not to attend the show. A member of Kotadive later stated that the link was an inside joke, and that it would be removed (which it was). Most didn't seem to think the joke was very funny, but when we showed up at the show, we saw Ophelia's Mask was present, and that a number of people decided to come. (Personally, I figured supporting Rizen Underground was more important than not supporting Kotadive.) So we watched Rizen Underground play an awesome set, and then headed outside to wait for the next act, Mutiny. Well, the short of it is, a protest group against the support of racism was put together, and right before Mutiny started, the pacifist army marched through in front of the stage, and Jester made a little speech about Ophelia's Mask's unwillingness to support a band who condones racism, and we left (only about half the people attending were involved in the protest, so the audience wasn't totally stolen). The lot of us stood around in the parking lot outside for a little while. Some annoyed people from inside (music fans, not band members) came out and bitched at us for the way we spread the message (the argument was very civilized), and eventually people started suggesting that the argument and large group should be broken up, and eventually it was. As Ethan and I drove away, we saw a police car pull up to the Button Factory, and that's the last I know of the events of the night.


Sunday, July 21, 2002
It's been a weekend jam-fest for Fervid Whisper, with Saturday and Sunday practices. We're just cleaning everything up, making sure it's all perfect for Saturday. Our three-guitar arrangements of a couple songs are sounding cool, and the soon-to-be-debuted songs are sounding as polished as they've ever been.


Sunday, July 14, 2002
Sasha's definitely well on his way on the road to recovery, as his arm made it through most of our CD Release Party set when we practiced this past Friday. A couple songs sounded a bit messy, but most songs were up to par, so there should be no problem pulling off the CD Release Party performance.


Sunday, July 7, 2002
We finally had Sasha's arm back for this practice! It turns out that his arm is pretty sore still though, so he made it through about four songs (Naked Souls Embrace, the untitled new song, Lullaby... hmm... maybe that was it). But even for those, it felt great to have him back. When Sasha put down his guitar, it gave us the opportunity to try some different arrangements of some songs, so we came up with alternate versions of Nightmare and Ecstacy. The one-guitar versions of Reflections and Grace didn't sound too bad either, and it was interesting to play as a trio for those songs.


Sunday, June 30, 2002
Matt couldn't make it today, and Sasha's arm is back on Thursday, so we attempted a one-guitar practice yesterday, with varying degrees of success. Vision sounded like noise (and left Sasha laughing so hard he couldn't finish singing the song), but Sasha's new song and Grace and such sounded fine. Sasha made up the flyers for the CD release party and gave us all a look, so you may see those floating around for the next month. With Sasha's arm back soon, we expect to be jamming far more frequently in the weeks leading up to the CD Release Party.


Sunday, June 16, 2002
Things are getting more polished now that we've been playing a bit more with Matt. It actually looks like Sasha's arm may be better by the time we have the CD release party, so we'll actually end up having Matt play on a number of them, and then perhaps one or two 3-guitar songs. Anyways, today, I taught Matt Reflections and we ran through that. Some songs still sound a bit messy. For example, I've taken over the lead parts in Vision and Naked Souls Embrace at the moment, and I'm admittedly a bit messy on those so far, but I suppose it won't matter if we'll have Sasha's arm back soon. Lullaby sounded a LOT better today than it had previous days. It was pretty rockin'. I'm still getting used to my new amp, and I'm so pleased that I now have to ability to jack it up enough for me to be able to hear my lead parts clearly through the muddled wall of sound in Lawrence's basement. Basically, we're just polishing things up now, so not much to report. Grace and Reflections need to be done up with the whole band, but other than that, it's just a matter of tightening up our sound now.


Sunday, June 2, 2002
Yesterday's was a shorter jam. We put together Sasha's new song, Lullaby and Ecstacy. Lullaby is still messy and we'll need a lot of practice to get it down properly, but that's to be expected with a new guitarist and such a long song. Other than that, we went over Removed, The Picnic Table Song and The Darkest Skies again. Grace and Reflections in Bathroom Mirrors, my two, will probably get done next practice, and then we'll have finished up all 10 songs that we need to have down for our shows. After that, we'll just need to tighten everything up, and we'll be all set.


Sunday, May 26, 2002
Yesterday, we had our first jam with Matt, our temporary guitarist. It couldn't have gone smoother. :-) Matt had already learned most of his parts simply by listening to the Fervid Whisper EP, so we only had to clarify little bits here and there. The Darkest Skies did take a little while though, since we don't have an actual recording of that song. It seems that I (Shuborno) will be stealing most of Sasha's guitar solos, but I think we'll leave a couple for Matt to have his fun with. Matt's acoustic guitar was also a nice addition. Sasha has a nice guitar, but no pickup; he has a cheapish one that you plug into the sound hole and it doesn't sound too great (it's adequate, but no more than that). Matt's got a beautiful acoustic, and when we put that through the P.A... oh my... crisp and gorgeous.

We ended up being very productive, and already, we have Naked Souls Embrace, The Darkest Skies, Vision, The Picnic Table Song and Removed done. For next week, we'll hopefully get Ecstacy, Grace, Lullaby, my new one Reflections and Sasha's new one done, and we'll be all set, but it may be wishful thinking to assume all that will get done. Either way, we're moving along far faster than I'm sure any of us could have imagined, so we're very very grateful to have Matt helping us out.


Sunday, May 12, 2002
I think we were all a bit tired from playing shows the last few days, so the jam yesterday wasn't particularly eventful. We spent the whole practice sitting down. We just ran over Sasha's new one and Reflections, and both are just a little more tight than they were last week. If we needed to, we could pull them off at a show, but in about 2 weeks, I'm sure both will sound even better and fully ready. Other than that, we just ran over some older songs like Removed, The Picnic Table Song and Grace, since we hadn't been playing those ones too much lately. Oh, and I just remembered. We spent a couple minutes trying to play a riff Sasha wrote in 6/4 7/4, but that just got too damn confusing. :-)

Hopefully I'll have a bit more to tell you next week.


Saturday, May 4, 2002
So here we are - the first real jam diary entry. Hopefully at least some of you will find this somewhat interesting.

First of all, I debuted my new Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amp today, which was lots of fun. Sasha looked very pleased at my upgrade. My old Fender Frontman 25A was being pushed to the max all the time for the past couple years. It was great how I left the Deluxe volume at 2 / 12 and it was quite loud the entire practice (my ears kinda hurt), and I used to have to jack up my Frontman to 7 / 10 to be heard during my solos in stuff like Lullaby. Anyways, it's beautiful, and while I still have a lot to learn about the subtleties and intricacies of it, it's looking like it will do anything I want it to do.

We were working on the same new material as the past couple weeks. First off was Reflections in Bathroom Mirrors, one of my songs. It's quite a contrast to the typical Fervid Whisper song, as more of a pop-rock type of thing. Consequently, it had been sounding pretty rough the past couple weeks, but today it seemed to come together nicely. The drums were sounding great today, and my new amp allows for my electric guitar part to be a bit more dynamic. The main concern right now is to tighten everything up. And one of my concerns is that my guitar solo has to keep the energy level up, and with Sasha on his acoustic, it's gotta rock a bit harder for me to do so, so I'll be working on that for next week. But it's coming together, and I feel safe in saying that you can probably look forward to it possibly being setlist-worthy for shows in a few weeks.

Second new song we worked on today is coming together quite nicely also. If it has a title, Sasha hasn't mentioned it to me yet, but he's only got set-in-stone lyrics for the first of the two verses so far, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's untitled. We've had difficulty arranging this one the past few weeks, because the song starts with simply Sasha singing and picking strings on his electric, and nobody else is sure when would be a good time to start playing. Today we extended the part of the first verse where Sasha is playing alone, which does sound nice.

Beyond the arrangement issues, I think everything is sounding great in that one though. A part I particularly like is when everyone is playing at the beginning of the second verse; it locks into this sweet groove with no particular instrument being flashy. Frankly, I think we could pull this one off pretty well on the show on Friday if we had to, but we'll wait until the show after that to debut it.

Other than that, we just ran over a couple other songs for fun over the course of the practice. We warmed up at the beginning with The Darkest Skies as we tend to now; that song is always a blast to play, but with my new amp with its gorgeous reverb, I was able to make my weird noises in that particularly atmospheric today. :-)

Yup, so that's that. Look for another one of these next week after our practice. There are plans for a "new heavy song" since we've just been playing Vision forever for that purpose, so I suspect next week will see some work with something aggressive.


Tuesday, April 30, 2002
I thought it'd be cool to keep a record of what Fervid Whisper was up to during each of our practices. So, if it doesn't prove useful or I get too lazy to update it much, then I'll take it down. But for now, you'll have this record of what we're up to, and what kind of new material you can expect at upcoming shows, etc. We practice weekly at a minimum, so there's always something going on.