Jody Whitesides

Author: Jody Whitesides

  • Inside the Tech Trend Behind My New Release: The Story of “Delicate Stretch of the Seems (Sped Up)”

    Inside the Tech Trend Behind My New Release: The Story of “Delicate Stretch of the Seems (Sped Up)”

    Just when you think you’ve seen or hear it all. Maybe even when you think you’ve done it all or failed to do so… Along comes a little spark and change that can make a difference. Such is the change about to hit later this week with the release of Delicate Stretch of the Seems (Sped Up).

    If you’re like me, you might be asking yourself, what the fuck is up with the “(Sped Up)” portion on the end of the title?!?

    Call it a chance to control the TikTok trend that has come to the forefront of music sharing and or use. Where it’s popular now to take a track and speed it up a few percentage points in order to get more of the song into a TikTok, or Instagram Reel, or whatever other short form video there is.

    Delicate Stretch of the Seems (Sped Up) cover art.

    My overactive brain decided I’d like to head that off at the pass. Meaning, I’d create the sped up version for those crafty “6-7” lovers. Which not only benefits them, it will benefit me.

    It takes a little getting used to hearing your work tweaked out like a bat-out-of-hell on cocaine and ‘roids while smashing a dirty soda. One of advancing years may say “shit that sounds like the fuckin Chipmonks!” Which wouldn’t be far off the plank. Hence the title Delicate Stretch of the Seems (Sped Up).

    Much to my chagrin, after I’ve heard a few of them several times, it’s grown on me like a fungus. I can tolerate it without tossing my last meal back into my mouth. No, they won’t be released in Atmos – that would be serious overkill. Besides there isn’t a person on earth that could truly appreciate a high speed version of Coming Home in Atmos. It would cause your brain to melt like a threat from Darth Vader coming from the planet Vulcan.

    More news is on the horizon. Gonna hold off until it’s fully tested. Thus, come on back at the same bat time, same bat channel.

  • Reinvention: The Independent Journey Behind “Delicate Stretch of the Seems”

    Reinvention: The Independent Journey Behind “Delicate Stretch of the Seems”

    Culminations. This week is the culmination of a bunch of audio work. Specifically on some remixes of my first album I ever put out. Delicate Stretch of the Seems was originally released under the name Amalgam. But the release is obviously not.

    Long time ago, in a musical universe far far away…

    There was a young man who wrote a bunch of songs and worked on putting a power-trio together. When I did that, I originally felt it was better to use a band name. The name I chose was Amalgam. Yes there was a meaning behind it. The concept of many things rolled into one.

    The idea was to be able to run with any type of music and still sound like that band. A couple of great examples would be Queen, and RUSH. They always managed to sound like themselves no matter what they did – the musical DNA was too strong. I had this notion that Amalgam would do that to, kinda like how Trent Reznor is Nine Inch Nails as the mouthpiece.

    The record labels felt the music was every bit like that and more, but the time had swiftly changed and while they loved the music, it wasn’t what they felt they could sell. Yes, that was powerful rejection early on. Someone I still decided to forge on.

    Delicate Stretch of the Seems modern cover art

    Those initial recordings done on equipment owned by my roommate, Jeff Scott Soto, eventually became my first full fledged CD and a true independent release. Mixed on tech that was cutting edge for the time, which helped forge the sound. Crazy.

    Even crazier was being able to obtain distribution and getting in stores with an impending tour. Everything was looking up. Then it all came crashing down.

    In the aftermath, Jeff said something to the effect of: Dude, you’re doing all the work, you should just use your name. Which is why all subsequent releases were using my name.

    Here’s the full circle, I’m re-releasing this early release under my name so as to not confuse people with another band called Amalgam. They are likely defunct at this point as well. Though I will say, they were good chaps in that they reached out to ask me if they could use the name when I no longer was. I said sure.

    Thus, if you’re reading this, you can purchase the entire album for the first time digitally in full studio quality WAV format. Or you could listen on Friday on your favorite streaming service. Obviously I’d prefer you did the former. Especially since it sounds so much better and it’s in 48k/32bit file format.

    What a long strange road it’s been. What a wild year 2026 will be as well. Stay tuned.

  • How Technology Transformed the Making of ‘Beside the Lies’

    How Technology Transformed the Making of ‘Beside the Lies’

    The game changes. Sometimes you’re in the middle of the game and there’s been some instructions on how to play and suddenly the rules change. Or rather the method of how it’s played changes. It’s enough to make you feel like someone has lied, and you’re Beside the Lies.

    My week is off to a racing start. I’ve brainstormed out the cover art ideas for all the songs on the next round of releases that will start in January. Can’t let out a sigh of relief just yet. See, my distributor’s system was taking all of the files for the current release’s special version, then balked at 5 of them.

    Here’s where the rules changed. Now I have to un-distribute something that was already planned because the way they now want that version delivered suddenly changed. After careful consideration I have to let out a giant ARGH! It also means that some of what had previously been distributed to a particular service, suddenly changes going forward.

    In the meantime, this week will be a release of the song Beside the Lies. Kind of apropos for the snit I find myself in for the next 48 hours with fixing the full album release.

    One thing about the release of Beside the Lies, the newer technology I’m now afforded allows me to tweak the timing of all the crazy sounds that open the song. Originally it was quite the task to get it relatively close to correct via hitting play & record on an ADAT machine to line it up as best as possible.

    To get an inkling of all the things going on in the intro, I suggest hitting the song title to see the song notes. Hell, any song that has the song title allows not only for the actual lyrics but also a plethora of nerd information about any song and their IDs.

    This is one of my favorite songs to play as it has a very tight groove and deceptive “1”. Andy and I had a lot of fun playing it in practice. If memory serves me, Andy nailed this in one take, the first take – but we did take two other takes for safety’s sake.

    Next week we’ve got the complete picture and then some.

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