Album Notes

About the Album:

Between my usual guitar-oriented rock albums, I like to experiment with electronica.

As an additional challenge, I write electronica style songs completely inside the sequencer. Each note is manually entered onto the sequencer's 'piano roll'. This is very much like writing music on paper using traditional notation, except I have the wondrous advantage of being able to hear the song as I write.

Writing in this fashion, as opposed to writing on an instrument (like a guitar or piano) helps steer me away from my comfort zone of learned riffs and musical figures. It steers me away from keys that fall easily on the guitar. It allows me to produce music that may not actually be playable by humans. It may sound odd but it is actually a great form of musical freedom.

So, a few years back, I started this new album with the intent of keeping it strictly electronic. I wrote songs using the technique described above. The songs sounded, I thought, pretty good. I thought I had a finished album.

Then I made the mistake of playing along with a couple of the songs with my electric guitar.

Suddenly the songs bloomed and took on new life. I was excited, yet anxious - how to integrate guitar into these electronic-oriented compositions? The songs were in un-guitar-like keys, had un-guitar-like rhythmic structure. Would human-played guitar work with the electronica?

I decided early that this would not be a turned into 'shred' album - an album showing off technique. I chose not to use the songs as beds for unending guitar solos. Instead I wanted to songs to sound like, well, songs. Melody, dynamics, interesting sounds - I kept these as my parameters.

After about a year, on and off, adding 'real' guitar, and obsessing over every song, I arrived at the fourteen songs on Spank Your Inner Monkey.

I'm pleased with the results. I was able to integrate my electric guitar into my electronic world in a way I haven't before. Sometimes the two clash and sometimes they meld. I've come to appreciate this dynamic.

Thanks for listening!

About JRS:

Jeffrey Ryan Smoots is a multi-instrumentalist and composer living in the Pacific Northwest.

He has appeared in Guitar One and Guitar for the Practicing Musician magazine.

Jeffrey is endorses Dean Guitars, Dean Markley Strings, Morley Pedals and ADK Pro Audio Computers.

Jeffrey has also written guest columns for several websites (including Guitar 9 Records, Insane Guitar, and Sounduser.com) and has written album reviews for the progressive rock website Prog4You.com.

Jeffrey’s website (http://www.jrsmoots.com) is the central repository for JRS-related musical information, featuring his popular free online guitar lessons, drum sequencing articles, streaming and downloadable audio and midi files, Jeffrey’s bio, discography, news, and much more.