Welcome, and thanks for visiting the project! I've been very eager for this release. Terry sums things up beautifully below. I've added a few additional notes underneath, but first, here's a few words from the other half of Trecento, Terry Skaggs...

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So . . . Trecento.

Sean and I worked together at the local improv comedy club, he as house band and I as stage manager.  After years of dabbling in music I, in the Spring of 1997, mooted the idea that we collaborate on some music.

Our first, very primitive, album was released in June 1998.  "At Variance" was largely recorded on cassette tape and then "mixed" on extremely basic early music production software. This 'practice run' served as proof of concept that Sean and I worked well together and played off of each other's ideas in a creatively satisfying and additive way.

We soon entered into a rather productive phase which produced the albums "Rainwater Wine" (2001), "Of The Earth" (2001), "These Painted Fields" (2002), "Well May The Dreamers Dream" (2003) (all of which are long out-of-print private CDR releases), and a few projects collaborating with other artists.  This period eventually ended with "The Wide And Starry Sky" (2005), which is still available on Bandcamp.

Everything was recorded in my apartment's dining room in Rock Island, IL., on a PC built out of used parts and whatever software I could lay my hands on.

Easily 70% of the instrumentation came from Sean's Roland XV 88.  I also had a small selection of virtual instruments that I'd perform on a very basic MIDI controller connected to the PC.  Monitoring, mixing, and mastering was done by wiring my hi-fi speakers into the computer and dragging them into the "studio" from the living room.  Despite our equipment limitations, we weren't afraid to be big, bold, sentimental, cinematic, and beautiful.

Are many of these pieces overblown?  Fuck . . . absolutely! These intervening years have taught both of us a certain amount of restraint, but for Trecento it was never about that.  It was about learning. It was about exploring possibilities. It was about figuring out what we could do and then doing it unashamedly. It was about figuring out what we _couldn't_ do and then doing it anyway!

It was also about paying homage to our up-to-then musical inspirations. As I worked on remixing these pieces I could hear so much of what we were listening to and influencing us back in those days:  Porcupine Tree, Yes, Ozric Tentacles, Richard Wright, Richard Barbieri, Salvador Dalí, Brian Eno, ELP, The Orb, Kevin Moore, Bass Communion, Sigur Rós, John Foxx, Peter Gabriel, and others. They lurk like ghosts, like memories steeped heavily in nostalgia and old dreams.

Since I had greater access to what little equipment we owned, most Trecento pieces began their lives with me noodling around with a simple chord progression, a loop pattern, or just a concept or title idea.  After I'd put together a basic structure that served as a demo/framework, I'd play it for Sean and we'd see if it would be something he was inspired to build on.

Sean would inevitably perform the more complex musical parts that required pure playing ability.  Piano, drums, lead lines were his area of expertise and were generally knocked out in single improvised takes.  Outside of technical ability, he was fundamental in giving many of these pieces proper musical form.

After his contributions were in the can, I'd start cleaning up the track, fixing mistakes, developing 'window dressing' overdubs, adding various accents and counterpoints, then -- often after weeks of mix trials -- finishing the piece.

This retrospective focuses on material from "Rainwater Wine" and "Well May The Dreamers Dream."  While creatively invigorating, both of these albums suffer from technical issues brought about by the learn-as-we-go nature of Trecento.

I've long wanted to do a remix project for Trecento -- I've been talking about it since 2008.  In the autumn of 2019 I finally set about choosing the tracks to remix and locating the necessary stems in my archives.  I haven't sought to radically re-invent the tracks, but rather to complete the pieces in a proper, professional-sounding way with 22-years of experience guiding me and more advanced tools to work with.

--Terry Skaggs, February 2020

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After Terry sent me what he wrote above, I thought back to our late night recording sessions years ago after the improvisational comedy shows we played together. Our playing for Trecento was almost entirely improvisational. Sometimes, the live tracks were made up instantaneously as I was playing. Sometimes, they were based off of brief phrases I tripped across earlier in the night during the live comedy shows. I still play this way to this day.

One of the things Terry and I learned during the recording process is that there was an interesting twist doing our music improvisationally. We found out that we couldn't bring just any musician into the recording environment and expect “the magic” to happen. The disconnect we found was that “trained” musicians can execute sheet music perfectly, but you can't say “Hey, I'm going to play this music we have, just make something up!” It doesn't work that way for everyone.

That said, as Terry stated above, roughly 70% of the instrumentation was from the Roland XV-88, which I still have and use today. This means most of the drums (and other percussion), basses, strings, pianos, synths, synth pads, horns – you name it -- was played live. No programming, no sequencing, and if I would guesstimate, I'd say less than one percent of editing was necessary on all of our live tracks combined in our history. Make a mistake? Delete the take and try it again. And again. And again...until you get it right.

A lot of bands go into the studio and make albums in this same manner and have for decades with live instruments, however, the computerized home studio era was starting to get its legs underneath it and Terry and I were standing on the precipice with Trecento. Computer studio music was (and still is) done with “click and drags”, punch-edits, loops, and a lot of things that can sometimes have vision but reduces the overall technical talent which Trecento used to do extremely well (in my opinion). The home studio just made things too easy for the average person. And as a result, the internet is now flooded with computerized music. Explore Bandcamp.com for further proof. :)

I digress.

Hearing these songs was a true pleasure after nearly 20 years. Yes, we recorded them in his dining room. Terry pointed out that Billie Eilish just won a Grammy an album recorded in her brother’s bedroom.  My favorite artist, Ólafur Arnalds, recorded an entire album in his living room. Perhaps we were indeed 20 years ahead of our time? Either way, this will be a lot of fun and a delight to share with friends, family, and whomever happens across our old vision and musical exploration.

Thanks again for stopping by! Make sure you check out the individual song notes for the inspiration and history on each individual song. We packed a TON into this release and hope you enjoy!

--Sean Smith, February 2020