Official Neal Morse Appreciation Thread

[Mladen]

Neal just posted a picture of the first Sola gratia master disc on FaceBook. I am becoming way too excited. 

[The Letter M]

https://youtu.be/6RrzoXjL4_A

Neal more or less confirms TA5 for early 2021...

Also mentions Flying Colors Live In London in late September, after the Sola Gratia release on the 11th of that month, as well as JCTE Live in December.

-Marc.

[KevShmev]

Sorry to post something completely different to what's being discussed, but I was just listening to At the End of the Day and, man, I really love that song, I think it's my favorite from Neal-era SB. Comparing it (and probably that whole era) with his current music is very interesting, it's clearly the same style/genere, but I feel like his writing was a lot freer/looser than it is now. It doesn't have to be a good or bad thing, I just think he wrote with less musical boundaries back then. Anyone else feel like this?

And I've said this before, but I think NDV's drumming compliments Neal's music much better than MP's.

Portnoy and D'Virgilio are both on my short list of favorite drummers, so I am good with either. 

As for Neal's music being looser back then, it is hard to say.  I think the difference is that the early Spock's Beard wasn't as conceptual from a full album standpoint (Snow was the first one, and that was their 6th album), so there was room to fit in those fun songs like In the Mouth of Madness, All on a Sunday or The Gypsy, without worrying if they fit the flow or theme of the album.  So, in essence, perhaps being able to write single songs that had nothing to do with anything else resulted in a more effortless feel to those particular songs.  Not sure if that makes sense, but that is what popped into my head.

Kyo, to touch on some of your points from your last few posts...

I don't agree regarding the brief T1 reprises in T2.  I think they are done very well. Rather than any of them ever overtaking the album, they are brief tips of the cap to the first Testimony album, and are done very tastefully, IMO.  It's like DT giving a nod to Metropolis with that little keyboard thing in The Dance of Eternity on Scenes.  Let the new album be its own thing, while giving a little nod to its predecessor.

I can't remember if I had read that about Seeds of Gold and Flying Colors, but while I have no doubt that Casey would have knocked it out of the park vocally, I am having trouble imagining which parts he would have sang and which parts would have been Neal's.  Hmmmm....

I absolutely agree. I think the callbacks to T1 are very well done in T2. And I actually think they are variations from the way they were inserted into the first album.

Seeds Of Gold wouldn't have worked with Flying Colors in my opinion. It's a fantastic track, but Flying Colors is not the band to play 26 minute epics with.

Perhaps not.  I would say anything is possible with those guys in the band, but I suspect that if Neal gets the urge to write something that comes out as a 25-minute long epic, he'd probably save it for a solo album, the NMB or TA.

[Kyo]

I don't agree regarding the brief T1 reprises in T2.  I think they are done very well. Rather than any of them ever overtaking the album, they are brief tips of the cap to the first Testimony album, and are done very tastefully, IMO.  It's like DT giving a nod to Metropolis with that little keyboard thing in The Dance of Eternity on Scenes.  Let the new album be its own thing, while giving a little nod to its predecessor.

But that's the problem - they don't let it be its own thing. The whole album starts with a lengthy quote from the prequel and then quotes two sections from it (one even twice) in its very own overture. About a quarter of the overture are themes and riffs from the first one, even though none of those are otherwise actually used in T2! It's just completely random stuff that detracts from what is supposed to be an introduction to fresh material from the upcoming album. In other cases, songs are robbed of their original conclusion by elevating a rehashed theme from T1 to its new conclusion. That has long bothered me a lot.

And in the particular case of the overture these quotes aren't even all that well inserted - I've always found the riff at 3:25 a jarring transition harmonically and it's telling they needed to construct a lame modulation at 3:45 to get back to the original sequence again. Once you hear how beautifully this part flowed originally, you'll be shaking your head. Same goes for the uninterrupted Time Changer without the quote from The Water, which is a really helpful longer breather section after the pretty relentless opening instead of taking a detour into Spock's world in the middle of it. There are a few bits like this, just riffs plugged into a song - Time Has Come Today at 0:44 is another one.

I absolutely agree. I think the callbacks to T1 are very well done in T2. And I actually think they are variations from the way they were inserted into the first album.

Really? I've spent quite a lot of time with this and I haven't found a single variation. The closest would probably be the piano intro at the very start, but that's just a different arrangement of a familiar idea, not a variation of the musical material itself. Other than that, it's familiar themes and riffs used at very similar tempos with very similar instrumentation. There is nothing fresh about the way these older ideas are brought back, they're just inserted "as is" into songs at various points.

I have removed five minutes of T1 quotes from T2 - that's about 6.5% of the CD or an average of 24 seconds per track. I find that quite a lot.

Either way, the important thing is that I am very happy with the result. The songs flow better and the focus is far more clearly on the new main themes rather than having them fight for attention with the old T1 motifs. I find the restored T2 album a far fresher and thus significantly more pleasant listening experience.

[KevShmev]

Kyo,

I hear what you are saying, but I guess I see it a bit differently.  Throwing in random bits here and there, that are not always referred back to again, has long been a staple of Dream Theater, and I suspect that is the DT influence coming out of Portnoy when he probably suggests ideas like that to Neal.  Serious question: does it bother you when DT does that kind of stuff?  They are hit or miss for me, with DT and post-Spock's Neal material.  To me, the most obvious miss is the part that kicks in around 3:20 in the song Lifeline. That feels like they just decided to throw a random little section in there for no reason, with no regard as to how it would hurt the flow of the intro.  I never get that vibe from the T2 moments to which are you referring, so we can agree to disagree. 

[bosk1]

I'm with Kev on T2.  Kyo, I disagree with pretty much every word of your last post. 

To me, T2 isn't nearly as good as the original.  But the callbacks have nothing to do with that.  If anything, they make it a closer call than it would be without.

[gzarruk]

I prefer T2 over T1.

[KevShmev]

Even though I greatly prefer T2, I am still a pretty big fan of the original Testimony. Hell, I listened to it like crazy for a solid year when it was first released, but he has just topped it so many times since that it's hard for me to find the time to get to it anymore, especially since it is so long.  T2 is just a very special record, IMO, and seeing Disc 1 performed in full at Morsefest 2017 remains one of my favorite concert experiences ever.

[Kyo]

Kyo,

I hear what you are saying, but I guess I see it a bit differently.  Throwing in random bits here and there, that are not always referred back to again, has long been a staple of Dream Theater, and I suspect that is the DT influence coming out of Portnoy when he probably suggests ideas like that to Neal.  Serious question: does it bother you when DT does that kind of stuff?  They are hit or miss for me, with DT and post-Spock's Neal material.  To me, the most obvious miss is the part that kicks in around 3:20 in the song Lifeline. That feels like they just decided to throw a random little section in there for no reason, with no regard as to how it would hurt the flow of the intro.  I never get that vibe from the T2 moments to which are you referring, so we can agree to disagree. 

As for DT, I don't have a concrete example to work with here, but weird detours and extended instrumental sections that come out of nowhere and feel out of place in songs have bothered me all the way since Scarred and particularly in the last decade that Mike was still in the band.

As for that bit from Lifeline, this is just the typical way Neal has been structuring his intros forever - jump from one riff or theme to the next until you get to the song proper. That particular example isn't a big favorite of mine and I guess the alternative would've been to just skip ahead to about 4:02 and just not do that riff and forego the repeat of the theme before 3:20. Might have worked. It hasn't bothered me that much because I'm kinda used to this jumpiness from Neal - the song The Light was all about that, basically elevating it to a concept, after all. And at least that 3:18 riff is expanded upon later whereas those T1 quotes in T2 are not. 

Having said that, the Lifeline intro as a whole has long bothered me and after reading the booklet of the special edition I know why - they added those first two minutes later because his bandmates thought Neal's original opening wasn't dramatic enough to open the album. Eh... I don't really care for that bit and it just makes the song seem disjointed and unfocused. The effect is that you have a piano intro leading into a full-band intro leading into... another two-minute intro.    Almost a third of the piece is now the (triple) intro. I find that oddly unbalanced.

Look, I'm really into song structures, making sure the pieces flow well, the transitions are good, the build-ups lead somewhere and the whole thing doesn't get needlessly sidetracked. With my band, I'm usually the guy putting things together and keeping an eye on the big picture while we are working on details here and there. The funny thing here is that I will often cite Neal as a role model, but it's his more coherent long songs like The Doorway, Harm's Way and particularly At the End of the Day that I will use as an example for how to structure an extended piece without having it sound like a collection of unrelated shorter songs with segues between them.

The thing with Neal is, the main things that have bothered me about his post-V output (the lyrical aspect aside...) were too many reprises for the sake of reprises, which at some point just seem arbitrary and pointless, and an overall sameyness. T2 was so bad in both ways that it really made me lose interest in his work for a long time - I have just recently bought the albums from Momentum to The Great Adventure because of this! So yeah, it's really, really bothered me. And turns out, with the editing work I did on T2, it's actually turned into an album where the reprises and sameyness have become a non-factor. So for me it's like discovering a whole new album! 

[Stadler]

Testimony was the album that opened the "Neal Morse" door for me; I had heard of him through Mike (Yellow Matter Custard) but hadn't gotten into Transatlantic, and saw "Testimony" for a dollar at a thrift shop sidewalk display while walking down the street in Philly.  Providence if you're into that kind of thing; I can hardly think of a time I've gotten as much value from $1.   

Testimony 2 hasn't quite resonated as much with me, because it's overshadowed by both the bonus disk (I've spoken profusely about my love for Supernatural; easily my favorite Neal Morse song) and the two that follow, Momentum and The Grand Experiment.   

Random question for the team:  are Neal and Alan close?

[MinistroRaven]

MORSE/PORTNOY/GEORGE - It Don't Come Easy (OFFICIAL VIDEO) Featuring Melody Portnoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdWuYRmstRI&feature=youtu.be

[bosk1]

Wow, that's actually really good!  I was feeling more than underwhelmed by the concept of another covers album and wasn't planning to buy, but that has me considering it now.  And Melody is a really great addition to that song.

[Kyo]

Since I was so happy with the results of my Testimony 2 restoration project, I've looked at some of Neal's other stuff. After reading the booklet for the special edition of Lifeline, I knew that they had belatedly added an extra intro to the title track, which I've long thought made the song feel unfocused and disjointed, so I quickly got rid of. And yeah, it works better that way. I really prefer the more immediate opening without those first two minutes or so.

But let's not make it seem like all I do is remove stuff - the other thing that caught my attention was a comment by Neal that Children of the Chosen was originally a part of So Many Roads that was only removed quite late at Randy George's suggestion, as he thought it would work well on its own and the epic was getting a bit too long. Eh... I'm not sure those are good reasons to just cut out a piece from a larger work, even an openly episodic one like So Many Roads, so I tried to reconstruct the song in its original form. At first I wasn't quite sure where exactly it fit in. Neal wrote that it was originally placed between All the Way to the Grave and Eyes of the Savior. After trying around for a bit, I decided to look at the overall structure of the piece and I realized that Neal had always separated the various episodes with a "So many roads" vocal section. And so it became clear: When they extracted Children of the Chosen from the epic, they ended up with one "So many roads" section leading into another. A transitional section leading into another transitional section - pretty arbitrary! But I had found the exact spot where to re-insert the missing piece. After some deliberation I decided that the repeated choruses of Children of the Chosen were likely a concession to the stand-alone song format, as none of the other sections of the epic did that. To me it sounded like the backing track for the repeat was just a copy&paste job and the transition from the first to the 2nd chorus seemed a bit forced on the vocal/lyrical side indeed. So I merged these doubled choruses into one and then figured out the best spots to crossfade the remaining music with the preceding and following blocks of the epic.

And it worked really, really well! The restored So Many Roads is 32 minutes long and I like it quite a lot. I also prefer the resulting album structure, as it now alternates proggy pieces with lighter ballads/pop songs all the way through. I've long thought Children of the Chosen was a bit lightweight on an album that had plenty of other lightweight songs already, but within the epic it adds some nice color and works much better in my opinion.

[KevShmev]

Random question for the team:  are Neal and Alan close?

They still seemed pretty chummy when Neal posted his listening video a while back on YT of the two listening to an old record :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXbLpNgbbhU

[MinistroRaven]

Wow, that's actually really good!  I was feeling more than underwhelmed by the concept of another covers album and wasn't planning to buy, but that has me considering it now.  And Melody is a really great addition to that song.

Check your PMs

-----

Yesterday I had a brief talk with Neal Morse about 20 or so minutes. I had to cut some of the questions I had prepared.
He said he tried to call me several times but the call never came in. I was waiting for him ready all day, I don't understand what happened, I was then contacted by the PR and I call Neal and we did the interview, I wish I could have made all the questions but he had another call and couldn't give me extra time.

Anyways, when it's published I will share it here.

BTW I asked him about King David as an idea for a concept album, I asked him about the chance of getting the albums rereleased on vynil and a couple others.

[KevShmev]

Yesterday I had a brief talk with Neal Morse about 20 or so minutes. I had to cut some of the questions I had prepared.
He said he tried to call me several times but the call never came in. I was waiting for him ready all day, I don't understand what happened, I was then contacted by the PR and I call Neal and we did the interview, I wish I could have made all the questions but he had another call and couldn't give me extra time.

Anyways, when it's published I will share it here.

BTW I asked him about King David as an idea for a concept album, I asked him about the chance of getting the albums rereleased on vynil and a couple others.

Nice!  I look forward to reading the interview.

MORSE/PORTNOY/GEORGE - It Don't Come Easy (OFFICIAL VIDEO) Featuring Melody Portnoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdWuYRmstRI&feature=youtu.be

Solid cover.  Probably as good as the original, but I was never much of a fan of that song, so the bar was low for me.  The video was well done.

But let's not make it seem like all I do is remove stuff - 

Too late... (quote edited down for content)

[ytserush]

Sorry to post something completely different to what's being discussed, but I was just listening to At the End of the Day and, man, I really love that song, I think it's my favorite from Neal-era SB. Comparing it (and probably that whole era) with his current music is very interesting, it's clearly the same style/genere, but I feel like his writing was a lot freer/looser than it is now. It doesn't have to be a good or bad thing, I just think he wrote with less musical boundaries back then. Anyone else feel like this?

And I've said this before, but I think NDV's drumming compliments Neal's music much better than MP's.

I would agree that the lyrical/musical box is tighter than it had been.  I have to say that I really love Nick's drumming on the Neal Spock's Beard records.

[ytserush]

Testimony was the album that opened the "Neal Morse" door for me; I had heard of him through Mike (Yellow Matter Custard) but hadn't gotten into Transatlantic, and saw "Testimony" for a dollar at a thrift shop sidewalk display while walking down the street in Philly.  Providence if you're into that kind of thing; I can hardly think of a time I've gotten as much value from $1.   

Testimony 2 hasn't quite resonated as much with me, because it's overshadowed by both the bonus disk (I've spoken profusely about my love for Supernatural; easily my favorite Neal Morse song) and the two that follow, Momentum and The Grand Experiment.   

Random question for the team:  are Neal and Alan close?

For me Testimony 1 worked in all of the ways that Snow didn't.  Testimony is just so natural where Snow to me is tense and forced.

[Kyo]

Just finished my latest project, an alternative version of One. This was some serious restoration work - reconstructing original song structures and re-adding tunes that were previously relegated to the bonus CD (to fit the album on one disc) even though they were part of the concept. My changes:

1. The Creation no longer has the happy big final chorus and simply omits that part, ending on a dark note after the instrumental section. Which works well and really makes sense concept-wise!
2. The Man's Gone has the long acoustic jam that they moved to the end of The Separated Man (9:25-15:35 there) re-instated. I think the resulting song (now 8:26 long!) is a real highlight and this kind of acoustic prog should be done more often!
3. Nothing to Believe is next, added back into the sequence the way Neal's band played the full album at Morsefest 2014.
4. Author of Confusion is shortened by the first 1:45. This makes for a more coherent song.
5. The Separated Man ends around the 9:25 mark. Again, the result is more coherent as the stuff that follows on the CD has nothing to do with the first half of the song.
6. On the "One Demos" CD, The Separated Man is followed by Mayhem, an interlude that originally led into Cradle to the Grave. It starts with what they turned into the added intro (those 1:45) of Author of Confusion, followed by some other stuff that was deleted in the middle, and then a version of what ended up as the last two minutes of The Separated Man on the CD. It's impossible to re-create the whole thing in its original form from the CD tracks, but I'm OK with what I managed to put together from the remaining bits anyway.
7. King Jesus is added back into the sequence before Father of Forgiveness, as in the Morsefest 2014 version.

The rest is the same as on the regular CD. I really like it this way! The long version of The Man's Gone is a revelation and the shortened songs work great, too! 

[MinistroRaven]

Just finished my latest project, an alternative version of One. This was some serious restoration work - reconstructing original song structures and re-adding tunes that were previously relegated to the bonus CD (to fit the album on one disc) even though they were part of the concept. My changes:

1. The Creation no longer has the happy big final chorus and simply omits that part, ending on a dark note after the instrumental section. Which works well and really makes sense concept-wise!
2. The Man's Gone has the long acoustic jam that they moved to the end of The Separated Man (9:25-15:35 there) re-instated. I think the resulting song (now 8:26 long!) is a real highlight and this kind of acoustic prog should be done more often!
3. Nothing to Believe is next, added back into the sequence the way Neal's band played the full album at Morsefest 2014.
4. Author of Confusion is shortened by the first 1:45. This makes for a more coherent song.
5. The Separated Man ends around the 9:25 mark. Again, the result is more coherent as the stuff that follows on the CD has nothing to do with the first half of the song.
6. On the "One Demos" CD, The Separated Man is followed by Mayhem, an interlude that originally led into Cradle to the Grave. It starts with what they turned into the added intro (those 1:45) of Author of Confusion, followed by some other stuff that was deleted in the middle, and then a version of what ended up as the last two minutes of The Separated Man on the CD. It's impossible to re-create the whole thing in its original form from the CD tracks, but I'm OK with what I managed to put together from the remaining bits anyway.
7. King Jesus is added back into the sequence before Father of Forgiveness, as in the Morsefest 2014 version.

The rest is the same as on the regular CD. I really like it this way! The long version of The Man's Gone is a revelation and the shortened songs work great, too! 

Would love to hear this version!

[KevShmev]

I think One is nearly perfect as it is.  My only beef is that The Spirit and the Flesh part being part of the same track with Help Me seems unnecessary and tacked on.  I condensed Help Me down to one track on its own a long time ago.  Everything else is great. 

The Separated Man is one of Neal's best songs ever, IMO, so I can't imagine taking any of it out, but I will admit that I'd be curious to hear what The Man's Gone would sound like with that section added to it.

Removing the beginning of Author of Confusion is a major no-no, if for no other reason than we'd lose what I can consider one of the best little moments of the entire album around 1:20 or so where the entire band briefly speeds up the tempo before bringing it back to the normal tempo.  That little part is awesome.

[bosk1]

Just finished my latest project, an alternative version of One. This was some serious restoration work - reconstructing original song structures and re-adding tunes that were previously relegated to the bonus CD (to fit the album on one disc) even though they were part of the concept.

This is just musical blasphemy to me.  One remains my all time favorite album.  No doctoring is necessary.

[425]

One is the Morse solo album that doesn't quite work for me the way it works for other people. To me, Kyo, some of the things you said about reprising on Testimony 2 are what bother me on One. I normally very much like Neal's use of reprises and recurring melodies, but on that album it's just taken a little too far for me. It's definitely fitting with the Platonic concept, so I can't really fault him for it on thematic grounds, but as an Aristotelian myself it's just not to my taste. I find that I like the individual songs pretty well on their own (although I don't really connect with The Creation), but get worn out by the full album.

I'm not sure how well these changes would help me enjoy the album, but the change you suggest for The Creation sounds good, and I'd be interested to hear your version of The Man's Gone. I wouldn't change Author of Confusion. I love that intro.

[Fritzinger]

I have to admit I would like to hear The Man's Gone. But otherwise I'm with Bosk. If it works for you, that's great  but for me, it's just too much changing the intentions of the artist. Plus, One is one of Morse's best efforts and apart from adding the bonus songs for a potential vinyl release (Jorge where is your interviieeewwww!?) I wouldn't change a thing.

[Kyo]

This is just musical blasphemy to me. One remains my all time favorite album.  No doctoring is necessary.

for me, it's just too much changing the intentions of the artist.

Guess I should've been clearer above, as you guys are missing the point. This isn't random doctoring, it is in fact RESTORING the original intentions of the artist before his backing band started doctoring around with his demos in the studio. ALL of the above changes restore the way these songs were originally written! Now obviously I can't undo every little change they made and many of them I actually like, but all of the big structural changes I have undone have bothered me all the way since 2004 and it was quite a revelation for me to realize that none of the stuff that I disliked was in Neal's original demos. I'm basically just going back to those!

So to be clear: Neal didn't write an 18-minute Separated Man. His demo ends exactly where my edit stops the song. Same with Author of Confusion - his demo starts where my edit starts. That long jam sandwiched between two The Man's Gone choruses was - duh! - originally part of The Man's Gone, not randomly added on to a completely unrelated piece. So all of those were more coherent pieces of music before the Frankenprog songwriting approach of "why don't we stick this part in a different song?" was applied to the material after the fact. And the idea to end The Creation on a dark note after "But you chose a lie" is how Neal originally wrote it and how it makes sense. Returning to the chorus in the end is a popular songwriting move, but here it is structurally awkward both musically and lyrically and it ruins the continuous darker mood that the song originally ended on.

You have to realize that for me it was with some of the structural decisions made on One that I started seriously questioning Neal's songwriting and Testimony 2 was what made me stop buying his stuff for almost a decade. To me it all felt like increasingly random reprises of earlier songs in later ones. He had used the recurring themes idea much better on Snow and Testimony 1, but here I felt he had lost his knack for large-scale songwriting to a degree and the resulting music seemed more and more arbitrary. Forcing stuff into songs where it doesn't make sense and it disrupts a song's flow and logic just because he can. Sure, the musical ideas at the core of the songs were as good as ever, but to me in many cases it all didn't hang together as well as it used to. I used to praise Neal for writing some of the most well-rounded extended pieces back in the days - At the End of the Day always remains a high water mark and even under the time pressure of a Transatlantic session he was part of creating the magnificently coherent epics on Bridge Across Forever. But with One and Lifeline (see my earlier post) and Testimony 2 (dito), I felt there was seriously something lacking in terms of structuring. So realizing that the stuff that bothered me wasn't how he had originally written the songs was a real revelation and these restorations have really brought back a lot of the respect I used to have for Neal as a supreme songwriter.

And it's amazing that simple audio editing can help restore so much of what he wrote originally while retaining the much better sound and performances of the final albums.

[Kyo]

Would love to hear this version!

I will ask Neal how he feels about me sharing some of this stuff with the public.  I think you'll all also enjoy the restored full-length So Many Roads!

I think One is nearly perfect as it is.  My only beef is that The Spirit and the Flesh part being part of the same track with Help Me seems unnecessary and tacked on.  I condensed Help Me down to one track on its own a long time ago.  Everything else is great.

Well, Help Me and The Sprit and the Flesh are one CD track, but they are listed as two separate songs regardless. So just placing an additional track mark there on the CD or splitting the audio file would be enough for me to separate them, no reason to tinker with the direct musical transition there. I'm unlikely to wanna listen to The Spirit and the Flesh on its own, so I never really bothered to do this, but I can see why you would want to.

The Separated Man is one of Neal's best songs ever, IMO, so I can't imagine taking any of it out, but I will admit that I'd be curious to hear what The Man's Gone would sound like with that section added to it.

I remember you gushing about The Separated Man and I was baffled by that. To me it's the most disjointed things Neal has ever released as a "song" and I even found an interview where he called it "more of a collection of songs with a common theme". That makes more sense than to call it a "song". To be perfectly honest it was only after I restored Neal's original structure (i.e. when I cut off the second half entirely) that the song's own identity became clear to me. Before that it just felt like a sequence of unrelated musical ideas. Sure, I liked the bits and pieces on their own and the transitions were clean, but nothing made much sense structurally. I've always thought "why is he going back to The Man's Gone here? It seems totally arbitrary". The acoustic jam was very cool, but what was it doing there? Lyrically and musically the song didn't seem to have any direction in the second half that would relate to the first. But with the 2nd half removed, it becomes a nice shorter piece that has its own musical core. It still hints at some earlier and later themes, which is why it feels a bit like an extended interlude to me, but at least it's no longer an 18-minute interlude. 

Removing the beginning of Author of Confusion is a major no-no, if for no other reason than we'd lose what I can consider one of the best little moments of the entire album around 1:20 or so where the entire band briefly speeds up the tempo before bringing it back to the normal tempo.  That little part is awesome.

Maybe you missed this, but I didn't remove that section from the album. I merely moved it back to its original place, after The Separated Man. The entire 1:45 of that intro is retained.

[Kyo]

One is the Morse solo album that doesn't quite work for me the way it works for other people. To me, Kyo, some of the things you said about reprising on Testimony 2 are what bother me on One. I normally very much like Neal's use of reprises and recurring melodies, but on that album it's just taken a little too far for me. (...) I find that I like the individual songs pretty well on their own (although I don't really connect with The Creation), but get worn out by the full album.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who's always felt that way!

I think having The Man's Gone as its own longer piece and not spread across the album helps a lot to make the recurring themes seem less arbitrary and dominant overall. It may seem like a small change, but with my structure (i.e. Neal's original structure), the first hour of the album barely has any reprises at all and the individual songs are more clearly defined. I feel that this combination makes a big difference! The Spirit and the Flesh is the first big throwback to an earlier piece (going back to The Creation) and after that there is more familiar stuff, but I'm OK with some recurring themes in the final stretch of the album and there really isn't a lot of that otherwise. So yeah, I feel this helps a lot!

And if you prefer it that way, not including Nothing to Believe and King Jesus from the bonus CD would also avoid some recurring bits!

[Mladen]

Sorry for the change of topic, but does anyone know what this is? Is this worth tracking down, did anyone hear it?

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/neal-morse/more-songs-about-coffee-and-my-wife-inner-circle-november-2019/

[Stadler]

I've been watching the "documentaries" included on the various Neal Morse CD's lately - T2:Live, Momentum, The Grand Experiment - and I've come away with a new appreciation for both Mike and Neal.   I wrote about Mike in the Mike thread, but here I'll say, I have a new (or I guess deeper) appreciation for Neal.  I'm sort of blown away by his commitment to his craft, and what he does that seems to be so effortless.   I think it's amazing how he can catalogue and remember all things he does and plays, and then, seemingly off the cuff, just hop into "Tiny Dancer" or "In Your Eyes" or...

I also think the connection with Mike is clearer too; there's a real synergy there, and say what you want about Mike's tweets, his practicing, whatever, when Neal goes off on the tangent, it's almost always Mike that's right there with him.  If you watch the segment where Neal is playing "In Your Eyes" (I think it's on the Momentum Live set, don't quote me), Mike is right there playing along, and everyone else is just standing waiting for it all to end to continue rehearsal. 

[Learning2Live]

Just finished my latest project, an alternative version of One. This was some serious restoration work - reconstructing original song structures and re-adding tunes that were previously relegated to the bonus CD (to fit the album on one disc) even though they were part of the concept. My changes:

1. The Creation no longer has the happy big final chorus and simply omits that part, ending on a dark note after the instrumental section. Which works well and really makes sense concept-wise!
2. The Man's Gone has the long acoustic jam that they moved to the end of The Separated Man (9:25-15:35 there) re-instated. I think the resulting song (now 8:26 long!) is a real highlight and this kind of acoustic prog should be done more often!
3. Nothing to Believe is next, added back into the sequence the way Neal's band played the full album at Morsefest 2014.
4. Author of Confusion is shortened by the first 1:45. This makes for a more coherent song.
5. The Separated Man ends around the 9:25 mark. Again, the result is more coherent as the stuff that follows on the CD has nothing to do with the first half of the song.
6. On the "One Demos" CD, The Separated Man is followed by Mayhem, an interlude that originally led into Cradle to the Grave. It starts with what they turned into the added intro (those 1:45) of Author of Confusion, followed by some other stuff that was deleted in the middle, and then a version of what ended up as the last two minutes of The Separated Man on the CD. It's impossible to re-create the whole thing in its original form from the CD tracks, but I'm OK with what I managed to put together from the remaining bits anyway.
7. King Jesus is added back into the sequence before Father of Forgiveness, as in the Morsefest 2014 version.

The rest is the same as on the regular CD. I really like it this way! The long version of The Man's Gone is a revelation and the shortened songs work great, too! 

What about 'Back to the Garden'? Wasn't that part of the original concept? If so, where does that fit in?

[KevShmev]

Kyo, I totally disagree that One was the result of Neal’s backing band doctoring his true intentions. I’ve seen enough of Neal in the studio to know that he’s not changing anything unless he thinks it’s for the betterment of the album and song. Demos and early versions are rough drafts; what ends up on the album is the final draft. And it’s not accurate to suggest that a demo/early version is his true intention.

Regarding The Separated Man, not every long song has to all connect musically and whatnot. In fact, Neal is sometimes accused of being too formulaic with his long song structures. The Separated Man is a different and unique structure.

[DTA]

I've been watching the "documentaries" included on the various Neal Morse CD's lately - T2:Live, Momentum, The Grand Experiment - and I've come away with a new appreciation for both Mike and Neal.   I wrote about Mike in the Mike thread, but here I'll say, I have a new (or I guess deeper) appreciation for Neal.  I'm sort of blown away by his commitment to his craft, and what he does that seems to be so effortless.   I think it's amazing how he can catalogue and remember all things he does and plays, and then, seemingly off the cuff, just hop into "Tiny Dancer" or "In Your Eyes" or...

I also think the connection with Mike is clearer too; there's a real synergy there, and say what you want about Mike's tweets, his practicing, whatever, when Neal goes off on the tangent, it's almost always Mike that's right there with him.  If you watch the segment where Neal is playing "In Your Eyes" (I think it's on the Momentum Live set, don't quote me), Mike is right there playing along, and everyone else is just standing waiting for it all to end to continue rehearsal.

Mike's enthusiasm for all things non-drumming is legendary and easily his best quality. I'm not a fan of some of his production or songwriting choices (aka repeat stuff ad nauseum to make songs longer), but he certainly hasn't lost his passion for creating music even if I'm not into a lot of his recent output. I'd just like to hear some of that creativity make its way into the drumming rather than just quickly laying down parts and keeping them to get it over with.

[bosk1]

Guess I should've been clearer above, as you guys are missing the point. This isn't random doctoring, it is in fact RESTORING the original intentions of the artist before his backing band started doctoring around with his demos in the studio.

I completely get what you are saying.  I just strongly disagree.  As Kev said, demos are, of necessity, "rough drafts."  And Neal has a VERY strong personality when it comes to the final product being his vision of what the song/album should be.  From everything I have seen, he does a great job of balancing that with also being open to input and suggestions.  But as to the songs in question, I just don't see any need to change them.  The final version are fantastic.  Yes, there is at times a "disjointedness."  Often (if not always), it is for a reason.  That doesn't take away from the song for me at all.  I'm not saying there is anything "wrong" with feeling the way you do.  But the fact that some of Neal's writing choices bother you also doesn't mean they were the "wrong" choices either.  And as for me, I'm happy with the choices and direction we got--to the point that, as I mentioned, One is my favorite all time album by anyone.  And as mostly a metal guy, I think it says a lot about Neal's writing that if I could somehow put together a top 10 or top 20 all time list, I think Neal would be the only non-metal artist to have a few albums (Neal solo and TA) on that list and a few others knocking on the door.

[Kyo]

What about 'Back to the Garden'? Wasn't that part of the original concept? If so, where does that fit in?

I am not sure. I remember Randy George posting about the original order back in the days and then correcting himself (swapping Back to the Garden and Nothing to Believe) and I *think* what he said in the end was this (at least this is what I pencilled onto the bonus CD cardboard holder at the time):
1. The Creation
2. The Man's Gone
3. Back to the Garden
4. Nothing to Believe
5. Author of Confusion
etc.

But obviously Neal didn't feel strongly enough about Back to the Garden to re-insert it into the sequence for the complete performance of the album at Morsefest 2014, so I tend to consider it more of an actual outtake than merely a victim of disc space. None of the bonus tracks were included on the One Demos CD, so that doesn't help in this case.

Kyo, I totally disagree that One was the result of Neal’s backing band doctoring his true intentions. I’ve seen enough of Neal in the studio to know that he’s not changing anything unless he thinks it’s for the betterment of the album and song. Demos and early versions are rough drafts; what ends up on the album is the final draft. And it’s not accurate to suggest that a demo/early version is his true intention.

Now you're putting words into my mouth. I said "original intention", which is a different thing, and we know what that was because he actually put out the One demos for everyone to hear. And as a musician I just can't see anyone going through the effort of recording 80+ minutes of detailed demos on a variety of instruments (vocals, guitar, keys, bass, drums) all by himself without having a very clear original intention.

Obviously Neal gave the final CD versions of these songs his approval, but there are many factors that influence how these things go. He has said that he struggled to write the album at the time, so it would make sense that he would welcome some concrete feedback from his bandmates. Then we know that Mike has very strong opinions on this stuff and he wears people down in arguments so he always gets his will (his words, not mine  ). Does that mean that Neal thinks the songs are better that way? Or does it just mean he felt both forms were perfectly acceptable and the one on the CD had a stronger lobby within the band? I'm gonna go with the latter.

What I know for sure: I had a problem with certain aspects of these pieces ever since I heard the CD in 2004. I was amazed to find out that none of them were a problem with Neal's demos. And so I side with Neal's original instincts when it comes to structuring the album.

Regarding The Separated Man, not every long song has to all connect musically and whatnot.

Well, no. But usually, if they do not, that is considered bad songwriting. Except in prog, apparently! 

And guys, you all seem to feel very strongly about Neal never compromising unless he is really on board with an idea, but we see very clearly in the Testimony 2 documentary that he felt strongly that he should not repeat himself and that the idea to add T1 quotes was only brought up by the other guys during their short time in the studio (so short, in fact, that you can hear Mike joking "we better get going, or this will be a 40-minute album" after some of these discussions). And Neal clearly isn't the guy to force his opinions on the other two. So after some initial skepticism, Neal relents and goes along with their idea to add in some bits of T1 here and there. There was enough hesitation on his behalf and initial tension there that Neal found it important enough to talk about his take on this in the video.

Personally, I think it's weird to have two guys who only got to hear the songs a week earlier making so many suggestion for changes as if the guy who spent weeks writing, thinking about and demoing these songs in great detail just didn't know how to do his job. Making such decisions in a situation with serious time constraints and after only having had the music for such a short time seems rushed to me. And so in this case I think it was a mistake, a spontaneous decision that should've been reverted while there was still time.

Which in the end is just another way to say that I think a songwriter of Neal's stature may just have had it right the first time around. I don't think that's blasphemous at all. 

[bosk1]

Then we know that Mike has very strong opinions on this stuff and he wears people down in arguments so he always gets his will (his words, not mine  ). 

No, that's not really accurate about Mike's involvement with Neal at all.  I mean, the "strong opinions" part is true.  But beyond that, I think you're reading too much into it that isn't there.

Regarding The Separated Man, not every long song has to all connect musically and whatnot.

Well, no. But usually, if they do not, that is considered bad songwriting.

  Says who?  Who made up that rule?

...but we see very clearly in the Testimony 2 documentary that he felt strongly that he should not repeat himself and that the idea to add T1 quotes was only brought up by the other guys during their short time in the studio

I didn't get that from the T2 documentary AT ALL.  It was more along the lines of [paraphrase], "I originally had the thought that I didn't want to repeat myself, and then Mike pointed out to me that it would be so much better to have those callbacks, and it's such a 'prog' thing to do, and even though that wasn't initially on my radar, I realized that was a really good idea."

That idea that Neal didn't really want to, but the other guys drove him to it, just isn't right.  Again, YES, Neal is a great compromiser.  But he also doesn't give up on what he thinks the best vision for one of his projects is.  I think the "making of" documentaries for the last 2 albums really illustrate that point quite vividly.

For TSOAD, Neal felt VERY strongly that it needed to be a double concept album.  Mike felt VERY strongly that it should not.  That led to tension between the two on a level they hadn't seen before, and it was disturbing to both of them.  But Neal stuck to his guns, and they moved forward with it being what Neal wanted it to be. 

Then for TGA, they weren't even writing a sequel, and when the idea came up, the band said they didn't think it was a good idea.  After writing the entire thing, Neal re-write it himself and made it into the sequel he wanted to write. 

Those are just a couple of recent examples, but they are very illustrative.  The idea that Neal isn't in control of his band's vision or that he does not have the final say (and isn't 100% comfortable making the call) isn't supported by what we have seen in the band's history.