GuitarOne: What was your writing process this time around?

Ed: As it always is: all over the place. When it happens, it happens. I cannot wake up at 10 a.m. and have a cup 
of coffee and say, "I'm going off to write today, honey. I'll be home at six o'clock." I'm just not that disciplined.




GuitarOne: What drew you guys to the sound of electronic drums and percussion textures on some of these 
tunes?

Ed: Well we've been wanting to do that for a while. Shane is very much into that. We worked with loops on 
Collective Soul - we did it on "Smashing Young man" - and we did it on Disciplined Breakdown with "Precious 
Declaration," but we just didn't have enought time to really get into as much as we would've liked. So, once again, 
with the luxury of time and a bigger budget to make a record, we experimented a little bit. And it was something
Shane wanted to do - a lot of it was looping Shane and distorting him or adding whatever effect. I think it added
another texture to the overall sound. It as fun to do. We had a programmer, Anthony J. Resta, who came in and 
worked with us. And Shane did programming; I think Ross did also.




GuitarOne: How did you approach creating your string arrangements in songs like "Needs," "Run," and "She 
Said" [the CD bonus track]?

Ed: Basically, I would go in to the vocal room and listen to the track and then sing what felt right. And then Eddie
Horst, who was helping arrange them with me, would come in, take the part I'd sung, and expand from that. So, 
basically, it's just me in there howling. [laughs]




GuitarOne: How was having worked as a sound engineer at Real-2-Reel Recording in Stockbridge in the early 
90's helped you now as a composer/producer/arranger in Collective Soul?

Ed: Well, because it wasn't a state-of-the-art studio, and it wasn't high profile, people would come in and they 
would need help. And who are they gonna look to? There's nobody else in the room except me. So it gave me an 
opportunity to learn how to work with arrangements. And then sometimes there would be people who would come 
into the studio who were just amazing. And being the engineer, you sit there and you watch and learn their little 
tricks. And then you also learn the "attitude" of the studio, which is the important thing: to always make sure it's a 
good vibe and that there's no ugliness going on. I learned everything you could imagine to learn from that, other 
than how to work on an SSL board, because we didn't have one.




GuitarOne: Do you and the band work out song arrangements in rehearsal, in the studio, or do you play all the 
parts on a demo and then assign parts to the other players?

Ed: It's usually worked out in the studio, or it's worked out in preproduction. This is the first time we've ever had
"pre-production" has consisted of only what we try out at soundchecks before a show. This time, we had a little 
bit longer window of time to be in a studio. And there wre songs that were written in the studio, so of course you 
have to work those out in the studio. But we usually try to get it semi-togther before we go in to record an album.




GuitarOne: How do you guys go about creating your own parts for Ed's songs?

Dean: Most of the time, Ed comes in with a basic structure of a song written on acoustic. And that's when we 
figure the song out as a band and do the arrangements. Shane will come up and try to find a cool groove, and he 
and Will work together on coming up with the rhythm parts. Then we start the building progress after we get 
that foundation. I fit in more with the basic rhythm part, and Ross usually tries to put in the more melodic guitar 
parts that are in the choruses. This time it was great because we all did pre-production, so we set up on a 
soundstage and sat there and we all worked our own parts out, playing it live, doing arrangements.

Ross: Sometimes the songs that he'll bring in are at different levels of completion. But most of the time, he'll 
bring in this very bare sketch - like, "I've got this idea and this direction." So then I'll listen to whatever he's 
playing, and I'll try to come up with some kind of an interesting part around that, if it's needed. For example, with 
"Tremble for My Beloved," he came in with just a very raw sketch. He had that opening lick - the first lick that you 
hear on the album - and then after that there was this chord he was singing over. And I was like, "Wait a minute. 
Maybe there could be something busier going on there than just that chord being hit." So that's when I did the 
syncopated little frilly thing that's going on there. So I just kinda hear a direction of the song and then add guitar 
parts to it. My mindset's more in "orchestrating" things - that's the way our whole entire mindset is, in a way.

Dean: Ross is really good at arranging guitar parts - making just layers of guitar parts that intertwine. He and 
Ed work really well together, doing that kind of stuff.


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