Session Notes

• Lyrics and melody: (M. Carteret 2025)

• Vocals: Marcia Carteret

• Musical Arrangement and Guitar: Mike Sunjka

• Mixed/Mastered in Logic Pro by Mike Sunjka

• Inspired by reconnecting unexpectedly with an old “friend” and discovering that certain emotional currents never fully disappear.

Session Notes

• Lyrics and melody: (M. Carteret 2025)

• Vocals: Marcia Carteret

• Musical Arrangement and Guitar: Mike Sunjka
  Piano: Trip Ziegler

• Mixed/Mastered in Logic Pro by Mike Sunjka

• Inspired by the death of my uncle the week of Thanksgiving 2025. He made choices that will change my life forever. He broke my heart and almost my spirit. Music—and especially The Liminal Sessions is keeping me from listing towards depression. Music and my dog Dobro who was named after the dobro guitar. Hardly anyone knows what that instrument is. People have a hard time saying his name. Doesn’t matter. He’s a bull terrier and doesn’t listen to people anyway.

Session Notes

• Lyricist: M. Carteret 2005 (Originally released on the Album Stories in Song in 2018 under the same title.)

• Created from original lyrics using Suno as an exploratory compositional tool

• Human and AI vocal layering as part of the final arrangement

• Final mix/master: Garageband & LANDR

• Inspired by a turning point in my long friendship with my first jazz mentor, the marvelous Elynn Rucker, whose influence continues to echo through my music.

Session Notes

• Lyricist: M. Carteret 2005 (Originally released on the Album The Trouble with Wanting. in 2018 under the same title.)

• Created from original lyrics using Suno as an exploratory compositional tool

• Human and AI vocal layering as part of the final arrangement

• Final mix/master: Garageband & LANDR

• Inspired—let’s just leave it at that. I created a music video to go with the original release. It featured a man pinning and arranging butterflies for display. Sorta creeps me out now, but—it felt like the perfect metaphor at the time. Yeiks!

Session Notes

• Lyrics and melody: (M. Carteret 2018 originally released on album The Trouble With Wanting )

• Vocals: Marcia Carteret

• Original lyrics and melody written in 2018. For this Liminal Sessions recording, the song was reinterpreted using AI-assisted composition tools, which generated a new melody, harmonic structure, and arrangement while retaining the original lyrics.

• Written sitting on a back porch swing during one of my last visits to a much loved family farm in Missouri. Originally settled in 1881. Lost in 2025. I used to run away from “things” quite often—and usually I went home to the farm.

Session Notes

• Lyricist: (M. Carteret 2026)

• Created from original lyrics using Suno as an exploratory compositional tool

• Human and AI vocal layering as part of the final arrangement

• Final mix/master: Garageband & LANDR

• This song came out of nowhere. I wrote it in an hour. It pays homage to Billie Holiday—many people will assume I am referencing Billie Eilish. Jazz cats will get the Lady Day line, however. Billie Holiday was the first jazz singer I learned about, and I fell in love with her songs back in college—at the University of Edinburgh! Well, it was a dark lonely place in winter. I was homesick.

Session Notes

• Lyricist: (M. Carteret 2026)

• Created from original lyrics using Suno as an exploratory compositional tool.

• Final mix/master: Garageband & LANDR

• This song started out as something entirely different. It simply wasn’t working—which, as any songwriter knows, is often the case. Songs can be like truculent children, stubbornly refusing to become what you want them to be.

  Guitarist Mike Sunjka listened to an early version and sent me back to the drawing board. He was right. I reworked the song at least three times before it finally revealed what it wanted to be: a song about a spy. Why a spy? Probably because I spend most evenings falling asleep with a spy novel in my hands.

• Original lyrics by M. Carteret. Originally released on the album The Trouble With Wanting in 2018

• Back-up vocals: (M. Carteret 2026).

• Human and AI vocal layering as part of the final arrangement.

• Final mix/master: Mixed in Garageband and Moises.ai Mastered via LANDR

• This song was originally written when I was working on a folk/country album—the only departure from jazz in my music career. Back in 2016, it was a chance to collaborate with musicians who introduced new instruments to my arrangements— i.e. harmonica, mandolin, fiddle.

• I first recorded myself as the lead vocal. I didn’t like the feel of the song after a lot of takes. The male voice took a while to “create” by manipulating Suno’s male voices. I kept getting pop country “guys” which I can’t abide. I finally hit upon this male singer and immediately loved the tune.

• Original lyrics by M. Carteret. First released on the album The Trouble With Wanting in 2018 as It Goes Without Saying.

• Human and AI vocal layering as part of the final arrangement.

• Final mix/master: Mixed in Garageband and Moises.ai Mastered via LANDR

• The female voice is my own. The male voice exists only in the liminal space between imagination and technology. This is a great example of how AI expands the choices an arranger can experiment with.

  Reimagining this tune, I wanted a Béla Fleck-style banjo to work. Not bluegrass banjo, but the more melodic, jazz-inflected approach.

  I chose to leave the AI vocal in place and sing alongside it. I wasn’t hearing a duet so much as two voices sharing the same porch swing. The song seemed to want the easy companionship of people who have spent a long time making music together.

  At first listen, it can almost sound anti-marriage. It speaks about wedding bands, vows, and the rituals of commitment with a certain suspicion. But the song is only questioning the idea that love can be secured by anything external to itself.

  I’ve always been drawn to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s line, “Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow! / Faithless am I save to love’s self alone.” The song lives somewhere near that sentiment. 

Session Notes

• Lyrics and melody: (M. Carteret 2018). Originally released as Charm In My Pocket

• Created from original lyrics using Suno as an exploratory compositional tool

• Human and AI vocal layering as part of the final arrangement

• Inspired by my one-and-only-ever husband, who now lives in Italy. He once said to me, “It’s OK to be fabulous.” I’ve carried those words with me ever since, and I suspect I always will.

• The original tune featured my good friend and fabulous guitarist Neil Haverstick. I was torn between versions for this project. I chose the song that involves AI, but the original version will always be my favorite.

• Lyrics (M. Carteret 2005)

• Vocals: Marcia Carteret

• Musical Arrangement
  Eric Gunnison *see below

• Mixed/Mastered Scott Griess and Jeff Jenkins of Greywood Studios

• I wrote this song with an entirely different set of lyrics. I asked Eric Gunnison to play on the tune. The piano solo made me see the whole song differently. I re-wrote the words and melody based on what Eric had played. I said to him later, “I don’t who wrote this song, me or you. I think it was you!”
  
  Knowing Eric had accompanied Carmen McRae early in his career was intimidating, but he wore that history lightly and focused entirely on the music at hand.

• Original lyrics by M. Carteret.

• Human and AI vocal layering as part of the final arrangement.

• Final mix/master: Mixed in Garageband/ Mastered via LANDR

• I wrote this tune a decade ago and never did anything with it.
  Luckily, I have boxes of saved song lyrics; I found the tattered piece of paper with these lyrics and— it was like finding a twenty dollar bill in the pocket of a coat you rarely wear.
  
  This is another tune that felt like it needed a male vocal. As I was shaping the song, I kept hearing Amos Lee in my mind. In particular, I kept picturing the cover of his self-titled debut album—the image seemed to accompany the song as it took shape. I’ve long admired his songwriting and the understated honesty of his lyrics.
  
  The voice on this track exists only in the liminal space between imagination and technology. Another good example of how AI expands the arranger’s choices.

• Lyricist: (M. Carteret 2026)

• Created from original lyrics using Suno as an exploratory compositional tool for the music arrangement.

• AI vocals on the the final arrangement.

• Final mix/master: Garageband & LANDR

• The cover art was inspired by a 1960s British Vogue cover. I can’t explain where this song came from. I knew I wanted a Marcus Miller-style bass line, and once it started driving the groove, the singing character emerged—confident, flirtatious, and just a little reckless. By the time I turned her earring into a handcuff, I was laughing out loud.

  The title reflects the realization that, sooner or later, it’s time to turn away from something built on deception. For all the excitement of playing outside the changes, eventually the music wants to resolve. He needs to return to the root—the home key.