7 posts from August 2008

Devo

"It's like the Ramones had sex with the B-52s."


Nina said so.

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Stupid guitar. We are sick of it.

I made myself a promise when I bought my shiny new ESP. It's a "real" guitar (the first I've owned, really) and I'm going to learn to play it for real. I've been faking my way through with power chords, a couple of scales, and a handful of open chords for years. I've essentially treated guitar like a bass with teeny strings that are close together. My technique is terrible. That was OK for recording (ah, the magic of digital editing) with my cheap Les Paul and Strat knockoffs, but I've reached the point where my lack of ability is really starting to hurt my songwriting.


Now, I've been playing stringed instruments for almost 30 years. Violin until high school, electric bass after that. I consider myself a competent musician. But the basic, beginner exercises I'm doing - simple three-string chords like Asus2 and G7 - are frustrating the hell out of me. My fretting hand position is different enough from a bass that I have to fight 20 years of muscle memory...and the chords still aren't clean half the time. My picking hand can't find the right strings unless I'm looking down. Reading the tab is all screwy because there are two too many strings, and chords to boot.

I know I'll get the hang of it after enough practice. I just didn't think I'd be this far behind.

1 comment Tags: music, rant, guitar

Jared!

Back in 1996, I had a PowerBook Duo and a Newton. The Powerbook had a little application called "Jared" that lived on my desktop. It was, at the time, the second most awesome piece of Mac software I had ever seen, right behind the Talking Moose. The app was simple: double-click the icon and a little smiley face would sing an execrable song in Italian or Spanish or something. No matter how crappy my day was or how much drama I was in the midst of (usually a lot), Jared was always there to provide me with 55 seconds of awesome.


Somebody ported Jared to the iPhone.

He is still magnificent.

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Now I know why new albums are two years apart

I've been working on mixes for two of the 13 songs I have earmarked for the next record. Composition, arrangement, and primary recording don't generally take me that long - maybe 40-50 hours per song, soup to nuts. Sounds like a lot for four minutes of music, but it starts to look more reasonable when you consider what's involved: drums, bass, two or more guitar parts, synth parts (sometimes none, sometimes as many as five or six), main vocal melody, harmonies, and lyrics.


In the past, my mixes have been pretty simple. "Raw" or "natural" would be putting it kindly, but "basic" and "unsophisticated" are closer to the truth. Once the recording is done, I generally set the levels to something that sounds good, adjust the reverb sends, and bounce to disk.

It's always bothered me that my recordings don't sparkle like other bands' recordings that I admire. I can write some of that off to professional gear and seasoned engineers...but I know that there's a lot that I could be doing and I just haven't bothered to learn it until now.

I kinda wish my standards were lower.

Why? Because I have discovered that mixing - setting the relative levels of each instrument, setting equalization, adding effects and other touches here and there - takes just as long as writing, arranging, and recording the damned song in the first place. It's some serious cold water in the face for a guy who's always looked at mixing as "the home stretch". But really listening with a critical ear, taking the time to make each instrument sound its best in relation to the other parts, and placing everything carefully in the audio spectrum is a huge amount of work.

What's worse is that it can't be immersive work. I often go through the creation & recording process in one huge push. I become totally consumed by the one song I'm working on. Mixing, I've found, requires time away from the song. Work on it for a couple of short sessions (2 or 3 hours), put it down for a few days, pick it back up with fresh ears, and so on. Recording for the mix I finished tonight was done five weeks ago. No joke.

Do I think it's worth it? Hell yes, or I wouldn't be doing the work. But if it takes me, a part-time musician with a day job and a bunch of other hobbies, two months to complete a single track - then no wonder it takes full-time musicians two years to come out with a new record. Now I grok in fullness.

I've been having trouble uploading the track but I imagine I'll post it later when I have more time.

Post a comment Tags: music, recording

iLemming

My latest 2-year commitment to Verizon Wireless expired last week. Phone tech has come a long way in the last two years, so I've been thinking hard about what I want for my next upgrade. 


Mandatory:
  • Strong signal reception
  • Compatibility with my existing bluetooth headset
  • Contact sync with the Mac address book
  • Task sync with iCal (ok) or OmniFocus (preferred)
Nice to have:
  • Calendar sync with iCal and gCal
  • Mobile Web access
  • Full keyboard, Graffiti, or handwriting recognition
  • Camera sync with iPhoto
Don't really care:
  • MP3 player
  • Mobile versions of desktop apps like Word
  • Email
I looked at a bunch of the Verizon smartphone/PDA/mobile Web gadgets and was surprised to find that almost all of them are running Windows Mobile. The ones that aren't are still pretty Mac-hostile according to user reports. So much for Verizon.

Iphone
Iphone
Once I started looking outside of Verizon, it became clear that the iPhone is really the only gadget out there that fills all my mandatory criteria...and all my nice-to-haves as well. So I bought one. It seems strange to me that Mac users have such slim pickin's - I wonder why. Apple's developer support, maybe? Manufacturers unwilling to create gadgets for a relatively small market?

I'm liking it pretty well so far. It's a relief to have my GTD system with me at all times now without double-entry or the kloodgy multi-app sync process required by my Palm. Having a real UI to deal with call waiting and hold and so forth is fantastic. My fingers are a little large for the keyboard - I wish I could re-orient it to landscape from any app (especially SMS) but no such luck. Location services + map has come in handy once already. I feel somewhat uncomfortably trendy whenever I take it out of my pocket in public, but hey - it's the right tool for the jobs I want it to do. How can I argue with that?

1 comment Tags: gadget, iphone, recent purchase

Derbyderbyderby

Richmond Wrecking Belles vs. SF She-vil Dead at Herbst Pavilion last Saturday night. Not a great night for San Francisco. Richmond outscored them by more than double: 113-42.


On the Richmond side, Dianne Rott and Demanda Riot were the Unstoppable Force and the Immovable Object, respectively. Rott had several 8+ point jams. Nina (the Missus) and I were at one end of the track, just at the outside of the first curve. The pack would start, the jammers would start, they'd all skate down to the other end, and then all of a sudden Rott would be out in front by herself. She's like a machine. 

Riot, for her part, just makes people fall down whenever she touches them. It's the weirdest thing. During one jam on Saturday, she just faked at one SF blocker, and that blocker ran smack into another SF blocker - they both fell down and Riot didn't touch either one of 'em. Amazing. 

Newcomer Brawllin' Angel also had a good night. She's a fast jammer, thin and agile. She's Nina's new favorite. I'm looking forward to seeing her skate again in September's Oakland/Richmond bout.

Friskie
Friskie
On the SF side, Sassy Slayher was on the warpath all night. Seemed like every time she put her shoulder down, a Wrecking Belle went airborne. She racked up some points as a jammer too, but her defensive game was really impressive.

Pia Mess was (IMO) SF's other MVP. She also played aggressively, blocking the opposing jammer way off the track early in the jam and then working her way through the pack. A couple of jams had her pairing her off against Dianne Rott, which was a thrill to watch.

Coolest thing about the evening: Nina and I were sitting right next to a whole pile of Richmond jammer Friskie Meow's friends and family. They all had home-made Friskie t-shirts. Every time she went by they'd holler and make these clawing motions with their hands. How awesome is that?

1 comment Tags: roller derby, bay area derby girls, richmond wrecking belles, sf she-vil dead

Holy crap I'm 15 again

I'm sitting in The Man Room (my own private sanctuary that probably deserves its own post). My MacBook Pro is sitting here on the desk next to my mini-painting setup. I am listening to U2's Unforgettable Fire. Before that, it was playing The Smiths' Hatful of Hollow. I am painting a miniature for a D&D game coming up on Wednesday.

Substitute "boom box" for "MacBook Pro" and "this weekend" for "on Wednesday", and you have pretty much my last two years of high school.

Reckon I'll put Joy Division's Closer on next, to complete the experience.

Post a comment Tags: gaming, painting, miniatures, life is peculiar