Some Demos

Okay, let's try this embedding mp3s thing.

Here's a demo of the Stooge:
The Stooge (12-10-09 Demo)
It sounds like I actually decided to record Kevin's vocals on this take, but at the expense of the guitar and bass. I won't let that happen again! (Okay, so I'll use my new mixer to get it right, but really, who wants to listen to the singer?)
It also sounds like my strap-lok gave out for the thousandth time during this recording. During the solo, there are two bars where I abruptly cut out. It sounds like I caught my falling guitar, propped my leg up on the coffee table, and finished the song. You can also hear me cursing my strap-lok at the end of the song.

This demo of Tomorrow came out okay.:
Tomorrow (10-29-09 Demo)
Kevin's vocals get lost during the louder sections, but the Rock will do that to a singer sometimes.

Credits:
Kevin C: Drums
Kevin M: Vocals
Mike: Bass
Ryan: Guitar
Ryan: Music/Lyrics/Shitty Recording

Blog Revue

Just reread my 2009 entries. Wow, I got in-depth about rehearsals. It reads like a personal diary. Oh, well; not really sure if there is a target audience for this blog anyway, so it might as well be me.

I've missed entries on a ton of rehearsals in the meantime. A lot of rehearsing and refining what we've got. I've started setting up the 8-track to record some of the jams, so at least there is a musical record of what's going on.

I'm thinking I may be able to use drop-box to link to some of the tracks, unless I come up with a better way to get mp3s embedded in this blog. If not, it will continue to serve as my personal diary!

The real reason I started blogging again...

...is that I got new musical toys to play with (and to blog about.)

The in-laws got me a Eurorack UB1222FX-Pro mixer for Christmas. My sister also got me a gift card to Guitar Center, which meant a spree of musical purchases there and at Musician's Friend.com that went well beyond what I meant to spend.

The initial trip to Guitar Center yielded some cables and a Furman M-8Lx power conditioner. I don't trust the wiring of my old house, and my guitar amp has been buzzing like crazy, so the power conditioner was in order. The more exciting stuff is in the mail.

More on the guitar and recording toys as they come in. More on the mixer when I get more time to play with it!

NPR: Grumpy Old Men

My father-in-law sent me this article:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122114058&sc=nl&cc=mn-20100102

Here is my response to the article:

First of all, it describes two very different phenomenon: compression and digital quantization. The point of song compression is to raise the amplify the "softer parts" into a dynamic range that your ear can more readily enjoy, at the expense of the louder parts. For the Metallica example in the article, instead of bemoaning the loss of a sharp snare attack cutting through the song, they could easily mention that the raised floor of the music and vocals makes the actual content of the song easier to listen to. A good recording engineer should work with the band to compress the songs in a manner that benefits the song.

The concept of over-compression, or making the song sound completely flat, has been around long before digital music. In fact, radio is the culprit for the over-compression phenomenon. Radio has very narrow side-bands around the carrier frequencies, so the content has to be compressed significantly to fit within the sidebands. It's the reason why classical music is still better live and most contemporary music is dynamically flat.

Digital quantization noise was a big problem before 16 and 24-bit recording and dithering techniques were developed. Then, when mp3s first became popular, people chose to digitize at low rates to keep file sizes small. A properly digitized song's digital quantization errors will fall well below the noise level of the ear. As higher quality digital music becomes more prevalent, the only discernible difference between formats will be that analog music is more prone to noise and more expensive than digital music.

I have noticed that recorded music has gotten progressively louder. (There is something called "The Volume Knob," available on most music players, if the music is too loud.) However, without elucidating the benefits of compression or digitization, this article sounds like a couple of guys lamenting about "the way it used to be..."

Let's start again...

I thought I had deleted this blog. Apparently, I just never wrote to it. Oh, well.

Thank goodness I didn't resolve to start blogging again. (I never keep my New Year's resolutions.) But I did feel that it was time to track my musical journey again.

Lots of cool things happening with the band. We've continued to meet, and we're starting to polish a few songs. We're hoping to focus on 5 songs, then get into the studio for a demo early in 2010. The songs are:

1) The Door
2) Far Side
3) Tomorrow
4) The Stooge
5) Untitled Blues Song

I just need to write lyrics (and give a title to) the fifth song, then we'll rehearse and be good to go.

Why no word?

Not sure why I haven't been blogging right as things have picked up. The crew has been Kevin M on vocals, Kevin C on drums, Mike on bass, and myself on guitar. We worked Far Side for a number of weeks, and basically the 12/8 bar is the only part we need to lock down. Next came The Door, which came together relatively quickly. Only update there is the sparse guitar intro. Stooge and Tomorrow came together pretty quickly from there. Need to nail down the Tomorrow stop. After that its just polishing.

Trying to get a manager to book gigs. Need a name for the band. Wondering how Kevin M's first kid is going to affect us going forward. Things might get interesting again soon...

Anyway, band name ideas:
Team Badguys (From Jen C)
Bottleneck (From Steve N, C1NG)
Good Behavior (From Mike)

Kevin M apparently played in a band named Lesser Offense, so he was making the connection with Good Behavior...


Also, in recent news, somehow a cleanup effort popped the cap in my digital delay pedal. Wondering if I want to replace it or go a different route. Volume/Wah is still the mainstay, and I'm trying to get the Whammy pedal in the mix.

Back On

Started writing a couple things for the Stooge. Recorded an early version of the Lament. Have a couple more ideas floating around.

Should have the guys over tomorrow. We'll see what's going down with the band.