Misc. stuff

A co-worker of mine is getting himself out of the live sound business, so he is selling off a bunch of his stuff. Of course, I have very little money right now, so I can't really go hog wild, but he gave me the first shot at the stuff he's selling. He has a couple of decent condenser microphones and a "psycho-acoustic processor", which I'll have to try out for a little bit, but the one big thing I'd really like to get is the portable DAT deck. Unfortunately, that's also the most expensive thing he's selling, and I have too many other things that need my money more. Bummer. I'm probably still going to get the mikes and maybe that acoustic processor, though. More toys!

Speaking of getting new toys, Cakewalk sent out an e-mail yesterday claiming that their "special upgrade pricing" on Sonar Home Studio was going to end soon. I don't really believe that it will end soon, but I would still like to upgrade. It's only about $80 to do the upgrade, but unfortunately, that means that I'll need to upgrade the computer, too. I was looking at a refurbed IBM ThinkCentre from Tiger Direct. It's only $199 after rebate, and it will get me where I need to be as far as the computer and operating system. Plus, with Home Studio's support for VST add-ins and such, I might be able to knock a few of my other "must-have" pieces of equipment off my list. Be nice to be able to get all the stuff I want working for only about $300.

Then it's just a matter of actually sitting down and recording something worth listening to. The hard part...

Why I Need to Record Everything I Play!

Last night, I was playing around with this neat little bassline. It was getting fairly late, so I just put down the bass and thought that I'd remember the line in the morning. Woke up this morning, picked up the bass, I could remember all the notes involved, but I'll be damned if I could remember the funky rhythm thing I had going on with it. Sucks. I should have taken the five minutes, plugged in the bass and hit the record button, and I'd have the core of another song pretty much done. Oh well. Live and learn. Record everything!

Weekend on the coast

Carol and I drove over to Crescent City on Friday evening after I got off work. I brought along my keyboard and laptop, but I didn't do a whole lot musical over the weekend. I tinkered around a little bit Saturday afternoon, but no composition or anything came out of it. Oh well. Next time we go over there, I'm going to bring my little mixer and a couple of microphones and stands; and I'm going to put them up on the balcony and record a decent couple of CDs' worth of the ocean surf at a decent quality. Do a little editing with Audacity, record the CDs right there, and we can check them out and make sure they came out okay on the way home. Then I can either use them as backing sounds for some music or just let Carol use them as-is to lull her to sleep at night. She loves the sound of the ocean.

While we were there, we heard this bagpipe music coming from outside our balcony door. There was a man down on the motel lawn playing bagpipes by the ocean. Carol said it reminded her of a movie, one with the English moors or the Scottish highlands. It's a very melancholy sound, the way he was playing it. Later, we heard him again, but this time he was in full Highland regalia. When we were going out to lunch, we asked the desk clerk and it turned out that he was performing for a funeral reception. Very fitting music, moving and sad.

Overall, it was a very good, if not too musical, weekend.

Note to self:

Always remember to check your instrument's tuning before you start playing that first track, because it's a royal pain in the ass later if you don't. I loaned my bass to my stepson last night, and when I went to play this cool little slap number earlier today, it sounded in tune. Unfortunately, it was all about half a step flat on all strings because he had tuned it to match his guitar. Take that nearly perfect performance I had recorded, delete it, and start all over. Bummer...

I've got about eight songs that I'm working on, so I hope to have stuff posted to the web in the near future...

Making Music

Wandered upon a very cool music blog called Making Music. Includes a great list of free computer software including programs and VST plugins. Definitely have to keep this one on my list of sites to watch!

Music Paper

Music Paper is just this way cool resource that someone on StumbleUpon pointed me to. They have downloadable music paper for general use, as well as pre-formated special purpose music papers for things like choral groups, guitar tab, orchestras, string orchestras and quartets, and more. If you like to write your music the good old fashioned way - with a pen or pencil - this is a site that you absolutely must bookmark!

Disappointment...

Well, looks like I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board as far as looking for a band. Joe and Rob, the guitarist and drummer who responded to my Craigslist ad, are just a little to disorganized for me, and their "business plan," for lack of a better term, leaves me a bit cold. Their plan is essentially to try to record as many songs as possible in the hopes that someone, someday might notice one or more of them. They do not plan to play live unless someone requests them to perform. I think this is basically the reverse of what most bands do, and I have never heard of anyone being successful using a tactic like that. Most bands get noticed by playing live and drawing a large fan base from their shows. Then they use that fan base to sell CDs and such, which draws the attention of record labels and radio stations. Anyway, combine the fact that I want to play live with my lack of desire to learn a song, play it once to record it, and move on to the next song, and you have the reason for my disenchantment with the pair. Back to the drawing board, I suppose.

On the plus side, I just signed up with putfile.com, which allows you to share various files such as mp3s with the world at no cost. I need to look over the license agreement and such a bit more to make sure I'm not screwing my own rights to my songs later, but if all goes well, I should be able to get some rough versions of songs up on the web in the next couple of days. That would be very cool...

Stupid, redux...

Sent an e-mail to the person who responded to my older ad on Craigslist. He gave me a call a little while ago, and we're going to get together after I get off work tomorrow. He's an older guy who plays drums, and he said that there are a few other people he gets together with sometimes. It sounds like he may have some different influences than me, but I'll just load up the amp and the bass in the back of the car and see what happens tomorrow evening.

I spent a couple of hours working on some of my little pieces of tunes today. Recorded one little MIDI chord progression, an 8-bar guitar thing, and one of the little bass things that I actually wrote a few days ago. One of these days I'm going to have to finish one of my tunes and get it put up on the net somewhere. For now, though, off to work on a little more music...

Stupid...

I was looking through some of my older e-mails today, and I realized that a drummer here in Medford had sent me an e-mail responding to my older ad on Craigslist, from about 4 months ago. I'm not sure if I just missed it the mass of crap I get every day, or if I looked at the title and said to myself, "Oh, I'll take a look at that later." Regardless, I'm going to send an e-mail back to the person and see if they're still interested in jamming.

Haven't done anything musical today to speak of.

Go Seahawks!