Friday, October 27, 2006

The Dream. . .


























Do you have one of these?

Somewhere in the back of my aged mind, I still believe that with the right circumstances, I could end up in the NBA.

(These circumstances now include a plague on everyone over 6', everyone with jets, and everyone with what the kids now call "ups" - formerly "hops", "springs", and "air".)

This music thing is really just my back-up dream.

The basketball dream makes it seem almost possible.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Mixing



I was sitting at the mixing board today, going over some of the tunes we've been working on. Right now I'm using a Tascam 2488 24-track (that's the 24 in 2488, I guess) hard-disc recorder (uh, what's the 88 about?). So, you make a sound (drums, voice, whatever), and then a microphone picks it up, converts it into electrical energy, that moves down the wire into the mic pre-amp on the back of the 2488, where it's amplified, and the amplified signal is converted to digital information by an analog/digital converter. Blah, blah, blah.

But what I want to talk about is mixing. Because the more I record, the less I want to dick around with frequencies and levels. I used to crave perfect control, 4 band parametric eq's, the ability to pinpoint each sounds essentialities and cut down on the noise. And with digital, you can really do whatever you want. Once the information is digital, there isn't the problem of having the greatest mixing board, because eq becomes a simple math problem, and the 2488 is pretty much a math machine. And I've used the eq to fit 10 guitars into stereo sound, to squeeze a voice between them, but I'm just not fantastically interested in doing that this time around. I'm getting the feeling that an honest record should have so little eq, that the arrangement of instruments should have no extra noise to filter out, that it should just sound like it would if you were in the room when we recorded it. It's not like in person someone would say, "you know, the high end snare sound is really getting in the way of the vocals".

I started making multi-track recordings on a karaoke machine -- it had a double cassette deck, so you could record yourself singing over your karaoke tapes, I guess. But, I could record a guitar track, and then switch the tapes and record a voice over that, and then switch the tapes again and add drums. Voila! Multi-track recording. But I couldn't mix, of course, I couldn't eq or adjust levels. That's actually how John Lennon recorded Revolution 9, one of the most hated songs in popular music history -- using simple tape over-dubs.

What the hell is this post about?

I don't know.

It's late.

I'm trying to keep up writing.

I'm using a minimalist mixing approach.

Would that my blogging be the same.

Anyway, I'm not begrudging my newly found ability to manipulate and mesh sounds -- the 2488 has really helped me out. I'm just finding that with this record, I'd almost rather record on a karaoke machine -- remove the temptation.

Jay.

P.S. The above 2488 was yet another final piece in the studio puzzle.

Monday, October 23, 2006

When is enough enough?

Every conversation I have with Sienna about music gear has the same moment -- she looks at me with her eyebrows raised, and I know she's thinking "how much is this going to cost us?" Not that she isn't amazingly supportive, even encouraging as far as buying gear goes, but sometimes I get the feeling that she's starting to suspect that the great gear acquisition has no finish line. Which, of course, is the truth. Now, I mean, a lot of the time I'll be talking about gear that I just think is cool, like a $2200 Custom Telecastor, which I would never buy. . . Probably never. . . I mean, unless I got a deal or something. . . Which is the story behind the $300 ride cymbal upstairs right now, which, once again, completes my studio.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Love is a Four Letter Word

Had some daytime jamming today with the Guelph boys. They came down late last night and just left to make it home in time for Sunday dinner -- something that, for honest folk, isn't optional - or so they tell me.

We dug through some old songs, Magellen and the Worms, Red Flag, Safe and Warm -- listening to half done demos that showed promised but got shelved for other material. But it seems so wrong to punch into the old tapes and add new vocals or change the organ part. Music, at least for us, is such a changing thing, that it seems like doing a cover song. Now. . .

Hold on. . .

While writing this I had "Peja or Paul" -- a record I wrote for Peja (or Paul, if she, uh, you know, was someone different), on the stereo and a song called "love is a four letter word" came on, and damned if I wasn't drawn to the idea of recording it again.

See, there's the problem. Old stuff is easier. Writing new material is scary, and I don't have the time to spend with it that I've already spent with old songs.

Oh, hey, this is all part of the "post lots of crap on the blog" program leading up to the new records release.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Teachin' the Rock. . .

I teach music lessons 1 night a week out at the Dorian School of Music (www.dorianschoolofmusic.com, I think), and there's a sad reality to the job. Most of my students will give up. They will sell their instruments, or let them gather dust in their parents' basements.

But, the flip side is that they could stick to it, practice, have a great time, and live the dream.

The funny part is, I don't think I really have much say in what happens. I can show them a few techniques, and challenge them a bit with ideas, but there's not a lot of grey-area between self-motivated and slacker, between gifted and hopeless.

Where I end up, is just trying to let them have a good time. Music education can be as much about confidence building as it can about becoming a rock star. But don't tell my students -- I have high hopes.

Thursday, October 19, 2006

519 Callin' . . .

I haven't talked much about this, mostly because I didn't want to jinx it. . . But things have been going well enough that I think I can share it with the 4 people who read this blog (hi sis!).

As some of you know, I started this frontman nonsense back in Guelph, with a group called (you guessed it) The Barn Flyz. I was playin' my indi-whathaveyou and they were playing their alt-rock-country-indi-whatever, and they needed a singer, and I got my first chance fronting a band.

I moved to Kingston after meeting/marrying (I think it was in the same day) my beautiful wife Sienna, and I tried to get the Barn Flyz to move down. Now, like the good farm boys that they are, they had to stay in Guelph and tend the fields. The kept sending me demos for songs, and I kept adding lyrics, and we did a few records "long distance".

My live bands came and went (mostly went), and just when I was thinking about throwing in the towel and becoming a banker or something, the phone rang.

The guys from the Barn Flyz wanted to make music again. And for the last 2 weeks, they've been driving back and forth from Guelph to write songs with me. The new record will be the first record with the LIVE Flyz on it since Free Soup for the Revolution.

Viva la Farm.

Monday, October 16, 2006

How the Go's Going. . .

Hello!

It's is damned cold in the studio today -- which is great, because you have to keep moving to stop from dying, and so shit gets done.

I think I finished recording the 3rd song today. It's called "Sucker Punch", and like the rest of the record, it's about heartache, revenge, and other stuff that sounds good accompanied by harmonicas and handclaps.

The record is tentatively called "songs for my seaweed girl".

Hey, look, a happy post! Hazahh!

Jay.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Sad Songs. . .

Quick post.

Acoustic songs going.

2 down, 8 to go.

Old songs being revisited, but likely cut, as energy always better on new stuff.

Hope you had a nice thanksgiving.