So last night was a very productive night of music making and mixing. I figured out how much of a stubborn a** hole I am and now I kind of feel stupid. Allow me to explain:
About a year ago I went to a producer's conference in San Francisco for Reason users. The speakers were professional film score composers, sound designers, programmers and filthy rich electronic music makers.
My favorite part of the conference was when Peff spoke. Peff's name may be familiar to Reason producers for is 8billion refills he's authored for Propellerheads Software, as well as his independent releases. He consults the makers of Reason and has designed some of the modules it contains. He was one of the guys who helped create Thor, the synth that can do just about everything.
Anyway, the guy is a psycho-genius (real name Kurt Karasaki) and he totally blew my mind. His own music sounds great and he never takes anything out of Reason. It's all done and mastered in the app.
Part of my welcome package was a DVD that contains 3 hours of tutorial knowledge on advanced Reason techniques, including mastering.
So it's been a year, and my thinking has been, "Mastering is an art in itself and best left to professionals so I won't try to learn it as it would be time taken away for the actual music making."
Last night I decided to watch the DVD finally after digging it out of a box. Well, it took about an hour of watching Peff master a track and that's when I realized how stupid I had been. I learned and used his process when mastering a new track and it sounds 10 times better.
Thank you Peff...you are my hero. I am humbled.
Just tied a nice little pretty bow on a new track. Thank God that's over. It's called Baptism. It is my favorite track to date, which probably means that everybody else will be like, "Yeah, it's alright." But seriously, haven't been this proud of a track for quite awhile.
Now trying to cram in "Grandpa Gary" for the CAMMIES showcase so I can drop two brand-newbies. That would be nice. I've been working on the track in between burn out times on Baptism and have a nice thing going. Lot's of strings, composition, melody, beats. We'll see, it will be a weirdy too so I'll be booed off stage probably except for the five people that think I'm great when I get the strangest.
That Baptism one though - that's from my gut, my center, or what the Japanese call, "Hara" where the energy comes from and where the unadulterated self lives.
Grandpa Gary is a gravel road in cornfields and the enchanting mystery of town water-towers with the town name painted on. Iowa beats son!
So breaking a hummingbird sample down into component parts for use in a song project is fun and all but....
It doesn't sound quite as cool as I thought it would and I worked on the sound design of it for like 2 hours last night and didn't come out with much.
Will now run a piece of processed birdsong sample through granulator to manipulate further and create eerie ambient pad. That will come out good at least.
Percussive sounds not so easy. I need to get right up on a hummingbird in flight to get that insect-wing sound loud a clear.
Shit. Had an idea. Why do I even want to do this? Such a nerd...nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd.
Been working regularly on new tracks for the CAMMIES show in a week and a half.
I sourced quality recordings of hummingbirds and will attempt to pump out a 100% hummingbird sample track. Since this is a showcase of original work, I'm going to let it hang out and avoid sticking to crowd pleasers.
Maybe I can get people pumped up by the hummingbird track but something tells me it will be one for the scientists. Ayrian, Symbio and Logan5 will appreciate it...the bros will be like, "Pick it up DAWWWG!" and I'll be like, "Fuck you haven't you ever listened to Steve Reich fool, what do they teach you in college anyway?!!!"
So whatever. If musicians appreciate what I do that is, and always will be, the greatest compliment.
Art for art's sake. Give me the courage to imagine unfettered.
Time flies when you're always preparing for something coming in the future. Electronic CAMMIES showcase is Saturday April 4th, Saturday. $10 at TiON. Need free tickets? Hit me up.
I do believe it will be a very good time. New tracks are coming together for the show. I'm dying to record a hummingbird and make a track with 100% hummingbird samples so we have a feeder in the backyard. Hopefully they'll come in time.
What a total narcissism high it is to hear my music on the radio! I have big love for KZFR: Mom tuned in all day since its beginnings when I was a youngster living on E. 4th Ave. KZFR has always sounded like "home" to me so it was awesome to hear my music on the air.
There's some motivated people listening to the show apparently because my site traffic jumped considerably yesterday.
The PHATTY hosted by Mojohito plays every-other week on Tuesday. If it were up to me, he'd be on daily. The show is off the hook and his play lists haven't graced our airwaves ever before.
Thanks for coming to the site whoever you are and thank you for caring. Support your local community radio station whoever you are. Feel free to lay a comment on this blog so I can have a sense of where all those page views came from.
I love my kids man. We have so much fun over the weekend and I cook and eat and go to parks and relax. I've never been busier in my life and I've never been more productive artistically.
It's one of those paradoxes, like the more you work out the less you need sleep. Or the more times you get poison oak the easier you get it (that's true, nasty nasty stuff).
I cram in these 1 to 2 hour production sessions in the corner of my bedroom sitting on a little ottoman hunched over a night table. It's totally rediculous but I feel like I really found my comfortable place.
My "studio" is an ottoman and a laptop, a field recorder and a midi-controller. That's seriously it man. I'm even losing my gear lust. I've been losing it for a pretty long time really and when I see something that would have made me drool 2 years ago now it feels like it would clutter up my corner of the bedroom.
Anybody want to buy a vocoder?
A beautiful wife who bought me my first mac in 2005.
Kids who like weird electronic music and bug me to listen to what's in my headphones.
Being broke after the mortgage payment and spending the weekend walking around in the sun with my family.
Eating any meat from Chico Locker and putting said meat on sandwiches.
Hearing music in my head and not being able to define where it came from.
Being inspired to write and write and write.
Having a few people really appreciate that effort.
Living in a little town that has a disproportionate amount of people who are inspired to write and write and write.
Chico is the good life sunshine vortex we call home.
Ty and I were just talking about this.
I'm pretty sure that the fundamental reason I am driven to write music and write is so that when I'm dead, there's a massive body of work for my kids to sift through to really help them understand who I am.
That's about it. It's really that simple. I don't care if I ever make money, or make fans, or play shows or am ever appreciated (yes, those things are wonderful, I am not a robot).
The point is, I won't ever be discouraged from creating things because the primary number one goal is to leave behind a body of work.
That way, my great-great-great grandson "Zorcon 5" can understand a little better where he came from.
So I have 3 unfinished tracks that I sort of work on simultaneously when I sit down to produce.
That's the normal mode of operation for me, but it is slow and kind of distracting. This new track has totally taken over and I think is one of my best. There's a particular 8-bars that I'm really happy with, and it might be my best 8-bars ever.
Last night Anna and I had friends over, Karl Travis and family. Karl and I go way back, we used to run around town 10 years ago causing problems and desperately hunting for our artistic voices. Karl and I have always appreciated eachother's creative efforts (still think Karl is the best drummer I've ever seen play in front of me...he's unreal) and he wanted to hear my new track.
Normally, I don't let people in to my process, but Karl is an exception because that bond of trust and understanding runs very deep. Our oldest kids followed us to my computer, his daughter is six and Coleman is going on three. First, Karl listened to the track and declared that it was his favorite I had ever written. Karl's heard a lot of tracks of mine and isn't a "fluffer" so that was a good sign. Karl's daughter then listened to it.
I was truly afraid of what was going to come out of her mouth. She is VERY honest and says things without considering how it's going to make other people feel...PERFECT for finding out if a track is good or not! If it doesn't pass the kid-test, forget it, delete.
Jesus said to be like the little children and I think I understand what he meant. So if the little children don't like the music, I figure at best, I'm not touching on anything universal and at worst, it just plain sucks.
Karl's daughter listened to it and I was shocked at how afraid I was at what she would think, her opinion really mattered to me because I knew it would genuinely be her opinion. She listened, she liked it. She asked to hear it again a little later...sweet.
Then it was Coleman's turn. Coleman has advanced in his awareness lately and in the past week we've been having full blown conversations with eachother. It's so cool. Two days ago we were listening to my favorite internet radio station (Limbik Frequencies) and he asks, "Dad. Did you make this music?" I was trippin that he now understands my music's style enough to know that I potentially would make something similar to the track on the station. "No," I said. It was our first conversation about music that was in context and brought up by him.
So it was Coleman's turn and I've tested tracks on him since he was a baby. He's saved me from a lot of embarrassment I suspect. When Coleman doesn't like it I instantly abandon ship, run fast. Shitty tracks are kept but buried in folders on my laptop that tend to never see the light of day again. What's funny is that when Coleman reacts, he tends to just verify what I already know, so in a way he's really taught me to trust my ear and I've slowly learned how to look at my stuff from a 3rd person point of view thanks to him. I think when you really understand that you are writing garbage, you have the ability to really make something sing.
Coleman liked the track, eyes wide with a little grin under my AKG headphones.
Sweet. We got something. Consensus with the little children. That's all I want.
RSS Feed