Last night brought me much closer to completion of the Grandpa Gary track for tomorrow's show. I'll have it done today or tonight with out a doubt.
It morphed itself into a crispy-crunchety IDM track as I followed the inspiration like a lost puppy crossing the street. It was one of those high-intensity production sessions where I cranked out 16 bars of constantly changing IDM beats, three layers of morphed drum machines and samplers with every slice and sound tweaked to how they needed to be to make the synergistic WHOLE.
I worked pretty late, and I woke up this morning with my baby son climbing around on my open laptop and drinking a flat Sierra Nevada. No joke. He spilled most of it thankfully, not on my laptop thankfully, and I won't be leaving the station that way again.
That sneaky devil.
Off topic - for you producers who read this, check out this crazy patch built by Peff for a sweet beat repeater in Reason 4.0. It's a tutorial for you to build your own:
BEAT REPEATER TUTORIAL BY PEFF
There will be last-minute mastering of a track that isn't currently done at 6pm Saturday.
CAMMIES show will be well-attended and Metisyn will be loved by all.
I am busy tonight, and tomorrow night, and Saturday morning wrapping up another new track just in time for the show titled
"Grandpa Gary"
If you knew the man you would totally get it. He would say things like, "Why don't you make yourself useful and get me a beer," or "You should go play in traffic...that would be fun."
H
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.
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