'The Sandwich'

Recently, I did some music for a video made by Projectline, Inc., a creative services / marketing firm (I'm probably describing them incorrectly)  based in my beloved Seattle.  It's a funny video promoting their company, and was written and directed by my lovable big brother Ben.

I made sort of a big beat kind of track, and tipped my hat to Dr. Dre with some low brass.  I tripled-up the bassline with brass, synth (GForce impOscar) and piano, and added a screaming synth lead (Native Instruments Pro-53) near the end.  I had a lot of fun doing it, and I think it turned out well. Check it out for yourself.

Click HERE, or watch below:

UPDATE (4-27-09):

I also did the "theme song" for their Ask Larry segment (Larry being their IT guy), which can be seen HERE.  It which  also uses track 4, "Want and Should," from my album Fragments in Abstract, which you can listen to on the sidebar of the blog:  --------->

new track: 'When I Dream'

Recently, I had a project for my songwriting class in which we had to do a "produced song."  That is to say a song that is of presentable, produced quality - whether recorded or performed live - such that you would feel comfortable presenting it in that way to a panel of publishers.  I was at a loss as to what to do for the project, so I took my go-to method and decided to dig through my old stuff.

To make a large understatement, my average song has always had a fairly long gestation period. My standard protocol was to come up with an idea, record it, develop it a little bit, then forget about it and move on to some other new idea. As a result, my hard drive is full of tons of old ideas, which is kinda bad, but also pretty good.  My album I released last year is almost entirely composed of songs that were 2-3 years old by the time I finished them up and got them album-ready.

So anyway, I took a song I had started during the summer of 2005 and worked it up to demo quality.  It was originally a Sting-ish pop track, but now has almost a Postal Service kind of electronic vibe to it.

Just two more things.  First, now that I have a vocal mic that fits my specific voice really well, and now that I have my mixer back and can use its preamps instead of the cheesy digital ones built into my audio card, it is a million times easier to capture a nice sounding vocal track.  You'll see what I mean when you listen to the track.  Secondly, I play a "bass solo" on this and be forwarned: I AM NOT A BASSIST.

Lyrics:

Verse 1:

When I dream I dream of you,

When I sleep, you're in my dreams,

I just wish you felt it too,

You've gone away or so it seems.

As I go throughout my day,

your voice echoes in my thoughts,

Nothing keeps my mind at bay,

I can't let go my heart is caught.

Chorus:

Yesterday and yesteryear

fade aimlessly away

and the words that tell our history

lay graying on the page.

My weary heart grows still,

and I bide my time until

I find there's something I can do

but in the meantime,

when I dream I dream of you.

Verse Two:

When I look, you're all I see,

Who you are is what I need,

You mean everything to me,

but if you leave I won't impede.

[Chorus]

When I dream I dream of you,

When I sleep, you're in my dreams,

I just wish you felt it too,

You've gone away or so it seems.

Christmas music loot!!

I got some pretty sweet Christmas loot this year, including some pretty sweet music-related stuff:

1. Skullcandy Titan earbuds. Now, be a ridiculous audophile if you want and reject earbuds out of hand, but when you're always on the go - sans a car - like I am, then big, bulky studio cans, while higher in sound quality, are not practical. But in the realm of earbuds, I've gotta tell you, these things are swwwweeet! Let me count the ways:
1. Unlike most earbuds that make up for their lack of true low frequency by over-abusing the proximity effect and thus making the low frequencies muddy and indiscernible, I was amazed by the clarity of the bass.
2. The connections and plugs are solid, and the cable is soft and pliable.
3. After you buy them, you can go to their website and register them, entitling you to a) Full replacement for life if anything happens with normal use of them, and b) Half the replacement cost if you do something stupid like hit it with a hammer or roll over it with your skateboard.

2. A $25 iTunes giftcard. Oohoohoo, the possibilities!! This is better than cash to me, because it means it's guaranteed to be spent on music, and can’t be pilfered to buy our next gallon of milk.
3. The coup de grace: The SE Electronics M1C Mini. If you read this blog even sporadically, you're probably sick of hearing me blather about this mic. Nonetheless, let me give the background of why this mic is so awesome: If you do any recording, you’re most likely familiar with the name Neumann. Needless to say, they’ve produced high quality microphones for the last 80 years which have become the industry standard (not to mention being the inventors of such things as the stereo microphone and 48V phantom power). In short, they’re gorgeous and they’re classy. I’ve lusted after the Neumann TLM103 for the last 4 years, since I first used one in a recording session. Then, about 2 years ago, I first heard about the SE Mini, and couldn't believe my ears. A Chinese microphone that was getting good reviews? No way. And they were making a TLM103 knockoff? Nothing about "Chinese Neumann knockoff" sounded plausible to my ears. But I reserved judgment and finally eventually got a chance to hear the TLM103 and Mini side by side. I almost pooped my pants to discover that on my particular voice, the Mini (priced at $169) sounded better than the Neumann (priced at $1,100)! That was it. I had to own one... but was poor as hell. Then about a month or so ago, I found out that they were discontinuing it (most likely a patent issue with Neumann), so I bumped it to the top of my list (after much deliberation), so, I now own one! Wheeee!

the best kind of dilemma

So, I hate to write two posts in a month's time on the subject of music gear, but I'm tackling a serious conundrum at the moment. As Tracy Morgan said on 30 Rock, "You've put me in quandary, Jack Donaghy... a quandary!" With great sadness, I learned that SE Electronics, the beneficiary of Communism's hatred toward patents and copyrights, discontinued their wonderful M1C Mini, the knockoff of the Neumann TLM103. I had tried the two of them side by side and had been surprised to discover that on my particular voice, the Mini actually sounded better. Considering that the TLM103 cost $1,100 and the Mini cost $169, it skyrocketed to the top of my google wish list.

Adding insult to injury, I found out that my Mom had ordered the Mini for me, only to discover after the fact that every site that sold it online was out of stock. Bollocks. The upside is that as a result of this misfortune, I get to select something(s) of relatively the same value to take its place. *Kid in a candy shop!*

My first window-shopping stop was FabFilter. I've been eyeballing their plugins for a long time, now and let's just say that there isn't one of their products that I wouldn't mind owning. They're gorgeous sounding and have a fantastic GUI. They have this amazing drag-and-drop modulation interface on most of their products that is cooler than all get out. In talking to my friend and mentor Aaron, I was made to realize that there are none of their products of which I don't already have at least a decent (and in many cases, stellar) equivalent. So, with one last saliva-swallowing look, I moved on.

What my rig has been missing, is a good channel-strip plugin. Yeah, I have Live's Saturator device, and I have some good compressors, not to mention a heavy-duty mastering plugin (Izotope Ozone), but I don't have a nice, all-in-one, warm channel strip. My first thought was of PSP Audio's Vintage Warmer. An exquisitely-crafted analog modeling compressor/limiter, that really is the king of analog/tube emulation. This has come highly recommended to me by friends and teachers. I've used a trial version of it before and love the fatness it added to drums and the overall thickness and warmth it added to mixes. One drawback however is that it's kind of niche plugin and would have very specified uses, perhaps limiting its frequency of use. Considering that I love vintage (I mean 1970s-style vintage) mix sounds, especially on drums, this would be an excellent addition to my rig.

The next contestant is Wave Arts' Track Plug. This has also come highly recommended to me, and on top of all of the praise I've heard heaped upon it, the thing that catches my eye most is its widely-celebrated CPU efficiency. It's system footprint so small, in fact, that it can be used on every track in a mix without much effort on the part of your computer. Now that is an important feature in a channel-strip plugin. Professional reviews have had minimal and insignifcant things to list in the "Cons" column, and heaps to say in the "Pros." Two compressors, a gate, EQ, "clean" and "warm" settings, sidechaining on all of the dynamics sections, and much, much more. Definitely a contender.

Then I got to thinking about my hardware. I had originally wanted that damn SE Mini, so I looked on eBay and found it there. Expecting to find it at some sort of terrible average between its original price and the price of the Neumann, I was pleasantly surprised to find it for $150. By this point, my head is swimming.

You know, I thought to myself, I am not a huge fan of the digital preamps built into my audio interface, and its phantom power is an enormous pain in the ass, so what about some kind of tube pre? I immediately began scouring the internet for tube pre's in my pricepoint. A well acclaimed audio hardware manufacturer, ART Electronics, makes a couple inexpensive ones. I found myself quite taken with their Tube MP Studio V3, and its two-channel equivalent. Having some nice, analog gear in the signal path between your performance and your mix is always a good thing. Especially considering that these both have output protection limiting and, of course, natural tube saturation. The only drawback for this is that I don't record audio as often as I mix, sequence and play with sound. It's just that when I do record, I'm always unsatisfied with the sound of my preamps. (I love my microphones. They are not the bottleneck here.)

So there you have my quandary.

Do I go with the Vintage Warmer, Track Plug, an ART tube preamp, or the microphone I originally asked for?

With this post, I introduce a new label: "your input please?" Anytime you see this, I'm requesting your advice, opinion and expertise. So.... give it to me.

calling all computer nerds!

So, I'm picking out the parts for the Studyo's* next computer. I'm getting really excited. [NOTE: If you are not interested in computers and the like, please stop reading, as you might realize just how apt the name of my blog is.] As is my custom, I'm getting as many people to weigh in on the tech side of things before I make my purchase.

I'm trying to buy as few parts as possible, but buy the most powerful ones I can afford (my minimalist philosophy on software is spilling over into my hardware). I've been really pleased with my old computer, and it has lasted a long time as a machine which can compete well with anything prefabbed. However, I've learned quite a few things since building my last one, and want to avoid a couple mistakes I made.

The biggest lesson I've learned is this: Never, ever underestimate the ability of Windows to waste space. Whatever they tell you is the recommended system requirements, double it. Since I don't trust Vista, I'm going to buy it and then downgrade to XP, but in case I ever develop dementia and decide to switch to Vista, I'm planning for its system requirements. They say that Vista needs to be put on a 40GB hard drive with 15GB of free space. I'm installing XP on an 80GB partition of a 160GB hard drive. I'm probably tempting fate by making this taunt, but, "Try and fill up all of THAT space with invisible crap, Windows!"

Secondly, I've learned that it's never a good idea to scrimp on RAM. Since I plan on running XP still, I'm going to use the max possible, at 4GB. It's going to be dual-channel (2X2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3 RAM, which come equipped with their own aluminum heat-sinks. And since it's DDR3, it's both faster and uses less voltage than DDR2.

Since I've already started doing it, let me get to the part all you computer nerds want. The parts list as it now stands. On each bullet point is a link to its stats on the website from which I'm buying the parts:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.16GHz 65W Dual-Core Processor
• RAM: 4GB of Corsair XMS3 240-pin DDR3 1600
• Motherboard: ASUS Striker II ATX Intel Motherboard with a NVIDIA nForce 790i SLI Northbridge
• Video Card: MSI GeForce 9500 PCI Express Video Gard with 512MB of on-board RAM
• Hard Drives: For my OS and for my software, I'm going to go pretty standard, but for my audio and samples, I'm going to use a Western Digital Velociraptor 300GB SATA 3.0Gb/s drive running at 10,000RPM. Ahhh, yeeeeah.
• Other stuff: I'm going to scavenge the case, power supply, wireless card, audio/MIDI card, and my 40GB SATA 1.5GB/s hard drive from my old computer.

Your thoughts? I'm excited to build this monster. It should be going down within the next 2 months. Wheeee! Yay for being a nerd! [I will update this post as changes occur.]

* My home studio is also my study, thus the amalgam, The Studyo.

[SAME-DAY-AS-POST UPDATE!]
Ok, so after many comments, I've changed my tune. I've made the following changes:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Core 2.4Ghz (which I will overclock up to 3GHz)
• Motherboard: An Intel motherboard that is compatible with everything else I've selected. It has an Intel X48 chipset. Is that better (Justin and Bart)?
• Hard Drives: I will stream samples off of a 150GB 10,000RPM 3.0Gb/s drive, and run the audio for my projects on a 300GB drive of the same specifications. The OS and the programs will be on two separate, equally-sized partitions of a 160GB 7200RPM 3.0Gb/s drive.
• Other Stuff: Like the CPU and Motherboard, my buddy Justin Aiken helped me find this nice, sporty little CPU cooling unit. He either has this one or something similar. It's supposedly super quiet. With that and the fanless video card I've selected, this should be one silent little beast.

Alrighty, my geeky brain trust, how's THAT?