It occurs to me that I make pretty music.

And often hate myself because of it. Half of the time I spend trying to make music is to come up with something pretty. The other half is spent despising the prettiness of it. Sometimes to the point of trying to make it ugly. I make fun of ugly music a lot. Because I can't really make it I suppose. The Ramones, The Velvet Underground, AC/DC, Nirvana, their music wasn't pretty right? On the other hand Brian Wilson's, Paul McCartney's, The Davies Bros.....their music is. I'm not sure where I fit in there. I guess all in all, all music has all shades. I mean let's face it is there anything more beautiful than "Candy Says?" And Wilson can descend into unlistenable chaos at time. But I always feel like I'm straddling that line. Does it even matter? I don't know but it's something I obsess over to the point of it being unhealthy. Who has it perfect? Who balances all of it...making music that's sometimes so beautiful it's transcendent and sometimes so ugly it's uncomfortable to listen to but at the exact same time? David Bowie for me is the first to come to mind. So am I feeling like a failure and wanting to jump off of bridges because my music isn't as awesome as David Bowie's? WTF?

Speaking of awesome music, my friend Sean has finished his RPM record. It's better than anything I've ever done and in my opinion quite brilliant.
here's his blog
http://leatherbackbulletin.blogspot.com/

and here's a mediafire for anyone interested in listening
http://www.mediafire.com/?dm3gvt2zw4n

So another problem that has me severely down...I think one of the Jagger/Richards team said once about how music is an organic experience. I make these records. I make them myself. And in some weird way I get absolutely nothing out of them. Even when I get fantastic musicians I admire to play on them it's usually all but done and I'm like "here, here's how it goes." There's no interaction with other humans. While I'd like to say it doesn't have an effect on the music...and maybe it doesn't, but I think it does, and more importantly it has an extremely profound effect on the attitude I take towards making music. I think we probably need people to share it with. But maybe it's just me. And maybe after a little sharing I'd get pissy and take my ball and go home anyways.

I'm sick. I'm going to bed. I'm going to try to post a song tomorrow called "Me and the Devil" Yes, obviously lift from Robert Johnson and I'm sure I'll change it. Geez.

People who can't play jazz

have something in common with me.

Here's my new song. It's called "What makes the world go 'round." But that's kind of a shit title as well as being a mouthful so if you can think of something more clever drop me a line or add a comment.

It was based on an exercise which was to write a song whose first line is a question, whose last line is the answer to that question, and the lines in between are how you went about finding that answer.

It doesn't really fit in with the 'album' So maybe I'll put it last after my doom metal outro and it will be like "Her Majesty" on abbey road.

Anyways..here it is.

What Makes The World Go 'Round

Out of Sunshine

Hi folks. I have a sample up. It's for a song called "Out of Sunshine" A pretty new song and not originally slated for the record, my friend Ian Miller had played bass for me on the song "Shell" and being that Ian defines everything that is rock and roll, punk, and metal all rolled up into one, I decided to write something a little more shaking for him to play on. So the original idea was to write a Westerberg style garge rocker. To me it wound up sounding like the Stones. To Ian it sounded like Tom Petty. I know I compare everything I do and everything everyone else does to everything else. I can't really help it though. Just how I was made.

Right now the song clocks in at about 5 minutes which is good for time slots getting RPM done in time but bad for the fact that I wouldn't normally sit through a 5 minute pop song without being bored. So I'm probably going to pare it down a tad.

Here's first sample.

Out of Sunshine

Wasting time.

I haven't blogged much because I went out of town last week and have been pretty busy in general. Also frustrated with the creative process. Although those are the times I guess I should be blogging. But this is my first time doing so, so I forget. I worked on a song...I had it all in my head. The lyrics finally started to take shape. I got the perfect drums for them. Everything clicked. Then I woke up....listened to my beats and played the song. And realized I thought it was shit. So I started over. Lots of wasted time there. I probably should have moved on. I guess I'm incapable of 'moving on' when something is bothering me like that though. I have a new version of my new song in the works though. Tomorrow I will see if I can't have a rough recorded. It is called "Out of Sunshine." At that point I will probably move onto the song "Out of Sunshine part II." Which incidentally has very little to do with part I. And I'm not smoking. Which means I've gained weight. Which means I'm pissed off, which means I'm tired from exercise and hungry from starving myself. How was your week?

So...the good part in all of this is that while I'm way behind on material...material is COMING. Like it really hasn't before. I can sit down and stare at half filled in stanzas on paper and words and rhymes and sentences, and cohesive thoughts don't seem to have as much trouble finding their way from my mind to the paper. This has always been the worst part of songwriting to me. I mean lyrics are weird y'know? Everyone gets something different out of music and I get that. But I have people that come to me and say "a song is only as good as its lyrics." I understand people feel that way. I just think they're wrong. The story of Pet Sounds is not told in the lyrics. He could be reading the ingredients to Cheeze Its and I'm pretty sure the emotional impact on me would be identical. I'm neither the musical master Mr. Wilson is nor the lyrical master Mr. Dylan is or any bizarre combo of those two from Pete Townsend to Tom Waits. But I DO have the goal to make my lyrics not embarrassingly bad enough to take away from being able to enjoy the song as a whole. I spend an awful lot of time making sure that doesn't happen and yet I still don't think of myself as a songwriter.

Am I? I write songs? I have no idea. Songwriters to me are people with these things to say that can't stay in their head that must find their way to the paper. Poets with burning souls. Or maybe (maybe not) more superficially, geniuses like Diane Warren or a host of Nashville penners that can knock back #1 hits in their sleep. I don't know what a songwriter is. And I don't know why I write songs and am convinced that whatever the answer is, I'm not one. Which becomes bizarre in thinking "what am I"? My guitar playing went to shit years ago. I was only told I had a decent voice by someone a couple of years ago so I'm still not completely comfortable there. My piano playing definitely won't win any awards. I can't properly mix a song with more than 3 instruments. But in the end, I somehow overcome odds and make music that I'm really proud of.

Is that weird?

Channeling my inner Jeff Lynne

To say I'm a fan is to put it mildly. Anyways, this is the first clip of Dimly. It started out as an overwrought Butch Walker style ballad but as usual ELO winds up creeping in. I'll have more soon. I'm working way too slow on this stuff. But one time saving exercise is that my friend Satish has said he would chart out some orchestrations for me on this song. I mean...it's gotta have strings and such right? Wouldn't make sense otherwise. There's an ego part of me that wants to do it, but it would add about a gabillion years onto my time. This way I get to collaborate with a guy who's brilliant anyways, and get the song done more quickly.

Anyways..here's what I got so far. Just vocal, drums, and piano right now

Dimly Clip 1

Thinking about air a lot.

There's a little dude sleeping right across the hall from me. So most of my recording is done in some way or another via direct inputs. I'm an embracer of technology to be honest. I love old stuff but I love new stuff too. And while we can argue the merits of how much better a guitar would sound through a marshall cabinet pushing air into a microphone, without the technology I'm using I wouldn't be able to do any of this at all. Because I can do it in silence. But I was watching the 'Classic Albums' episode on Stevie Wonder's "Songs in the Key of Life" Watching those horns. The last thing those notes hit before they were committed to electronics was air. Those notes WERE air. My notes are never air. Therefore I'm plugging in my loud ass amplifier tomorrow and sticking a microphone in front of it and raising hell. I have no idea what my success level will be.

I've taken a couple of days off, and then got promptly back to work. I wanted this album to be melancholy. But now I'm just so wallowey in depressing music, I'm just not so sure. We'll see how it goes.

I'll put clips up soon of the new song I'm working on. It's called "Dimly" Stephen King said he doesn't care for adverbs. However, I'm not so sure I care for Stephen King.

Frequencies and elbow room.

Ok...So I was a little cranky last night. And I don't really even hate Metallica as long as it's before 1986.I've worked some more and I'm going to put it aside for now and this will be my as finished as it's going to get until album finishing time version. Although I started sending it to my RPM buddies and all I got was shit about how horrible the mix was. Why can't I mix? I mean..it's not like I'm completely void of an ear or musical ability. It doesn't make sense. Whenever my friend Josh mixes for me I feel he probably gets frustrated.....he plays many instruments but is by nature a bassist. So I think he doesn't understand how the rest of us (normal people) get so crowded in the mid frequencies. So I'll have organ, piano, acoustic guitar, 2 electrics, 3 harmonies, a lead vocal all taking up the same spot. And in his mind (and he actually understands mixing) he's thinking "where do you want all of this to go???" And I'm just thinking "GET IT IN THERE!" So maybe it's not mixing I'm bad at. Maybe it's arranging. I don't know. I like dense sounding things, but I also like sparse sounding things. Here is my song.

Shell

First fer real song

It's called Shell. And I've been working at it mercilessly for about two days. So needless to say I fucking hate it. The clip you will hear is one of a drum loop, a scratch acoustic guitar and vocal track where I forget the lyrics. and two out of harmony harmonized guitar lead tracks. Which you may think sound ugly but is the only thing I can seem to do to not make this feel like an Air Supply record right now. What in the hell is wrong with me? And when at first I attempted to make a cool harmonized guitar part, I thought it would sound cool because other people who do it sound cool. When Brian Eno does it all fuzzed out on "Another Green World" it sounds badass. Especially combined with the piano. Not so much for me. It sounded like Metallica. And the whole thing has this Dorian like sound so everything I play reminds me of Carlos Santana. Metallica or Santana. I can't decide which is worse. But when Verlaine and Lloyd do it it's awesome. When Tweedy and Nels Cline do it it's awesome. I've already failed at making this song what I want it to be but I have to trudge forward I suppose and deal with what I have. This is why I decided to make the harmonies kind of 'off balance'. I'm contemplating a distorted doom/stoner rock bassline on it. Just to De-YachtRock it some more. I have more done to it as of this writing. Tomorrow I hope to be completely done and move on and wish myself better luck with the next one. Stupid time limits. *kicks ground* So anyways...here it is.

Even the nights are better.

Oh...and happy Mardi Gras, folks.

Ok, so it sounds like self indulgent horse shit right now.

But wait until you hear the REST of it. Then this will seem totally minimalist. ;) I went a little Tom Waits on percussion and banged on desks and Kiss garbage cans. So anyways..here's the soundclip you can judge for yourself.

Intro

This is the piece I've been working on and pretending I'm Brian Eno. At first I was going to try to use it as a backing track, but I think I'm going to use it as sort of an introduction. There's more to come with it, but I've gotten a little stuck so I'm going to go ahead and move on to my song Shell for which the backing tracks will be a horrid nightmare of recording a million guitars. Or..at least a few. But all in time and in tune with each other. Which could prove challenging for a fellow such as myself.

Marital Visual Aids

I thought I would share some pictures with you. Most of these blogs don't have pictures. Piss on a bunch of words.

This is my Desk. From which I work. Or...surf and chat with people online. Notice I purposely have recording software up so as to give the appearance of business. Cubase, for anyone curious. And as you can see I'm using KRK V6 powered monitors, Miller High Life and freshly ground coffee with a splash of half and half, Burt's Bees lip balm, and a ziplock of pills for when it rains.

















Guardian Ace keeps all of my things safe. Namely coffee and beer.

















Mic stand and my Audio Technica AT4040 condensor mic that I use for about everything because it's the only condensor I have. My friend Josh who helps me not be a complete blundering idiot when it comes to making records has an amazing collection of microphones though that I'll possibly utilize come vocal time. :) The keyboard is a Kurzweil K2000. I dig a lot of the piano and synth sounds from it but I'll be using it probably as much as a MIDI trigger during these recordings. Also observe the cool ass reel to reel at the bottom that I have no idea how to use. It was my old man's and even as a kid I thought it was the coolest looking thing in existence. If anyone has any good ideas for me to use it during this process....even just to make racket with, please feel free to share. :)

In the rack is an FMR Real Nice Compressor and Real Nice Preamp both housed in a Funk Logic rack, and a Furman power supply. My Mesa Boogie Studio Pre should be in there. It's at someone's house. I should get that before I start tracking guitars I suppose.



Alright..for the hardcore dweebs....I'm using an RME Multiface (it says Steinberg Nuendo Multiset....apparently that's how they label them in Canada. But Canadians are fucking crazy anyways.) So you'll just have to take my word for it. Since the Multiface does not have the obscure and esoteric and super expensive feature OF A SIMPLE FUCKING VOLUME KNOB and I have a baby across the hall at 3am....and yes there have been many upsets....I decided to get the Presonus HP4 headphone amp. I didn't need a headphone amp. Just a volume knob. But the headphone amp is coming in handy. Maybe I'll use the other 3 one day. But it has a monitor mute button on it too so I don't have to shut down my powered monitors every time I go back and forth from headphone mixing. Also...the cans are AKG K141s, and the little blue you see sticking out of the corner is just a passive direct box.
















And lastly...not to be picky or fussy. But....WHAT IN THE FUCK IS THIS ATROCITY UP IN MY STUDIO???

I don't know what it is. But I'm almost positive I can't make music with it. Unless I somehow wind up joining Sonic Youth.