I can't believe people are still tuning in to this site in May! I mean god damn! THIS SITE EXISTS FOR AN EVENT THAT HAPPENS ONCE A YEAR IN FEBRUARY!!! WTF? You know that brown christmas tree sitting in the corner of your living room? Yeah, NEWS FLASH, time to kick it to the curb my friends. I played my first solo show ever in my life last night at River Run Bookstore in downtown Portsmouth, NH under the name OFFSET NEEDLE RADIUS. It was the final show in a series showcasing RPM ... (1487 more chars)
I came in here yesterday, remembering there was another song I wanted to include on the record. I'd spent hours tracking it. It still needed final mix and mastering. Plus going back to bring up volumes to something resembling "normal". I was at it 12 to 4:30 when I ran out to pick up CD jackets from the print shop. At 6:15 I realized that I had done all I could do. I really wanted to submit the end product within the month of February. So I grabbed the computer, hopped in the van and... (993 more chars)
1)I learned more of the ins and outs of Garage Band this past month than I'd learned in the previous 2 years. 2)I learned a little about compression 3)I learned a little about how to play the recorder whistle...you can listen and decide for yourself just how much I learned 4)Computers are great to record with. 5) But mine is just an e mail machine. 6) I have some good supportive friends around 7) I can write music I like without the pesky band mates showing up late, drinkin all my b... (298 more chars)
I burned a CD this morning at 5:30am. I listened to it at 12 and lo and b-hole, the volumes are pretty low compared with factory cd's. So I'm back again, sweaty, tired, haggered, adjusting volumes. Frustrating that Garage Band doesn't have a peak meter that shows the db output you're getting. How am I supposed to know what the final volume will be? It's a final spin on a month of recording boot camp. Jackets are ready at the print shop. Pretty low res limited run of the first 10. The h... (276 more chars)
I think the songs are as complete as they're going to get. I don't have a means to scan the cover art in tonight. Actually I think the sun will be coming up soon. It's like 6 deg. outside. But I'm done. Good bye February. Happy Leap Day yalls. Song Order: 1)Black Ice 7:00 2)Retrograde 3:36 3)Melting 5:07 4)Convenient Breaking Point 5:54 5)Water Crystals 3:48 ... (226 more chars)
So friggin close despite 2 computer freezes, repair down time, abandoning the I Book for a friend's IMAC, etc. I now know what gear I need to record. I'm saving up my pennies. I have almost 50 minutes of sound in 8 chunks to mix, do a few last minute takes, try to salvage some weak lyrics, put the song order on the sleeve artwork and get it to printers today. I'll have some more of the music posted this evening. I've been waiting to mix and also not wanting to spoil the surprise. I didn't t... (297 more chars)
Working on layout with Brad Anderson, I realized something. My album name sounded better than the project or band name I had. Brad agreed. So we switched the placement of the two titles on the front cover and voila, presto chango. The project/band/name I'll play and produce under, is OFFSET NEEDLE RADIUS. Not Square With Zero is the album's title. This untertaking began Feb 1, and being the only real member of this organization, what I say sticks!
Not much time left. I drove to work/studio today thinking about how the end result will sound, thinking about continuity from song to song or lack there of. With stuff in the way of the work area, I went into the studio room to work on some mixing and discovered some songs I'd forgotten about! Like putting on a jacket that hasn't been worn in 6 months and finding a twenty dollar bill! I usually save each new song written this month, with RPM before the song name, like "RPM Frost Heaves".... (410 more chars)
I was here until 4:30 am last night, catching up after a week waiting for the computer to be salvaged. Going over some blogs I see I'm not alone in the crashing dept. I was having some haneous car issues around that time and found out Mercury was in retrograde. I'm superstitious and fully believe in the powers of Mercury appearing in the sky to travel against the current the rest of the star scape follows. The phenonomon is said to play havoc with communication and transportation and se... (554 more chars)
The computer is back and running, although slower then ever before. I may have to final mix on a more powerful machine. When I bought my IBook 3 years ago, I had no idea I would end up relying on it for recording. Now here I am and can easily say Garage Band is what I use the most. Only now do I find out how insufficient an I Book is to utilize Garage Band. Especially after the crash, there is a lot of waiting for the hard drive to catch up. The pinwheel of patience comes on the scree... (121 more chars)
Thursday night, after a long week of work and recording, my IBook crashed as I was trying to replay a song almost finalized. The phone rang, I talked, then when I got back to the computer, it was seized, frozen. The Techs at MacEdge said I probably filled up the hard drive, that my IBook wasn't really the machine to be running Garage Band on. Seems odd to me. The thing came with Garage Band. Luckily, I will have a Mac Book to use in just a few days, a loaner for the remainder of the mo... (621 more chars)
