reliance

Everything was looking good for a gig on 03/12; however, the band that wanted me to open for them can longer play that show and had to cancel. Apparently, their bass player couldn't swing it and I don't know why. But that's really none of my business or concern. So here's the deal: I was going to go through them to land this gig since I have no relationship with the club owner and they do, but now I know I'm just going to have to go it alone on this front, both now and in the future. It would have been ideal to keep everything within network. Now I can see that relying on stuff like that is foolish if I'm ever going to get anywhere. It is preferred, but I just can't count on such things. Now I'm just going to put my tracks together, burn them to disc, hand them to the owner and say, "Evenings are best to reach me and I'm available to play immediately."

redesign

I'm trying to improve my site design skills so I downloaded the trial versions of Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash and Freehand. So over the weekend I began to redesign my site. I animated my logo with Flash so now it mirrors the behavior of an actual blackhole! I'm so impressed with it. Also, I redesigned my home page and then built two new pages to support the recordings I've done recently. The first page outlines all the bands I've done recording for and then the linked pages are a showcase of the band itself. So far, I think it looks pretty damn good, but I'm a perfectionist to a fault and would like to consider more design elements/improvements. In particular, I'd like to make the left-hand menu on each page a graphic with rollover links, etc. Plus, I'd like to design a text/font-style logo for my site's name and all. So much to consider and do, so little time, but all the time in the world!

In terms of my own recordings and all, well, that's going to be slow going for the near future because I have to prep for an up-coming gig. More on that later.

momentum

I guess all the hard work is starting to pay off. I've got a bunch of different projects going on at the same time. Right now, the biggest thing going is the show I recorded Saturday night at Erricos. So I took a break from editing tracks of three great bands: Me, The Captain & Some Guy - Shapeless - Unoriginal. I happen to know the guys from the first two bands personally. So anyway, yeah, I'm up to my eyeballs in work and it feels fucking awesome. I'm going to be developing pages very soon to showcase all these guys. I also have 180 pictures to weed through for these pages so that should be fun too. OK, I'm rambling like crazy but I just wanted to pop in and do a quick update. Obviously, stay tuned for when I release the new pages.

Speaking of updating, I just did that for my home page. Basically, I just added a little blurb about new things going on, added some dead links to prep for the release of all this material, mentioned that I'd be interested in both recording other bands in the area and doing some site design too, and that's about it.

Now...if I could find the time to do my solo work...

I did program a new multi-beat track and wrote a ridiculously awesome bassline, but I have yet to record the bass so that'll all be the first thing I get to when I have the time.

weekend

Over the weekend, I finally got the chance to go through all the presets in GarageBand2 (the new recording software I'm now using). Unlike my experience with presets in the past, the ones within this program are quite decent. I have yet to mess with all of the software instruments; however, all of the drum kits and patterns are very cool. I really liked one beat so much that I posted a short clip of it on my site along with the other tracks/riffs. I've started dating my music file additions so visitors have a clue when these originated.

I think it would be a good idea to have an "Updated" field somewhere on my home page so that people know what's up, etc. I've also run into the situation where I've made changes, yet visit the site to see that it's still the same. This is just due to a page being stored in cache memory and not reloading all of the content with each visit to the site. So even if I post and update date, the updated date may not even reflect the most current status. Therefore, if you'd like to really stay on top of things at my site, refresh/reload the page completely to ensure all modifications and additions are available to view. I guess I'll just post the same comment on my home page because updating an "Update" field would be a real pain. This topic should really have its own entry, but whatever.

So in the process of digging through GB, I also did two new recordings. They're not very dynamic (in the sense that they don't have multiple change-up's and all), but I enjoyed putting the new tracks together. BassJam1 has a drum beat from my Boss Dr. Rhythm machine and a distorted bassline played with my Ibanez BTB 5-string ran through the Ibanez Phathed pedal. I started writing a matching guitar part for this track, but I somehow lost interest. I'll go back eventually and add guitar and maybe more. Who knows... Actually, it's more the case of having such good recording tools now that I moved onto the next fun idea instead of working with the same track.

So that brings us to BassJam2. This track was really an experiment. I used one of the preset drum patterns within GB and I think it sounds pretty natural (which is really hard to create with a drum machine/software). Then I laid three separate bass tracks just to see how precise the editing capabilities are and to see if I could overlap and do all the related work. Well, this track is a clear example where I can just overlay tracks easily. I'm so stoked and the more recording I do, the more stoked I get.

And as I mentioned in the first paragraph, the "Kicking Beat" loop was just one preset of many from GB that I think is particularly hot.

FYI - all my music can be found at this page.

DRM-less

This is too good to be true! I'm glad to see that another mortal has the same beliefs and theory that I do. I think DRM should be ILLEGAL! It is essentially stealing in reverse - punishment with no crime. It's just dead wrong and makes music/data management technically cumbersome. Please take the time to find some good independent artists and buy from them directly. No corporations at all. Eventually, they'll take the DRM out if they can't sell the mp3 files. Once the big labels sell without DRM - go back to buying their music/data. Read the article here: Linspire Chief To Launch DRM-Less Music Service