I'm moving on

I haven't been as faithful at keeping up with the blogging as I have been in the past. I'm hoping to rectify that. But I need a change of scene. So I'm moving here: http://vman1974.wordpress.com/

I'm Kind Of Floored

It's two for one day.

A few posts back, I mentioned some projects I had "in the works." Stuff I was considering working on. As creative processes often go, they all got shelved in lieu of something more immediate I wanted to work on.

About a month back, my roommate calls me out to our porch, hands me a pair of binoculars, and tells me to look at the moon. She wants me to confirm whether or not I'm seeing what she's seeing, which is what appears to be a string hanging down from the top of the moon and across its surface. I look, squint, adjust, squint some more, and fuzzily maybe see what she's talking about.

More importantly than my seeing it is that she keeps mentioning it over the next week or so. She's the type that likes to look things up, so I have no doubt she spent some time on the internet trying to find out about it. I'm guessing she never found a satisfactory answer since she kept bringing it up.

Well, an answer of sorts was brewing in my head. A short story in the form of a fictional fairy tale sort of answer. For anyone that does anything creative, you're probably well aware that inspiration can come from anywhere. A song idea can spring from a news story; a story idea can spring from a song title; a short film can be inspired by a Yanni song; a picture can be inspired by the quality of sunlight on a certain day. Well, her infatuation with the moon's string inspired almost an entirely full-blown story into my head. This is somewhat rare. Usually when I get a story idea, I get a hook first and then have to develop the story around it. This story idea came mostly full formed. I say "mostly" because in the process of writing a story, it invariably changes; it never ends up quite the way you intended when you started it, nor should it. You can guide a story in a direction, but a well-written one should dictate to you where it needs to go---it should have somewhat of a life of its own.

Anyway, the high-level concept of this story was, as mentioned above, a fairy tale style story about a girl who sees a string falling from the moon to the earth, and she goes on a journey to discover why. Along the way, she meets some people and creatures that have their own thoughts on the matter, and acquires some gifts that help her along the way.

Inspiration for a story is usually enough to get me to try and write it, especially when it was this strong. However, even when I do write, I tend to do it at a lackadaisical pace. The discipline of writing is what I typically lack. However, I also managed to provide myself with some motivation. Because it was getting close to Christmas, I decided that if I could finish a story I was reasonably happy with, it would make for a unique Christmas gift for my roommate. Based on that though, I did manage to work my way through a few drafts, and get the story to a point where I thought it was probably good enough to give as a present.

I won't lie, however, I was nervous about doing it. I don't really write short stories all that much anymore---the inspiration/motivation hasn't really been there for a while---so I was concerned that the story basically sucked and would make for a shitty gift. But I decided to suck it up and just do it. The final step was, in a way, the biggest pain in the ass, more so than writing the story itself. Originally I figured I'd just print it out and give it to her, however my roommate is very artistically inclined, so I decided instead to go the extra mile. About a week before Christmas I was in a stationary store, and saw a journal that looked like it would make a good book. So I bought that and hand wrote out the story into it, just to give it a little more of that personal touch. Note: personal touches can apparently lead to hand cramps. Eight typed pages doesn't seem like that much, but try handwriting it out. Especially when it's last minute. Between tightening up the drafts and generally being busy with whatever other day-to-day stuff, I was up until about 8pm on Christmas Eve actually finishing out that last copy. Luckily, my roommate was out until after midnight, so I had plenty of time. In fact, I was asleep when she got home, and I was leaving for NC the next day, so I wrapped it up and just left it on her desk.

I'm not being falsely modest here when I say I was unsure of whether or not it was actually good enough to give as a gift. Because I don't write all that much, I'm far more critical of what I do than I would be with something like, say, music. I play music a lot more, so I'm a lot more confident in my creative muscles in that direction. However, I've been getting nothing but great reviews from my roommate about the story. She apparently liked the story, which I'm glad about. But even more so, she's been reading it to other people, and apparently they're liking it as well. And that's where I'm kind of floored. I was hoping that one person would like it, but to find out that others do as well was both surprising, because I hadn't expected her to like it enough to read it to anybody else, and very gratifying. And, in its way, inspiring. Maybe I can use this as some momentum to try to get back more into this kind of writing again.

Pawnshop Diamonds Studio Update

Sorry for the lag in posts, but I've had some other stuff on my mind.

At any rate, the Pawnshop Diamonds studio session is going extremely well. I listened to our first full rough mixes last night---by full, I mean all the instruments and vocals are there---and they sound fucking amazing. By far, the best quality studio recording I've been a part of.

Our studio time broke down like this:

Day 1 - (10 hour day) - Set up gear. Set up mics on gear. Get sounds. Start basic tracking. We recorded together live (sans vocals) and the plan was that on whatever track we decided was the keeper for the drums, anything else worth keeping (bass/guitars), we would, and then would overdub or retrack whatever needed it. So on day one we got all six songs worth of drums done, as well as all the bass tracks/overdubs. That took up a majority of our ten hours, so we ended up the day just listening to the full live tracks of the songs, and myself and Kevin (the other guitar player) took notes on our performances and what we wanted to either fix, overdub, or retrack for ourselves the next day.

Day 2 - (10 hour day) - All about guitars, baby. We had hoped to get some vocals in on this day as well, but Matt was getting over the flu, and as it turned out the guitars took a little longer than anticipated. I went first. I retracked one song entirely and overdubbed on a the others.

Also, this would be the time to mention that Mike Quinn, our engineer, is a whiz at the cut and paste. By this, I do not mean copy and paste, a la "Fly Away" by Lenny Kravitz. For each song that we did, we probably cut at least three live tracks on the day before, meaning we played each song at least three times and kept at least three versions. So, when retracking guitar parts, there were times where I wanted to fix something, and instead of replaying it, Mike was able to take a part from one of the other takes and use that instead. I know one of the "heated discussions" that came up pre-recording was to how "love" we were going to be when recording, and I'm sure to some this may have felt a bit like cheating. Not to me, though. I believe that:

1) The studio is NOT live, and when in the studio, you should use the benefits of the studio. If we wanted a "live" sounding recording, we should just record live. (For the record, I was also against the fully "live" style recording that was discussed not because I don't like the vibe---I do--- because I felt we were not good enough to pull it off. Don't get me wrong, I think we're plenty good, but to get something I would have thought was good enough would have required a lot more practice/live experience than we currently have. ) Besides, I think a lot of the debate was that we don't want a recording that sounds too processed. I agree with that, but I think that sucessfully using the studio to do things we can't do live won't necessarily do that. And then there's:

2) Doing it this way was quicker. We are on a budget here. If we had unlimited funds and time, I'd be totally fine with keeping at it until we all got great live one-takes. But since that's not the case, expedient is the word of the day. As it is, some of this recording will be paid for out of pocket, and the more we can minimize that, the better.

Anyway, back on track. I retracked or overdubbed my parts in the first half of the day, and then moved on to my solos and lead parts. After which, Kevin did the same for his parts. Again, this ended up taking up a lot of the day, so we ended with a little bit of rough mixing at the end of the day.

Day 3 - (7 hour day) - Vocals. Matt, recovered from the flu, cut three songs' worth. This was also the day I had to do the background vocals for the one song I would be doing them on. The most daunting part of my studio experience, standing in front of that (gulp!) vocal mic. Since the background aprt actually called for a few voices, we first did it with both me and Matt at the same time. Later, when our bass player arrived, we did it again with the three of us, all standing in front of one microphone, headphones on, all "We Are The World" style. At the end of the day, that background part ended up being 8 voices total, all of which were thrown into the rough mix. Talk about sounding overly processed. It didn't sound bad, but definitely not what we wanted. In the second rough mix from the other night, it sounds like some of the voices were removed and it sounds a lot better for what we're trying to do. Also, on day 3, I did retrack one song of my rhythm guitar entirely. Matt had thought there were tuning issues that were going to bother him on one tune. I didn't notice it to the extent that he did, and when I ran it by Mike, he called it a "Rolling Stones" sound....being that yeah, maybe it was a little out of tune, but not so much that it was bothersome. Much like how it seems on a lot of Rolling Stones records, it always sounds like someone is a little out of tune. I agreed, but had no problem retracking if it made the band more comfortable. And besides, Matt was late (big surprise) so we just took about 20 minutes and did it while waiting for him. Once again, we ended the day with some mixing.

Day 4 - (7 hour day) - I wasn't there for this day, because I was traveling home from NC. But I have the rough mixes, so I know that the vocals were finished and some more rough mixing happened, and it sounds FAT!

From here, our next day will probably be a full day of just mixing. I'm not sure when that will be scheduled for, however. Hopefully sometime in the next few weeks.

The drums are done

I finished recording the drums for my demos project with Eric about a week and a half back. Mostly. We missed one song, but I'm not going to do another drums session for just one tune. I've returned all the gear I've been borrowing to the people I've been borrowing it from. What I may do for that one tune, if I really want to get it done, is possibly try and put together a drum machine track for it. Brian recently got a drum machine that I may ask if I can borrow. Either that, or I could just move forward with the original version I recorded with the drum loops. However, we (me and Eric) discovered when messing around with the song, that the main guitar riff is entirely ahead of the beat, so it wouldn't sync up with the drum loop as well as it might with something specifically built for it.

I did end up throwing down one guitar track last week as well. Time now to finish up the guitar tracks, get some bass (and possibly keys) done, and get working on the vocals.

However, I'm not going to be doing much on that for at least a week, as the Pawnshop Diamonds recording starts this weekend. Two full days over at Moontower studios on Saturday and Sunday. I guess you could say I'm excited. I am excited to get the songs recorded, maybe not so much for the actual recording. I've done this enough now that excited really isn't the word. While I do enjoy the process of recording, it is also work, and when you're paying $35 an hour for it, I tend to try to want to be more efficient than excited. The most important thing is that I no longer feel as apprehensive as I had been feeling. Let's just say there have been some....ahem "spirited discussions" on how we should be going about this that seem, with the last couple rehearsals, to have been mostly resolved. I've always maintained that often, in the workplace, too many meetings were detrimental to actually getting things done, and it felt like that for a while with the band. We are....ahem, "discussing" way too much and not settling on a plan and sticking to it and rehearsing. But that seems past now. The past couple rehearsals left me feeling a lot more positive about our ability to go in to the studio and be more efficient.

But this weekend will tell.

Well that was a quick day

Today was a recording day for me---guitars, specifically---and one that I had been sort of putting off. Well, maybe not so much "putting off", but I intentionally held this particular song I was going to record until such time as I had no other songs I could record. It's not because the song itself is particularly hard, in fact it's one of the simpler ones rhythm guitar-wise. But I held off because this is the song out of all the demos that has the guitar solo I like the most. In fact, it's one of my favorite solos I've ever written, period. And I hadn't played it probably since the first time I recorded it. Basically I held off on this one until the end because I thought it was going to take me a long time to:

1) Relearn the solo
and
2) Record a take of the solo that I actually liked

Well, that ended up not being the case. I more or less relearned the solo in about 20 minutes (although I did change one lick.) And when I sat down to record the song, currently titled "Untitled 2", it took me about two hours to do everything. Two hours. For two rhythm guitar tracks, one solo track, one solo harmony track, and one track that's basically just a rhythm harmony line under the solo. I may or may not use that last track, but the idea crossed my mind to just play a harmony line to the chord changes and sort of bury it in the mix as a little "easter egg" type beefing up.

As for the solo, let me put it this way. Typically for these demos, I can maybe go through anywhere from 10 to 30 to whatever takes to get a solo I like. This one took about 5.

I have plans later this evening starting at about 5pm. I had anticipated that I would be recording all day up until then. So, even after I finished in apparently record time, I did a little mixing work on the song. Just through a little bit of EQ and reverb on the rhythm tracks to sharpen them up a little. Now I need to figure out something to do for a couple hours.

Sir Mix A Lot More Than He Was Expecting

I did some mixing on C'Mon tonight, more than I was expecting. My plan for the evening was to sit down and dry some specific drum mixing that I read about in an article, called NY Style mixing. The short version is that it is supposed to beef up the drum sound by creating essentially a second drum track that gets super compressed. That second track is then mixed with the first to beef up the sound of the drums while at the same time keeping the original tone of the drums.

I didn't have much luck following the instructions in the article to create the separate drum track the way they described. I'm just not yet quite good enough at Nuendo to figure out what they were talking about and how to do it. But I tried a modified version of the instructions so that I could try it on the bass drum. It worked a little bit; the bass drum isn't much louder, but it does pop out a little more now.

I had planned to end my night's mixing there, but was feeling pretty good about continuing on, so I then played with the bass sound a little, and then the rhythm guitars a little, and then the lead guitars a little. When I finished, a couple hours later than I was expecting, I ended up not liking the lead tones, so I'm going back to scratch on those. But everything else was sounding pretty good. I was pretty happy with the results.

Block Update

In lieu of being able to get any actual writing done last night, I decided to go with a little stream of consciousness exercise. I created a document I'll be calling "Musings" and I will add to it, blog style, just whatever happens to be on my mind at the time.

This is not something I will be posting on this blog or anything. It's purpose is twofold:

1) So that if I feel like writing, and am having no luck working on whatever project, I will be at least be writing something. Just to keep up the mechanical aspects of actually sitting there and typing something, and

2) Perhaps someday I can mine that document for ideas to flesh out characters, situations, etc. in stories that I actually might be working on. Those thoughts of mine will perhaps one day become the thoughts of fictional characters.

So despite the blog entry from last night, I actually did end up getting something done. Good for that.

The Block

The worst part about partaking in any creative pursuit is the demon known as writer's block. For me, there's no worse feeling than sitting there, staring blankly at my guitar, or in my case tonight a Word document, and...nothing.

I've been scrolling through the few writing projects mentioned in the last post and trying to find some inspiration for any of them, and....nothing.

I opened up some other documents, hoping something would grab me. I opened up a blank Word document and thought about starting something new and fresh. And....nothing.

The worst part of writer's block is that it causes doubt, and lots of it. When I want to work on something creative, but those juices just aren't flowing, I start to wonder if they ever will again. Now, I know from years of experience that there is, for me, an ebb and flow to creative endeavors. I know, intellectually, that tonight may be slow but that tomorrow will likely be better. Or next week, next month, etc. At some point I know I will be able to sit in front of my computer and write something. But until then, I'll have to deal with that fear that maybe I have nothing more to say. That's the real kernel of doubt that writer's block instills in me.

That's the worst part.