First vlog glitched or something, so here's take two

wooo vlog

wooo vlog

Recording is About to Begin... The Skies Darken, Thunder Crashes, and Babies Pour From the Clouds

Recording. Yeah, Recording is not gonna be easy. We have a low quality recording device that only really lets us record one track at a time, so we'll have to dub each individual track over the prior one, which can lead to some serious synchronization issues. We'll have to use and obey a metronome in order to stay in time and not sound horrible. So, I'm reeeeally pissed off at my associate here - he's going to Florida over spring break. Florida.Not Pennsylvania, where we can record - Florida, where he can screw around in the sand, and have hot fun in the hot hot sun. The selfish little punk is gonna leave me to record for the second week. So, this week is gonna be stuffed with recording sessions - on Tuesday and Thursday, we'll literally go from 3 - 9 PM recording and recording and recording. Getting into specifics, we're gonna record rhythm guitar tracks first, then drums, then lead guitar, vocals, and other instruments. I'm gonna record keyboard tracks when stupid is in Florida, because those aren't completely necessary. Keyboards, in this album, are mostly for fleshing out the sound and providing more chord support, which strengthens the sound of the song itself by adding to the army of instruments. To answer a question I got from John in detail, we aren't using a studio. I bought a Lexicon Alpha recording hub, which has a USB hub, an instrument jack, and a microphone jack. This brings me to another problem - micing the drums. Drums are an annoying instrument to record, because most of the time, they've got over 5 different components that need to be recorded at once. The best way to do this is to use a separate microphone for each one, but we've got one microphone, and that's it. So, the recording of my drumkit will be through one microphone, which may or may not sound a bit... muddy. Moving on from that, I've been reading up on the internet about songwriting and song structure, and I've learned a lot about the moods that different chord progressions set. I, I, II, I sets an angry, agitated tone, I, IV, V, IV sets a cheery tone, and I, IV, VI, IV sets a more melancholy tone. I've also been reading up on the emotions that are communicated by different chords. Read here: http://music.stackexchange.com/questions/4974/what-are-the-feelings-emotions-behind-chords

Woooo demos and lyrics

Here we have a demo of one of our songs, called (at the moment) "Owen's Really Cool Song in 5/4".

Things are still going well. Our songwriting capabilities are very annoying, in that they prevent me from having a very interesting blog. Actually, there is one problem. We keep coming up with new, good ideas. This is, believe it or not, a problem, solely for the fact that it'll distract us from recording the 8 songs we've got. We'll try to incorporate these new songs and ideas, which will spread us too thin, and when it comes time to finalize recording, we'll have 14 half-finished songs, and that's not an album, that's an EP. On the good side of news, I'm actually pretty good at bass, and getting better. It looks like I'm gonna be playing the majority of bass on this album. Overall, this is a really good opportunity to round myself out as a musician, and I've been taking advantage of said opportunity. I've been reading a biography of Keith Moon, (ex)-drummer of the Who, and it delves into his style (which consists of beating the living crap out of the drums), and I've been trying to incorporate said style into my drumming by lifting weights and such, which allows me to absolutely murder my poor drums. I enjoy it, thoroughly. I'm getting better at guitar, because I've learned a major scale pattern and have been running through it whenever I put my hands on a guitar. My fingers are getting quicker and more calloused, and I can play without looking at the guitar now. Pretty cool.
To fill some space, I'll include a lyrics sample.

Maybe I’ll end up a better person

Or maybe I’ll lose it all

Maybe I’ll be changed forever

Or maybe the bitterness will stay

And I threw my life away

Just to get a taste

And I’ll throw my life away

Just to get you back

In a strip-mined ocean

Lost among the waves

There’s nothing there, anymore

There’s nothing there, anyway

And I threw my life away

Just to feel this way

And I’ll throw my life away

To feel this way again

Burning voices, bright with passion

Burning my shell with hazy pain

I’ll never make this mistake again

Never, until the beast is slain

And I threw my life away

Just to fade

And I’ll throw my life away

Just to remain

You just won’t leave this place

Your claws are dug in

My mind is flooded

False words plugged in

And my life’s been thrown away

By someone who wanted to fade

And my life will be thrown away

By the fader who used to be me

drums and stuff

Just an improv drum solo I did. I decided to film something for the blog, but didn't know exactly what. I also didn't know what I was doing while I was doing it.

Comments and Other Marginally Exciting Thingies. Actually, Just Comments.

So far I've commented on:
Ally Abramson's blog
CoolWillRocks' Blog
Nicole Reisert's blog
Find the damn things on moodle. I ain't got time for no silly links.

Second week of work, and things are going pretty smoothly. We've got all the frameworks for our songs down, we know one of the covers we'll do. Pretty cool. We also have one song completely done and ready to record, and it's sounding good. One minor problem (hey Hassan) that we've encountered is putting lyrics behind the melodies we have. It's a lot harder when the lyrics are not written while listening to the melodies. Alas, we'll deal with it. Another problem is that some of the lyrics I've written for Max's rapper persona, PhRe$h Nu KoNpHlIkT, are not "school appropriate". And by that I mean very inappropriate, for school and even for everyday life. In fact, if they came into contact with any human who isn't entirely corrupt, their little innocent heads would melt from the inappropriacy. Anyway - to take a closer look at the songwriting and learning process, I'll talk about an event that transpired yesterday, and an event that shows some of the difficulties of practicing quite well. Max was over my house, and we were in the basement, where all the music stuff is. I was showing Max a riff I'd written on bass, and trying to get him to learn it on guitar. The thing about this riff is that it was for a song in 5/4, which is a fairly strange time signature. So, I show it to Max, and he seems to get it. Except he plays it in 4/4, which is just missing the last beat. I say no, that's not how you do it, and play it again. He plays it again, but same as before. I try again, to no avail.

This goes on, repeating, for twenty minutes, until he finally gets it.

At this point, I'm about ready to smash my bass against Max's head, or the floor, or maybe both. So he plays the riff, and it's how it's supposed to be. I start to play the bass part, and he plays the riff over it. It sounds alright, but he suggests that he play the chords, and I play the riff on bass. We continue to do so, and we both come to the conclusion that it sounds better on bass anyway.
I was, to say the least, frustrated.

Anyway, that's just one episode of the minor difficulties we've encountered, and are yet to encounter. But we're making progress, and lots of it. I've been reading more of this book that teaches you to play in the style of famous drummers, and I think I'll record & post a video of me doing some John Bonham or Keith Moon. Now for pictures of my dream kit:

                                                       Till next blog,

                                                                              O-diggy