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More Sonic Youth, Less Paul Simon

Listening to the mixes I’m making, I’m surprised by how dissonant and raw these songs are sounding in the end. “Berlin Floor Show” was written on an acoustic guitar, but this version sounds a lot like recent Nine Inch Nails, and “Scarecrow” sounds like Radiohead meets Massive Attack meets TV On The Radio. They’re really noisy — much more so than I’d anticipated.

I think that’s a good thing, honestly. Just surprising. I can’t speak for other musicians, but I’m constantly surprised by where my music ends up. It’s usually never where I meant for it to go, but that’s what’s awesome and engaging about the music-making process.

I just wish I was a better singer. But c’est la vie.

“Berlin Floor Show” and “Scarecrow” Are In The Can.

I recorded vocals last night, all hot and sweaty ’cause I had to turn off all the house fans so they didn’t register on the mics. Mixed “BFS” and “Scarecrow” tonight. I think the mixes are pretty much perfect, or as close as I’m gonna get.

When I’m done with all of the songs, I’ll dump the bounced tracks into a new project in Logic for mastering. This brings all the tracks to the same level, with the same basic EQ. Then I chop the finished product back into individual tracks, and I’m done.

That’s still a few days away, though, at least.

So It’s Official…

I am officially a blogger for The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

Er, that’s all.

Sigh.

So I may make the India trip, but not until August or September. I feel so fucking stupid — I’ve flown literally fifty times or more in my life, and I’ve never missed a flight before, ever. I simply misread my itinerary — I was flying from Vegas to Chicago to Delhi, and I read the departure time from Chicago as the departure time from Vegas.

In my own defense, I was completely deranged from sleeplessness and stress — finishing a web project (see below), sorting out a couple of other projects (also see below), packing, sorting everything out…I got a total of ten hours of sleep in the three days before I was supposed to leave. I’m lucky I was able to read it at all.

And, honestly…this is going to sound odd, but I just had a sort of bad feeling about the trip. It wasn’t very well organized and…I dunno, I just felt apprehensive. I don’t know why, but I felt like something bad was going to happen.

I don’t get those sorts of feelings often, but when I do, I’m usually right. I’m not claiming psychic abilities or anything silly like that…but I am right, more often than not.

I still feel dumb, though.

So I’m going to record my vocals instead, for the album, now. Which means it’s almost done. And I’ve got some more info about that blogging thing I mentioned recently, which I should announce soon — probably tomorrow.

Meanwhile, take a look at the Flash header I just designed for Vortex Immersion. I’m rather proud of it — it’s all done in Actionscript 3.0 programmatically, no pre-created movie clips or anything. It loads content dynamically, so the guys at Vortex can just add new video and clips at their leisure.

I hope to be working with these guys more in the near future on other cool projects. And I’ve got another thing coming up which I hope will come together.

Lots of work, but no money. I can’t afford to pay my phone bill, for reasons I don’t want to get into here, so it will remain off for the time being. (Anybody need a couple hundred bucks worth of web/print design? I work quickly and I work well.)

I’m really stressed, but hopeful about these new projects.

And now to haul out my recording gear and try to get at least one song tracked tonight. I think I’m going to try and do “Berlin Floor Show” and “Scarecrow”, since they’re the ones I’ve got melodies and harmonies actually sorted out on.

Las Vegas Noir Book Launch Party

Be there if you can. It should be very cool.

Not Going To India.

I missed my fucking flight. Somehow I misread the times on my itinerary and thought I was flying out of Vegas at 7:10pm. In fact, I was supposed to be flying out of Chicago at 7:10, and Vegas at 11:30 this morning.

I don’t think it can be rescheduled — the flight, I mean.

I’m a goddamned idiot.

Fuck this shit.

Out Of Service.

My phone got turned off. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get it turned on again anytime soon. I’m really, really angry about this, but there’s nothing I can do.

So I guess if you want to reach me when I’m in India, try my Grand Central number or email me or use the blog contact form.

I’m leaving in a few hours. Wish me luck!

links for 2008-05-06

links for 2008-05-05

Oh, Hell.

I just realized I’m leaving Tuesday night, not Wednesday night, as I’d thought — I misread my itinerary.

Crap. 24 less hours to get stuff taken care of here.