What a Shame. There’s definitely something to be said about not messing with perfection, when your brand is so recognizable… Especially when you’re moving to something that is not going to do for you what you’re already doing.

Well, things have been busy but slow… We’ve been getting drum sounds down, but things have been moving a little slower than I’d hoped (but probably faster than I’d expected…)  BUT… BUTTTTTT there’s a little bit of a silver lining.  There’s a VERY rough mix of boneyard which is slowly coming together that you can have a sneak peak at.  there’s no bass yet (BOB!) but we’ll have that soon I’m sure… Soooo… Have a listen and lemme know what you think…

Oh, and the Beta Safari seems to have issues w/ the wordpress wysiwyg.  If you know what that means, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  Otherwise, feel free to ignore. (needless to say, I’m re-typing this on firefox)

This is absolutely crazy.  Granted the demo is just 2 simple commands but transferring those commands without touching a computer or speaking to a computer is pretty amazing.

That said, this is still pretty basic, it’s not reading the brain, it’s reading brain signatures and using brain waves to create a basis for what your brain does.  But, the number of applications for this type of technology if it proves out to be as functional as it seems are limitless.  Think of the ability to get rid of keyboards, joysticks, etc… anyway, here’s part 3 of the demo, the whole thing’s pretty interesting but the meat of it is in this link: http://fora.tv/2008/12/12/Tan_Le_Brings_the_Force_to_Life_with_Mind_Control_Device#chapter_03

On a side note, fora.tv seems to be a pretty nifty little site.

And on a further side note, I’ll have updates on the recording process soon!

Twitter is hugely popular in some circles.  Just about every early adopter I know is using it and there are quite a few others that are jumping on the band wagon.  It’s one of those applications that’s so simple you think, “why couldn’t I have thought of that” at the same time you’re thinking, “it’s so simple, what use is it going to be”.  Then again, who’d have thought that people would have cellular phones and use them for texting rather than talking…

Anyway, this is a pretty interesting read.  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/02/twitter-creator.html

You wouldn’t think that trying to record an albums worth of music across continents and oceans and through the ether would create any issues ’cause technology ALWAYS works…  But we’ve run into our first hurdles.  Bob and Dave both are having issues with their A/D (that’s analog to digital) converters.  So… while they get that wrapped up I’m continuing to throw down guitar tracks etc… I’m also starting to book some gigs for the fall in the hopes that I’ll have a new CD to promote by then.  Just small little places around here in PA but they’ll be fun.  First up that I’ve heard back from is the Creekside Cultural Center Oct 17.  Seems like a very cool little venue http://www.creeksidecenter.org/ It’s a non-drinking establishment so anyone who comes out will likely have to join me elsewhere afterwards for a little “sustenance”.

On another note, while Tim was over on sunday we put scratch tracks down for Sin the Skin so the count for recordings is back up to 20.  I still think that it would be a little much to do a double album (and though I’ve got an ego, it ain’t that big).  So I’m going to have a lot of work to do figuring out what makes it and what doesn’t.  That’s where you fine people will come in.  Once I’ve got everything to a good place I’ll throw up (not really, it’s a figurative throw up) everything in MP3 format and let you all bash away at what a suck-ass waste of time I can be.  Or you could just be nice and say that it should really just be an EP.

Anyway that’s it for today.  Hopefully we’ll have some more info coming up shortly

Tim came by today and we got his tracks down for 4 of the songs.  It’s starting to sound really good.  Acid to the Tongue, is proving to be a little more difficult to do as a band.  Basically the part that I play on the tune SOUNDS kind of heavy but once you get tim’s part on there it changes the whole tone of the song.  It’s one of the issues that can end up happening when you’re doing songs at a distance. Other than that we’re working through some technical issues and hopefully we’ll have the first 5 tunes down with basic tracks here in the next week or two.  

This week I’m going to start working on getting acoustic and electric tracks done for the rest of the songs.  At a minimum I’ll have a bunch of extra tracks for shits and grins.

So I’m in the process of recording a new album of tunes.  I figure that I’m going to document as much of it as I can here.  First off, there’s no real reason to do it other than the fact that I’ve got a bunch of songs written and I’d like to get them down.  That and I’ve been doing solo gigs here and there over the past couple of months and since I can’t seem to keep a band together, I figure I might as well just start doing this on my own.

I’ve enlisted the help of quite a few friends and this recording adventure has become an international affair as well as a bit of a Maximum Bob reunion.  Dave Avillion and Bob Troia the drummer and bass player from MB have agreed to help out.  Dave’s in Las Vegas and will be doing drum tracks remotely.  Bob is in NYC and will be doing bass parts there.  Tim the guitar player from Sweetwood Groove is going to be doing some of the guitar parts and I’m recording a number of songs that he and I co-wrote so that’ll be pretty cool.  A friend that I’ve done a couple of online collaborations with over the last 2 years will be helping out with keyboards and sound design.  He’s in Australia (hence the international part).

So far things are going fairly smoothly.  The timeline so far has been:

• Early January, I decided I was going to do this.
• Figured out what songs I was going to do, there were 23 on the list initially.
• Spent a couple of nights figuring out tempos for the songs and annoying the hell out of my wife while I tapped away listening to headphones… (there’s nothing more exciting in the recording process than just listening to some idiot tap out tempos trying to figure out BPM (Beats per minute).  I have a very understanding spouse…
• Went down in the basement and fired up the recording gear to get moving on scratch tracks.
• Gear shit the bed, so I had to figure out a new way of recording.
• Again, said spouse was awesome and agreed to let me purchase a new recording rig.
• New rig was delivered and spent a day and a half learning how to use the damned thing (plug and play my ass…)
• Had a gig right about this time (this is still mid-january).  Played a bunch of the songs that I’m planning on recording, too much crowd noise on the recording so I couldn’t tell if they really sounded good or not.  The applause was really good for them, but the amount of talking during the playing makes me think that maybe no one was really paying attention anyway
• Spent a week getting scratch tracks down to cheesy drum loops and just playing my acoustic and singing.  The cheesy drum loops help in that they’re better than just playing to a click track so that I keep everything on tempo, but they’re fairly annoying to listen to for anyone who’s not all that accustomed to them.
• Posted all of the tracks for the core participants to listen to and so far we’re fairly happy.  I only ended up doing 19 of the original 23 because there were 3 songs that I had either recorded before or in one instance sounded too similar to one that I knew was going to make it on the final recording so I figured I’d save it for a later date.
• This past weekend I started recording electric guitars and overdubbing the acoustic.  Again a very understanding wife because in order to get decent tone out of the amp I need to have it fairly loud…
• With 5 songs as a start, Bob and Dave are beginning to do the overdubs.  One song in particular of course proved a bit of a challenge figuring out a good drum pattern for it, but Dave has already been more than cool about it.

So there’s the beginnings of the recording processs.  I’m pretty psyched for it, and I’m pretty sure that I’m going to end up with 10-14 songs that I’m really proud of.  Not to mention the fact that it’s very cool to be playing with Dave and Bob again albeit from a fairly large distance.

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/

Edit:  OH, and yeah, it’s a micro$oft commmercial and they’re using a macbook from crApple.

This article/blog has a lot of great points.    It works for a lot of different creative environments as well.  And I appreciate that there is no reference to “thinking outside the box”.  It seems that that term has become so cliched that it’s the antithesis to what it’s actually referring to (I believe that’s also the definition of irony).