exipolar.net

My guitarist mark called yesterday.  After doing that song two weeks ago, he’s gotten more dedicated to music than ever before as have I.  I’ve decided to finally stick to one instrument which is bass.  I’ve been contimplating buying a new guitar, but now not as much.  I’m now happy enough with him that I don’t have to worry about if what he does is good enough and if I “should” do better than him for the sake of the product we make.  He’s now good enough for me to not have to concentrate on guitar; and this relieves me.  I got so relieved that I decided to design custom basses for myself when I happen to have a spare $10,000 to spend.

I suck at drawing metal in SVG.  They shall be made

Mark came over today, we worked on a song that I had started months ago.  we finally finished it clocking in at 5:07 in length. here’s a 30 second clip.  hopefully I’ll have some lyrics drafted tomorrow to record, and the only thing left to record some real drums to it other than the amazingly repeatative drum machine.

Left to Question – epiphany(we need a real drummer mix and some vocals would be nice mix) clip

I’ve decided to no longer wait to go bed with courtney everynight as she closes at her job at midnight five nights a week, and instead have decided to go to bed at a reasonable hour provided that the place is in decent shape when she does get home.

So far, my plan is working wonderfully!  Yet again I have a ton of energy. I have a bunch of song ideas that I’ll work on when I get some private time to myself.  I started on a song last spring that I’ve been redoing in the last two days and it kicks ass.

Waking up early and having more energy has had one unintended side effect.  I’m much more restless with others around me.  I’ve always been sort of independantly minded though.  Most of the time, I I find that others just get in the way of what I want to do, espescially in this town when it comes to music.  Lame people are everywhere and I still am.  I guess with that attitude it’s best for me to do things on my own for now.

The Mixing Console continues to yeild new surpises in functionality.  I’m starting to get the hand of the three band Equalizer for de muddying instruments.  Though I do hate having to pull it out, plugging it in, plugging everything else into it, and turning it on everytime I want to do something.  Before I just had to start up jack and use Ardour’s Mixing Capabilities.  I do overall prefer the tangibility of the mixer itself though, which Is why I don’t unhook it.

Follow me up on twitter

I bought this mixing console not too long ago.  This is by far the most intimidating thing I’ve ever used.  Took me days to even come up with an eloquent way to hook it up to my Multi Track Card.

Equipment Nerdiness is now

This thing has 8 RCA post fader outs. 8 XLR in’s, 8 RCA in’s, 16 TRS in’s, Inserts for the first 8 XLR/TRS/RCA ins.  Three Band Parametric Equalizer… it’s intense.  My Mutlitrack card is an M-Audio 1010 lt delta.  It has 8 RCA analog outs, 6 RCA analog in’s and 2 XLR in’s.  I’m also planning on this thing being hooked up to my Direct injection box that also has 8 channels on it.  Right now I’m using the Unbalanced output of the DI box to hook up to the M-audio card.  But the DI box has XLR outs on the back which means provided that I invest in a snake, I can use strictly balanced signals through the mixer save the card’s RCA jacks.

Along with the Mixing Console I got an Alesis Quadraverb.  This thing is a beauty.  I plan on somehow hooking this up to the effects console. I’m still debating whether I should put it in the aux sends & returns or use inserts for it. I think as Inserts that they’d be much more useful and cause less confusion.

I deduced that when recording for now, If I were to record from the mixer that I record raw tracks from the Monitor outs since they are prefader (hence why it’s called the monitor) into the 2 XLR in’s on my Multi-track card. I don’t want to record anything post fader on account of the obvious fact that it would go through the equalization again through the main outs and that could be problematic.

Right now, the first 3 inputs on my multitrack card are from the unbalanced outs of my DI box for intrument recording.  the 4th is from my Marshall Lead 100 Mosfet that I need a Cabinet for.  The last 2 RCA outs are coming from the mentioned Monitor outs as I do not have the TRS-XLR(M) chords, but I kinda like it like that because I can simultatiously record Vocals and the V=amp 2 if I wished but I can just as easily do it with another less desirable configuration.  I only go through all this trouble to use only balanced connections without having to spend $500 on a Presonus Firepod.

Now to set up the midi system for the Quadraverb and my Behringer V-amp 2(it’s cheap but it has uses)

Despite how smart my friends seem to think I am, I takes me awhile to learn things.  For instance, I have yet to learn how to open a blog entry without the same tricks.  Notices how the subject opens up with every entry?

Anyways, I finally discovered Luna Sea.  I’ve known about them for as long as I’ve known about jrock, and I’ve known that they are possibly the most influential band of V-kei next to X Japan.  until recently I’ve never figured out why though.

the past 7 years has simply been a journey through learning how to listen to music.

I spent a good portion of my economic stimulus check on a new midi controller! It’s not like it has knobs and buttons all over the place like others but it’s enough for my purposes.  Mainly I have been composing a lot for piano-ish/keyboard type music, I realized that doing this sort of thing strictly through sequencing isn’t going to do unless I actually had a keyboard on hand to know how one plays it.  I’ve actually learned a lot more than I wanted to.  This isn’t a bad thing of course.  What I was hoping for was to give my compositions more life by adding some improvisational flair to the rhythm pattern,  Instead though I got a handle of the proper “posture” that one plays piano that made even the original renditions sound more like piano music.  To be specific, the way I had originally wrote felt very awkward as I attempted to play it.  I decided to spread my hands our a bit which of course spread out the harmonic range of the phrases.  I noticed that the result sounded more natural as well, it sounded more like a piano piece.

The Classic Rock Trio dubbed “The Psychotics” for which I am the bassist of is going to be playing at a local bar the 30th, I see it as my internship on the whole rock ‘n roll band.  Experience to be used for when I actually use my own projects.  I’m fairly excited, it’ll be my first show.  we’re trying to get fliers posted around town and all.  If the gig is successful I’ll look into making a myspace and all for us.

I started what Leo from Zenhabits called a tralog.  Basically it’s a blog to keep track of personal progress on things; it’s very dry and simply full of stats but it’s good to reflect on.  You can read (& comment on) it here.  I’m going to update it twice a day at least, once in the morning to show what I have planned, and once before I go to bed to show what I have done outside of plans.  I hope that eventually I’ll be 100x more productive and I’ll be able to get things done easily.

In first grade I was diagnosed ADD and emotionally challenged.  I should scan the paperwork for a post header.  I really didn’t know about it until my early adult hood.  The fact is though, it takes some real living in order to understand what it means to be “emotionally challenged”.

I kinda disdain the term actually; it seems insulting to my faculty as a human being; it implies that I was made “wrong” from the beginning.  I’m not sure if it’s a developmental problem or just a learning disability, but the fact is I do have trouble relating to others.  I’m often insulting, crass, tactless, and just generally uncouth; the only way I even know this is from analyzing the reactions of others around me.  I aspire to be a musician, but it’s been a hard road having to make the heart I have to use to be my muse for my art; at least I don’t have to settle for the one I was born with.

But without being so pretentious, I do experience emotions, I just don’t experience them in the way we seem to be acustomed to them being presented.  I like to think of the way I experience passion, and hate, and all of that as the way we individually see colors, and it just so happens my frequency assignments are very different from others.  My only worry so to speak is that I question if a person who experiences emotions so different from others can succeed in what I have a passion for. Well, Beck certainly made it.

playing on the bass, I was playing better I usually do when I’m bored so I recorded it.