Death Bop

Weekly update....in bullet point form!

-My internship at Spaceland Recordings is DONE. I finished all of the metadata stuff two days ago and now just have to finish remastering these fugazi tracks and maybe do a widget for a band every once in a while. It's remarkable how good the timing was for me to be doing these things while taking Communications in the M.I.- in fact I'm going to be employing a lot that I've learned/ have been doing in my final paper for that class.

-...a continuation of the last paragraph...for Comm. we have to write a marketing plan for a death metal/ be-bop band. Here's my angle- since they're all virtuoso players there are two intersecting niche markets to specifically target- The Prog Rock community and the adult swim community. In talking to a lot of my prog friends they told me that if a death metal, be-bop band was in existence they would be seriously down. This same group is responsible for popularizing other bands like Primus, Dragonforce, Maximum the Hormone, etc. who are ridiculously talented musicians, but write tunes off the beaten path. The direction I'll be taking is to get them individually placed or sponsored in skill magazines for drummers, guitarists, etc. while attempting to get songs as title tracks for adult swim shows. There's a lot more, but that's the general idea.

-Mastering on Marc Payne's album starts today which should be sweet. I've been working a lot with my room over the past few days to make it a better listening environment. My ultimate solution was to create a equalizer preset on the master bus that makes the sound as accurate as possible in the sweet spot- I'll then remove it when I bounce the mixes. I'll keep everyone updated about how this is going, but for the time being you can listen to his tracks at www.myspace.com/marcpayne (check out "me, myself and I")

-Mariella and I have solidified our plans to record a cd this summer and have been working on some material which I'm really excited about. A lot of crazy time signatures, breakdowns and tasty riffs...plus a dance beat in the middle. WHICH reminds me.

-The Closure in Moscow albumette finally came out and it's incredible, seriously one of the most progressive, unique cd's I've ever heard. And in addition, the production is fantastic- recorded at Interlace over in Hillsboro like all of the Rise and Equal Vision stuff nowadays.


Eh, too tired to think of anything else. Back to bed maybe? Garver, I hope you enjoyed this post you crazy, crazy, facebook stalker. Lates!

A Strange Week

Hey all, checking in at 4:40 AM Friday morning- my insane week is done and so I celebrated a little bit with a couple of my friends by watching I Heart Huckabees. My audio adventures the past five days have been scattered due to my ridiculous sleep and work schedule, but I'll bring everyone up to speed.

-Springfest was last Saturday and I pretty much met all of goals I set out for myself. I got to meet The Chase, the lead singer of Self Against City and one of the guitarists (beau) from Saosin. Lupe Fiasco also performed later that night and his band completely blew me away. Ended up missing a lot of the acts, but it was cool- with the insane heat it was very reminiscent of Warped Tour.

-Got an email earlier today from Marc Payne who's asking me to master his album. (By the way, I've recently figured out that mastering is pretty much the coolest thing ever) So that's really exciting....I'm hoping my horrible listening environment won't affect my judgment in too bad of a way.

-Been working on this master compressor/ level stuff and drums are still perplexing me- though I've learned a bit more about how the release times affect how punchy the mix is and what really gets hit hard by it.

-cleaned my room for the millionth time so it's nice and spotless again-though I'll be posting pictures on myspace and here of it looking crazy packed.

Not too much happened this week I guess....but with all my major projects done for a while now, hopefully I'll get to focus with sound a bit more.

Peace all

Blog Posted

Hey everyone,
I've started this blog in order for you guys to know what recording stuff I'm up to- equally my breakthroughs, frustrations and random thoughts. So here we go, in list form!

-Had my mastering quiz and think I impressed Garver. Basically we had to bring in a couple songs- one that we thought sounded good and one that sounded bad and make them feel like they would belong on the same cd- then we had to do the same for one he had. After I finished he asked me if I was graduating that semester, when I told him I was a freshman he was totally surprised. (songs I chose- girlshapedlovedrug by Gomez-good and Battle for Middle Earth by Air Show Disaster-bad, but I made it better)

-I'm working on a punk cover of "What Goes Around, Comes Around" by Justin Timberlake which is going really well so far, guitars and drums sound nice and crisp- but I still need to redo the bass track and the vocals. We recorded drums through an electronic kit and triggered the snare and the kick using samples- turned out better than I expected, but that's probably because Mariella's an incredible drummer.

-I need to learn how to make my drum sounds consistent when I'm sampling. As the level of the guitar and vocal fluctuate, the master compressor/limiter is shelving the snare hit seemingly arbitrarily and it ends up sounding weak and awkward. (however ironically, extremely real)

-Speaking of which I finished recording and writing my second songwriting class midterm, which I'm really happy with. Once again, drums could be better....it could also use some hi hat and toms which I was too lazy to put in....but I did it all in about six hours so it came out really well for that. I've been borrowing this Marshall JCM 2000 head from my bandmate Alex and it makes guitar sound incredible.

-Got SSL and API Waves emulators the other day and I'm extremely impressed. I don't really know how similar they sound, but I like them regardless...especially the SSL EQ and the API 2500 compressor.

-Put a high quality flash player on myspace instead of their shitty one- drums have life now, it's incredible. (it's hard to imply sarcasm in text so I'm just going to say it) sarcasm.

I think that's about it for now, I have Springfest all day today so if things go right I'll get to meet Saosin, The Chase, Self Against City, etc. Enjoy all, keep checking in.