Musician Diaries

I didn't pay much attention to these guys at the beginning. I have to admit that the singer's style at first seemed to me a bit of a gimmick or a simple "whim", more than real substance. Something like "OK, let's see, what can we do different to stand out from the rest of black metal bands?" However, as I've listened to them more, I've found there is an appropriate combination of elements in what these guys do, something that feels very authentic (and creepy) to me. In some songs like "Magnificent glorification of Lucifer" or "Ominous doctrines of the perpetual mystical macrocosm" (it's not the kind of band you play at your nephew's party), the drumming has a quality of "stubborn machine" that makes you think of some sick and incredibly perverted AC/DC or Prong; add to that the despair of the raspy guitars, put on top the monotone, ugly voice, and it sounds like music for slaves, with a mum

With certain loses you die a little, a part of yourself goes away. This is how I feel about Chuck Mosley's passing away. I know he wasn't a mainstream musician anymore, and all I got to know of his work was two albums, but I consider him a big influence of mine and always respected him as a very original artist and free spirit. As most of my peers, I got to know Faith No More through "The Real Thing", and later "Angel Dust", both already under the Mike Patton mantle. A bit later, in summer 1993, I made my first big travel abroad, to a town in Maryland, US, and one of the first key locations I pinpointed after arriving was the record store. That summer for sure created the foundation of my musical taste. Among the myriad of records I acquired that summer, I grabbed and listened with great curiosity "Introduce yourself", FNM's second and last with Mosley's vocals, to find that FNM had replaced a singer of great personality with a

I have to become better at finishing. The muse I serve is cruel, the road is paved with the bodies of my predecessors. Suicided, OD'd... and all they thought they could handle it, and they all thought they knew better. As long as I don't put stuff out there and call it "finished", there is a terrible psychic tension within me. So the way I see it, the options I have are: either getting better at finishing, or calling the whole thing off, which in my case is not possible--being able to create music is such a blessing in my life, where would I be without it? I feel dirty for the things I had to do yesterday to make the rhythm guitar sound decent. Still this shitty affair with the guitar emulation that sounds well while playing but harsh and horrible when listening to the recording later. Aaaarggg!!! Anyways, at least it's done. Today, faced with the grim perspective of doing comping work (which is just another name for "office work"), I th

Got the keyboards recorded, courtesy of Yoshimi. As usual with keyboards, most of the time went to finding a good instrument; I always feel as if I were auditioning people for a musical; "Saw+chimes" -- "Thank you, that's enough". "Space Ethereal #9" -- "Don't call us, we'll call you". Etc. Once I got the sound, and the choice for the chord inversions, the recording itself was trivial. Got a hint of how my musical mind works in what has happened with the rhythm guitar; for more than 48 hours I've remained unaware of the fact that the track was still in a crude DI state, the recording that I used for the basic initial metronome demo. It's like, my mind knows the content is there so it doesn't care so much about the "dressing", it disengages. Although in this case it's understandable with so much stuff happening all of a sudden in the other tracks, with the new solos and all. Today I'll record

I keep surprising myself at how incapable I am to foresee how long will things take. For today's session, I intended to record the "reinforcement" guitar track, plus the keyboard -just a few ambient notes here and there, so no big deal-. And I felt a bit guilty for cutting myself too much slack doing only those two things. Yeah right. It's turned out the guitar track has grown on its extremes two solos, which inhabit the gaps between words in the vocals, and logically they have taken some time to adjust. The song already had a solo, and heaven knows I'm by design very sparse arrangement-wise in my songs -sometimes too much for my own good-. In this case it's like the solos have found me, rather than the other way round. To compose them I've naturally turned to this technique I've used several times before of recording myself time after time, then listening and keeping the "hints": discoveries, unexpected vibes... A couple of mist

What I did yesterday, after considering several options, was starting a new song from scratch. I live by my intuition and along the years I've learned to listen to it and follow it, sometimes very blindly. But I've found that it is very powerful and it serves me well (it's a miracle that a peculiar creature like me has hit his forties relatively intact). Intuition is immediate, boom, while logic, on the other hand, lives within time. Sometimes logic has taken years to catch up with why it was a good idea to do X. (Also, in other occasions, I've mistaken the signs; in the musical realm you have aesthetic clues that tell you if you hit the target; in real life not always, so sometimes intuition is easy to be mistaken with that other tiny voice of plain desire...) Deep water navigation to try to explain what I did yesterday. Here's a more superficial explanation; I've found that it is a great practice to document things; together with that, I've fo

Got to listen the whole Bandcamp thing. After giving it some consideration, I think I'm going to scrap "Zombie barf". I believe in the song, it doesn't deserve the poor audio treatment I've given it; plus I don't want to ship junk. When I was in my 20s, it was enough for me to get the song good enough so that others "saw what I meant", the vibe I was aiming to, and the execution was only in second place. Now I find that approach too lacking; I can do better than that and I know it. I try to see it as a "failing forward"; I've created a new category for songs like this, unpublishable, but good as elaborated demos, to show to one's band when or if I ever get to have one again. After this listening I've made a lot of reflection. "Zombie barf" took like 20 hours of "production" (the term including everything besides composition and rehearsal). AB tests in different speakers, all the different plugins

Not much time available for rock and roll today. I'll try to take it where I left it yesterday; I'll listen to the session, polish a bit the things that stick out the most and try to get something printable that is convincing enough for effect in the Bandcamp placeholder. I'll move in that direction as much as I can (A snail just passed me from my left side at dizzying speed... but whatchagonnado...) The deadline I set is gone. As these logs help my process so much I'll keep going for five days more, as a homage to Megadeth's "Five magics"...

My plan for today was to finish real quick the redux-to-normal montage of voice tracks, print the session, upload it to Bandcamp and listen to the album I have so far, kinda like the painter who takes a step backwards to watch the whole canvas. But I didn't get to Bandcamp because housekeeping has caught up with me; there was some serious tidying up needed after fighting the "guitar tone wars" of 2 weeks ago. I didn't name consistently or usefully the guitar tracks then, so I've had to go through most of them to tell which one was which; for example, there was one called "g_vamp", as in "virtual amp". The reference was a good enough locator at that moment, with my brain more engaged in listening and experimenting, but, come to think of it, all my amps are virtual so, it hasn't been too eloquent later. Plus I still had laying around the guitar mockups of the demo stage, plus some of the tracks that were intended for experimentat

Done with the vocals. And I don't want to be overenthusiastic, but I'm certainly enthusiastic. To me artistic creation is about at some point being able to say "yeah, that's me". It's like your face is buried and sometimes, after a lot of effort, you get to unbury it and recognize your features. I feel like I AM in this song, and that's such a rare occurrence, it's a moment of growth for this little life living here. This can sound so pompous, of course... So I do my best to stay grounded too. I remember a quote by Rilke -I quote by heart-, that went something like "we know how fragile we are by looking at how small our victories are". At the end of all the struggle, all the change you get in the world is a new song out there, yet another computer file out there, with 3-5 minutes of sound who someone hopefully will enjoy, without noticing it too much... It's easy for anyone to say "big deal", even for the same perso

New voice tracking session. All undesired vibes of Paul, Gene and company have been removed. I have recorded 5 takes, plus a few more of a stubborn section where I think I could do something more. And I'm not hardly as beaten up as I was in the previous session. It was expected, after all; the other session was a bit of a stubbornness case; after all the effort of setting the process, the sensible voice advised to just dismantle the whole thing, but it was just impossible to resist giving it a try. This time, with the extra mental resources liberated, the process has matured a bit more; it has grown a separate section about getting the right headphone mix, something that up until now I've been doing winging it time after time, as with so many other things. Regarding the singing, I entered the session with a stance of "I've done the due diligence, so now I'm going to forget all about it and just sing". My previous singing was perhaps too "acad

Yesterday's works went to adding a couple of needed guitar blings (saturated amp screaming in the intro; swarm-like background sound a la Morbid Angel during one of the slow parts). Measuring the results in terms of my own previous production, I think this thing kills; but regarding the vocals I found a surprise. My raspy efforts of the day before yesterday seem to have been in vain; with the vocal tracks aligned and with reverb, the raspiness does not come through. What sticks out the most is my high pitched voice, in a very melodic way that, surprise surprise, made me think immediately of Kiss; to be preciser, of the song "Love Gun". At that moment, the following inner dialogue took place in my brain: --Ehm... Kiss is a great band... --Don't give me crappy excuses you lazy bastard! You know you have to redo the vocals... So well, I'll have to experiment and record more. Should be easier now that I have a well defined process... Today I cannot record any

Haven't done the music part yet, but I figured I'd take this entry out of the way first in case I'm too tired later. Perspective for today: first, check vocals' validity. I think they will do. Fingers crossed. Second, a lot of tiny confusing things. I'll try to be diligent and maybe finish the song today (I think I'm being fooled by Hofstater already...). Meaning, finishing the tracking part, after which it will be so good and healthy for my psyche to work in some different song and come back later for the production part with fresh ears... The main hurdle I see is how to make QTractor's midi output be received by Ardour as several tracks (one per Drumgizmo instrument). I've researched this thing several times and never found the way to do it, or even (yikes) if it can be done. Maybe QTractor is more in beta than I thought? I hope it's just a case of the confusing documentation. Worse case scenario, the battery goes untouched, as a on

Recorded vocals today. Tomorrow I'll listen to them and if they sound authentic that's it. I've sung really comfortably, in terms of sound. Just a little bit of delay effect in the headphones, and everything has melted together nicely. Info I've gathered from the internets on singing raspy: 1) It's better to start with a clean voice (aaaaa) and then add raspiness gradually (ajjjjjjj). Otherwise you might strain your voice --I forgot to do this, and, being new to this style, after the third take I was gasping for my life. 2) A good starting point is thinking you're holding your breath. 3) A definition that I loved: "you use less air and more power". The "redux" system has also contributed to make the session a short, tremendous blast. After the recording session I was in a state of "eustress", a word I once read online, ugly but very useful: it is the kind of stress you get for a good reason, when you're euphoric. Also,

Feeling kinda chewed so I'm going to give it a rest today. I could get down to it and get some stuff done, but I think it's better to just rest and get to it tomorrow more renewed.

Finished the "lightning mode" software setup. Funny how the process is similar to what you do in audio production; you fire it up, see where it derails, fix it, go back to the beginning, fire it up again, see where it derails now... Everything is a process. I've corralled it to 3 clicks+3 keypresses between boot and being singing. Everything documented so that the improvement stays. Another innovation today that is a keeper is what I'm going to call "redux version"; as the song has long instrumental interludes, I've created a version that skips them gracefully; that way my verses will be more consistent among them, my voice won't cool down with the waiting, and also I'll finish every take quicker. Editing was a bit boring (the song has 2 tempo changes; that's what I call hitting the road running with Drumgizmo...), but the result is well worth it. Additionally, pops are being filtered, room reflections are being killed, and today

Prep work for the vocal tracks. Last summer I instituted a concept called "lightning mode", which seems to stick. It is simply setting the software so that the singer (me but with a different hat) can get to the session, to be recording voice, in as few clicks as possible. That way you take the software factor and its horrible stops out of the equation. After that is set, I also have a list for the hardware setup, and everything is orchestrated so that I can go in and out as quickly as possible (here I have to explain that I don't have a recording space of my own where I could leave my stuff in a stable manner...) Preparing this lightning mode has taken more than I expected because it has forced me to advance in the computer configuration, something that I've been procrastinating as much as possible, giving preference to creating stuff and also to this nasty stuff I've recently had with the guitar tone. Funny how you find this same dichotom

Feel so lost right now. Recording guitar within Ardour also gets this "harsher than while recording" effect. And, after so many takes IT CANNOT BE ONLY PSYCHOACUSTICS. For worse my mouse just died in the middle of a session (he couldn't stand the power). I hate this situation (when stable? when?), but  I think I'll be able to patch up something decent with the different guitar layers I have recorded. Today in fact I've made the first arrangements for the vocals session (as yesterday,, too early, but I guess it's normal that I want to speed up the process). My "goals" (another word for "wet dreams") of releasing one album in October and another in November have gone down the drain with this delay. But I still can aim to launch album #1 somewhere in November and #2 somewhere in December.

New tests with guitar tones. I estimate I have like 2-3 more days of tests until I have everything tamed. But I'm happy because I can jam along the way, so it's not all boring theory and parameters. Looking back in perspective, today I've been a bit too confident, a bit too quick. I've tried to go back to the "one pass of drums then tracking", but it was too soon, too much work. I should have focused only in consolidating the new guitar stuff, that I just discovered yesterday. There is an energy cost to the change of activity; although there is also a cost of boredom and therefore morale effects on doing only one task for too long... A dynamic balance. I promise myself that once I have a decent guitar tone in place, I won't shake things for at least two albums. Unless, of course, a certain song demands something special that requires innovation. But other than that, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Today I've tried a lot of stuff, under the bracket of "fail fast", and I think I've finally found something I can work with. I've been doing experiments regarding the guitar tone. It's difficult for me to summarize here the chaos of tests in a linear manner; the result, or at least the most plausible hypothesis as of now, is: my audio interface, a Samson G-Track, works better with buffer size=3, but according something I read somewhere, Guitarix acts funny under buffer sizes that are not a multiple of 2 (perhaps this is true for Rakarrack too?). So that's why historically all my tests with buffer size=3 did weird stuff. Today I have tried recording the guitar within Ardour, no Guitarix, just adding a distortion plugin to the track and monitoring via software, and the sound has finally become something I feel confident, not that sensation that someone or something is taking a dump on you whenever you try to play and the latency is "slimey&q

Today I was going to work on the drums, but in a funny, organic way, I've finally done some prep work for the vocals too. It was so because I started my musical day by trying to find some songs in a similar style to mine, and listen consciously how they deal with the crash cymbal. This is a part of my song that has been bugging me for a long time; the song is fast and repetitive, noisy as hell, with a crash on every beat. In the session, however, this continuous crash ended up sounding very unrealistic, and sometimes generating subpatterns that become very distracting because each beat should be evenly accentuated. I thought this issue had to be dealt with during production; compression to tame the excess of noise. But I wasn't totally clear about that, so today I listened to how other bands do it in these "noisy" scenarios. Firstly, I had difficulties finding a song that did this stuff. Probably because I never listen to a song in terms of audio productio

I just come from listening "Now you're talking". I think I have decent guitars. It bothers me not having reached the bottom of this matter, but I've made great learnings that will help me getting rid of problems in the future, for sure (for example, I now understand the connections screen in qjackctl and can change stuff there directly, which is very handy). What happened today was that, out of the blue, Guitarix didn't work with the settings that I've been using all these days. After revising the whole chain, it turned out that for some reason, "capture 2" was now "capture 1", and viceversa. Strange. Never had this kind of inconsistency before. Through the intensive rehearsals of these days I took out of the equation the poor playing element, which blurred the other possible causes for the problem. I also learned more about Guitarix settings, which helped me discard the possibility of a poorly set tone. The 5.8ms latency is to

The gods favored my endeavors yesterday with an early success. Half the problem at least seems to be gone, and I'm confident about the other half. Sound is being made, although deep down you always have this rage that "things should not be this way, grrr..." I recorded Guitarix via Audacity and the recorded track sounds as it should. So the obscure problem is an Ardour related thing, apparently. When I say that 50% of the problem is solved, I mean that I still haven't passed yesterday's guitar tracks back to Ardour; will they keep the quality, or is it Ardour what makes them somehow sound like crap? I would like to get to the end of this affair and squash that motherfucking root cause, but I have to move on, so maybe I'll settle with a provisional solution. Yesterday's takes were not as good as the previous; to record in Audacity I printed the Ardour session in one track and exported it, which reduces the flexibility when you want to adjust pl

No music possible yesterday. The plan stands for today. As today I'm going on 23, I'll extend the deadline until #30, as homage to Sananda Maitreya's "Seven more days". (Ive noticed all my musical references are always 20 or 30 years old... What you gonna do, I'm just grateful I had such wonderful formation years...)

Intestines! It turns out I do my best to get a great guitar tone in Guitarix, only to find that the recorded version in Ardour does its own thing, and it's not a good thing. I tried all kind of things yesterday to corral this problem. The only options I can think of are: 1) some kind of mismatch between Guitarix sample rate and Ardour's, resulting in a loss of sound quality. 2) Some "channeling" stuff of the kind mono gets recorded into stereo, phase cancellation issues... 3) Some badly adjusted ratio of input-output volumes that makes the signal get "fried" at some point before getting recorded. I tried all the experiments I could think of yesterday and got nothing concluding. It's not a preset thing, it happens just the same no matter which one you use. It's a torture getting such a good sound with the guitar while playing, and then being submitted to the turd that gets recorded (harsh, mid-rangey and fake, and yes, I've tried conn

The song is taking shape big time. I rehearsed and recorded the guitar track yesterday and went to bed in a state of euphoria, absolutely pumped up by adrenaline; it took me long to fall asleep. I finished tracking and closed everything without even relistening. One of the parts, despite my efforts, is in the reds at some moments, that's all I know. But while playing I had this great sensation you get sometimes as if, instead of playing, you were taming some kind of beast. This is what makes great the rehearsals with a band, and in this case I have the plus factor of finally taking out my chest a song that's been living within me since 2013. Needless to say, everything else pales like cheap cardboard compared to these moments. I live for this shit. Today is one of those days where the arrival to music land seems far far away, at the other side of the Chores mountains, full of thorny canyons and dangerous trails that lead to nowhere. Something I can do is repeat ye

My drumming powers got greatly enhanced after installing VMPK (short for Virtual Midi Piano Keyboard - It works flawlessly in live recording with Qtractor, and configuring it is as simple as activating one option from a drop down menu), plus the watching of a few generic "Midi drumming" videos --without falling in the "getting prepared" trap--. To that I can add Qtractor's "randomize value" option, which is great because allows a percentage (1st time I tried a 7% in a cymbal and it was too much, 3% made it a matter of minor touches here and there). So the drum track is very advanced, the feared arrangement is almost there (to be more precise in the state "every time I listen to you I change you I'm gonna get you you sneaky bastard"), and soon I will leave it and move on, with the "safety valve" of going back to it later if something sticks too much later as a no-no when I listen to it with fresh ears. The same goes

Impossible working yesterday. The plan stands for today.

Yesterday I made an inventory of the obstacles remaining with the drum track, one in each index card, and tackled one. I then moved on to record the first bass tracks. I have often had several songs on the works at the same time, but not so much this; I think there's something here. I knew the boring task with the drum was going to drain my brain, so I needed something fun to counterbalance. I would generally not like to have two tracks in the works at the same time (two cakes in two ovens; more programs open simultaneously, double of reference information needed...) But this time, given that the drum track was mature enough, I think it has been a good idea because when you lay the bass on top you start to get synergies (yesterday the "fairies" made a visit, that unexpected 5% that only pops up through the process of turning mental impulses into muscular energy that then turns into sound waves...) A good thing with these synergies, again, is that it reduces

Ah, that's better. Feeling much rejuvenated now. Funny how yesterday at some point, during my "rest day", one of the things I did, spontaneously, just because, was grabbing the guitar and playing some tunes. I think that's the spirit. Keep it fun. I still have to make it through my Bruce Wayne life so I don't know how much of me will be left when I get to the music. But I have to make some serious dent on the drum tracks thing today. The task has suddenly become daunting, and I know where that leads; there's a familiar stink in the air... I think I'll try getting analytical, listing all the problems and deciding how to tackle them before diving in. Regarding the arrangement, I'll give it a deadline and if I cannot make it I'll cut my loses and go back to the simpler version I was using. I hate it but I hate more taking so long to release stuff (consolation thought: I can always re-record later.) The sad thing is, if I had a human drumm

Recovery today. Nothing to report. As today is the deadline I set for myself, I'll set a new one; I'll extend these posts until #20, the number of years of boredom that Leonard got sentenced to.

Sudden death yesterday in the middle of the drum editing. "Bed. Now." I was doing a new pass to the drums and I got stuck in a splendid rabbit hole; "congratulations, you've just met an arrangement that is not easy to translate to a machine, it is going to suck your soul forever, and only, once you succeed, for the final result of one second of music". But of course that one second of music is what counts. Many one seconds like that. If it wasn't the case, we could just the same ask our computers to create the music for us and be done with it. I'll try to get to the drums today, but I have a lot of have-tos and I'm feeling semi-ill, so maybe it is better to be prudent and let it sleep for today. The thing with this is what Neil Young says in his latest record, "It's bad for the body/but good for the soul". The perspective of a day without making music is so bleak, so what for... Such a shame that it always has to be in the

Yesterday I tested options for the guitar feedback; surprisingly, feeding back the guitar to itself gives an interesting effect when you move the EQ from one side to other, so I think when the moment comes I'll use that mixed with a Rakarrack setting that screeches like hell when you turn it on (I used to hate it, so yesterday when I was looking for it among the others it was like "come back... I didn't mean it...") Finishing the guitar experimentation was my baseline for the day; I also did one pass to the drum track, following this method: "I'll stop when something comes to mind". A note missing. An arrangement I could add. An existing arrangement that is too distracting. And of course the transitions (I'm very happy with them). Relistening the track later, I found many moments where, while on the spot I thought "this is embarrassing, I'm not putting enough stuff", listening later the whole flow of the song, it works

Yesterday all I did was doing the rearranging of the drum structure. The song is now like a "Frankenstein" (my favorite simile this season) that has still not been stitched; on the table I have a head, followed by a neck, then a torso and the arms... Everything side by side, already in the correct place but still not a unit. I don't know where will I start today, I can do those transitions, or maybe changing the velocities; Drumgizmo with the additional human feel must be a blast... And now that I think of it, I'd rather do some experimentation with the guitar, I need a somewhat convincing guitar feedback in the box; I asked in the LinuxMusicians forum and got 2 ideas, I better try them soon so I can report the results... My hypothesis is neither of them will work but I will learn a lot in the process; no problemo, there is always sampling, or building upon that trick I used in "Zombie barf"... To be honest, yesterday I was this close to not doi

Yesterday I worked in the drum track in a great state of flow. Ath the end it was like "hey, you have to go to bed now, buddy, this thing is calling you, you know, physical exhaustion". I got to the end of the song's drums, although technically I didn't get my "plank" because, after printing the demo, I discovered one of the sections (replicable, not a problem) got garbled. In general terms, with a couple of non-damaging crashes as the exception, Qtractor seems rock solid. Too soon to say for sure, anyway, as I'm still learning its ways and  sometimes it's not easy to tell when I screwed up or when it was a bug. And regarding Drumgizmo... Oh my god. At some points makes you wonder "when the hell did a professional drummer sneaked into my demo?". Those 2.4Gb of the kit are worth every bit. As I'm still getting familiar (and with a couple of concerning things that I still have to learn), I'm going to make "Now you&#

Ouch. While I was waiting for this page to load, I got informed of Tom Petty's passing away. So many memories of my friends in my tape days, and more recently, of how about a couple of years ago "Hypnotic eye" helped me so much, in what was easily one of the worst periods of my life; in those days I listened to that album time after time, it was the thing of beauty in my shitty days... "I have a dream/I'm gonna fight till I get it...". So solar, so easy going... And the so timely and intuitive final song, since then in my habitual personal repertory: "Shadow people/what's in their minds?" I'm too sad to say something more coherently, so I'll just move on to the log. Yesterday it took me around 28 seconds to discard Ardour's Midi editor as a viable tool: I multiduplicated a drum part, then I tried to edit one of the copies, and I couldn't; neither add nor substract notes. Further investigation showed that for some reas

Yesterday I reached my objective of making some new noise. The passage is still shaky, but, well, the journey from point A to point B has already been blazed. After a first part of the night doing all I could to save my relationship with Hydrogen, to no avail, I finally decided to move to Drumgizmo. That thing rocks. The moment I got the first sound, and I saw several levels on the screen going up at the same time (because of the mic bleed simulation), I felt a thrill similar to the first time I used software EQ in real time (Ardour 2, 2010, if I remember correctly). The only thing that doesn't convince me much as of now is that humanization is only an on-off control, not a knob as in Hydrogen. But the sound is gorgeous, and I can further humanize things to my liking manually if I have to. The objections to my enthusiasm are two pronged; on one side the aforementioned fear of a final lack of consistency in the album; I'm hoping that there's enough unifying fac

Tangled in intestines. Yesterday I went to bed confused and a bit concerned. I think the main cause was because when the shit hit the fan I wasn't fresh. I had mastered "Coming back" and uploaded it, and then took some time to decide what to do next between two options. On one hand, I thought to master "Murder Christmas", the other impromptus song for the album;  it would get me a new cheap win, with a new song ready to go in one sitting. But as those impromptus songs don't have (logically) the same recording quality as the full fledged stuff, I was afraid that it could bring me down, plus, I just came from doing some mastering and didn't feel like starting another cycle. Discarding other songs that no way I felt like getting into, the other option was "Now you're talking". This song got interrupted halfway the recording stage by the big breakdown. In fact, I was still able to advance a bit on the drums with computer B; but the

Finished (abandoned) "Coming back" mixing. Today I'll apply the mastering process and be done with it. I've erred too far into production tasks (which tire me and depress me), and it's been a while since I entered the land of diminishing returns. It seems there's no way around with the vocals track; if you apply compression to tame the big initial push, you get too much shhhs and bohhhs. So after trying all kind of tricks, I just went back to my previous version and reduced manually the volume of some of the beginnings of phrase. In spite of this, overall I like the final result pretty much. Especially the moment when the solo enters. It's something my twentysomethings old self would have listened to with pleasure, cutting classes at the school campus while smoking the stuff he used to smoke back then... I'd like to publish the Black Sheep Riot album somewhere around October, and the Maple Dye one at some point in November. It would be a g

Still working my way through "Coming back"'s vocals. The problem I have is that I have had to pile two compressors to keep the voice from sticking out too much, but that on its turn has caused the track to be under a "magnifying glass"; a lot of breath-ins that were hardly noticed before have had to be pruned, and the sibilances have become too prominent. So it's deesser time. I haven't used that plugin much, so I have to get familiar first. I guess it's just a compressor for chosen frequencies. Hopefully today I'll take that stuff out or find an alternative solution. The rest of the song is smooth sailing already. I'm going to stick to these logs until #10. They're working great for me by now -suffices to read my mood and my outcome in day #1 and now-. Still haven't had a "hangover" or lost the novelty halo, I like this routine...

99% sure "Coming back" is finished. Gotta relisten today. I got plenty of moments during the session where I though "aha, that's it, it matches what I had in mind". The main point of discomfort in this one is that the overall mix is a bit 2D, especially considering (or perhaps more noticeably because of)  that trill effect coming and going it has in the middle; I would have liked to give it more depth, but... I think that's a job for a professional producer; for me this one is an advance in the right direction, so I think I'll leave the table and cash my earnings now that I'm winning... Another positive surprise was how well tape saturation works in the song. I have used it in the past in several songs, and I had discarded it as a great creator of mess; maybe it's something that works in ballads only? Material for new experiments in the future.

Almost there with "Coming Back". The first part of the session went very well, everything flowed famously. It made me think of the Karate Kid movie, when Daniel san, sick and tired with so much "wax on, wax off", finally puts the training to use; Miyagi starts throwing punches at him, and his hands block the blows automatically, unconsciously; "the vocal track sounds too piercing at the beginning of the phrases?" That's because the compressor does not attack fast enough. "The guitar sounds as if it had a sponge stuck among the strings?". Let's open the EQ and chase those two or three suckers lingering in the middle range. "The solo sounds too 'telephonic'?". I've gone too far with the Low pass filter... But at the end was too tired, and I wish I had stopped about half an hour before I did. I still have to relisten, but I think at the end I couldn't trust my own judgement. I stopped before I 'fried

After giving some thought to what to do next, I passed another song through the gorilla master process. 2 ready, 6 to go. This one was "You're Repulsive", an impromptu one that was already published, but needed some tweaking. This has made me realize that most of the material of this album has already been somewhat published, but hardly noticed, so... It surprised me how clear the bass sounded in this one. I think what I did different from Zombie was not using distortion; that was an experiment because I thought a distorted bass would cut better through the mix, etc... In this one the drums hardly qualify as such; they're just a loop on top of which everything gets played. But the song turned out well and it fits the mood of the collection, I think. I chose doing this one for morale purposes (getting one more song to done quickly is a boost, reducing inventory is great...), plus reinforcing the just created master process with a new iteration. After that,

Relistened to the song, resisted the temptation to tweak "just a couple of things more", did my gorilla mastering process, then the property registration and uploaded the song to Bandcamp, plus lyrics. A lot in the song is wrong production-wise. Too wet in places, too raw in others... But the song, what matters in the end, is there. It has the fist and it has the feather, the two elements I always look for. The drums kill me, but fortunately here come cultural references to the rescue; Venom's first album sounded as if the band were playing somewhere and the drummer on a dance hall at the next room; yet the record works because the songs are so primal and dirty. In fact the crappy recording even adds to its creepiness, so who knows. It's always this struggle, I don't want to become sloppy, but there is an epidemic of technical disease going on and you have to remind it to yourself at each step. Music is life or death stuff, there's people out the

Installed the window manager in the music distro (gave some troubles, but nothing serious, and I also documented it so from now on it will be easier). To cope with the yawn-ness of the whole thing, I structure things like this: "I'm going to do this wm thing, and then I'm going to do something that actually involves music". The premise was doing something that involved sound, creating it, editing it, recording it... When the moment came what I figured out was checking the session of the song I was mixing before the "great breakdown".  I chose this task because it only involves one program, the DAW, so configuration overheads are lower. What makes sketchy and strange the inventory I currently have is that, during the absence of computer A, I tried to stay committed and do what I could with computer B. That involved generally recording, which computer B could take, but not so much mixing, plugin stuff, etc... The song I left in the mixing process

Not knowing where to start, today I applied the "begin with the end in mind" principle and created a Bandcamp draft for the upcoming album. I had the feeling I was accumulating a lot of resistance for not knowing what the "endgame" of the songs was going to be, and it seems I was right. As it often happens, I felt terribly lazy about going back to Bandcamp, (where did I put the password, etc...), but everything went smoothly. The first thing I wanted to check was if I could publish a "work in progress album", i.e., an "album" already available with only one song when I've finished it, where I can upload new songs as I finish them. This doesn't seem to be possible, but in any case I'm happy I've done the test. I had never done a Bandcamp draft and it seems a good practice. The project feels more real. I've uploaded a crappy cover version, the first .png I've found laying around, and I haven't even uploaded

Lately I've felt very far from music, even though I know, i always know, it's the best thing that's in me (bear in mind my interest in music started way before the accession of home computers, and it won't change a thing for me the day they become "the penultimate wonder"). I blame this distance on worries and stress. Life has squeezed me extremely these latest 4 months. Granted, my superpowers have also risen considerably (I'm in my forties, top of the hill baby!), but music, real music, is a delicate thing that needs a bit of buffer and comfort. I changed my computer recently and it's been an odyssey. After having things configured to my liking, the screen started to act weird, so I had to back up everything and start again after the attempt at repairing (useless attempt, for worse, as the technicians acted like in Monty Python's dead parrot sketch). Now I have a guitar laying around, a hard drive full of half finished songs and docu

I have found my entertainment greatly enhanced since I started listening to podcasts. I love the direct approach of someone telling how he does his/her thing, sharing tips, or just "telling it like it is". I can no longer stomach for very long the traditional, grandiloquent TV news reports, where everything reeks of staging. I get a better worldview, I think, by listening to a diversity of podcasts, from areas that sometimes don't even have to do with my direct interests, but where I get indirect advice that I can later customize to my world, or simply I like the way the guys talk, the flow of the whole thing, the fun they're having together... Speaking however of my direct interests, music making in this case, I'd like to speak of a certain mentality I've encountered often in podcasts and blogs of the guild, a misapplication of terms that I find annoying and dangerous, and which I've refered to in other texts as "the technical disease&qu

Last time I wrote about them here, I defined "demo", as  "Song that can be played from one extreme to the other". (More specifically, the crappy, one track recording of that song, which then will "feed" the whole audio works that, at the other side of the pipe, will give a full fledged song ready for distribution). Now I've refined the definition of demo by changing it to "Song that could be played LIVE". I consider this definition an improvement because it contains the previous one in a more "organic" way (if you play a song live you play it from one extreme to the other), but also adds the purpose, the endgame (the song must be listened to by someone to become a song), and in addition it allows a playful headroom for experimentation; the application of the definition will be different for every song in the making; you cannot play live something that is too disgregated, but you can play, and it's always great fun, on

(This time I'm going to pass on music related world news. All I want to say is: some world we're living in. And fuck those guys.) As I get to know my process better, the latest epiphany I've had is that, with my current workflow and equipment, it pays off to split the "rehearsal" concept into at least two different kinds: 1) Rehearsal for arrangements: once reached the demo stage (which I described in an earlier post, "demo" defined as song-can-be-heard-from-beginning-to-end), in this rehearsal I play each of the instruments time after time figuring out ways to flesh out things, adding variations, inviting serendipity to add findings... 2) Rehearsal for recording: once the arrangements have been fully decided, this rehearsal is about building the muscle memory necessary so that you can record the part in the least numbers of takes possible (because I hate editing; in an ideal world no creative person should be punished with this task) This

I never was a big fan, but I respected Chris Cornell and I feel shocked by the news and compelled to say a few words in the light of this tragedy. The circumstances surrounding this cannot be sadder: a musician in his 50s-killing himself no matter how you put it-with some dark medication stuff involved-when nothing seemed to show problems and there was even a new album from his seminal band in the wings. Another factor that adds to the shock for me is that I always considered Cornell one of those members of the rock community who "played it safe", in a Foo Fighters kind of way. And this is not said as a criticism, I think the forest needs all kinds of birds and trees, and it's a good thing for the whole if there are a few bands out there that go mainstream and fill stadiums and are listened to and considered acceptable by the "stiffer ones". Different human views create different kinds of music and flavors, and to me both the stances "hey peopl

A key factor of Lean is that it places a big importance on handouts. (Or: if calling "Lean" to this way of doing things inspired by Ono & Co is pretentious, let's call it "systemic thinking", instead - Seeing everything there is to do like a process, a box or tube where you put something in at one extreme and get something out at the other.) Only as long as each process is well defined you can be sure what the "out-put" will be, and therefore what "in" is the next process going to receive. This principle works exactly the same way when you're working in a factory, with the guy putting rubber frames on the car window that you just fixed with screws, and when you're just working with yourself, receiving a drum track you just recorded, on top of which you're going to add a bass track; if such drum track is handed to you under a certain fixed, predefined parameters, if you know what to expect beforehand, it