Steve came over tonight, stopped by for a few hours on his way back home from his mom's. We played each other new songs we are working on (we are getting better). We have lost that familiarity that we had, so now every time we see each other it's a few hours of "Hey man, how you doing? How have you been?" etc. Translation: we never get anything done unless you count the consumption of wine as a productive activity.
Because of this, we are going to try to schedule a weekly "band practice" on Monday nights. Make dinner, hang out the with family until Stephen goes to bed, maybe do some recording or something from 8-10:30 pm.
In other news, I did a lot of yardwork and have some sort of poison ivy/oak look-alike. Happens every time.
re-record vocals at beginning (with real lyrics)
bass
strings
[maybe] another simple beat to go over the top
Okay, I think I am finally done working on it for now. That is to say, until the next time Steve comes over here. I added a fake chorus of my own voice at the end and made endless mixing adjustments. Making music this way can be maddening. You spend the first day making loops and getting all the components to meld smoothly, and then you spend three more days making minute adjustments to seemingly insignificant settings on all your sounds and effects.
This song is just a few loops
1 short ukulele loop
1 short piano loop (to match)
5 piano samples (low piano)
1 drum loop
2 voice loops (for refrain during last half of song)
It really is that simple. Even the high piano stuff is the same piano loop played at a higher octave. All of it was recorded by me except for the drum loop. So the song wasn't very hard to construct, but most of the ambiance is created by stringing effects together and splitting the sounds up into multiple channels that can each be processed differently. This results in me looping portions of the song in headphones for hours on end while I pace around the basement floor (the paint is worn off by my computer), occasionally making changes to various settings. I always have to make sure I do not over-listen to a song during this process, lest I lose all interest in the song and it falls by the wayside.
I realize that some of the chorus at the end sounds fake. It sounds like some alien altos are singing with me. That is intentional.
Not finished, of course (nothing ever is), but starting to sound nice. I would recommend skipping halfway through (by clicking the middle of the song after you hit play) to hear the real build. The first half is naked. I'm going to wait for Steve to help me with lyrics and such.
I guess I've caught the music bug once again. I love when this happens.
Another new song. The download link (to a .WAV file) is the down arrow on the right. This thing is in 124.5bpm (or 249bpm if you prefer) and Gmajor. I'd love some loops to go with it. Right now it's rather naked. Could go in a lot of different directions.
Started a new song yesterday. Had the idea that all the musicians I know should add onto it or provide a loop for it. It's 134bpm and is in C Major (no sharps or flats).
It needs a lot more loops to be contributed by you, the listener. It needs to build and build (with no resolve in the end). The download link (to a .WAV file) is the down arrow on the right side of the play bar up there.
Steve came over last night. Felt like I hadn't seen him in forever. We hung around and drank beer, he came to dinner with my family, and we rehearsed this song 5-6 times. The audio quality is not bad for a video camera.
What a great weekend. Yesterday, dinner with 8 adults and 2 babies at Rock Bottom. Even got Nathan's ice cream later that night. Today, laundry, shaved my head, couple dog walks with the family, went to Costco, returned the pump to Lowe's. Got a lot done. Had fun doing it. We may even go grocery shopping this evening.
I have been in earsauce mode. Steve and I are constantly planning how to get the word out. I'm actually willing to put in the work recently, so I've been trying to take advantage of that. Our site is slowly building hits, and our myspace has been redesigned and has shown signs of life again recently.
New earsauce song. I think it's almost finished. It uses acoustic instruments/sounds, but it is an electronic song. I think it is turning out pretty well.
Well, Steve spent maybe ten hours here yesterday. I think we finished our album, at least the recording aspect of it. I just have to get everything in order and make sure all the fade-betweens are perfect. I'm happy with it. It's the best of everything we have, and it's 78:45 out of a possible 80:00 that can fit on a cd. Couldn't squeeze more on there if we tried. So, we'll see what happens. It seems the rates for mastering have gone up, but I'll try to get the old rates honored. With the new rates it will cost us between 900-1000 dollars. Ouch. We now have gathered about a hundred bucks through our bandcamp site, and Steve has put forty bucks into the pot. Not quite there yet by any stretch, but we'll make it happen.
Steve and I are going to try to set up a scheduled weekly time to work on stuff. We can't exactly call it band practice because we don't practice, but it's like a combination Super Nintendo and audio recording time.
We went bowling this morning and Stephen's nap schedule is completely screwed. He has slept for a total of 30 minutes all day, when he should have woken up from a 2+ hour nap a little bit ago. I just made the suggestion that we go grocery shopping right now so we could be finished by the time football starts, but then I realized the error of my ways when Stephen started to lose his temper and remind me that he needs to nap very badly. Jaime is upstairs feeding him and trying to put him down right now, and it doesn't sound like she is having much success.
I contacted a title company to get the title of this house transferred to me and Jaime's names. It is currently listed in me and my father's names. We'd like to get it squared away before it becomes an issue down the road when/if we sell this place. I throw the "if" in there because ideally we would rent this place out when we buy a new house. We have less than 9yrs to go on this mortgage. Money situation is good right now. Hopefully we can pay off our new car or Jaime's student loans (or both, but probably not) after taxes this year. Will be nice to not have a car payment again. If we paid off the car (which we just got last April) then we'd have 303 more dollars per month to play with. We shall see.
It's time for Evan to pass the hat. Steve and I need money to get our album mastered. We get a surprisingly good response to this old album when we give it out, so we thought we'd set up a system for donations. If you click "download" on the link below, it will bring up a Paypal payment screen. If you have a Paypal account, it couldn't be easier to donate seven dollars. If you do not have a Paypal account, it is still easy to purchase/download the album with a secure credit card payment. We have it set up for a minimum of $7, in case our relatives wanted to give us more as a Christmas present or something. You can stream all the tracks for free below, or visit the actual site on which it is hosted. It is an easy, convenient system. Anyway, throw us a bone! $7 for the album means a) less than 34 cents per track and b) less than ten cents per minute of audio. Also, if you like it, you can click the "share" link below and post a link to it on your Facebook/Twitter/Livejournal/What have you. Thanks in advance.
This is a set of self-produced home recordings. All 21 songs run together seamlessly to create the feeling that the listener is hearing a jam session. This album will never be released as-is except through bandcamp.com. Proceeds from downloads of "innovation avenue" will go towards the mastering of our next album, for which we will be seeking representation from record labels.
I am a photographer, musician and stay-at-home father in the Greater Washington D.C. area. I have a wife named Jaime and a son named Stephen, born in May 2009. I shoot almost exclusively with a Canon 40D and a couple of Canon prime lenses. I own a variety of instruments, and record and produce music in my basement studio / laundry room. I occasionally post songs or snippets of songs on this page--try browsing my music category.
![[pic]](http://blog.evanvalentine.com/media/aboutme.jpg)
