I went to the 9:30 Club on Thursday night to see The Books with Steve and Coren. It rained pretty hard for the drive there and the drive back. Driving into DC is hard enough without the weather interfering. I have to say I was fairly underwhelmed. I've sort of made it a point not to attend electronic music concerts, but The Books are somewhere in between. On stage, they synchronize a video and a background audio track using a laptop -> projector. Then they pick up the slack and play whatever instruments are not present in the backing track. They don't try to add anything new and do "live" versions.

Overall it was enjoyable, but for me, most of the reason to see a band live is to take in the nuances of the live version. This show had none of that. Afterwards, we met the band and passed Nick one of our earsauce cd's, which he pretended to be enthused about (they are very nice guys).

Yesterday was Stephen's second "Music Together VIVO" class. The premise of this class is this: the parents are the only ones who have to do anything; the kids can do whatever they want (including nothing). All of the kids walk around aimlessly at some point except for Stephen. Stephen sits in our laps the entire time. If an activity requires us to stand/walk/dance, we have to pick him up or he cries. There was a slight bit of progress yesterday in that he was very interested in the instrument portion, but there was also more crying than the first week.

It's been nice working on new music for a change. No more obsessing and re-obsessing over 5-year-old songs. Out with the old, in with the new. Finally.

My "big computer" (the tower) is back to running normally. I had a slew of problems for months, and it was all ubuntu-related. For the time being, everything is running properly, which is why I'm back to posting pictures on here.

Just heard a funny song on the 40's station (satellite radio).

Harry James - Mister Five by Five

Well, I've done some productive things this morning. I made a few (back-dated) posts on this blog and edited a bunch of vacation photos. I also finally got around to listening to the new album by The Books. I bought tickets to see them at the 9:30 Club next month, so I figure I should bone up on their newest stuff. [I never thought I'd say this about any band, but] their newest album might be their best. Impossible to say after just one listen.

Well, vacation is now a week behind us. I'm not so sure I care about vacations anymore. I don't have a job to get away from, which was a weird feeling when we were there. It's like I pack up every single one of my normal responsibilities and take them wherever we go. Stephen is in a very shy stage, so no one could really take care of him except me and Jaime. Then, in the few hours that Stephen was napping, I felt like I had to cram everything I could into that time (shopping for trinkets, swimming, sucking at Wii). Everyone was talking about how relaxing the trip was, meanwhile I was dying a little each day. It was very nice to spend some time with the family, though. Stephen was almost used to them by about Wednesday. He eventually would walk up to my brothers and ask to be held. I will continue to go on vacations, of course, but I just have lowered expectations now. It's just a different version of being at home. It's like, "welcome to being a grown-up," I guess. Nothing will ever compare to our Sandals vacation/honeymoon.

I don't care about baseball, but Albert Pujols is on the verge of something very great. He has been quietly building a Hall-of-Fame career for nine seasons now. For batters, winning the "Triple Crown" means having the highest batting average for a season in addition to the most homeruns and RBI's. This has not been done since 1967. Most power hitters do not have high batting averages. Anyway, Pujols is dangerously close to the triple crown right now. The thing that makes this interesting is that Pujols has never been suspected of using steroids, and his career does not have the tell-tale signs of steroid use (nagging muscle injuries, major changes in physique, wildly differing statistic from season-to-season).

We got home six days ago, and we finally started cleaning the house this morning. We hadn't even moved the suitcases upstairs since we walked in and plunked them on the living room floor.

I have been messing around with Audio Mastering software. I do not have "golden ears" as it were. It seems that Steve has a better idea of frequencies than I do (which is kind of embarrassing because I'm the producer of our duo). Between the two of us, we're going to have a good-sounding album before long. This album is five years in the making and we have all the tracks laid out, but they sound like they are being played through a tin can. I'm getting really excited. Part of the problem is that I have to clean up our first recordings which are horrible quality. (Our first recordings, the microphone was just placed on a shelf.. no mic stand).

If you are in windows, you can play these files in any of these players:

Winamp (any version, even very old versions)
XMPlay
Schism Tracker

In linux, they will play in just about any audio/media player, and there is a player called BASS which will play them accurately in linux, Windows, Mac OSX, and even iPhone. If that's not enough, here is a much bigger list of players/converters.

These files are [legally] free and free to distribute.

Falcon is a Polish producer (Jacek Dojwa) who used FastTracker 2 in the late 90's and released a lot of songs in source format (*.xm). He later went on to form the band Husky.

Falcon - 'Twixt Cup and Lip
Falcon - French Connection
Falcon - Nicollete
Falcon - La Petit Prince
Falcon - Sofa Surfin'

Enjoy.

Song info pasted from site...

song still needs:

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.

Stephen was awake for 8 hours yesterday. Yup, "awake." That means I did this:

sandwich in the sky (unfinished2) by evanvale

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.

249bpm by evanvale

I know it hasn't been long since my last post about the demoscene, but here is a trailer for The Demoscene Documentary. Certainly nothing exciting, but it's still cool to me that the demoscene is still alive in a slightly different form.

The demo they used as an example features a track from md/kschzt (1, 2, 3, 4). He was a huge influence on my music and I even own an "appelsap" t-shirt that I still wear. The person being interviewed is one of my favorite artists fthr (1, 2, 3). He was the first person I knew of that did impressive things with photoshop.

Setting up my RSS reader has made me follow a lot more people on twitter. That, in turn, has made me privy to a bunch of useless information. Kind of fun, kind of a waste?

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).

the heavens by evanvale

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.