Black Rain from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

Whoa!

Just ran into this great song, Dear Diary by Howe Gelb for troubled bloggers everywhere:

Dear diary, I’m a grown man, why shoud I be writing to you?
Dear diary, I’m a sorry to hear that you don’t want to write to me too.
Dear diary, OK lets start anew, I’ll be me, and you be you.
Dear diary, I’m a livin’ a life when I think of war and its on TV
If I don’t want anything more then I’m free.

Howe’s Down Home 2000 Album

I’ve been getting started with music again. The main issue I’m facing is the creative process. So here’s what I’m working on:

monogrey

I started monogrey with the idea of doing something slow. I threw on a drum loop, then did the guitar 1st guitar part. Towards the end, I added a open riff that’s been stuck in my head. When I did the second quitar, I had the idea of running a some dense root-fifth-octave stuff for the ending.

All in all, it seems like I over-did the slow bit – at 70 BPM, it’s kind of crawls. So. I thought I’d try it again, only faster:

monogrey2

This time, I ran it at 110 BPM, with my acoustic/electric as the rhythm part, and changed the open riffy thing a bit,
then added a distorted electric kind of wandering around. I think this ends up sounding a bit too soft. Maybe I should try it again at 90 BPM or so, and shoot for the darker first version.

Overall, I’m trying to keep it simple and leave room for other things, primarily vocals. That said, I’ve never had much luck adding melody and vocals after-the-fact. We’ll have to see what I can manage with this.

Next, I thought I might try starting with some sort of melody or lead-line. The result is this one:

drive-with-horns

The cheesy synth-horns are were I started. I pecked out the lead-line in my head, then picked up the guitar and searched for some changes that worked with it. The result is pretty un-challenging, though I did have fun doing the bass part. It’s pretty easy to sync up with the kick in a 4-measure drum loop. I’m not sure where “drive with horns” goes from here. I suspect it’s probably a dead end.

After all that, the open question is: can I write songs like this – layering parts, or, is do I have to buckle down and write lyrics against my guitar all at once? Past experience is that I can’t retro-fit lyrics and melody to fully-formed backing tracks. The results is usually monotone rambling.

As for the tools, this is the first time I’ve tried writing with any sort of DAW set-up, having done tape-based multi-tracking in the past. I Have to say that it’s pretty nice being about to hack stuff up so easily.

I first heard Explosions in the Sky when I say the movie Friday Night Lights. I looked them up later, and bought Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever, probable a couple of years ago. At first, I like just small parts of the album, but over years, the more I listened, the more it grew on me.

I’ve just picked up The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place. It’s fantastic. buy it now.

I’d sworn off Bob after seeing him do his live solo act back in 2004 or so. It was a horrible thing with recorded music and video on a big screen behind him, and left me depressed about my own creative future as I, like Bob, plunged toward mid-life.

After all, Husker Du changed my definitions about music, and seeing Bob do a solo acoustic guitar show in the early nineties was one of the best shows I’ve seen. Ten years later, I left that disaster in 2004 wondering how Bob could go so far off the rails.

Well, having listened to some more recent stuff, I feel better. District Line wasn’t good enough to justify buying the whole album, but I picked off three songs I liked the best having listened to samples, and bought mp3s: Stupid Now, Who Needs to Dream, and The Silence Between Us. These songs are nice and comfortable, like seeing an old friend from long ago.

From doing a bit of reading, it seems Bob Mould is a DJ, and into House and other forms I’m not interested in. That’s fine with me. He’s still searching, and that’s all any of us can do. I think he was just lost for a bit.

I’ve spent a little more time with POD Farm, and I’m pleased with it. I got it via a free upgrade with my Line 6 Tone Port UX2. Most of my experience with guitar sound is from my Digitek 2101, which has a tube tube preamp followed by a digital signal processor. I would either record direct from the line outputs with it’s speaker simulator on, or run a solid-state power amp and mic the speaker.

With POD Farm includes amp, speaker cabinet, and room simulation (early reflections). In short, this gives you control over distortion (non-linear amplification) on both sides of the effects processing, allowing sounds that just aren’t possible with the 2101.

On the other hand, POD farm can’t match the flexibility and control of the 2101′s signal processing, which allows you to create completely novel effects. POD Farm’s effects are simulations of “classic” and popular discrete effects stomp boxes. What would be really cool is the ability to create your own models from scratch.

A minor annoyance with POD Farm is the blatant up-sell: it installs numerous patch (called “tones”) definitions that refer to device models you don’t own. This means that 70-80% of the factory presets you get can’t be played on a stock install of POD Farm. Fortunately, customized presets can be stored in directories on the file system, so as soon as I pick the factory presets I like, I can move them in my own directory and ditch the upsell/broken ones.

My Tone Port UX2 came in last night. I’m pretty impressed with it. The amp/cabinet modelling stuff is really cool; I’d never tried it before. It’s not going to replace my GSP 2101, but it’s great at its intended use: getting guitar tracks on to a computer.

I ran it with Garage Band – it pretty much clobbers my poor little Mini, the UI is pretty sluggish, but all the real-time stuff (getting the audio recorded without latency issues) works flawlessly.

Here’s a little sound test I did with a GarageBand drum loop and a couple of tracks of guitar:

quick test for Tone Port/Gear Box/Garage Band

Now for the hard part: I have to start writing.

Maybe it’s because times are feeling apocalyptic, or maybe it’s because I just found my old cd and ripped it, but I’ve been listening to an old project, Apes.

Apes came out of a standing get together of friends back on the early nineties in my home studio. We wrote and recorded music one or two times a week. At one point were thinking in terms of a bigger project. Tom suggested we do something around a movie. I suggested Planet of the Apes.

This was 1994, long before references in The Simpsons, and long before the remake. Over the next year, Tom and I used some of the more compelling ideas and imagery from the movie to write an albums’ worth of songs.

We started with the finale, Lamp. Thirteen years later it seems the strongest and most relevant.

700 Years
Crash
This World
Round Up
Wrong Species
Brain Surgery
Orangutan’s Orders
Trouble
Climb Down
The Trial
Beach Fight
Dr. Zaius’s Confession
Lamp

(Just AAC for now).

Tom Dube’: bass, vocals
Keith Lundberg: drums
Me: guitar, vocals

I just picked up Giant Sand’s latest album, proVISIONS, which meant I spent a lot of last night listening to their other albums.

I first heard them on the radio back when I lived in Tucson, more than 20 years ago. Giant Sand became the sound that defined the place. A broad mix of styles, lots of air and space and contrasts, clever and thoughtful lyrics. I’d say they’re my most favorite band. They’ve evolved, yet the good stuff is always there.

So, if you’ve not heard them, here’s some videos to give you an idea of what they’re about.

From the latest album: Increment of Love:
Increment of Love

From a couple of years back, Remote:
Giant Sand – Remote

One of my favorite songs, Happenstance:
Happenstance

One from way back – Searchlight:
Searchlight

If you’re interested, here’s a couple albums you might start with:

I don’t like movie reviews – they’re best seen with as few preconceptions as possible. So don’t read this until you’ve seen Once, which you must.

Warning: SPOILERS!

I’ve described Once as a low-budget musical, but it’s way more than that. Most of the music is about people you don’t see. The raw emotion in Glen’s songs are about betrayal and loss of his girl friend that happens before the movie begins. Similarly, we don’t see Marketa’s husband until the ending montage.

This makes the movie mostly about the music as an expression of emotion and connection. Also, it’s a romance but not fulfilled in the obvious way. Glen goes to his girlfriend, and Marketa’s husband goes back. I’m referring to characters by the actors names because they’re not named in the film. Like Lost in Translation, there’s something wonderful about romance that isn’t ground down by getting together and trying to live happily ever after as the credits roll. A contrast is drawn between romance and relationships rarely seen in movies.

I also liked seeing a movie devoid of cynicism about music or the industry. The banker pulls out his guitar and sings after hearing Glen’s tape. The recording engineer quickly gets on board once things get rolling. Glen’s dad says it’s “brilliant” after hearing Glen’s work, and says that he’s proud of him. Music isn’t a prop or plot device to serve the story, it IS the story.