Friday, 25 March 2011
Friday, 14 January 2011
Monday, 5 July 2010
Sunday, 4 July 2010
Friday, 2 July 2010
Saturday, 20 June 2009
Guitar Fixed :)
Got my guitar back from repair and it's basically good as new. Need to set it up though cause the intonation is off now.
iPhone updated to 3.0 so now my bluetooth sunglasses work without that bulky white adapter.
Cubase just released a remote too that works through the iPhone. Also got my email working finally. Don't know why it never worked before but after the upgrade I suddenly started getting messages. There's no spam filter though so the 3000+ spam mails I get every month might get a little annoying.
Starting work on a new song. Working title "Cosmic Stoner". Just working on the drum tracks now. Did everything in Battery 3 on 17 separate tracks. That way I've got way more control during mixdown.
Taking the weekend off for now though. Doing some reading... haven't read a novel in ages.
Sunday, 7 June 2009
Day Off
Took the day off yesterday. Needed some downtime after all the paperwork and 'business' stuff from the last coupla weeks.
Back to work today..it's Sunday but I gotta get started on editing the ringtones.
However, if it's nice out I'm goin swimmin again :)
Unreal that it was actually snowing in Calgary yesterday.
Friday, 5 June 2009
Busted Guitar
Well... I stupidly left my favorite guitar (1975 Gibson L6S Deluxe) sitting right behind my chair in the studio.. got up in a hurry and tripped right over it. Ended up busting the headstock in half.
Thought it was toast but on advice from a friend, took it to The Arts and it was fixed in just a few days. Haven't picked it up yet but I should get a chance to get into town tomorrow.
Lucky too cause I wasn't looking forward to switching guitars. My others are great but none of em are worked in like the Gibson. Smooth as hell to play. Hope it still plays well.
Putting together a bunch of instructional guitar videos. Glad I had the forethought to leave out the Guitar Tricks logo and keep the uncompressed versions so I've got a couple of hundred in the bag and ready to go.
Spent the last couple of weeks doing nothing but uploads to various publishing sites. Takes forever, especially when they want .wav files and all the meta tag info.
My iPhone is coming in really handy for stuff like finding the BPM of a song or just putting it up to the speaker and having Shazam tell me what song is playing when I'm doing research.
Also found a cool 4 track recorder for it for coming up with ideas and another one that sends the .wav files to my Mac. Now I can sample sounds from anywhere and they're ready to use as soon as I get to the studio.
Finally finished off the last of the DVD's and got them sent out.
Friday, 24 April 2009
Argh... paperwork and more paperwork
Haven't had a chance to get back to doing any recording for a few weeks now. Got back like, a week ago but still doing paperwork for royalty collection etc..
Decided to go through the recordings from a couple of months ago & was pleasantly surprised to find that they aren't that far off from completion. Still trying to decide whether to add female vocals, my own or just do guitar work.
Uploaded a ton of loops to TradeBit. Still have about 9000 more to go. Would like to get back to working on AxeLoops but just don't have the time.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Amsterdam
Took a break for a coupla weeks to wind down. I was majorly stressed out & needed some legal recreation for a change so I took off for Amsterdam. First time there... if I didn't have so many ties here, I'd move.
Got back last night and I'm getting caught up on all my missed emails. There's a ton of contracts that have to be read, filled out and signed for the various publishers. Have to go through all of my tunes today and update the rights info as well as list all the various bpm's, tempos and keys. Been at it since 9 a.m. and it's mid afternoon and I've barely scratched the surface.
Unfortunately, most publishers like using PDF's to send me their contracts which are completely impossible to fill out on the computer. So it's either print out 100's of blank forms and do them by hand or re-create the forms in MSWord. So i opt for redoing em. (I gave up writing by hand so many years ago that I just do a few paragraphs I get major cramps).
I have Cubase 5 finally and have gone through all the reading and DVD info to figure out all the audio warp features. Pretty damn cool. Haven't had a chance to try them out though. I'm just imagining all the possibilities though.
Since Guitar Tricks is no more, I took down that horrible backdrop that's been blocking my fire exit. It's nice to have the studio back to normal and not be spending all my hours doing annoying beginner lessons on video. I may get back into it again but it'll be on my own terms this time. Guitar Tricks membership is apparently going down the tubes and I can only say 'I told ya so'.
They're blaming the economy but it's got more to do with the changes made to the site in the last couple of years.
Too bad. It was one of the best sites on the net and now it's been reduced to a beginners public school where nobody's allowed to say boo anymore. It's definitely opened my eyes to some of the other guitar sites available that are far more advanced and well thought out. The end result is basically, I'm not a beginner teacher who follows lesson plans and goes by the rules. I'm a rock guitar player who teaches advanced techniques who's philosophy is like all other rockers... it's ok to break the rules. Censorship sucks and I'm ashamed that I actually put up with the rigid site rules for so long just for the sake of pleasing the owner of the site, who obviously didn't give a shit about me.
Let's just say he did exactly what Liptons Electronics did 16 years ago. Tried to get me to quit by making things so unpleasant that I'd have no choice. I saw it coming after I came back from vacation to Calgary and my sixth sense didn't let me down.
Anyways.... this is the crap that go me so worked up, hence the reason for taking off for awhile to put things into perspective.
Just remember... never trust anybody... especially where money and business are concerned. You'll get burned every time.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
It's Tuesday!
Nothin but paperwork and money stuff tonight. Managed to record 2 notes on the synth before I got called away to the phone tho :)
Paid Tiffany for the male vocals on Going Home. Pulled out a couple of older recordings. 'Neon Lies' and 'Goodnight My Love' for Inna, the female vocalist. Goodnight needs a major redo. Nice music but it's a $23 guitar through a Radio Shack mic and sounds like it. The other instruments sound pretty good so I may keep most of em. Slow going though. OS9.2 isn't compatible with OSX on Cubase, so I have to export each track from Cubase 5.1 to a .wav file on an external drive, then import them each to separate tracks on Cubase 4 on the other Mac, then redo all the mixing from scratch again. The Cubase 5 upgrade still hasn't arrived yet.. neither have the backdrops for the videos. There's also a custom attenuator on order somewhere so I gotta check into that.
Dave's coming down from Calgary in a few weeks so I have to go to Barrie.
Have to write the lyrics to "I Don't Know Why" as well as verse 1 of Angel. 2 new film projects to bid for and something called an 'IPI' number that I don't have a clue about.
Gotta top up the CD's at CdBaby cause they're sold out & send 5 CD's to Jessica.
Then add Inna's vocals into CM and GM7 songs. Gotta contact Tiffany again about that one word that needs changing. Gotta redo 'Stringing an Acoustic' as well as get a new photo taken for my bio. Update the Track Metas and MP3 links. Send a DVD to Anr in Australia? i think?
At some point I gotta get back to 'Game is Over' as well.
Just finished typing out the problems I've been having with CopyPaste to Julian.
Gotta do the list of lessons for the forum area & double check to see when my contract minimum is up. Have to contact that other site about doing lessons for them & send the Hi-Fi versions to CyberFret. Also gotta contact Rogers Cable cause they've been charging me for the friggin Howard Stern On Demand service for the last 6 months & I've never even watched the guy before. Psnl. Doc/Lic visit 19 dys. bldtst..send reg. mail.
Monday, 16 March 2009
It's Monday
Purchased new router for the studio. Back up and running wirelessly again.
Have to contact Tiffany re: pay for male vocalist & send demo MP3 of Neon for Inna.
Started working on this months lessons. Figure I'll do a tutorial similar to those 'rip-off' ones you see advertised all the time "Learn Guitar in 10 Minutes". Except this time it's free and actually works. :)
Need to do a series of backup tunes in all keys for the Jam Station & MP3 files at GT. Good chance to check out OmniSphere and Miroslav Philharmonic to see how they sound together.
May need to get the new Giga library of orchestra stuff after waiting...what? 5 years for the Mac version? Depends on whether Miroslav has the 'real' sound I need for Eventide.
Of course, all this hinges on the copyright clause at iPhoto. Apparently, they have it both written into their contract that all samples must be owned by yourself but that you can't be a member of a rights organization.
Unfortunately, they don't understand my question as to whether that includes Samplers and Drum Machines containing sampled sounds. For instance, Miroslav uses sampled orchestral sounds to play the notes. iPhoto is saying that I would have to get a release from each member of that original orchestra in order to use that instrument on their site. (which I think they've legally misinterpreted because they aren't musicians)
Basically, if I can use sampling drum machines, string machines and other instruments using samples, then it might be worth temporarily getting out of SOCAN and put all my music with them. If they think I'm gonna hire a 40 piece orchestra, a drummer, bass player and keyboardist to play all the sounds on "real" instruments requiring a signed release from each person... ferget it. They're obviously misinterpreting the law because they don't understand what samplers and drum machines actually are and how they differ from using "samples" in a song.
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Shut down the studio for the weekend. Purchased a new synth and spending my free time learning how it works and how to tweak it. Also getting caught up on paperwork and stuff. Got my new mixing board working (finally) but had a problem with a low output again. Some kind of conflict in my software between iMovie, Cubase, Firewire410 and the output channel.
Also looking at bass modules as the next purchase. Pretty much outfitted the studio with everything I can think of at this point. The next thing after Cubase 5 arrives is to get some new harmony software, a bass module, symphony module (already got Miroslav Philharmonic but there has to be something better out there). After that it's a final purchase of some new guitars and hopefully a move to a larger studio cause this one's already starting to feel cramped now that I've got the video studio permanently set up.
May get a new keyboard as well. I'm finding the modulation wheel is completely lacking on this Roland PC-200 and Omnisphere uses it quite heavily to tweak sounds while playing.
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