|
|
| | Back in school, and my oh my how interesting that gets...The new semester of school started a couple of weeks ago, and I have to say, it's rough getting back into the school mentality. Things of note:
- Three music classes. Along with continuing the studio production and multi-track recording classes from last semester, I'm taking History of Rock 'n Roll, which is an awesome class that's a lot of fun. In this class, I've met a few people whom I click pretty well with, along with re-meeting an old friend that I last saw about a year and a half ago.
- A sociology class, "Social Problems." The teacher is amazing; not only is he not afraid to tackle any non-PC topic (which is entirely necessary for this class), he also has a great sense of humor about it. He's one of those people you can tell has his head on straight from the moment you meet him. Shouldn't be too rough of a class.
- Weight lifting! Yeah, I'm back in the gym. It's... weird. My legs are still pretty strong, but not nearly what they were last time I was in a gym for a serious workout (six years ago! O_O). Hopefully, this class will help keep me healthier as the semester goes on. Yesterday I was on the treadmill for a full hour, ending the run at 4.32 miles. Ugh.
- As of now three of my four kooky ex-girlfriends are attending the same school as I am. I somehow manage to run into all of them at some point or another throughout the weeks, so take that as you will.
- I've been appointed Sound Director on a film project that one of my coworkers is putting together. The team will not only have a couple more of my coworkers on it, but also include a former coworker from back when I worked at Gamestop in 2005! Funny how things work out.
- After hearing a couple of my tracks, four more people at school have enthusiastically requested copies of Synaptic. This album has definitely risen to "pride and joy" status in my mind. From the time and effort I poured into it initially to the number of people who really, really like it, there have been plenty of elements that have made me very happy with it. There are once again talks of possibly getting a real DJ to play my songs in some small venues, and even a possibility of it being reviewed in the school paper.
- On that note, it's been quite a while since I've actually created something that wasn't experimentation. "Angels" was as close as I got with Reason, but even that felt like more of a B-side to me than anything else; neat and definitely not bad, but not quite the direction I felt I was heading. However, I've started to get a handle on Logic 8, at least to the point where I'm able to execute all of the things I could in Garageband. The program is packed with tiny changes and additions that make me very excited, the foremost of which (at the moment) is the upgraded Ultrabeat drum sequencer. It's enabled me to put together and tweak drum patterns in a far more robust and complex manner. Because of this, I've actually put together three new songs entirely from scratch in the past week. This is a pretty big thing for me; not only does it usually take longer to put together tracks, but it's usually with help from some kind of loop, whether as inspiration for my own ideas or as a base to tear apart and rebuild. At least two of these tracks will be on the next album, which I've decided will be called "Peregrination." The new tracks:
"Groovymess" is mainly drum sequencing with some weird effects put over it at points. It was originally intended as another stab at making a background rhythm for someone to rap over (a completely different kind of song structure that I'm still trying to pin down), but with enough variation to be listened to on its own.
"Run" is a first for me. A first of what, I'm not sure, but it's different from other things I've made before. Maybe it's the fact that it's a pretty intense track that I put together from scratch. Maybe it's the feeling of putting together good 32-step drum beats. I don't know. Whatever it is, it's good, it's new, it's intense, it's danceable and fun, and it makes me very excited about where this album is heading.
"Peregrination" is the title track, and something I put together just yesterday at school. I had plenty of fun with new techniques I have available to me now for creating more ambience and textures in the background. It reminds me of certain tracks off of my first three albums and a few off of the second half of my fourth album, and definitely feels like what that style was meant to grow into. Unfortunately, the transcoding that Xanga's audio codec does seems to have created a few weird sound artifacts, so I recommend that you download this one if you want to give it a listen.
Something about Synaptic that I have to mention is the fact that it was a fun project, but by the end, it became a little forced. I hit that point halfway through the song "Follower", when I was trying to figure out how to continue the track in a way to that could flow into the next song. Ultimately, this turned what's one of the albums strongest assets into what made it stumble a bit: by insisting on one continuous mix from start to finish, I basically ended up backing myself into a corner at points, giving me a set starting point for my next track at times when I felt like heading in a different direction. While it made for a more immersive experience in the end product, I can't deny that I'm only proud of half of the last seven tracks on the album. The other ones feel too forced.
"Peregrination" looks to allow me to expand in completely new ways, creating stand-alone tracks that go wherever they feel like going. This is going to be fun, and it feels good to be back in this state after eight months of feeling like I was stagnating.
The sound quality of the tracks does suffer a little because Xanga re-encodes everything at a lower bitrate for streaming purposes. I do recommend downloading the full MP3s to listen to if you'd care to. They can be found here.
Please give them a listen and let me know what you think! Let me know what you liked about it, and if you didn't, give me a little constructive criticism so I can get an idea of what didn't work.
Mujah | | | Posted 2/12/2008 4:29 PM - 83 views - 6 comments
- recommend
  - recs0
- give stars
- votes0
- email
 - sent0
|
|
