The Stuff

Sorry about the blob — Word Press does not play nice with the Safari web browser!

It’s Day 24 of the RPM Challenge — just 5 to go. 6 out of 10 tracks are partially recorded, and 4 are just concepts so far. 4 long nights ahead. :-<24 days ago I planned on recording 10 semi-idiotic pop songs, but after a 2 week gout attack, about 60 hours of OT at work, writers block and winter blues all I had by the third week were song titles and some lyrics. I started to panic — but I hate to fail. Around day 21 I was ready to drop kick my DR 880 — I used to be pretty good building loops with BOSS drum machines, but something wasn’t clicking. I lost the funk. I put the 880 aside and plugged in the Electribe and started fooling around. Fairly quickly, I came up with some really strange sounds, and I thought: I can use this; forget pop-songs, I’m going to make an epic ten-part space Opus — Neil de Grasse Tyson Drops Acid and Buys a Casio. There’s been plenty of challenges. First, I don’t have anything like Pro-Tools, just Garage Band. I have a Cubase disk that came with by PreSonus Firebox, but that wouldn’t install. My PC is kind of old, and lacks firewire ports, otherwise, I would have used that instead of my Mac. The Mac is a real bear to work with — every now and then either the OS or Garage Band throws a hearing-shatter POP sound and the speakers go dead. Lots of reboots. Quicktime let me resample wav files, which was nice, because I couldn’t find a way to do that with Garage Band or Audacity (boy do I miss Sound Forge). My KORG Electribe MX (the blue one) is incredible — it sounds great, and I can make great sounds with it, and its pre amp is powerful, so no problems recording with it. My Bass Pod — oi vey — I couldn’t get loud enough volumes out of it to record, probably due to my own ignorance. No matter, the Guitar Pod works fine, and I am a fan of MCA and Dave Ween’s distorted bass sound, so I’m okay with that. My BOSS DR 880 — again problems — this time, probably my own ignorance or oversight, but I couldn’t get the volumes out of it that I could get from my KORG — two different machines, with different purposes, but a real pain in the neck when using both on the same track. The biggest obstacle is trying to record the text to speech reader on the Mac (which is really sweet, btw, so I want to use it) — I get the horrible feeling that I’m going to have to record the Mac with my PC and then copy the resulting files over. A sense a trip to Radio Shack for some cables. I also need to use the Women Take Back the Noise boxes set as an instrument — don’t ask if you don’t know. This will be a Milkshake Daddy album, but no funk, talk show samples or me trying to sing like George Clinton. That said, the music is still stoner-friendly, and I’d like to thank Funkadelic, Hawkwind, Coil, NASA, John Zorn, JAXA, Soulburn and Laika for inspiration. The lineup is on my RPM page, but obviously: the Milkshake Daddy programming and guitar, me Dan Century programming and production and Platinum Destruction on bass (the KLF is right — don’t use live bass; program instead).Anyway, here’s what you have to look forward to on the 29th:Tentative album title: Secret Lives of Probes and Satellites1) Track 1: 0-30.3 (To Serve Man)2) Track 2: 30.3 - 87.2 (Voyager 1 & 2)3) Track 3: 122.3 - 235.2 (USA 193)4) Track 4: 242 - 283.4 (Skylab)5) Track 5: 283.4 - 400 (Kaguya)6) Track 6: 401 - 452 (Satcom 1)7) Track 7: X-X (Aura)8) Track 8: X-X (Hubble)9) Track 9: X-X (Sputnik 1)10) Track 10: X-X (Sputnik 2)