Saturday, January 29, 2011

The Massie Johnson Combo. . .

Kids are sleeping. Wife is working. Blogging time!

After 4 sleepless nights and days, I lost my head and bought some drum mics, then panicked, and bought different mics instead, and then panicked, and then finally got some sleep, and then decided that the mics were a good decision. I've always recorded my drums with 1 or 2 mics (I think I used 3 a couple of times), and I liked the sound, and mostly the simplicity of setting up 5 minutes. The new mics clamp on to the drums, or hang high above, or need to be carefully placed on stuff near by drums, and when they are all combined, they sound fucking (sorry mom) awesome and huge and punchy.

Sometimes Barn Flyz Kevin Cooke sent a cd from ottawa of a group he's been playing with - The Massie Johnson Combo, (link is to a youtube clip of dubious sound quality, but you can get a bit of an idea) which is really fantastic instrumental jazz/blues/r&b that makes me want to shoot a black and white 16mm film about walking down quiet early morning misty city streets. We're in discussions about him mixing the next bit of Barn Flyz music; he just may have persuaded me to let someone else have some control over the sonic aspects of my tunes.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Movie Review: True Grit. . .

I took Sienna to the movies for the first time in 6 years.

We saw the Coen Brother's "True Grit".

There was a line-up for tickets, but apparently everyone else was going to see the Green Hornet or whatever else. We shared the theatre with one middle aged guy that came in 15 minutes late. Maybe he couldn't buy Seth Rogan as an action hero, ditched his 3-D glasses and wandered across the lobby. Either way, it was a quiet crowd.

Sienna bought a $7 bag of popcorn. It was f'n huge.

In film school, one of my instructors was always talking about how movies seem more entrancing then TV because the bigger screen makes your eyes move around and that keeps your brain more active. It's also nice if you're near-sighted like me. It's like a large print book in movie form.

The movie reminded me a bit of The Murder of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford; it is set it a similar world. But the pace is much faster, the whole thing is under 2 hours. But the plot never feels rushed, everything has time to breathe and be noticed.

There is a man wearing a bear as outerwear.

I really enjoyed it.

You could go see it, if your wife likes seeing movies in theatres, and you never, ever, ever go with her, and by going together you will share an enjoyable afternoon in a dark room with a strange man and $7 popcorn.

I don't mean the other guy watching the movie was strange. Just that he was a stranger. I think. I wasn't wearing my glasses. He could've been my 3rd grade teacher.

Sunday, January 09, 2011

Notes from the Recording Studio. . .

I've been spending some time in the studio working on demos for a new record. I suffer from demo-itis a lot of the time; I make really fast sketches of songs that have a lot of energy, but lack polish. The plan is always to go back and do a "better" recording based on the demo. But, after listening to the sketch demo a few times, it becomes the song for me, and it's difficult to live with anything that doesn't have that same first-time energy.

3 steps down the road towards solving this problem:

1. Become a good enough player that I can get a great first or second take.
2. Work on song building (as opposed to writing) before hitting the record button.
3. Write down song structures so I don't have to relearn parts from quick demos.

Most of it involves planning and discipline. Not being lazy lazy lazy lazy lazy lazy lazy.

It took me two days to write this 200 word blog post.

Hmmmm. . .

Saturday, January 01, 2011

MMXI

Alright.

Now.

I resolve to formalize the time I spent on my creative efforts. Specific to discipline, be it film-making, writing, song-writing, music-recording, times will be allocated and regimented.

Regimented?

I'm not sure that works there.

Add time for editing.

Rewind. . . and play. . .

Specific to discipline, be it film-making, writing, song-writing, music-recording; times will be allocated and maintained.

Better?

I'm not sure.

It's all very confusing.

When I was trying to become an English teacher (alright, lets be fair, I was actually trying to not live in my parents basement forever, and maybe meet some girls), I decided that I would write a novel, get it published, and not need to complete the plan I already had grown bored and jaded with. So, I had never written anything longer than 4000 words. Books are like 80,000 words. Small books. So, like the German army at the end of WW2, instead of going, "well, it'll take me a week to write a quality 500 words, so I should probably plan to finish the novel in like 5 years", I instead picked a long-term goal, and then forced the short-term issue (side note, I wrote a really long side note explaining the WW2 analogy and then erased it because it seemed a bit much; email me for details). I wrote 500 words a day, no exceptions, editing in spare time, and a bit at the end, and wrote my novel in about 8 months. I have no illusions about it being a great work of fiction, but I got it done, published it myself, and I never look back and wonder what would've happened if I really tried to write a novel. I can go to my bookshelf.

I'm looking to regain my foolhardy aspirations and the discipline they require.

Also, I should stop staying up late and rambling on my blog. . .

And a big shout-out to anyone in England reading this. Man, I'm sure that Blogger's stats have no idea what's going on. Adam, do you know anything about their accuracy?