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May 31, 2008
Here's a pile of strings on sticks we use on a regular basis.
If you're looking for really good studio p*rn, you must visit
Blackbird.
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May 29, 2008
You've been very patient. I was hoping to have all the songs for this project finished before I
began releasing them, but I want to end May with a bang.
Here's the full version of The Window with Monica de Vitry singing with
the Old Time Liberation Front.
The Window.mp3
The Window.ogg
There's lots more to come, with Monica singing another original that will just knock you out,
more instrumentals, more of that Jordan including a killer (literally) bluegrass
tune with his dad on banjo, and a song about our neighbors to the north by Peter (the quiet one).
Oh by the way, I believe that Jefferson Pepper is having a CD release party tomorrow night at the ABC in Harrisburg. It's
free admittance, and great music. Call ahead to make sure...
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May 25, 2008
Now would be a great time to slip something in here while nobody's looking- so over
to the right I've added links to a couple of videos. They're nothing remarkable,
but it helps to have visual cues to go with the songs...
And now there's a link to the little shop of horribly overpriced desktop accessories at
Cafe Press over there as well...
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May 24, 2008
Years ago I read a short story that was creepy and bizarre and that didn't seem
like a fairy tale. The Colour Out Of Space by H.P. Lovecraft
was both strange and ordinary, but I never followed up on it until this week. Could be a
good weekend to curl up with a few of his weird tales...
I'm still remixing Old Timer songs. If you let mixes settle in for a few days new
and different things about them stand out- sometimes good things, sometimes things
that should be changed. This could go on for weeks...
...or until someone decides we have to be finished! I was discussing the odd way
of working here at the studio with someone at my "real" job yesterday. This morning
I thought of a new way to explain what I'm trying to do here. Here's what I've written to
this guy, an audio engineer (and a good one).
RB-
As usual, you got me thinking about different stuff after our conversation about reporting income. It may seem to you that I'm using the idea of sponsorship as a way to avoid reporting income. That's not it at all.
Briefly, I use sponsorship as a way to separate the reward for creating music from the structure of selling things in units. I've given a lot of thought to this and spent a lot of time researching the issue- I believe that while unit sales of music (either for actual physical CDs, as mechanicals for records or as royalties for airplay) was once a net positive for musicians and other music industry workers, it is now a fool's game.
What I'm trying to make clear with sponsorships is that people who contribute to the studio are not buying units of anything- they are not receiving a measurable quantity of "stuff" for their money. What they are doing is providing the means for the studio to keep making music.
...You made me think of a new way of explaining it. It's like working for a salary.
Think about your job. There really isn't an easy way to quantify your contribution to the success of the company. While it's obvious that you add value to the place, you aren't loading speakers in boxes all day. You aren't doing anything that can rightly be called "production" work, and you aren't really even exchanging hours of your life directly for dollars. Yet for some reason they pay you to come in and do whatever it is you do.
I want making music to function the same way. With a fairly small number of people acting as "employers", I could actually make a living doing whatever it is I do in the studio- without charging a penny for product. My sponsors won't know or care exactly what it is I do, or how or when I do it- all they have to agree to is that I provide them with something of value in the end.
I consider what I'm doing here at Steam Powered to be revolutionary in terms of music production. The rewards for making music have been driven by unit sales for such a long time that it's difficult to imagine the value in making any music that does not automatically appeal to millions of people. But that's exactly my point- there's very good music to be made that does not automatically appeal to millions of people. How should that music be supported? The current system fails.
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May 20, 2008
I just found some old film negatives I'd misplaced for a while. Here's a shot of
the Cat Ranch studio in Paradise, PA, right around the time the first Dark 30
tape was recorded. To the left is a borrowed 4-track tape machine. It was like
a dream come true. In the middle there is the Peavey mixer that did
double duty as a live board for whatever band I happened to be in at the time. Nice
road case, isn't it? And
there to the right is the stereo reel to reel that served as the "bounce" machine and
also the one I used to run my loops. Actual tape loops, kiddies- I know, it's hard to
believe that anyone could be that old.
Let's run one of those loops as the featured song- Science Loop, with a rhythm track lifted
from the outro of She Blinded Me With Science. Hey, I couldn't afford a Linn Drum!
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May 19, 2008
Be on the lookout for Robert Bobby at the Tin Angel on May 24. He's playing
for a Bob Dylan birthday bash.
Meanwhile, the re-mixing continues on the Old Timer's CD. I've got all the songs
together on one disk now, and can listen from one to the next for continuity in things
like vocal levels and instrument tone. It's 12 songs. It's starting to sound like
a record.
And another sponsor rings our bell- thanks Steve (or Kelly)!
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May 17, 2008
This is too good not to share- a live recording of the band Little Feat
from 1974. The quality of the recording is excellent, and the band is at their
very best. At the Internet Archive.
(thanx, trademark Dave)
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May 15, 2008
Yes. The mix by pairs method I was going off about worked well for another
OTLF song last night, Two Lovers. Mark Rast joined in on banjo for this one.
You may remember Mark from the Stable Jam recordings a couple of years back,
jamming with the Honeycut Brothers. How about we make Nine Pound Hammer
from that session our featured song?
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May 14, 2008
Moving ahead with the OTLF project. Last night I mixed one called The End
of All Things. Having done two mixes from this session already, I thought I
would be able to simply copy my settings into the this one and that it would work
easily. Well, not. At first I had a real train wreck of a mix. Really, it bordered on
noise. I had to scratch the settings that worked on the last one and start over.
I learned a new trick for a live room mix like this. You can solo two instruments at a time and get them sounding
good together- then solo the first instrument with a third and "tune in" that one.
After they all sound good one-on-one with the "master" instrument then they must be
checked in the stereo mix. This saved a lot of tail-chasing. For the "master" instrument,
I picked the one that was giving me the most trouble, not the best sounding one. Each
step through the process made the master instrument sound a little better in the mix.
It was a long way to get there. At the end I wasn't sure I had accomplished
anything worthwhile, but listening back today it sounds like it worked out well. I will
probably go back to some mixes I've already completed and re-do them using this method.
-
We get visits from all over- here are the countries of origin from the past 15...
U.S.A.
Brazil
France
U.S.A.
U.S.A.
Norway
Canada
U.S.A.
Netherlands
Canada
U.S.A.
U.S.A.
U.S.A.
Germany
Brazil
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May 12, 2008
The Importance of Mixing in Ernest
I have been working for about a week on the mix for The Window. Sometimes
I accept a mix without being very critical
about it. I hear something in it that I like and that's where I leave it.
But there is some sort of acceptable range of musical sounds that must be respected. It's
the long tradition of "what things sound like" that rules. So a
bass guitar must sound a certain way, and the relative levels of instruments must fit into
certain patterns.
I'm often guilty of focusing on one aspect of a recording and ignoring the rest.
But I'm working hard this time to get The Window right. Tweaking the mix. I decide
on a small change, and I make that
change and I remix and burn a CD and I listen back. And it changes other things. This morning I'm
fairly well satisfied with what I've got. We'll see how it holds up.
Today, a new featured song- Love Drunk by Robert Bobby.
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May 08, 2008
Trent and the crew from NIN (no backwards "N" on my keyboard, sorry) are giving away their latest record,
the slip. I'm listening to it now, and it's
a full Hollywood production allright. So that's a rather large investment, even
considering the fact that Trent can work light if he wants to. There's a lot of time spent here.
Why would he give this record away? Promotion. He's in a position now where the songs
pay for themselves as advertising for his brand. People will come to his shows, visit
his website, and even buy the record when it comes out later this year. As I'm learning, it
isn't just writing or playing or recording that are hard- promotion is hard.
Promotion is why we give songs away here. I think of every song file as a little salesman out there
working for us. But unlike NIN we don't have a brand that
millions of people recognize. Steam Powered Studio doesn't tour, and we don't
even have product to sell (well, we do, but we'll probably never support the studio by selling
mousepads with a picture of a flying steamroller on them).
It's all about the sponsors!
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May 05, 2008
Happy birthday, Peyton!
Here's a short sample of something we recorded yesterday. Monica de Vitry singing her song
Window.
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May 04, 2008
We had fun today. We recorded 6 more songs.
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May 03, 2008
New month, new sponsor! Thanks, Richard.
There will be another Old Time Liberation Front session tomorrow.
Tonight I was working on something I call What Was the Point of Leaving? which
isn't much more than that line so far. Oh, but a nice kick drum...
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