look out, Lou Barlow . . . 24 July 2003 2:21 A.M.
___________________________________________________________________________
Two weekends ago, M. was in the desert having a late birthday party with her friends from back home. The last time I talked to her before she left, she said I should write more songs about her. (I�d written 2 the first time we got together) Then she said I should write a whole album. I said I didn�t know if I could write 12 songs in a weekend, but I�d try. So, she goes off to the desert. My apartment-mate was also gone for a week on a camping trip. He�d recently bought a digital 8-track recorder, which I was dying to try out. So I said, fuck it. I won�t just write an album�s worth of songs, I�ll record it as well. So, I read the instruction manual over lunch on Friday and spent the next four days writing and recording. There was a bit of a learning curve, esp. when it came to getting the songs from the 8-track onto my computer. I spent a lot of time on the web finding different kinds of software. For example, the 8-track saved to a zip disk, but in some weird proprietary form. I had to track down something to convert the files into a form I could use. The company�s web page had such a program, but not for the model I had. It was for the follow-on generation, so I grabbed it, hoping it would be backward compatible. It was, thankfully, and I was able to download some nice mixing software to do mixing and effects as well.
In the end, I only ended up writing four new songs, but I also did two older originals, and one cover of one of M.�s favorite groups. I also used all of DS�s equipment. So, on the songs I did some combination of acoustic guitar, electric guitar, electric bass, lead vocals, backing vocals. It was a challenge doing all the over dubbing, but I got pretty mediocre at it. Plus, I wasn�t aiming for 100% perfection, as I was aiming to get it finished before M. got back from the desert. I already had CD labels for mixes that I make, so I created a label and cover art and put it in a jewel box. I finished all of this on Monday night. I was beat, but super happy. I�d had so much fun playing rock star and studio engineer, although Freddie was pissed that I�d ignored her so much during the weekend. I learned quickly that cat�s are too curious to have in a recording studio, no matter how primitive. At any rate, I was excited to give it to M. and hear what she thought about it. I wasn�t able to get it to her until today as I hadn�t seen her, and ended up mailing it to her. She liked it.
That makes me happy.
___________________________________________________________________________
|
Current Music:
