question: what do you get when you mix bad, rusty singing with new recording gear?

answer:

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i picked up a few more toys last week with the goal of experimenting with music composition this year. the first is the presonus firebox, which provides a firewire recording interface to the computer. i also bought a behringer condenser microphone , which got good reviews and was in my price range (read: cheap).

my computer is, as the kids say, pretty ghetto, but i had a firewire card in it and setup was very easy. put the CD in first, run the driver installation, it tells you when to plug in the firebox, do it, and let the installation complete. later, i actually downloaded the latest driver and firmware from the presonus website, which i should have done first. the CD that shipped with the device appeared to have an older driver.

once the installation was done, i pulled up m-audio session, which i had as part of my m-audio keystudio bundle and configured it to use the firebox as the input device.

next, i created a new composition in session, added a guitar and vocal track, and set up session to record both at the same time. my mic was in input one of the firebox and my electric guitar (a cheap one) was in input two. i configured the firebox to mix internally and send the mix to the headphones, which i plugged in. i hit record in session, and started playing and it did it’s thing.

i did have to mess with the levels a bunch. first, since neither the mic nor guitar were amped, i had to to turn on the “48V” internal amp. then i adjusted the output nobs on the front of the firebox to boost the mic level a bit and trip the guitar. i also had to adjust the latency in the firebox control panel on my computer, since my computer is, as i said, ghetto.

after that, it was just a matter of playing with session. i copied and pasted sections, added effects, adjusted volume, etc. the one thing i still need to figure out with session is how to get the overall audio output higher; it’s pretty faint with the current settings i have. and with the midi controller i have, i want to add some other instruments, and harmonies, etc. it’s all very exciting, and as soon as my voice instructor/wife gets me up to speed, i’ve got big plans! until then, i’ll likely stick to just instrumentals…

i never really appreciated the grateful dead. i have a few friends and acquaintances that are in to them, but only recently did i really listen to them and appreciate that it is they could do. most of that, for sure, comes from learning the guitar and having a deadhead teacher who can explain the what’s and the why’s of their music and their guitar-work. being the young (in practice, not in age) student of the guitar, music theory,  and composition, i can certainly recognize their gift. i’d like to see any of the more popular bands carry a song for 30 minutes and keep it interesting and moving forward in to the next song. 

one of the songs i’m using to play along with is actually a merle haggard song titled “sing me back home”, redone by the dead. pretty cool stuff.

The warden led a prisoner down the hallway to his doom
I stood up to say good-bye like all the rest 
And I heard him tell the warden just before he reached my cell
‘Let my guitar playing friend do my request.’ (Let him…)

Sing me back home with a song I used to hear
Make my old memories come alive
Take me away and turn back the years
Sing Me Back Home before I die

I recall last Sunday morning a choir from ‘cross the street
Came to sing a few old gospel songs
And I heard him tell the singers ‘There’s a song my mama sang.
Can I hear once before we move along?’

Sing me back home, the song my mama sang
Make my old memories come alive
Take me away and turn back the years
Sing Me Back Home before I die

Sing Me Back Home before I die

i’m a bit too tired and unfocused to write much tonight, and murry just decided to jump on my lap so i can’t see the keyboard. but i wanted to at least put something up.

tonight was the guitar lesson. sean was nice enough to let me put the camera up and snap a few shots. i get annoyed with these shots because i can’t see through the lens. i had the same frustration shooting our engagement shots. i think we got some nice ones, but if there were two of me, i could have one in the picture and the other taking the picture. but then there would be two of me. see? there’s the downside.

before i post the picture, kerri and i had sloppy joes tonignt, and they were so good. if you like that kind of thing, i highly recommend that recipe. of course, the bread makes it worse, but the recipie was low-ish on fat and carbs. woot!

i started my photography notebook today.

i guess i’ve made a lot of progress on the photography front lately. i signed up for the new york institute of photography course and working on my first assignment. in addition to my course work, i wanted to do some work with portraits, so i bought some new (some needed, some not) equipment, including a background stand and a new strobe. i took some pictures for some friends on saturday, which didn’t turn out as good as i hoped. if there is good news out of that, it’s that i know how it could have been improved, and i think that will help keep me motivated to continue to practice and learn. i also took some shots at the CCT production of Grease this weekend, i think i got some nice pictures from that. you can look at them here.

tonight i continued to practice, and set out to take some pictures of my guitar (tomorrow i get my new guitar, yay!) . the first shoot was sloppy on my part. i wanted to see how three variables (shutter speed, aperture, flash power) affected the lighting of the guitar. but the guitar was too close to the background, and i didn’t use a tripod so i introduced a few other variables that i did not intend.

instead of giving up, i went downstairs and tried again. the second shoot had the background further back, the light source (strobe with a shoot through umbrella) was a little higher up, and, very importantly, the camera was on a tripod. so this time, i could actually see the results limited to those three variables.

the results were mostly as expected. i was trying to do the math for those variables to see if i could get consistent (or at least expected) results by changing those variables, and i think i did for the most part. i documented it all in the photography notebook, since i think i’m one of those people that learns better by writing things down (plus i can go back and look at it). it’s also nice to have a plan (i wrote down all the shots i wanted to take before hand, in terms on the variables in question) to follow.

i also learned that picasa automatically “fixes” images by default. i imported them using picasa, which i usually do. i exported them to post to flickr, and noticed that all the pictures looked pretty similar when they shouldn’t have. so shrunk them in photoshop instead and uploaded those images. i’ll need to figure out how to tell picasa to leave my junk alone.

in any case, you can view the guitar shots from the second shoot here. i even included the setup shot for strobist folks. i also put the one i liked best on kettlepot here.

i think that’s it for tonight. i learned today that an old work acquaintance that i haven’t talk to in a bit is moving to texas. i wish her all the luck in finding what she’s looking for.

me, right now, i’m looking to go to bed.

so, i think i made a decision which, for those of you that know me, is so unlike me.

i woke up this morning severely early due to being sick. instead of trying to go back to bed (i couldn’t, even if i wanted to), i pondered. well, i surfed, really. i got an e-mail from one of my best friends about the latest picture i put up on kettlepot. it was really the first picture i’ve put up in awhile, and she said some nice things about it. i also talked to one of my photographer friends this week about my lack of motivation, direction, and all that. she made a good comment that i think, in some regards, applies directly to me. i feel like a lot of my good shots are luck instead of technique or skill. the old saying “i’d rather be lucky than good” does have its merits. sometimes a great shot is about luck; being in the right place at the right time, or timing something that you capture a shot that’s 1 in a million.

i’ve read my share of books, and blogs, and articles. i’ve talked to other photographers, and experimented. but i think what i need are some actual classes. i’ve been looking at some online classes, mostly because of the travel i’ve been doing and my life schedule. i don’t want to have another excuse to not take a class, i guess. my camera is with me at all times, even when i go out east, so i think an online class offers the best opportunity to continue with the photography in spite of life opportunities. my plan has always been that if i take this class, which covers a wide variety of topics and photography types, that i would then (hopefully) pick an area to focus on and take appropriate local courses here to advance my skill. sounds like a solid plan.

the other thing i’ve been struggling with is upgrading my camera, but the one i want, the Nikon D300, is $1,800. my saving grace has been that amazon didn’t have it in stock, which changed today. they do.

the perfect storm? extra money came in this month.

so, here i sit, way too early in the morning. i’ve been saving up for the course, the camera, and a new guitar. i’m trying to rationalize everything in my head, weigh the pros and cons. it’s enough to make my already churning stomach spin out of control. and then i rationalized it.

i think the course should come first. my camera is a decent, solid camera that is fine for what i am doing (or not doing, as the case may be). i can’t really justify spending the money on a new camera when i don’t really use the current one. really, the only push for me to do it would be because the new camera would do way better in lower light situations, which happens to be where i’ve been shooting mostly lately, and that’s the shows for kerri’s school. but the shots i’m taking are fine. i have two fast, low light lenses i can use. and, realistically, if i bought that camera and only used it to take pictures of the shows, i’d be disappointed in myself.

next will come a new guitar, i believe. we’ve been working on note reading and more classical guitar work, so i think it makes sense to get a reasonable classical guitar to help me work towards that. i guess as the things i work on get more complicated, having the classical guitar will make it easier.

the extra funds this month will then help pay for some of the wedding bills that we’re piling up, which will definitely help me sleep better. then, maybe sometime in the spring or summer, i can look at upgrading the camera. by then, i should be deep into the course work (if not done, assuming i get highly motivated) and have a higher technique to luck ratio.

it seems all logical written out. not bad for some early morning decisions.

as always, i’ve been meaning to write for awhile. i’ve had all these (good) ideas that i’ve been wanting to write about but didn’t take notes and now, after a very long day, my head can’t recall what it once thought was the most important thing in the world.  i’ll work backward and see how far i get…

today we took the ski train up to winter park for some mountain fun. it was actually planned for my birthday, and it was a great present. the ski train itself is worth it, but being up there with kerri and two of my best friends makes it even better. it was a good day, though. it was a cold and we were reminded we need to upgrade kerri’s gear, but we made the most of it. my legs felt good, and my friends, who hadn’t been up there in over a year, did great. i brought the camera but didn’t use it; too cold, too overcast, but more on that later.  this paragraph already had a few things that sparked my failing memory.

my birthday. the big 3-4. i guess i’m destined to prefix all my birthdays from now on “the big”. i still don’t do birthdays, but k had the house decorated when i got home from work, which was awesome. we drank some wine, had dinner, and watched hockey. what more could i ask for? she got me a midi controller keyboard, which was way to expensive but that was very in line with what we’ve been doing musically lately. what a weird thing to say…”what we’ve been doing musically”. a couple of guitar lessons and all of a sudden i’m a musician.

speaking of music… the guitar lessons are going very well. we’re switching back to more classical work so i can focus on my note reading. i’m also continuing to read my music theory book, so things are starting to (somewhat) make sense.  a few weeks ago, kerri and i were playing with a keyboard and she was teaching me a few things, then we went for a few nights with me working on my songs (i have 3 “covers” that i play and (try to) sing) and her playing keyboard accompaniment.  music will always fascinate me, i think. it’s such a combination of so many things…theory, math, formulas, patterns, creativity, passion, soul, everything. i’m not nearly as advanced as i need to be to do the things i want to do, but i have some cool tools (including my birthday present) with which to experiment.

i actually took a few pictures yesterday, too. as i said, i took the camera with us on the train today, which was big for me. i didn’t use it, but it was there. yesterday we went with some friends to an acquaintance’s photography show, and it inspired me a bit. we got to talk to the photographer, and i actually sounded like i knew what i was talking about, which made me feel pretty good. i put two new pictures on kettlepot, which are the first new pictures i think i put up since i redid the website.

a new family guy is on tonight, so i’m totally distracted.

finito!

tomorrow marks the end of my glorious vacation. today was a good warm-up, though. kerri and i had a nice lunch and went to the denver art museum to see the louvre exhibit before it leaves this weekend. it was my first time since the remodel of the DAM, and it was disappointing. the layout of the exhibit was horrible. it did not flow at all, and the narrow to wide aisles left people bunched up on the narrow ends while the exhibits themselves on the wide end seemed forced. i appreciate what they were trying to do, and the main lobby of the museum is pretty neat, but at least the main exhibit space seems not well thought out.

tonight i also went back to my guitar lessons. my instructor was out of the country the past few weeks, so it was nice to get back to it. my practice the past few weeks was not as focused as it should have been, but i like that i am playing for fun and just to play, too. i think that shows my interest and enjoyment from playing…but i get a little frustrated because i don’t feel like i’m advancing in some of the other areas as much as i would have liked. i’ll get there, i know.

this is going to be a big year, and it’s already the end of the 1st day of it. i’ll be getting married, working on advancing my career, starting up some photography courses, continuing my guitar lessons, writing, health and fitness, and so many other things. the year has barely started and i’m already trying to figure out how to do it all. i’ll add “figure it all out” to my to do list. maybe somewhere near the top.