Without music, life would be an error.
Friedrich Nietzsche

i think this my second official music post, but it’s been so long that it feels like my first.

my first musical post was a cover of The Decemberists’ song Down by the Water, accompanied by my beautiful wife. that also happened to be my first post of the create365 project. we put the song together in Garageband; my first real experience with the program, but i really dug the interface and, for all the problems we had, those problems were mine, and not the software’s.

lo and behold, there is a version of Garageband for the iPad, as well. it’s certainly trimmed down but, at first glance, it looked like it was still functional for creating a song on the tablet. so, tonight, i gave it a shot. i took advantage of some of the “smart” instruments that are included and, after picking a key (E-minor), i played some simple chord progressions. i added additional instruments, trimmed, and pushed it to iTunes.

all told, this took about 30 minutes. it has an acoustic guitar, piano, and drum track.it was actually pretty simple to put together, and i’m excited to see what else it can do.

enjoy.

1_26 in E-minor

i found a wonderful new podcast this week from the Creative Screenwriting Magazine. the first podcast that i listened to happened to be the 2011 Oscar Screenwriting Nominees Q&A. what an amazing thing to be able to have so many Oscar-nominated writers sitting on a panel answering questions. it’s actually more impressive because it took place hours after the Super Bowl. the questions were well structured (something that is consistent with the other podcasts i have since listened to from CSM, a definite credit to the host), and i was fascinated by many of the answers from the writers…i’ve already listened to the panel again, and i’ll listen it it again in the future, i’m certain.

without getting too wordy tonight, because i certainly could with all of the inspiration and information in that one podcast, i wanted to write about something that i picked up on from the writers of Winter’s Bone, Anne Rosellini. when asked about having their budget constraint affected their writing and how they dealt with it, Anne responded by saying that her co-writer and director Debra Granik reminded her to “embrace [their] limitations, and let the budget inform the script.” she gave a number of examples of the creative ways they overcame the obstacles that the reduced budget presented to them and, in the end, their creativity in both the screenwriting and in the execution of the film was rewarded with an Oscar nomination.

i really like the sentiment. it’s not new, of course…it’s probably as old as creation itself. say, i don’t have a knife but i really want to eat that wooly mammoth, i’d better think of something if i want to eat. last year, it was a common theme from the photography voiceboxes…”it’s not about the gear.” of course, it was said by established photographers with tons of expensive gear and loads of loyals followers that generally reserve any negative comments, and i think that makes the statement lose some of its luster. “it’s easy for you to say that all it takes is an iPhone and a dream when you go back to your $5000 DSLR.”

but i think the Winter’s Bone examples demonstrate that it’s less about what you don’t have as it is about understanding what you do have and what you can do with it to tell the story.  creatives find a way to tell a story, even with imposed constraints. stop saying “i didn’t get that shot because i didn’t have XYZ lens” and start saying “since i didn’t have XYZ lens, in order to get the shot i had to improvise ABC.”

every project has constraints, and the creative problem solving aspect is often the most important talent you can bring to the table. if you realize that, and if you’re truly creative in solving problems and focusing on getting the story told, the end result of those efforts is often a truer representation of the story. and sometimes, well, sometimes your efforts get acknowledged.

here we go on a new adventure, the creative365! i’ll define the rules in a subsequent post…it’s late and i’m headed to bed! but for my first creative endeavor, the mrs. and i recorded a cover of the decemberists “down by the water” song from their latest album, “the king is dead.”

tools used: garageband, a guitar, mic, firebox.

this was the best of the takes we did in the time we had. lessons learned include finding a different location with less echo than our canyon of a living room. making sure junior is occupied to minimize distractions. and making sure the mic is turned on on the camera so we can more easily sync the audio (hence no video track here, just the audio).

i’ve (obviously) had no vocal training, but i’m married to someone who teaches that sort of thing, so we’re hoping this will all get better as we do it more, but for a first attempt at anything like this, i’m okay with the results. and it was a lot of fun singing with my wife.

so for #1 of 365, here we go…

Down by the Water Cover

update:

i wanted to come back in and add a little more to this post; namely, some of the lessons learned.

first, there is an interesting article on the psychology today blog on the science of success. in it, the writer states:

Start any new project by saying  ”I’m not going to be good at this right away, I’m going to make mistakes, and that’s okay.”

that’s obviously the case here. the result is far from perfect, but my goal is to learn and get better.

next, singing with my wife is one of the coolest things ever. she’s very patient with working with someone who has (obviously) never had any lessons in this sort of thing, and was very helpful in getting me this far.

in the room for improvement category (ha, a pun), the room we were in was not right for a number of reasons…primarily the echo from the large empty space and high, vaulted ceilings. if you listen, you can also hear other sounds in the background (junior and a xylophone), so a location with less outside noise would also have been preferable.

on the technical side, i started off the morning recording separate tracks for the guitar, my audio, and the wife’s audio. but we ran short on time so we just did one combined recording. that meant we had to have the mic a little further back to get the three components, which introduced more echo from the room.

i was also recording video to go along with the audio, but the auto-shutof engaged on the shotgun mic attached to the camera, so we had no reference audio track on the video, so i decided to scrap it since synching the audio and video manually would have been too challenging to finish in the time we had. (adding “check audio on camera” to the pre-recording checklist for next time).

overall, it was a fun project and a good learning experience for the start of the new 365 project. more to come!

in preparation for a few music projects that i have lined up for this year, i pulled out the recording equipment from the basement. i haven’t used the gear in over a year, and that was on my old windows machine, so i wanted to make sure the hardware was Mac-friendly and that it would work with my current recording software. last night, i took the gear for a spin.

the gear

• Behringer C-1 Studio Condenser Microphone
• PreSonus FireBox 6X8 Firewire Recording Interface
• MacBook Pro
• GarageBand
• Adobe SoundBooth

my biggest concern was the FireBox. it’s a few years old, and i wasn’t really sure it would work on the Mac–i only had a few months experience with it, as it was. however, a quick check of the presonus website pointed me to a software bundle that included the mixer and control software, along with a firmware upgrade for the box itself. the firmware updated without incident, and i installed the Mixer and Control tools by dragging them in to the Applications folder. the FireBox itself has it’s own power adapter (which i found after searching ever storage box in the basement), so that was plugged in, along with a firewire cable to the laptop and the microphone using an XLR cable. at this point, everything was connected, and it was time to pull up GarageBand.

with GarageBand open, the first step was to change the audio input which, by default, is set to the built-in mic on the laptop. in the GarageBand menu, select Preferences, and go to the Audio/MIDI tab.

with everything properly connected and powered, i had a new option in the Audio Input drop down for the FireBox. once i selected it, i was prompted to confirm that i wanted to change my audio driver, which i confirmed.

a few seconds later, and the Audio Input was changed to the FireBox. i left the Optimize setting for minimizing delay when playing instruments live since i’ll likely be recording tracks one at a time and want to make sure i reduce latency as much as possible.

with the input changed, i created a new song. before i recorded anything, i noticed that on the bottom right of the screen, the Input Source had a number of options in the drop down list. i left it selected on Stereo 1/2, although since i’m just using the one mic, i should set it to Mono 1 (confirmed here).

after that, it was just a matter of hitting the record button and speaking in to the microphone. i did wind up going in to FireBox Control and enabling the +12dB gain option to up the signal a little bit going in to GarageBand. i remember having to do that on my old system, as well.

i’ll do some reading on the FireBox Mixer, too, although it’s interface is a bit more complicated.  who knows, i may not need it at all, but that’s the point of the exercise!

finally, junior and i did some recording playing with the different options. at one point, he repeated my “test, test” which was both hilarious and amazing. i did manage to capture a “dada”, though, right before he tried to eat the microphone, which i include for your listening pleasure.

test, test, dada, test test