Archive for the 'Music' Category
So, I am already behind on my journaling for the month of June. But, I have a really good excuse… Or so I think.
Friday evening, my brother-in-law and cousin-in-law (can’t I just claim them as brother and cousin?!) came over for the weekend. We hung out playing World of Warcraft (WoW), listening to music, and we spent quite a bit of time making a beat for an upcoming song. We went to bed around 4:30AM Saturday morning.
Saturday morning, Caleb, a.k.a. Nfinight (damn, he was young in that photo), a.k.a. brother-in-law, and I started a new character on WoW. We both were running a Dwarf Hunter for the Alliance. Caleb started his character before me but we had a great time doing some quests, grinding, training animals to be our pets, and exploring.
Saturday afternoon, I had a birthday party to attend for my niece, Cami. I also had a work function to attend. I got home from both around 7:00PM and played some more WoW with Nfinight. A little while later, Paul, a.k.a. P.Q., Big Shteve, and Josh, a.k.a. Piano Man, came over and we did some recording on a song we started the day I broke my hand. We may not have made a lot of progress Saturday evening, but we had a great time hanging out. Oh, and I also became a Human Saltshaker Saturday evening, but that’s a whole different story altogether… Needless to say, we stayed up until around 5:30AM Sunday morning just kicking it.
Sunday… Ah, yes… Sunday. A day for rest and relaxation. I kind of went back to some old school traditions yesterday and didn’t do any kind of work… I mean, it was the Sabbath, right?! I guess it depends on which religion you ask. It could be Saturday or it could be Sunday. Either way, I didn’t do any type of work yesterday. I played WoW all day! From the time that I woke up until the time I went to bed… WoW! Or, WOW I played a lot of WoW!
So, I did miss a couple of days on my June promise, but here is a recap that should make up for the two days I missed… I will try to come up with enough content, technology, gaming, or related to me personally, to get 31 posts this month. I promise! Who cares you ask?! ME!!! And that, kids, should be all that matters.
Until next time…
Chris and Josh came over tonight (yesterday night/this morning) and we laid down another track for the upcoming Cocoa Crusty album/EP. I got my monitors in and, man, do they sound great! I hear music in a whole new light now. We all listened to some tunes in my iTunes library, some off of Chris’ iPod, and then Josh and I laid down an audio track. Let me tell you, everything sounded great through these Mackie HR824’s.
If you’re into the whole “prosumer” recording scene or just want some great sounding speakers for your PC/Stereo/TV, I highly recommend these Mackie’s. They really kick! The sound quality is unbelievable. You’ll be amazed at parts of your music that you have never heard before when these monitors bring everything to light. The imaging is great. The sound separation is great. Simply unbelievable…
Until next time…
Josh and I have been in “the studio” some more since my last “I Wanna Be a Rapper” post and have about 6 or 7 tracks laid down now. Josh has really been coming through for me on the album. We get together about once a week and lay down 2 tracks each visit assuming everything goes as planned and we don’t get off track… too much.
I’ve also made some additions to “the studio” since my last post. I purchased a Gateway FPD2485W 24-inch LCD Display. This makes working with tracks a lot easier as I can have them spread over 24 diagonal inches instead of 13.3. The Gateway display is nice. Obviously, it isn’t an Apple Cinema Display, but then again, what is?!
I also purchased some monitors for “the studio” so I can get my listen on. I purchased the Mackie HR824 High Resolution Studio Monitors. They should be here tomorrow, hopefully. Maybe then I can attempt to get a decent mix on the tracks we have been laying down. Currently, I have been using some JBL 2.1 speakers, which look really cool but don’t work so well with getting a good mix within GarageBand.
I’ve been dumping my tunes to my iPod and listening to them in the car, at work, and when I go to bed. Tonight, I figured it was about time that my “Summer 2007 EP” album/playlist had some album artwork. So, I made a cute little image to use for my album/playlist and now my music has album artwork just like every other track/album on my iPod. Here’s the 300×300 pixel image I used for my album/playlist.
I make a good cel-shaded character, don’t I?! Since I just through that cel-shading thing out there, here’s some more information on cel-shading from Wikipedia. I know, I know… that’s really off-topic for this post but I wanted all 1.63 (Yeah, my popularity is fading… Imagine that!) readers out there to know what I’m talking about.
Until next time…
Last night, Josh and I did some recording and Chris showed up to witness it all. We laid down 2 more audio tracks for two more rap tunes last night and I feel like we made a lot of progress as well as had a great time.
We started recording about 10:20PMP or so last night and might have had a few adult beverages to loosen up a little bit. I can’t wait to arrange the stuff Josh laid down and get some lyrics on top of it. Here are some photos from last night’s session:
I have had my 30 GB Video iPod for a while and have been using my MacBook since late 2006. I bought my iPod at WalMart and it came formatted for a Windows machine. This was fine and all when I used a Windows machine and FreeBSD because I could read and write to the iPod with no problems as well as update the iPod via my Windows PC (yes, I have one… I’m sorry…). However, since I have been using my MacBook full time I haven’t been able to update my iPod’s software from 1.2 to 1.2.1 because it was formatted for Windows, I was too lazy to boot up my Windows machine, and I was honestly a little afraid to click on the “Restore” button within iTunes for fear of hosing my iPod.
Today, while working at a remote disaster recovery location, I had a few minutes to spare while a server booted up and recognized some new tape drives to press that “Restore” button within iTunes. I was scared, yes, but I did it. I clicked it! As soon as I did, iTunes told me that all of my music would be deleted from the iPod and the iPod would be returned to the factory settings. I accepted this and told iTunes to continue with the restore. As it was wiping my iPod it also upgraded my iPod to the latest version of the iPod software, version 1.2.1, and obviously, formatted the iPod with a Macintosh file system.
Now, as software updates are released for the iPod I don’t have to feel left behind due to laziness and fear any longer. I always use my Mac and can just update it inside iTunes at the click of a button. I’m glad I “made the switch” to Macintosh, both in my normal computing environment (i.e. my laptop) and in my iPod file system.
Until next time…
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