vocal tracking is hard

i've been trying to work on more tunes with vocal tracks, as vocals seem to be pretty much the hardest kind of "instrument" to record. then there's also the additional fact that while i don't hate the sound of my own voice, i definitely feel uncomfortable listening to it. this is something i need to get over, and i guess there's only one way to do it.

I got a lot of help on this matter from the TweakHeadz site. There's all kinds of good stuff on that site.

anyways, this tune is another one larry hovish and i collaborated on. we kinda were going for an alt-rock kind of feel, which i believe we suceeded in. furthermore, my solo in this tune has a nice crappy-neil-young quality to it. okay, that was not intentional, i was just sick of protools, and i didn't feel like doing it over again.

• Ghost Train

Lyrics are on the next page.

mastering issues...

it's funny...i read an article last night about how people new to mastering tend to over-do the bass end when mastering, typically putting too much boost on the super-low frequencies, and not the low frequencies that our ears hear the most of.

well, anyone who's downloaded a copy of Atmospheres, be careful listening to it at higher volumes, especially if you have any bass bost on already. i nearly blew out the speakers in my car when i first tried to listen to it. ;-)

anyways, i hope to have a newly mastered version of it up in a day or two...

UPDATE: man, i never did that, did i? oh well...

some updates...

So, as it's been awhile since I've updated, I have lots of new developments. I've been fortunate to find some time to tinker with IS, and there's lots of cool stuff coming along.

I've also removed the CVS directory from sourceforge, as I wasn't using it, since I prefer to use my own repository for now. Once I get to a releasable 1.0 candidate, I may mirror my repository to sf, but for now you can access the bubblehouse web-repository using the links to the left. I will eventually open up pserver access through my firewall, but until i get some more interest in this I'm not going to bother.

Oh, and I've also started adding some unit-testing, using python's unittest modules. I'm quickly becoming a believer in unit-testing, since I found a slew of bugs in the parser and registry (the only two tests i've made yet). I will need to make a unit-test for the entity.py behemoth, but i'm probably going to hold off until I implement ACLs for permissions instead of the "rwx" business, which will probably happen in the near future.

You can read the rest of this entry for more details, but the improvements/changes include:

• Licensing - now under the GPL
  
• Parser - all new parser engine
  
• Verbs - enhanced developer functionality
  
• Plugins - support for new "core" packages
  
• Observations - dynamic observations engine for different clients
  
• Security - ideas on a secure environment for verb authors
  
• Build System - building and installation of client and server packages
  

a confession...

sometimes i go back and change dates of blog entries to make it look like i update my site more frequently than i do. the last three entries were all written on the same day.

<sigh>...that feels better...

rocking junk

So I've finally gotten a ProTools setup, after nearly two years of saying i was going to do it. My primary reason for doing so is that I'm applying to Purchase for the third time, and I needed to be able to put in some serious time behind the mike (or in my case, amp-modelling software pre-amp).

I had all these grand plans of getting this serious system, originally a Digi 002, or a motu 896HD, but although my new job affords me some excess of cash (at least, compared to the days of unemployment benefits), i still wasn't going to be able to get something like that in time for the auditions. I settled on the mbox, which only has two inputs, but they're pretty high-quality, and since i overdub everything anyways, it's working out.

I've also been using some royalty-free samples I got my hands around, and it's made my life much easier in the drum-sound department. This has, however, lent a distinct electronic/industrial flavor to some of my tunes.

1. Atmospheres (Christensen)
2. sample (Christensen)
3. light (Christensen)