We had thunder this morning that was HOUSE – SHAKING! (add picture of Sailor Uranus here), complete with urgent weather alert break-in on radio and all that fun. It’s let up a lot now but the rain is still loud enough that I had to move the sound baffles around to MAXIMUM SHIELDING! position. Of course, all that means is this:

I’m sure glad I made these things, particularly on days like this. FOOM FOOM FOOM FOOM FOOM

A newly-time-synched “Thought You Knew” is ready to upload, but I’m holding off until tomorrow morning to do it, because I like to sleep on things. (ETA: New version now uploaded.) Playing the current (as I type this/June version) against the version I just exported side-by-side is a great way to learn the value of a properly timed basis track. I wish I’d really understood this the first time, re-editing this thing was much more work than doing it right the first time. (Of course, I already uploaded the newly re-levelled “Something’s Coming” live track, which was the first thing I went and patched up.

Remaining work: “Let me Help,” I have some ideas about improving the last verse that I want to try. It’s a much simpler song than most of the rest, so I’m not planning on doing a full timing-edit pass, tho’ I’ll take a look at the bass solo in the bridge just to see what might need to be done there. “Shout at the Desert,” some boost on the low organ. I kept going back and forth on how much should be in the mix originally; I made the less-is-more decision and, no, I was wrong – in this case, more is more.

Then it’ll be off to mastering. What do you think of the current track order, anyway?

Next up: Another Trad of the Week! I’m not sure what I’m going to record yet. Something with riotous intent, no doubt. Perhaps something about… rum. Remember, you get these as free downloads for signing up to the mailing list – Clickie! Sign up!

Working on a huge timing-edit pass on Thought You Knew, which never got one the first time, because I didn’t know what I was doing yet. (It was the first track recorded on Dick Tracy Must Die.) All the tracks were timed against an improperly timed master track, and, well, hilarity ensues.

This would be unspeakably easier if I could go longer than eight minutes without the software crashing. No, really, I’ve been measuring it. Eight minutes, die. It hates having this many regions invoked. Hates it.

Despite this, I’ve finished 75% of the track. This is one of those things were people who hear what’s online now, then hear this, will go, “wow, this sounds a lot better,” but won’t know specifically why. A thousand little reasons. That’s why.

As I posted… two weeks ago? all the songs for Dick Tracy Must Die are recorded and levelled. Now it’s time for the whole-album look-over – track order, touchup, any post-major-mixing fixes.

I’ve already posted a new track order on Bandcamp. (Click here to see the new track order.) I think I need a heavy hitter to start the album, and if that happens to be a live track, so be it. What do you think?

Touch-up is a mix of relatively large things (re-recording vocals on “Thought You Knew,” the first song I posted) and very small things (pulling out a couple of weird audience noices in “Something’s Coming,” the most recent track; boosting the level of the low organ a little in “Shout at the Desert”). Mastering… is a dark art I don’t entirely understand, but have kind of a vague grasp upon.

I’m looking at CD release in January, possibly at a certain local music convention. I showed up there a year ago with a quickly-made four-track demo; why not follow that up with the actual album? It has a pleasant symmetry.

Besides, nobody’s going to notice a thing I do in the middle of holidays anyway. XD

Oh, before I forget, you might enjoy this six-part article on the major labels’ propaganda attempts to discredit independent artists. Basically, they’re trying to preserve their gatekeeper role, because at this point, that’s all they’ve got. Shame almost everything they release bombs and their whole industry is set up around that. Oh well! DIE, WARNER BROTHERS, DIE! XD

Illegal, anyway, unless they can get away with “Fair Use” claims in the era of corporate law: this guy on YouTube has gone through Beatles recordings isolating Ringo Starr’s drum tracks and posted several on YouTube. Me, I think this totally qualifies as educational. He’s also isolated a couple of McCartney’s bass lines and some other bits, but the drums are more interesting, at least to me. Check it, before they go away; he’s been doing this for a few months now, but word is starting to get around, and who knows whether Apple Records will put up with this.

…so now I know where readers are coming in from, and I want to give a big shout-out to all my peeps down in Redmond, Oregon, whose Centennial Park Amphitheatre I played last summer! You guys are awesome! o/ Thanks for stopping by! Keep doing it – and tell your friends! XD

I had a great time bopping around your lovely state last time, and I want to play some more down there, and in Eugene and Portland – I have dreams of a late spring/early summer Oregon tour. If you have any venue contacts, please introduce us! Contact information is on the Contact page – click on the “Contact” link up and to the right. Thanks!

I woke up sick yesterday. I’m still sick today, too. But one of the advantages, such as there are any, of being ill is that you lie around and don’t do much – which is the perfect time to rebuild a website!

So http://crimeandtheforcesofevil.com is rebuilt. It’s several pages now rather than the previous single-page WTFery of yore, and I added some extra stuff. I still have more little things to put on it, and I want to fiddle with the menus a bit, but – whaddya think? Did I miss anything important?

Also, if you missed it: new song! A live track. Enjoy:

Track 14 is finished. I went with a live track, the first I’ve posted, of a song that hasn’t been recorded in the studio yet; “Something’s Coming,” Live from the Lyons’ Den. I have Quen at leafdigital to thank for help in extracting out a mostly-separate vocal track for studio processing – thanks, Quen!

There’ll be a studio version of this song on a forthcoming album, but for now, on Dick Tracy Must Die, and you get a bonus live track as Track 14, and a little idea about how I start my shows these days. Enjoy:

We’re close now. Final mastering, final track order, booklet and graphics production; I want to make a couple of small changes to the tracks I recorded first, but not very much. Mastering, separately, is kind of a mystery to me, but I think I understand the idea. I hope I do, anyway. I have someone I want to ask about doing it, on a consulting basis at least, but I probably can’t afford them. We’ll see.

Also, my website is a mess, by which I mean damn, and I need to fix it, by which I mean now. I’ve been reading books but I’m strongly limited on computer keyboard time. If anybody out there has any suggestions for easier ways to do this stuff, and wants to help, or has ideas where I can get help, yell.

I can’t believe all 14 tracks are in the can. It’s crazy! But true! omg o.O

…I even know how the math works. But that’s a long, long way from code, and besides, I know this already exists.

I have a live recording from last Saturday. On the left track, I have vocals + instruments. On the right track, I have just instruments. I want to subtract the instrument-only right track from the left track to get a clean, or at least reasonably clean, vocal track.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, because I’m going to put it back on top of the same instrumental track, I need to level some stuff and get rid of a couple of weird pumping-like artefacts and that’ll work 100x better with the mostly-clean vocals hanging out over there —>. People do the same audio math all the time, removing vocals for sampling, remixes, karaoke, stuff like that.

My digital audio workstation is Ardour running on Ubuntu Studio 8.04. I’d prefer to do this in Ardour, but if I have to install something else, I can. (And I have the Ubuntu Studio audio suite already installed. I also have an OSX box, and can boot the Ubuntu box into XP, if I must, but it’s kind of a pain in the ass to get things across the systems.) Google has not helped me.

Can I do this in Ardour? That would be optimal. I have Audacity running on the same Ubuntu box, tho’ I’ve never used it. I also have Rosegarden and it seems to run, and a bunch of other things I don’t know anything about yet because I haven’t tried them but none of them seem likely to do this. (Drum sequencer, stuff like that.)

If so, how? If not, what do I need?

Thanks in advance…

I’m strongly considering leaving “Getting Away with It” off Dick Tracy Must Die. The album is already almost 44 minutes long, so it’s a decent length now. But much more importantly, I’m starting to think that “Getting Away with It” just isn’t ready. Worse, I’m starting to think it’s not going to be ready very soon. I’m starting to get the outlines of a new, even longer version of the song in my head, one that’s a little less hip-hop and is a little bit slower. I’m not sure. Part of that is… well…

…”Getting Away with It” should be epic. I’m sure of this. In my head, this thing is an opera, a showcase, a sprawling showstopper. It’s technically difficult, it’s already long (about 5m30), it’s got two levels of story going on… frankly, it’s a monster. But right now, it’s not having the impact I think it should, live, and right now, I think people are just plain overwhelmed by the sheer number of words. I’ve been thinking I can fix this when I record the studio version, but now I think it needs more than just the studio treatment.

If the live recording of last Saturday’s show came out decently – I haven’t checked yet – I might include a live cut as a bonus track. Then I’ll do a reworked studio version later. I’m honestly… I was sure for a long time that it was ready. I really was. But the more I work on it, the more I think I was premature. I think that’s why I have such a difficult time with it, still, both live and in studio.

I don’t think I’m cheating the album by doing this. Originally, Dick Tracy Must Die was going to be a 10-track CD, with “Getting Away with It” as the final track. I’ve cut other songs that were originally going to be on this album – most notably, “Life in the Underground” and “The World Falls Down¹.” And I brought forward tracks from the untitled third album². As of now, even without “Getting Away with It,” Dick Tracy is 13 tracks, with one more song than originally planned; with a live version of “Getting Away with It” in its current state as a bonus track, it’d be 14, with the final three tracks being “Stay Away,” “Shout at the Desert,” and “My Boyfriend.” I think that’s a pretty good closing – two hard-driving songs about existential questions, followed by dessert in the form of some comic relief.

…and with all this typing, I think I may have realised that the third album – the second “real” album of vocal/full-band original music – is called Getting Away With It, and that a reworked “Getting Away with It” is the title track. It’s definitely something to give serious consideration.

That kinda works in my head. Anybody out there got any thoughts? Particularly any of you who’ve heard “Getting Away with It”?

1: I put part of “The World Falls Down,” changed a bit, on the ending of “Thought You Knew,” if you want to have an idea about what it sounded like.

2: YES I HAVE THREE ALBUMS PLANNED OUT. The second, Distractions, is a collection of instrumentals and was originally going to have some traditional songs but I may do that as a separate EP. The third one has no title yet but starts with “Something’s Coming” and may have a tracklist of “Sad Muppet,” “Get Out,” “Hate Your Day Job,” “(Sick of) America,” “Roughrider,” “Taking Away,” “Elementals,” “December Storms” (that album’s instrumental, if I can come up with an ending), “What the Hell?” (which really needs a new title), and, if it works out, “Coyote.” It’s actually quite a bit lighter in tone than Dick Tracy Must Die. The fourth one is going to be called Rule the World but I don’t have any tracks written for it yet. Um. Except “Death Fat.” That’ll be on Rule the World. Have I mentioned I write a lot of songs?