The Enneagram: Day 39, It's a beauty!

So I've been working on the physical side of producing the CD. Since a CD booklet prints 3 sheets stapled together, I can't print page 1, 2, and 3 one after the other. After trying to mathematically calculate which page prints where, Luke gave me the idea of cutting out sheets of paper, folding them together, and using them as a reference. Duh. Why couldn't I think of that?

Today I got a very important aspect of production solved. The CD sticker. I picked up one of those CD sticker kits at Staples and worked on learning to use it. The kit came with a CD, some sticker sheets, and a tool called the CD stomper which is used to align the sticker onto the CD.

CD SMASH!!!!

The program was a bit difficult. I uploaded a lovely picture of the Enneagram, but it cut off the numbers at the edges, and it wouldn't let me adjust the size of the background to include the numbers. I tried adjusting it in Preview, but Preview wasn't helpful. Man, I really wish Macs had paint. In the end, I went onto my free trial of Adobe Photoshop Elements and extending the white background. The new image fit the CD template perfectly.

It continued to print quite well onto the CD sticker.

And after I used the stomper, I got a CD.

Oh man. It's so beautiful. And it's only a little bit distorted, which I might be able to make a quick fix for. That checks another thing off the list. Now to get the booklet printed and the rest of the CD recorded. I bought "Presentation Paper", which will hopefully be tougher than regular printer paper. It looks like I'll be spending my Sunday in production mode.

Self Produced Albums

On Friday I'm seeing the band Tune-Yards. How wonderful is it that after working on recording my own album, I'm going to see a musician who recorded her first album with a hand recorder and Audacity?

One thing I've discovered in life is that when your interest grows in a subject, the world curves to your interest. The other day, Luke told me I should release my album onto Bandcamp.com and attempt to sell it. I was unsure, because I didn't think it was quite good enough and I'm still quite insecure about my music (strangely enough, because of the singing aspect). Also, I feel that as a musician I'M not good enough. I mean, I've never listened to a Bob Dylan song before in my life. I know nothing.

Putting my music on a website doesn't mean people will buy it. But it does mean that it's there, it's official, I did something, and maybe some people will like it.

Merrill Garbus (the lead singer of Tune-Yards) is one of my idols. Why? There's a bunch of reasons. What caught my attention about her at first is the fact that in her music, she sounds like a guy. In fact, I thought she was a guy at first. When I saw the name "Merrill", I thought maybe it could be one of those unisex names. Even when the info I read about her clearly said she was a girl, I still didn't believe it. So I looked up a video of her live. When I saw a girl singing like that I just thought "Oh my god, she is so cool."

And the more I found out, the more I liked. Previously she was a vocal teacher in Kenya, she wrote a musical, and she works with children in a non-profit organization for music education. She's not super skinny and idealistic like most female musicians. She doesn't give a shit. She's Merrill Garbus.

Probably my favorite song from her self recorded album is "Sunlight". The drum beat is great, and her voice, oh man.

I guess it means I ought to work on my own self-produced album. Before I put anything up on the web, I want to fix rhythm issues, see if the levels are ok, and change the songs I don't really like. I don't know if I'll do that before summer starts, because I want to put quality into it. I've done the first step of working on writing many songs in a short period of time. Now it's time to settle down and focus.

The Enneagram: Day 36, I Hate This Song

You know, you're not going to like everything you do. And today I recorded my Type 5 song. It's sounds like crap. But whatever.

At this point, I've recorded all my songs that need drums, and one song that doesn't need drums. I have 2 songs left to record. At this rate I might be done before the end of the week. Question is, should I go and try to make the recordings better afterwards, or should I just leave it be and take a well deserved break? Most of the recordings I don't want to go back to. There may be some issues, but fixing those issues would take lots of time which I don't have patience for at this moment. Especially for Type 5. I'm done with that.

But hey, what is there to complain about when I finish my project early? I guess I'll just figure out how I'm going to do my booklet, and then maybe I'll do some drawing, or teach myself sign language. Oh, and I also need to figure out how I'm going to present during STAC Live.

I'm wondering if I should do a live performance. I do need to work on live stage presence. At the same time though, I love my Type 9 song, and it's basically my first recording, so I want to present that with a picture slideshow or something. I just need to decide which one I'm doing, because I don't think I can do both (nor would I want to). Decisions decisions.

The Enneagram Day 35

Today, I discovered that playing drums while listening to a metronome with headphones is a great way to keep the tempo. In hindsight, I probably should've done this earlier, but ah well.

The more I use Garageband the more learn. Did you know that you can set the drums as a "groove track" and then have the program automatically edit all of your music parts to fit it? Oh my god it does wonders.

Today I recorded 2 of my big arrangement pieces. I basically have a system now. First drums, then guitar, then bass, then vocals, then whatever else. It's been working pretty effectively. I spent about an hour recording the first song, and the other one I'm still in the middle of, but I enjoy it more so I'm putting more effort into it.

Everyday of recording fills me with new wonders. I put a guitar solo in my Type 1 song which sounds so perfect, and the riffs are coming together quite nicely (although not totally in time). Tomorrow is my last day this weekend to record because I'm seeing Foster the People on Tuesday. My goal is to at least finish all the songs with the drum set. Not much else to say. 8 days left.

The Enneagram: Day 34, CD booklets and other things

For the CD booklet

In the morning, I decided to start working on the booklet for my CD. Better to get a head start, to find out how much work making a booklet would actually be.

After doing some test prints, I discovered that a normal plastic CD case can hold a sheet of paper 4.83 x 4.75 inches in length. A two page sheet (to be folded) is 9.66 x 4.75 inches. After more mathematical equations, figuring out the margins, learning how to use Publisher, I finally got something decent.

After this though, I ran into the issue that regular desktop printers do not print solid colors well. My beautiful album intro was infested with lines!

Eghadd!

So, I experimented with lighter colors. Some came out better than others

Only a vague appearance of lines

Ahhhh!

After lighting most of the backgrounds I began putting lyrics. Here's what one of the pages looks like.

And it fits quite snuggly.

Now in addition to the issues of ink lines, I think I also need to get slightly sturdier paper, because the regular printer paper is practically bending in my hands, and inking both sides of it would probably push it off the edge.

That whole photography idea I had isn't going to happen, due to technical difficulties. Not like I actually had time to do it anyway, but at least I know I wasn't missing out on anything.

I'm trying to decide how many CDs to produce. Each booklet will need 3 sheets of paper which yield 4 faces each. If I make 50 CDs I have to cut 150 pieces of paper, unless I find my mom's cutting board, which would mean that maybe I could lower that number to cutting 70 or 50 pieces of paper. It's not gonna be an easy task.

However I decided to stop working on this project after a while so I wouldn't loose too much recording time.

Recording

Here's my fallback for my recordings. There will be wrong notes. There will be off rhythms. It won't be perfect. But it's going to be done.

Today I recorded Type 3, 4, and 9 with full parts. Type 4 was easy, because it's only me and my accordion. Type 3 was slightly more difficult, because it had guitar, bass, and me slamming the desk as drums. However, Type 9 was the most difficult, because I had to record the drums straight, sync everything up to the drums, and keep all the instruments together while there's an acceleration at the end. Oh, and I'm doing each and every track by itself.

First, I recorded the drums. Upon that I put guitar, then bass, then a few keyboard things. As each piece joined together, the song became more and more full. When I put the vocals on top, I was basically fully accompanying myself. It was awfully strange. But it was amazing. I had my own band. Which was myself.

Although the beat isn't exact and sometimes I played a wrong note in a chord, I'm actually very satisfied with how the recording came out. I was expecting there to be a lot of empty white noise, lightness, and a feeling that there's some part missing. But there wasn't. The whole thing sounded whole, and if I didn't screw the drums up so much, it could've sounded like a real recording. At least, I think so ;)

At this point, I want to record at least Type 2, 5, and 6 while I still have a drum set. I'd rather do all of them, but the Type 9 recording took me about 3 1/2 hours, so I don't want to overshoot myself. Problem is, Type 2 and 5 are the two songs I haven't finished writing yet. So I have to work fast.

The Enneagram: Day 33, Wow

I finally set up all the equipment in my basement in a 360. Standing in the middle of the space, it felt magical.

From the outside

The 360

Wow. Everything is really coming together. I almost don't know what to say.

Tomorrow I'm going to start recording. I don't know how long it's going to take, but all songs will be done. I can assure you that.

It's funny. I never thought that I was ever going to be writing my own music in a million years. I only started getting into rock music last year. I've always felt like a fish out of water; never one to have that cool, calm, and collectiveness. Never one to take initiative. Afraid to be alone. Not quite good enough.

But now I'm making my own CD of 9 songs in a matter of about 40 days. I'm performing at STAC Live and I'm going to hand out my own copies of my music. People are going to listen to me.

All there is to way is wow.

The Enneagram: Day 31

I'm happy (or maybe sad) to say that this was the first time I used all 3 STAC periods to effectively write songs.

My self-consciousness is slowly fading. Now I can hold a guitar, write songs, and feel legitimate. Today, I revised the lyrics for my other songs so that they're fully complete. At this point I have 6 songs totally written. Then, I started writing the last 2 songs I had.

After working for some time on my Type 2 song, I said to myself, let's go for the Type 5. I literally just played a random set of notes. Those notes became my bass progression. I had no inhibitions when writing my song. Lyrics flowed easily. Truth be told, a lot of them don't make sense. I think I'm starting to go for a Beck kind of vibe. He writes a lot of songs where the verses are pure word play without any purpose. My song started with riding on a camel's back and delved into phrases about feudalism.

So far, I think this might be my favorite song.

For the end of the STAC period, I watched Luke work with Scott. One important thing he was telling him was that he had a great verse but it wasn't going anywhere and it was repetitive. I wonder if my songs are like that. I mean, I can't do much about it now, but it's something to consider for the future. I try to vary up my verses. In my songwriting book it talked about musical themes within verses, like AABA form. It really made me think about how I form my melodic lines.

And one last thing. I've been playing around with the bass in my house, and one problem I'm having is that the strings make a metal rubbing sound against the frets, even when I'm not picking very hard. I'm not sure if it has to do with the bass itself or how I adjust the treble, middle and base, or the back wire of the amp, with makes no sense to me whatsoever. Time for me to google how a bass works.