Category — Music

Well I think I finally have reasonable space, workflow and ergonomics setup in my house in Austin, Tx.  I am using an upstairs “bonus room” as my studio.  Someday we’ll enclose it with french doors I hope, but until then it seems to work just fine.

I’ve got a Mac Pro, MacBook and a Mac Mini in here, along with most of my other stuido gear and microphones.  I am still mixing on the Event monitors with help from KRKs as needed.

Not using VMWare as much anymore – my workflow has pretty much moved to Logic 9 and ProTools 8+.   I do Boot Camp my Mac (which now has 16Gb of memory and  6 TB of internal disk) for Windows stuff – mostly games to be honest.  Which means I mostly never boot to Windows.

This room will eventually get hard wood floors and new fixtures…someday!

I originally wrote this in first person for Parker to sing, but she’s not quite up to this level of verbalization.  So she makes a cameo, and I do the tune in third person.

True.

What’s My Name Again (remix)?.mp3

Parker likes to freestyle in the studio.  “Yeah baby” and “Put your hands in the air like you just don’t care!” are some favorite quips of hers.  SHE’S FIVE!

I guess it doesn’t help that her favorite song is “Insane In The Membrane” by Cypress Hill.  Daddy’s fault.

Anywho, here’s a “chill out” (listen on headphones, repetitive themes that sloooooow yooooou doooooown) tune I whipped up from some of her freestyle riffs in my studio.  It’s repetitive yes, but hey, I had little to work with

Get a glass of wine and put on the headphones and chill out for three and half minutes.  Not bad for a five year old.

Spring.mp3

A friend asked for a copy of this a few days ago…didn’t realize I hadn’t put it online.  Recorded somewhere around 1996, just a simple demo I did.

Cigarette Away.mp3

Four stars.  Several tunes off this record are radio-ready and have hooks like you won’t believe.  The band’s penchant for excellent melodic harmonies along with sparse intros followed by lush, building crescendos is nothing short of awesome.  Check ‘em out.

So I wrote a little chord progression for a song, and my boys Ben Smith and Matt Parmenter decided to make it happen one night.  They just slapped some stuff on top of my riff and this is the result.

I laughed my ass off when I heard this.  No, it’s not PC.  So what?  It was pretty funny considering all they had was the piano track.  I am not sure, but that may be me playing the drums..

Enjoy “Shake for Me” ’cause I know I did.

Shake For Me.mp3

I met Ben Smith and Matt Parmenter, two dudes from out of state that now live in Austin, when  Matt purchased my two Vocal Booth sound isolation booths last month (sorry about the missing parts guys!).  I just didn’t have room for them anywhere.

Now – I am starting to work on music with these guys and I got to tell you it’s a blast.  Both are very talented musicians in their own right, and I’ve been lucky enough to get to remix some of their stuff.

Matt plays bass in a great Austin banned called Quiet Company – they also have a myspace page.

Matt and Ben both also play with James Kinney, a local Austin musician.  I am going to see them at Speakeasy on April 30th, time permitting.

This song is fully realized on Ben’s myspace page, but here’s the acoustic version I whipped up last week.  Just Ben and his guitar.  His vocals and songwriting talent really shine on  this one.

missed-connection-acoustic-vocal-2

A couple more artifacts from last weekend.  Admittedly, we rushed these so the production value could be better, and we had a couple of noisy spots that couldn’t be helped.  But here they are for your listening pleasure.

Right On Time.mp3

Always.mp3

Justin and I recorded this tune of his at my house last weekend.  I added a little mixin’…

Pretty soon he should have his demo tracks ready to go.  More to come…

I Turned Out For You.mp3

Justin Strackany  (shown here) came over last night to see if we could work together (which we do in real life) on recording some demo tracks for his approaching foray into “playing out” again for the first time in years.  The result, “Glen Tipton” is a catchy, Nick Drake-ish tune that I find myself listening to multiple times.  We did it in about two takes (way to go Justin) and there will be more Justin to follow.  If you’re wondering who “K K Venton” is (I certainly was), I believe Justin really meant K K Downing, one of the guitar players for Judas Priest.  But the song doesn’t flow as well with that lyric, so we kept the former.

Oh, and yeah , we celebrated with four Cuban cigars, three bottles of wine, and one broken Waterford Lisemore large goblet.  Guess who broke it?  I’ll never tell…

Tech specs on the recording:

• Justin’s Yamaha guitar
• Justin’s voice
• Apogee Duet FW audio interface
• Shure KSM32 on guitar
• Rode NTK tube mic on vocals
• Recorded into Logic Pro 8

Glen Tipton.mp3