Garth here—

This week could have been more productive...but Metal Gear Solid 4 came out.

We did do some collaborative work on lyrics. Shane commented that this has been his most collaborative work experience with music that he's ever enjoyed. I have to agree as well. In the past, the songs were primarily written with only one other band member, generally the bassist for me. Lead guitarists generally usually come up with a riff or idea and then I generally come up with a chord structure for the chorus, the lyrics, and finally the bridge. Occasionally, the bridge fluctuates behind the lyrics, but rarely first.

Now that I'm playing drums as well as rhythm guitar (my first love), and working with our sound/bass/symphonic maker-man, Jason, and our other rhythm worker, also moonlighting on rhythm guitar and drums, Shane, I'm finding that work on the songs is not only easier but much more creative. Three minds are better than 2, or one...when I'm by myself...I play video games—a lot—not very productive. Concerning production, I'm hoping, fingers crossed on this one, to get at least one track, with or without lyrics, up by Sunday the next, when I normally post my blogs (maybe this Sunday...).

I posted some pictures of a jam session...I said I was going to do that 2 blogs ago...mmm procrastination... These pictures were taken by Travis who owns and operates Tardis Photography. If you need some pictures taken, give this guy a call. Check his myspace page...see friends.

Have a good week.

It's Garth--
Thursday was extremely productive.  We've had scheduling conflicts since Sun/Mon and haven't had the opportunity to really jam together until Thursday.  That's not to say that this week has been unproductive as a whole.
Jason and I/Shane and I have spent quite a bit of time together just tooling around and coming up with new riffs, inventions, and/or movements all week.  Mostly as power sessions...20-30 minutes here and there.  If we weren't jamming, then we were working on the kinks of rehearsal:  sound dynamics (ie. your playing too loud for him and not loud enough for me), feedback, positioning of equipment, and the management of various consumables--water, beer, picks, drumsticks, cords, and batteries.  Thankfully the days of recording on tape are far behind us (not saying anything bad about the sound quality--occasionally I miss my Tascam 424 Portastudio 4 track.
     These little (some not so little) rehearsal kinks are things that every band that I've been in has had to deal with at some point--and none of them can really be solved in the same way.  Sound dynamics and/or feedback problems are created the moment that you bring a musical instrument into a room, and I've never had the same band practice or record out of the same space.  With Rose Tint, my first band experience,--not an official member...."more like enthusiast director"--we practiced out of a garage, recorded guitar and vocals out of a tiny sheetrocked brick house--one or two tracks at a time (Cake Boy).  Drums were always an afterthought and usually recorded onstage at Satcha Boogie, or in a Church Basement prior to gigs.  The Mighty Morphine Power Rangers recorded in my friend's bedroom while his mother and father were at work.  We had 2 sessions and recorded about 23 songs in 2 days.  There were no drums (drum parts were factory premade drum beats on a keyboard), no mixer, and all of the sounds--including guitar, were rooted through a keyboard.  This was a straight up plug and play and see what you get...we sold 3 tapes, and gave away 16.  One kid accused us of "breaking his speakers"...I think we recorded this in '95...not sure why that's important.  After recording with them, I began performing with a drummer named Shane (no relation with Shane).  This was the greatest set-up  for rehearsal/pracice/recording locale on the planet.  The space was in an aluminum building built for one purpose--Shane's father's very own Honky Tonk.  It had a sixty by twenty-four foot stage, an awesome PA system, two sets of drums (one electric), a giant Fender twin speaker (like four foot by six foot) and a dozen mics.  This place was plush.  His father was happy to share with us, but we had to be careful about the music we played.  The minute that we saw a ray of light peer into the place, think "Tell-Tale Heart" scene with the lamp light and the eye, we would instantly change the lyrics or music style...sometimes both.  Never recorded...never had issues--except for the lack of inconviences which actually detracted one of the major elements of a jam band; all that space, all those toys, nothing to play, and nothing to wine about.  It was a total bummer.
    The Veins practiced and never recorded out of a storage unit.  We tried to make that place work.  We did end up making it more comfortable than all the other bands in the storage units though.  We brought in a Window-Unit AC and we'd close the door over it.  We built a  carpeted wall and "window" that could be transported to the door for sound dampening...it ended up serving more purposes...once the wall was up, you were stuck in there...comfortable but more or less trapped--no one could come in and no one could leave without 20 minutes of moving various stuff plus the wall out of the opening.  This made for some very interesting social dynamics...ie cabin band fever.  But the AC was sooo nice.  The Veins may still be together..."I don't know"--Gir (Invader Zim).
    Catnipped is my first time to record in my house.  It's an old Sear's kit home from the 1920's (probably 70% of the houses in Highland are) that has very little insulation and hollow walls.  This is actually a good thing because the hollow space actually dampens the sounds prior to them exiting the house and into the ears of my neighbors.  No complaints as of yet (knock on wood).  The space isn't too small, but it does have it's problems when you add in 4 guitars, two amps, a set of drums, a keyboard, synthesizer, a DAT, and mics (and a few other toys that have lots of number/letter combinations).  After this stuff is actually in the room, and set-up, then we have to deal with the PA speakers and feedback, electrocution, and humorous comments that never end up being recorded:  "could you just move your right butt cheek to the left to stop that feedback from the speakers".
As far as recording goes, we've found a system that allows us to record as much as we like and yet forces us to actually listen to the stuff we recorded. We're using an older model BOSS BR-532 that's allowing us to record on flash memory cards. I say older, because it lacks a USB port. It does have an SD card slot, so we can get the stuff off of it. We aren't using this machine for recording anything other than raw rehearsal time however. It does solve one my biggest problems:

"Dude, what was that riff that you played about an hour ago?"

"You mean this one?"

"No, the one that sounded like that other song, but different...I think..."

"You mean that one about that guy that's end that movie that did that thing?"

"I think so..."

Now with digital recording, and the issue of actually having to delete something we've got this problem more or less solved; no more just grabbing another identical gray tape when gray tape 3 fills up. In the next couple of weeks we'll start recording/producing/editing about one song a day (hopefully).  I'm hoping that by next week we'll have at least 2 songs up...maybe 1, maybe more...we'll see.

Thank you for reading this rather long blog.  Since, I have some of my students reading my blogs I will leave you with a works cited:

"The Nightmare Begins". Invader Zim. Steve Ressel, Rob Hummel, Jhonen Vasquez. Perf. Richard Steven         Horvitz, Rosearik Rikki Simons. Nickelodeon. March 2001.

Cake Boy. Dir. Joe Escalante. Perfs. Warren Fitzgerald, Pamela Gidley, "No Use for a Name". Kung Fu         Films, 2005.