Seems like we've had a lot of 'next week's as of late.

Did you know that if you are currently presenting flu-like symptoms, you are 90% likley to have the 'Swine Flu'?

Did you know that many people 60 and over were already exposed to a similar Swine Flu virus back in the 50s and are now immune?

Did you know that the Seasonal Flu vaccine vaccinates for the seasonal A(H1N1) strain and two other strains - A(H3N2) and 'B'- but not the 2009 H1NI? IOW, a different strain of H1N1 gets vaccinated for every year. This year, there are two - one of them, the 2009 H1N1 (Swine Flu)which is being vaccinted for separately.

Did you know that even though the 2009 H1N1 virus is very contagious, it's not as dangerous/deadly as some of the other seasonal flu strains?

Did you know that the Swine Flu can put back recording The Good Guys another week?

Fortunately, Ori is doing a lot better today, and it looks like we can de-quarantine for next week's session.

Look, Ma - No spellcheck!

-=sf=-

Honestly, this is the closest we've come to arranging an existing song as a band before. Huge improvement on the song. It's great working through these changes and coming up with what might become one of our best recordings to date. If we get a good take, I hope to have a rough mix of this thing up within the next two weeks. Pretty sure I've been promising that for months, but setbacks have occurred. My sincerest of apologies to those checking in here regularly, awaiting new recordings. We hope your wait proves worthwhile.

After adding the new PreSonus FP10, the system became very unstable. I'm in dialog with a support guy from Presonus, who had me strip down the Vista 64 OS and kill all of the unnecessary processes, via a .BAT file. I think I still have some issues with the audio engine freezing.

I also rewired the monitoring portion of the studio, which was frankly really screwed up with a gain stage impedance issue last week. I think I've fixed it, and we should all have a reasonable headphone mix tomorrow. We'll know more in 24 hours.

Guitar-wise, I'm using the Parker Fly Deluxe, switching and blending live between the piezo saddle 'acoustic' (AG Stomp) channel, with pickups A/B-ing between the THD Bi-Valve and the modded Peavey 5150 rig. (If not careful, I'll want this whole rig out for all live performances - and house sound guys will hate me.) It will be interesting to produce this. I presume I'll cut just the acoustic blended with the THD and then overdub the 5150 on a separate track. Likewise, Jay will cut a rhythm track and then dub a lead track over the top. All in all it should be real fat and real smokin', just to get it down becomes five or six guitar tracks. I'm asking Jay to just cut LOOSE at the end of this song, which should be our blazin'est guitar to date.

Really looking forward to getting this song recorded. It's about time somebody heard this, as this song has been in the works for about five years now, and it hasn't ever sounded better. Proof will be in the pudding.

Enjoy this One Moment - -=sf=-

Got the new hardware all patched all in, but haven't fired it up and checked the inputs in Sonar 8. Will get to that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I'm convinced of two things regarding drums: I need a second snare mic on the bottom to ad some bright crispness on the attack (this eighth channel neatly fills up one FP10: 1: Kick (Audix D6); 2: Snare top (Audix D1); 3: Snare bottom (Audix D2); 4: Hi-hat (Shure SM57); 5: Rack tom 1(Audix D2); 6: Rack tom 2(Audix D2); 7: Floor tom(Audix D4); 8: Overhead (Rode NT1 - thank you Bob! We still need to do some tequila.))

That's ONE thing. The other is that I need to lose the rim-mounted mic clips and do it all with boom stands to lose the 'coupling' between mic and rim via the clip. This should really help clean things up even further. The clips will be great for live performance.

Once that's all switched out, will need to reset the drum channels template to compensate for the lack of coupling, to include the snare bottom mic and to check functionality of the second FP10.

What's more is we will start cutting drum tracks as soon as this Wednesday, the night Irene leaves town. Jeff will come over to start tracking Tears In The Rain and I want to have it all set up at that time. So I need another five 5/8" mic clips plus another four boom stands... within the next three days. And I really need a strategy for what else gets tracked. Maybe Never Ends, Careful, Don't Get It and some lite percussion on All You Need Is Love. Depends entirely on what Jeff feels like is happening.

So, no rest for the wicked... especially in 100 degree temperatures. Yes, it's peaked between 108 and 110 degrees here in Portland over the last week. Record breaking temps.

The good news is that we'll have some brand new mixes with Jeff's drums within the next two weeks or so, so be looking for them up here. I'm stoked to get this done. This will move us that much closer to the Finish Line. (Not to be confused with the Swedish Line.)

Speaking of the Finish Line, I just ordered a book on Amazon by Bob Katz, called Mastering Audio, Second Edition: The art and the science, touted as the book on mastering. This is good news, as we're really that close to finishing up our project, and I want to get the mastering done just right. Mastering is a potentially very complex art - the process that occurs after all mixing is complete and includes sequencing of the songs, timing of the spaces between the songs, normalization (making each song at similar levels) final EQ, compression and limiting of the product and getting it ready for production - artwork, credits and all! Wow, Never Ends may actually have an ending in sight, after all.

We've decided to drop Circles from this particular project, as not critical and too much work left to do (altough I really like the guitar and the lyrics). So we've still got Steven Trask's Midnight Radio to record, along with Heed The Call, and a remake of our own (TZ's) Miss You Babe.

Any ideas for final CD artwork? It really is time to get this stuff dialed in. You get the artistic concept right and you get accredited on the new, upcoming (multi-platinum fer sher) One Moment CD! You may even qualify to win a guest appearance with the band on MTV! (Does MTV even have anything to do with music anymore?)

One Moment: Never Ends. What does that CD look like? Let us know!

Peace - -=sf=-

I think Jeff approves of the baseline sounds we’re getting. It’s only going to get better from here.

One of the next challenges is that the PreSonus FP10 has eight inputs, which is pretty much now filled up by drums. This means that until I have a second FP10, I have to record drums without the ability to record other stuff, then un-patch drums and patch in guitars, vocals, etc. - redo levels and so on, back and forth. The real solution, of course, is to buy a second FP10. The only way I can think of to make that ‘okay’ is to part with some other gear - a guitar or something - to pay for a new FP10. It would be quite worth it, in order for us to be able to track rhythm tracks together live. Hell, a hot take would only need vocals re-tracked later. Now I have to figure out what to let go of. The Ovation Deacon? [gasp] The (albeit Epiphone) Les Paul Special? [choke]

We had a good rehearsal tonight, with rewrites working well for The Good Guys and Heed The Call. Good Guys has a whole new vibe and it’s on the right track. Starts off much more subtly and grows slowly into slammin’. This is a much better, more dynamic approach. I confess, I’m thinking a bit of how our good Mr. Grohl might produce this one. “Good writers borrow… Great producers steal.” Heh. I should be so great some day.

Years ago, right after I first wrote this song, I took it into a Teasing Zen rehearsal and got shut down by Bob. “We’re NOT doing a protest song,” he exclaimed. “Not gonna happen”. It was a critical moment in how 'bought in' I was to the band.

This evening, Jay happened to offer the successful status of the recording sessions that Myra Lease was having recently, and “Oh yeah, Bob and Carla are doing a ‘protest song’.” Really? Isn’t that ironic? Guess it's all about how and what one is protesting.

I truly wish them the best in their political endeavors and appreciate the values that drive them. Most of us really want the same things and it’s horribly unfortunate how quickly we polarize to the point of both forgetting how similar we are and ceasing to listen to one another. I aspire (and oft fail) to something better than that.

Meanwhile, I ask that you consider that while The Good Guys can be framed as a ‘protest song‘, it’s really a song about the abovementioned polarity. It’s about the Tao. The Path Between. And love.

I have some training in martial arts and one day stepped into a nearby AiKiDo studio to find out what they were about. A senior student greeted me and offered an explanation of what the program was. Since I wanted to razzle-dazzle him with my martial expertise, I started asking ‘knowledgeable’ questions and made the mistake of referring to one’s ‘Opponent’. Check it: In AiKiDo there is no ‘opponent’. There is only your partner. If they are angry, attacking you, trying to commit harm or death, they are still your partner. AiKiDo’s founder, Morihei Ueshiba, was said to absolutely offer love and compassion to his attacking partner. As his ‘partner’ came in attempting to bludgeon with sists, slice him in half (etc.), he simply skillfully escorted his partner to safer position on the ground on the other side, for his partner’s own protection. There was no enemy, only an act of compassion.

This is the model that I would like to believe that The Good Guys stems from. And it can easily come off as a ‘protest song’. I look forward to hearing the new ‘protest song’ by Myra Lease.

And I look forward to presenting the first published recording of The Good Guys to you in the very near future.

We are working towards new recordings of Heed The Call, The Good Guys, Miss You Babe & Circles. (Note: I don't yet have a page up for Miss You Babe, but it was previously recorded by Teasing Zen, with Carla's beautiful voice. If you want, drop me a line and I'll upload it here.) Yes, there MIGHT even be rough OM recordings appearing online soon, of these songs. You know, the kind of recordings that are bad enough that you can hold it against us after the final CD is released.

Looking forward to picking up a kit of Audix drum mics, soon, and getting Jeff firmly situated into this recording project. Hopefully starting next Thursday's rehearsal.

Really need to get it moving. I hope to get a couple of new mixes of existing recordings up online this weekend, but then there's a lot of other stuff to get done (Normal stuf like mow the lawn, fix the house, work a day job...) so I'm not promising anything.

Thanks very much for your patience as we get it together.

Peace - -=sf=-

The studio now looks like a rummage sale. Well, albeit of really cool rummage. Tomorrow we'll set the gear back up again and come up with a plan. Refine the setlist? Book more shows? Finish our recordings? Get Jeff into the existing recordings? Get philosophical? Plan a clever and inclusive marketing model? Play Aerosmith tunes for hours? (Irene loves it when we do that.) Watch Hedwig? So many choices... And nice to have options.

The show was nice. A beautifully sunny day, not too hot, just right. The crowd was about half Intel, United Way and other charitable orgs while the other half was Portlanders just hangin' in 'The Living Room.'

OM opened with Tears In The Rain and closed with I Wanna Be Sedated, complete with banjo and full vocal choir. In between, Jay nailed Satrianni's Flying In A Blue Dream, Athena sang Only Perfections with us, the Intel Foundation gave away hundreds of thousands of dollars, much free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream was eaten (not, however, by the band!), a very diverse mix of people smiled, Mike Frost ran a smooth front-of-house mix that received many compliments, I pathetically tried to whistle David’s part on Don’t Get It, Another Pair of Hands made its live debut, and my mom and dad showed up. Oh yeah, four generations were there, three of them on stage.

Thanks to all who helped: Aubrey Clark, Jill Eiland, Gordon Lawrence, P.J. Wazkiewicz, David Sloan, Jim Ourada, Georg Mueller, Shannon and Vanessa Nelson, Eleeza Andrus, Athena Frost, Will Hobbs, Gwen Goforth, Liesl Andrico, Julie Thomas, Jeff Boerio, Stephen Eliah, Randy Dodds & John O’Shea. Also to everybody else not listed.

Personally, I had a great time. I failed to find anybody that didn’t… although I’m sure if one were to look hard enough…

So yeah, now time to find direction. What if you had a pretty good band and could do whatever you wanted to with it?

Regarding our first gig together at Pioneer Square, Irene summed it up best: “Aren’t we supposed to do a bunch of crappy bar gigs for a couple of years, first?” Jeff, our new drummer, hinted that he was “in” after that first show. Did we just set the bar too high? Now do we go play the crappy bar gigs?

I’d really like to contribute something to this strange planet. I’m not sure that having some relatively okay recordings and songs counts much for giving something back to the world. I wonder what does.

I’m a medically trained First Responder. Does that count? Is that somehow better than being a musician? Does that redeem my hedonistic artsy ways?

Dang, I love this music thing. It’s in my chest. In my gut. For better or for worse.

I need to create a blog category for “Ongoing Identity Crisis”

So Irene enthusiastically requested pad and pen and sat down on the stairs leading up out of the basement studio and began writing while Bob ran me through some chords in A-minor. If I recall correctly (and I seldom do) Irene penned the rest of that song right then and there. "I saw your face reflected in the mirrors of your shades... and then you looked away." Irene was not only pulling from Blade Runner, but was (I believe) going back to William Gibson's original Neuromancer book and referring to the original Molly character. Molly was the first. I believe before Blade Runner. Before Terminator. Before BSG. 'Cyberspace' originated in Neuromancer. And look, you're there right now.

Bob had no idea how much Irene loved the genre, the story and the characters. Blade Runner was, in fact, an icon for ‘Best Movies’ for Irene and I.

So TZ worked up the song with Carla singing her own melody of Bob‘s original idea and Irene‘s lyrics, with some of my guitar riffs, and used it as our show opener for a couple of years or more. We put together some very cool call and response backup vocals for Bob and myself.

It was an ideal show opener. I even put together a 20-minute musical pre-show intro that ‘led’ the club we were playing into the show with a deliberate, dramatic transition straight into Tears. It was a fairly effective way of taking a room… if not perhaps a bit pretentious. (Hey, this is SHOW business, people!)

Later we made a recording of the song that ended up in the stack of ‘never to be released’ items. I’m surprised to notice as of this writing that I haven’t yet uploaded Tears to the TZ part of our website. I may have to do that later. It’s a good recording, although I recall that Bob confessed that he was never fully satisfied with the final recording. Adding a last-minute synth part and then a cybernetic flanger to the tail end of some of Carla’s lead vocal tracks were some of my attempts to get Bob’s buy-in.

I love the song for the potential cyber-edge (which I hoped to have captured in this new One Moment recording) and for Irene’s strong and graphic lyrics. Although, frankly, I don’t sing it nearly as well as Carla, who wrote the original melody.

The song is truly a collaboration. And if you ever get a chance to see the remastered version of this film on the big screen, do: breathtaking. It holds up beautifully over a quarter-century later.

I’ll follow up with a more technical blog entry about the recording and mixing of this song later. There may be another attempt at the mix, first.

We've rehearsed with Jeff, our new drummer, once now. In the industry, that's generally seen as too little. He's out of town for over a week, helping family move out of state. He's not responding to email, and I don't have a cell number for him. I hope he and his family are safe.

I have no doubt of his abilities and rather trust that the whole thing will come together, in one form or another. If I doubt anybody, it's myself.

We have precisely six rehearsals left between now and the show. That's about fourteen hours to perfect a ninety minute set. Nineteen songs. That's .73684210526315 hours per song. Each song is between 2.5 and 4.5 minutes long. Probably 3.5 minutes on average. (At this time, it's fairly obvious that I'm a geek, doncha think?)

I feel guilty for not blogging, so going full stream-of-consciousness here, but the truth is I’m stressed. According to the numbers, a few of y’all are actually reading this stuff. Can’t tell how much of it is pointers from MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Friends, or just my Mom. But the site, including the blog, is getting a few hits. Not a lot, but a few. It peaked in March, but is doing okay in April. I mean, it’s all word-of mouth at present. I’d love to quadruple the exposure in May/June. Should probably ask bandmates to go out and help actively promote it in their little areas of cyberspace.

So yeah, stress.

Stressed by this gig.

Stressed by trying to put together the whole Another Pair of Hands Choir thing, pulling all of those singers together and working the stage plot out with the Pioneer Square Production Mgr guy. A really cool guy, BTW, named Mahlin.

Stressed from have weeks of not doing kung fu (a tremendous stress release)

Stressed by my day job, hashing through all of the deliverables, plus bringing on a mess of new Emergency Responders.

Stressed that I’m not currently making progress on the recordings. I want to get something new up here soon... hopefully this weekend. Meant to last weekend.

Stressed that I can't ride my motorcycle until a bunch of service is performed.

Stressed with the legal/monetary issues that the IRS has bestowed upon us. (Musicians: Keep your bookkeeping impeccable, the IRS is targeting musicians, knowing we have a tendency to be a bit loose with our bookkeeping and those guys LOVE that shit. Don’t ask me how we know. To the tune of five figures.)

Two days ago, my acupuncturist told me that I was (not quite in so many words) frying myself. Something about my yin lung and yin kidney meridians. Gave me some herbal thingies. Take ten a day, ‘til they’re all gone. Okay.

I’m getting similar feedback from friends at work. Apparently the good chill from my sabbatical last summer has officially worn off. I need to remember to breathe. Deeply. Consciously. Probably need to get back out into the woods very soon.

Some good news is that Irene and I will be seeing Flight of the Conchords live in Portland the night before out Pioneer Square/Intel gig.

Had a great lunch with David Sloan today. Very validating and very moving. He’s a great friend. I hope he reads this.

Guess that’s enough therapy for one blog posting. [Inside the mind of a flaky musician]I’ll try to get a little more technical or musical or whatever next time. ‘Til then…