More studio stuff...

Alrighty....

The work on the live stuff is progressing quite nicely now that we have figured out the process we need to take...it is fairly time consuming but since we are on really only taking 4-5 tracks from the album its not an absolute trainsmash...the rest will be done in the studio so half the work is done already....


Here's Louise cutting up the samples in Nuendo, Rob's on the side messing around with his synthy Boss pedal thing....I have no idea what its called but its the bomb, it basically converts a guitar signal, preferrably bass, into raw synth tones so the result is a quite organic synth playing style...very nice.... :o)


This was after a bottle vodka and the final editing had been done...Rob's messing around, scratching up some sine tones and then running them live through the dbGlitch plugin....a very bizarre sound and just a little creepy... :oP

There "should" be more rehersals sometime this week with Lionel if we can pull Rob off a R&B album he is working on...im doubtful, so it looks like a bit of editing will need to be done at my place and then just carry it all across for the next week....

FUN FUN FUN !!!!

Yawn....

Man its Tuesday and im absolutely finished already...clearly 5 hours sleep is not enough for my body and it doth protests...my eyes feel grainy and I have a feeling that's from a combination of tiredness and cigarettes...

What can I say, its been busy...emotionally, I'm still in the same situation I was before but, I must be honest I'm feeling a bit more comfortable with the whole scenario...I'm guessing she is as well though this is not something you obviously bring up when you are "not seeing someone"...

Yeah yeah, I know its a screwed up situation but hey so goes life....we seem to be happy together for now and there's no pressure on either side for anything to happen....the only thing that does seem to be fairly committal is the sex and hey, I can live with that :o) ....I think she has realised that im not willing to share and so long as she keeps to that, everything should be fine...

I'm a one person kind of guy....I've never ever two-timed anybody ever and I don't believe there is any need to....if you're not happy with what you have then leave...simple...im not going to compete with someone else....I've told her this, if she wants me in her life there is no sharing, I don't particularly want or need commitment, I just want to be with her for now....so with that in mind I feel a little more confident,...

TBH my biggest fear in a relationship is having someone two time me...break ups I can handle, its just a part of life...but betrayal is something wholly different and I don't forgive that easily...

Some Studio Pics ...

I have just got a Nokia 6680 with a semi decent camera phone...so guess what ??? I will be taking photo's of everyone and everything until the novelty wears off... :o)



This is a pic of my modest home studio, now with Louise living with me, it just made sense to bring most of the gear home so that we could work on the stuff together instead of having to schlep all the way to Midrand everytime we want to do something...that and its easier to get pissed when you are home and your bed is right next to you... :o)

A quick discription of what you are seeing...from left to right...

What you cant see is the Yamaha SU10 Sampler and then it goes down to 2 vintage stylophones, a Yamaha CS01, my lovely Roland Juno 60 with retrofit, below that and barely in the picture is a Roland Synchbox....on the table we have a Korg Electribe MKII r (drum machine), a Korg Bassworx distortion unit (we like distortion)...a Gemini Mixer and Tannoy Mercury 1s (I need to replace these soon...as much as I love them they are rather old)...bang in the centre we have Louise and the Peecee, to the right of her we have a Phatboy Midi Contoller, a squishy toy the glows when squeezed, the all important glass of whiskey, a Sony PSP and EV mic....that thing with all the wires hanging out is what is soon to be a circuit bent Atari 2600 :o) then misc boxes filled with wires etc...


This was our 1st rehersal at weasil's studio last night with our new bassist, Lionel....this dude rocks the shop....thats weasil on the ground tweaking the GT6B, Lionel on bass and his girlfriend on the couch...behind Lionel we have the lovely Yamaha DX7 (that needs to be repatched)...a ton of vinyl, a Sequencial Prophet and the beautiful Korg Lambda.... :o) this will probably be the main studio as we can thump it without the neighbors complaining...

So it all seems on track....our next rehersal is on Saturday so yay !!!

Numo's Blog...

Ok, so truth be told, I stole this link from a friends blog but the site is just too damn cute not to share....its all about....and wait for it...a pet hedgehog called Numo.... :o)

Check it out here ...

Interesting fact....Hedgehogs purr.... !? how cool is that....I want me a hedgehog... :oP

Heartbeats

by Knife, The

album: Deep Cuts (2003)

for the acoustic sung by Jose Gonzales
(which I think is possibly as good as the original) go here
oh incedently, this song is on the new Sony Bravia ad
(the one with the bouncing balls ) ;o)

One night to be confused
One night to speed up truth
We had a promise made
Four hands and then away
Both under influence
We had divine scent
To know what to say
Mind is a razorblade

To call for hands of above, to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me, no

One night of magic rush
The start: a simpel touch
One night to push and scream
And then relief
Ten days of perfect tunes
The colours red and blue
We had a promise made
We were in love

To call for hands of above, to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me, no

To call for hands of above, to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough

And you
You knew the hand of a devil
And you
Kept us awake with wolves teeth
Sharing different heartbeats in one night

To call for hands of above, to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough for me, no

To call for hands of above, to lean on
Wouldn't be good enough

Welcome to the next level...

hmmmmmmmmm....

Ok this is not going to be an emotional blog today....just a quick sneak peek at what chaos my life is in at the moment... :oP I actually love that....peeps always think their life is chaotic or more so than the next person, which is, in a sense totally true and not....you are the only person who can truly say what you are feeling at one given time so no-one can really take that away from you....just perhaps put you in your place... :o)

Okies....to start with, I produce and manage a band "Devil's Cartel" .... www.devilscartel.com ....we've been around for about 2 and a half years already and we are slowly growing our fan base....its no easy task I can tell you and sometimes it just seems all to easy to throw in the towel and start all over again, but we persist...its the only way we are ever going to get anywhere and you never hear of any band really making the big time in 6 months...the norm is generally a few years...anyways...

My problem....after spending a year producing everything in the studio my vocalist up and left to go to the UK...this was devastating as, for any band, if you lose your vocalist you lose the essence of what you have created....so while she was away I started up other projects to keep myself busy and promoted the band quite heavily as I had a suspicion she would come back....and she did....joy is me !!! We can now finally take the whole thing live and start promoting and marketing ourselves the way it should be done...its amazing what a beautiful girl can do for a band ;o) ....

Now the task begins of having to move everything from the studio into a live setup....sounds easy doesn't it...not a chance...we relied heavily on computers to do the studio productions and now to change that to live gear is an absolute pain and I refuse to just plug up a PC and play the track out....it has to be live performance, I want people to see that it is a live performance otherwise I might as well just plug up my iPod and some pretty light and sit back, although this is all an exciting process is still fairly daunting....I have over the last year purchased some synths and drum machines but it is never enough so we've also enlisted the help of another very talented producer to co-produce....then we lost out bassist as he has had a very exciting opportunity presented to him and I cant hold him back...so now to find a new bassist...which is looking fairly promising as atm...

What a few ppl don't realise is the need for a rehearsal room...generally they need to be where people wouldn't be bothered by the sound so its normally in some dodgy industrial area...which Im not entirely comfortable with leaving all my gear in...so it needs to be close...preferably cheap and secure...hmmmm...there have been some nice spots but each have their own set of issues so you have to weigh up what works, what doesn't work and what ideally will be best for the band....right now it seems like my studio at home will be it until we get complaints... :oP

The next challenge is updating "our" sound....after 2 years you can get very bored of what you produced so its up to us to actually write a number of new tunes...again, just issues....when I was working by myself everything was self contained, when you are working with others who are used to different systems it takes awhile to find where the middle ground is....we have settled on an application that im unfamiliar with so I'll have to train myself up in a hustle so that we can get the ball rolling again...so far we have all been very unproductive...nothing has really happened since the vocalist came back besides one track that is sitting in mid limbo....this scares the hell out of me....if the vocalist gets bored, she may want to leave the band and I'll be well and truly fukt...but that's just my own paranoia kicking in...


On a more personal front, the vocalist moves in tomorrow....this should be an interesting scenario to say the least...where it goes, no-one knows but I feel comfortable with the risk of it all...

And I see my ex tonight....to say this girl damaged me is an understatement....it took me nearly 4 years to get over her and it was only towards the end of last year that I felt really comfortable with seeing her again....she is an incredible girl which doesn't make matters easier but since she slept with my best mate last year November I kind of realised that this is her and this is the way she is....she is no slag but she enjoys life and is one of those "dangerous" girls...the ones you cant help but fall in love with, knowing full well that you will get bitten sooner or later...luckily for me I was probably one of her more serious boyfriends and I hurt her as much as she did me...puts us on a kind of even medium again....

I'm looking forward to seeing her again and although I don't love her in that way anymore I still miss her a lot...

What else...oh, work is chaos and the fact that this is a 4 day week doesn't make it any better....everything gets compounded into 4 instead of 5 and its all urgent !!! urgent !!! urgent !!! ...its fine, I work better under pressure so I do enjoy it, I take my time out when I get home and morph out to BBC doccies...nothing better to take your mind off things... :o)

They are also forcing me to take leave :oP ....I have 3 weeks accumulated and this is after the week I took in Dec to Mozambique and the 10 days over my birthday...so I go to the midlands in September for a week....Wahoo !!! ...horse riding and trout fishing....two things im totally unfamiliar with...should be interesting...m just wondering if we could combine the two....sort sit on the horse while you fish, I did ask but they said it would get rather uncomfortable after awhile....

Anyways...that's a bit of whats going on...there's more but I personally hate reading long blogs so im trying to keep this one short and sweet.... :o)

The Moles...

Theirs was the laughter and theirs was the tears of making love as days passed into nights and leaves changed to stars...


Sex has always been a very personal thing for me, I enjoy it a lot and I have slept with a fair amount of partners but, I generally wont give myself away that easily....I don't enjoy one night stands and if im in a starting relationship and the sex doesn't work out, I would normally back out based purely on that factor...

Its emotive and in my mind it only really works well if there is a certain amount of faith given out to your partner...that faith is then returned and you have a symbiotic cycle that reciprocates on itself...

Having said that, you can instantly tell when you have slept with someone that works...and continues to work....and this is what this excerpt conjures up for me....that perfect balance where there are no uncomfortable moments or fears and you just get swept away with the tide only to resurface an hour later dazed and confused wondering what the hell happened...both are breathless, both are stunned and both cant get enough of holding on tight to one another...

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....I actually get squiggly thinking about it.... :o)



The except was taken from the "Duncton Chronicles" written by William Horwood...

The story or more stories, are based around communal moles...imagine "The lord of the Rings" and "The Secret of Nimh" bunched up into 3 books and acted out by moles and you have a fair idea of what the books are like....

I love them, they are by no means children's stories though, the moles are incredibly complex and the stories revolve around territorial disputes between vicious clans and a different fundamental religions...I can recommend the books to anybody that enjoyed "The Lord of the Rings", "The Secret of Nimh" or that book about the rabbits... ;o)

Colours

She had vanished with all the colours. Since then he had been imprisioned in a world of black and white.

This excerpt was taken from a book written in icelandic and then translated into english...the book is glorius and the writer has such a refreshing view on life, but alas, I cannot remember the name of the author or the book name (i'll have to post it later I guess)...

Anyways back to the line....

I love it, it says everything it needs to say about breaking up with someone you care for, the sort of come down you get from cocaine where the world is filled with pretty sparkles and light and everything is breezy....and then suddenly being dropped solidly onto a hard, cold, granite floor...

Shame on me...

Well its been more than awhile since I posted in this blog....I'm not going to lie...I've been incredibly lazy but driving here I decided it needed a new entry since so much has happened since my last post...

So essentially I "moved on"...hmmm...I think we both knew that wouldn't happen..it was agreed that it was probably the best route to take but alas we ended up in the same lustful position...to say this girl turns me on is an understatement...I've been with many girls, some have been good, some have been bad but none have ever completed me like this, she is gorgeous in everyway...

Saying that, I'm not in love...or more like im trying my damdest not to fall in love...I've had my heart broken too many times over the last 4 years to even want to go down that road...I would rather just stay single and even skip the sex if that's what it comes down to...but, I trust her....she knows me well, she knows my history so maybe things turn out smoothly for a change..."maybe"...

On another note, I saw the "ex"...

Now this is a toughie cos essentially we weren't seeing one another yet we spent every waking moment together either online or actually seeing each other...with no physical contact whatsoever...I kissed her once...that's not to say that I didn't love her....over the 3 years we were "together" I cared for her dearly...she just couldn't commit to a physical relationship of any kind....I think her being a virgin at 25 might've had something to do with it but after 3 years she should've had a little more faith in me...I would've never hurt her or taken things beyond what she could handle...

About 3 months ago I decided that it was best that we went our separate ways...neither of us was growing and we were just damaging each other...mentally we were very aggressive towards one another (probably why the charm was always there) and I just couldn't deal with it anymore...she took it fairly badly (something imp still pretty surprised with) and being herself she has now denounced me totally from her life....I had been preparing myself for this so it wasn't too much of a blow...it needed to be done...

Anyways....funny cos I still get a tingle in my spine when I know I'll see her....I can predict that I'll either drive past her on the way home or I'll see her at a nightclub, which was the story with Saturday....just the memories alone brought me down and that was before I saw her...sadly and luckily I was with someone else at the time so it was easier to block...

I still feel guilt though...I didn't want to hurt her in anyway but I couldn't continue the way it was going...im sure it'll go away sooner or later....

Other than that...I shaved my nether regions... :oP hehehe...

I do so about twice a year and like DR Evil says "theres nothing quite like a shaved scrotum"...he is right....there isn't... :o)