04.26.10
Posted in Music, technology at 9:17 am by Steve
I have long been a fan of Metric-Halo and their products. I was an early-ish adopter of their Mobile I/O device, which has been my go to interface for recording both in the studio and on location for the better part of 6 (maybe 7) years now. My MIO 2882 has been the most reliable piece of equipment I’ve ever purchased. Add to the the incredible sounding converters and analog front end and you can understand why I have nothing but praise for this company.
I recently setup a MIO 2882 2d Expanded for a local church, transitioning them from the Tascam digital board they had bee using, and I have to say that the results are stunning. It’s hard to believe that a 9 year old design can still be so incredibly current. A very refreshing paradigm shift from the “planned obsolescence” mentality most companies adhere to these days. Easy to use, small footprint, minimal power requirements and great sound.
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11.27.09
Posted in Music at 10:40 pm by Steve
When my students stumble over chord fingerings in a lessons I often fall back on a trick I learned while at Berklee College of Music. It’s a simple method for training your muscles to get into and out of a chord form smoothly and quickly.
You set a metronome on the slow side (54-60 bpm) and let it begin counting off the time. Now, since most chords are not played in a musical vacuum you will want to approach your trouble chord with another chord, preferably the one that precedes it in the piece you are playing. So, if you were struggling with an Emi7(b5), for instance, and the preceding chord was a G7 you would use those 2 chords for this exercise.
So, with your metronome happily clacking away get yourself ready for the approach chord (in our case the G7) and count off 4 beats to get you to your first measure. On beat 1 of that measure play the G7 chord, and then immediately release your fingers and use beats 2, 3 & 4 to set up the next chord (the Emi7(b5) in our example). On beat 1 of the next measure you will play that Emi7(b5) and then immediately release it, using beats 2, 3 & 4 to get back to your starting chord.
You would go back and forth between these chords, hitting them only on beat 1 of the measure and using beats 2, 3 & 4 to position your hand for the next chord. After a couple of minutes you will feel your hand finding its way without much effort. At this point bump up your tempo a notch or 2 and continue until it’s smooth at that tempo and keep going and bumping up the tempo until you are at the tempo you will actually be playing those chords.
If you aren’t using a metronome in your practice routine, here is one more reason to go buy one. The simply help you become a better musician.
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11.24.09
Posted in Music, Studio Log at 11:03 pm by Steve
I just finished mastering an album for children’s performer Marcia Louis entitled Goin’ To Kindergarten. As well as the mastering, I engineered, mixed and even lent a helping hand with the instrumentation. This marks the 3rd album I’ve done for Marcia and, while they have all been fun, this one has been a real treat. We started this way back in February of this year and finally nailed down all 13 tunes.
If you have young kids, keep an eye out for it next month. We covered a lot of musical ground on this album. My 2 year old has had the thrill of hearing this album several times over that past months as we recorded, mixed & mastered this. He’s already singing along with most of the songs.
I wish I had taken a picture during one of the recording sessions to post here, but I was too busy thinking about the task at hand to think ahead to ‘a picture would sure be good for when this is all done’. Oh well 
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06.12.09
Posted in Music at 9:12 pm by Steve
I was sitting on the couch playing my guitar this evening. My 2 year old son was sitting on the chair across from me playing “his” guitar (my baby Taylor). He would strum the guitar on his lap and sing along with me (using any words he could think of). He occasionally stopped to look at me with a huge grin on his face to say “I’m a good singer!”.
It was cute. What struck me was how much I don’t do this with him. In fact, I spend so much time working with technology that I sometimes stop feeling like a musician at all.
This evening was odd, because I suddenly felt inspired to do some of those musical things I had left behind to “be the good father & husband” and to “provide for my family”. All lies to myself. I was just afraid to allow myself to be the creative person I really am. And now I am feeling such a pull to be “the old Steve” and pursue that part of me again.
Oddly, this all comes on the heals of starting to take better care of myself; exercising regularly and eating better. Maybe that has something to do with it, maybe it doesn’t. All I know is that I feel inspired like I haven’t felt in a long time. So much so that I have decided to resurrect my second album project. I released my first album, Wasted Time, in 2000. I was planning on getting the second one out there in 2003. That never happened. I wrote songs for it, recorded some of them and then just became occupied with other things.
My thought right now is to work towards finishing the album and to then release it under the creative commons license to make it freely available for people to listen to.
Oh, and the working title for the second album has been Hurricane Season for years. I’m sticking with that…for now.
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05.17.09
Posted in Music at 12:06 am by Steve
Just booked it today. I’ll be performing as part of the Singer/Songwriters Sessions. I don’t know who else will be performing, but I imagine there will be some other good music too.
I go on at 7:30 pm, and will be sending out some emails to let people know and (hopefully) get a few supporters in the crowd. I should have more details soon.
Mark your calendars and come on down.
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04.20.09
Posted in Music at 8:45 pm by Steve
All my life I have been in search of the “perfect guitar”. That one instrument that gives me everything I want in tone, feel and playability. Of course, the longer I’ve played, the better I became and the more intricate my technique, it became less and less likely a single instrument could ever deliver everything I wanted. At one point in my life I was accumulating guitars at a break-neck pace. Buying new ones and unloading older ones. The I started buying other instruments to satisfy my need for other sounds.
Between my wife & myself we have a total of 13 guitars (4 electric, 9 acoustic), 2 bass guitars, 2 mandolins, 2 violins, 2 dulcimers, a drum set and various pieces of hand percussion. Storage and care of these instruments gets to be more and more of a chore, yet I can’t seem to find one that I would be willing to part with. And even though many of them go unnoticed for months at a time while I have my current favorite, I will go back to the others and remember why it was I bought them and what they provided that the others lacked.
I suppose the hardest part to deal with is that I really do want to have my one guitar that gives me everything I need. I just don’t think it exists. I even feel guilty about having so many instruments. I used to think my 1995 Taylor 812c was that perfect guitar, but I recently have gone back to my 1997 Taylor 810-WMB and am just smitten with the huge, all-encompassing sound of that instrument and the deep and sonorous low-end. It doesn’t have the delicate top end that the 812c has, but it has a power and depth that the 812c will never have.
If I could somehow magically meld these two guitars into a single instrument I would have my perfect acoustic. As far as the electric goes…well, that’s a story for another day.
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02.23.09
Posted in Music at 10:03 pm by Steve
So, I played my first gig in a long while this past friday as part of a songwriter’s circle. It was really fun to get out and play in front of a crowd again. I really like the energy of performing to a crowd that is there to listen…which was the case this past friday. After so many years of being in front of crowds, I feel so comfortable in that situation. That wasn’t so surprising.
What I was surprised to find was just how much I truly missed performing live. For the past few years I would remind myself of all the negative aspects of gigging: you always spend way more time loading, unloading, setting up and tearing down than you want to and the actual playing end of the night goes by so fast. Not to mention, the ROI on a performance is somewhere in the negatives. It’s a strong argument against it.
What you forget, after a while at least, is how alive you feel when you’re up there performing. I somehow feel most myself when I’m in front of a crowd playing my music. And I don’t mean that in a narcissistic way. I just really enjoy sharing my music. For me the pay-off is when someone walks away from the night having really “gotten” one of my songs. I think most of my friends get that about me.
And so, I say to myself: Step lightly over broken mirrors
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