Memory Lapse!

Due to some unseen Mental Condition I keep forgetting I have a blog. My Friend Ann reminded me that there was a blog I was contributing to.

Since my last update my Pro Tools interface has returned back after having been repaired under warranty. It was gone for far too long not having made any real success in my alternative methods.

The night before last I finished the basic tracks for a song that is similar to older Metallica recordings. I have acoustic guitars in the intro, heavy distorted guitars for the main verses and chorus sections. The drums and bass are virtual instrument in which I wrote the parts in the midi window and tweaked the volumes and velocities to give it some human variation i.e. make it sloppy.

Nearly every song I work on is constructed on the compositions of Bach and Mendelssohn, where the chord progression are diminished in a minor key of E. It gives the music that dark and ominous feeling that pulls more serious emotions from the listener. One of the issues I mulled over for a while was whether my music was acceptable to God because of the use of Instruments and the obvious religious overtones in the lyrics. After studying the bible, it seemed to me that there is a distinction between what God accepts has a lot to do with when He asks for specifics.

When we worship God, there are specific guidelines about how we are supposed to do things and when those things are supposed to happen. Worship, according to the scripture is specific homage towards God as an individual child, gathering together on the first day of the week, giving our contributions according to how we have prospered with the right attitude and motivations, songs with our voices and prayer. Commonly referred to as the 5 Elements of Worship. I believe (based on scripture) that there is more than just the 5 elements but that is another discussion.

Is it a sin to make instrumental music outside of the context of worship? Certainly, in the old testament it was commanded and we have Kind David's example that it couldn't possibly be sin otherwise God would be contradicting His own Commandments. As we have seen that attitude impacts to a certain degree the acceptance or rejection, we have to be careful not to be overconfident in whether our sacrifices are truly acceptable. Cain is a good example of being over confident. Nadab and Abihu were perfect examples of taking something innocuous and making it sin for introducing profane fire/incense at the time and place not commanded by God.

There are a few things we can use to determine whether everything we do is worship. One commentators mentioned that we take showers without clothes but you can’t worship without clothes with other Christians. Another commentator used the intimate relations between a married couple as another example of something you can do, just not while coming together with other Christians on the first day of the week.

One of the views I’ve tried to maintain is that my music is an expression, telling people about how God impacts me daily in the world and not in the context of worship. The Apostle Paul used analogies to help people understand who he was as a person and his struggles being a man. He taught people by using common threads to draw people across the gap that exists between the saved and unsaved. One of the main reasons Jesus came to earth was to become an advocate through common experiences. He was tempted as we are but yet gives us hope that through Him all this fleshly stuff can be overcome through Faith in God. He understands us.

There are appropriate subject matter and words people need to think about when writing lyrics for music. First off, if your going to write music about doctrine, it better be scripturally correct. Even songs in many of the songbooks do not pass that test. One of the cool thing I see in the bible that we often overlook is instruments in the old testament. Is the talent to build or play an instrument something that is given by God? In the Old Testament, those who played the instruments were Levites specifically. When I was really young I was drawn to music in ways my parents were not, and this musical thing that lives in me was the one things that led to me isolating myself from bad influences and allowing me to develop a relationship with James McCarty. James McCarty is a Christian who plays guitar and taught me the Gospel over a number of years.

It was hard at first to come to grasp with all the Pentecostal congregations having rock bands at worship and not want to be apart of that. But when I read the bible and understood bible authority that specific commands create an exclusionary situation it was easier because it was no longer my decision.

God is the original creator of art and music, it is part of His personality that we see in nature. Birds and children ignorant of the wiles of the devil natural make music with their voices and instruments like pots and pans. We are created in Gods image which means we have natural tendencies to be like God.

To design and to create.

Our God is an Awesome God!

Two Steps Fwd 3 steps back

I thought I was making decent progress in writing new songs a fragment here and and phrase there. Learning new editing features and really liking the new Pro Tools 7.4 version. Then with a click and total silence the Digidesign 003R was DOA. The first thing I do is look at my warranty information and called Guitar Center. The Salesman in the Pro Audio Department tells me to bring it on down.

So I pack the 003R up and head down to the Store where I purchased it only to be met with the traffic congestion of South Center Malls Grand Re-Opening. After 20 minutes of look for a parking place I found one a block away and had to hand carry a fairly large box. Once inside of Guitar Center, the salesman in the Pro Audio Department says "We don't do THAT kind of Warranty" and gives me a 1-800 number to call.

My Warranty is an extended one through Guitar Center which is called the Performance Guarantee which it turns out to be handled by a large 3rd Party Corporation that handles Warranty Administration for hundreds of companies. This one happens to ave recently been bought out which has led to some confusion in account numbers and paper work fiascoes.

SO after calling the 1-800 number and three days, I finally get semi correct shipping information that results in 2 days of phone tag with 3 different companies. The big old 003R box finally leaves the shipping company on a 7 days UPS ground Delivery to Boston to a Company contracted to do the repairs just as I'm leaving on vacation.

I get back from vacation and on my first day back to work I have a voice mail not on the primary contact phone that I needed to call. I don't know whether the message was left on the day I left on vacation or 2 weeks later on the day I got back to work. So I call the Operation Mgr and ask what the phone call was about. I then at this point discover that my broken Digidesign 003R has been shipped to Digidesign in California and the Technician is supposed to cal in a few days. I'm still waiting.

In the mean time I'm chewing my fingers off with ideas on songs with no way of getting it done. Then I get this harebrained idea to get my old M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 soundcard up and going and I run into Vista Driver issues that mess all the audio routing up. After 6 hours of tweaking and twiddling around I get it kinda working but the new driver interface and audio routing is messed up. It's taking the analog inputs and routing the audio into both the Spdif inputs and then sends both the analog inputs and Spdif to the mixer so I get a doubling about 11 milliseconds apart. Yuck!

Needless to say, the analog to digital converters of the M-audio are not nearly as good as the 003R, so the guitars sounds like junk. I did figure out how to get Fxpansions BFD Lite 1.5 to work with Samplitude 8.2 without having the install disc which was shipped in the 003R box.

But at this point my wife is wondering where I'm at because of all the time spent trying to get my computing problems resolved to have at least some sanity.

I can't do anything right.

April Showers

So it's April already and I've been busier that a chicken stranded at a KFC convention.

Currently I have started 4 news songs in addition to the other 4 or 5 I had started in Addition to the 10 to 13 I started before that....

The Famous guitarist Steve Vai sent me an email once after I asked him a question about writing songs and finishing them, he basically said that inspiration can take only a second but bringing that to fruition can take decades.

I've been using Digidesigns improved Virtual Instruments and creating sketches much faster but I'm clumsy at the next step.

Moving Forward

Now that I have a Computer...

and finished my report for my meeting I still needed a music interface since the old Digi 001 was no longer supported and incompatible with newwer PC's. I decided since I had been running on old risky systems and antiquated hardware it was time to step up and lay down some Cash.

I purchased a Digidesign Digi 003R. It's quite a leap in functionality from Version 6.4 to version 7.4 which works well with Vista. I was weary because the New G33 Chipsets have not been tested by Digidesign yet I plugged it all together an was greeted with a zero error install and opened older 6.4 Sessions without any glitches except where I had forgot to install certain RTAS Plug-ins.

The usage of Virtual Instruments Like BFD Drums, Structure and Xpand make creating songs vastly easier. The full version of "Strike" is $299.99 which is digidesigns virtual drummer to compte with BFD Virtual Drums. BFD is good enough for now because I can combine it with Reason ReWire to suppliment the MIDI aspects of Virtual Drumming.

SO far in the last 3 weeks Ive started 2 new songs while learning the ropes of a new version of a software. Next challenge will be to see if Elastic Audio can fix some of the analog drums I did on the tape machine.

I'm thinking a doing a new MySpace page that is video/audio capable for the project but I can't think of a name for the webpage or anything.

Hopefully I finish my album, do some more video....

The Beginning

About a Year ago.....

I set out to record a solo album of music that just happens to pop into my head. After overtime at work and many other things to distract me I never made it past 1.875 songs on the 8 to 10 I originally planned.

One of the problems beside time is the extra-ordinary effort it takes to write music the way I had been stuck in. I typically would find a groovy drum patter on a drum machine and then lay down whatever rhythm guitar part that came to mind. Once that was completed I moved on to a bass track to follow the previously laid down groove.

After I had the music bed completed I would just jam to that until I found a melody or series of phrases. When you have a drumkit and your recording to a tape machine that is in a different room its a little more difficult to follow that process.

I've using digital audio for mastering "2 track" for a number of years, but never entire songs because I was limited by the number of inputs to the computer. A few months ago I bought an old Digidesign Digi 001 interface and bought Pro Tools 6.4. This allowed me to transfer 8 tracks of audio from the tape machine or record the drums directly to the computer. But... my computer was an old dog that had been ressurected several times and it really struggled.

Then... the old Dog died.

Pressed for time because I had alot of file I needed for a meeting, I had to buy a computer right out of the box, I opted for a Dell 530 Inspiron with a dual core 1.8Ghz. machine and 2 gigs of RAM.