thirty-eight days

the countdown is on... 38 days to the Red Sox opening day!

things are always very exciting as spring approaches, buses full of baseball players arriving in florida to get conditioned and ready for the season, new players to get to know, sometimes new haircuts on old friends. three years ago, johnny damon showed up with his beard and long hair, last year manny showed up with his long dreads.

this year we have no manny (so far) and we have the circus surrounding dice-k. i think it's looking to be a good year for our sox. let's hope so!

right now, though, lexi is probably very happy that there are no sports on. i mean, basketball and hockey are on, but i don't watch basketball and i haven't been following hockey lately. i never followed it all that much anyway, but i'd keep an eye on stuff and at least catch some bits of games here and there. but studio stuff has been so busy anyway, so i've not been spending too much time by the tv unless we're watching something together or, more rare of late, i'm playing a videogame.

anyway... in other news, we've been having internet issues for the last week or so. our DSL has been not quite up-to-speed lately, anyway, but we've been getting by alright. but since this past weekend we'd been intermittently been unable to get online at all.

so wednesday i call verizon to see what's up, and the friendly guy tells me that they're working on some wiring issues in our area and that things should be resolved by wednesday evening by 8pm or so. i figured, well, give it to tomorrow and see what happens, since deadlines for repair can be so easy to miss if only for murphy's law. lexi, for her part, is lobbying strongly for a switch to comcast high speed internet.

yesterday (thursday) i get home from the gym, fire up the computer and try to sign online. same problem. "well," thought i, "i should give them a call and see what's going on, 'cause this is really getting ridiculous." pick up the phone.

no dialtone.

are you kidding me? so i call verizon on the cellphone. the (again very nice) guy traces the line, finds there's a break in the line not far from their office, and tells me they will get it fixed asap, but possibly not 'til saturday.

a couple of hours later, however, lexi picks up the phone and finds a dialtone! yay. she was subsequently able to get online, as was i, but the connection was still much slower than it should be.

we'll see how dependable the connection is over the weekend. in the meantime, i may be hitting bestbuy for a cable modem and then hitting comcast for the necessary software. supposed to be pretty fast (6mbps download/ 8mbps upload), so this should be MUCH more workable. especially since i'm going to be doing more remixes plus Funf work, all of which is dependent upon sharing of large files.

wish us luck!

more sonic adventures and more

last night i went to the gym. first time in a few weeks.

some time ago i realized the secret to not being disappointed in your gym attendance:

you can always go tomorrow.

i've found this to work unerringly. i've never missed a tomorrow!

but anyway, i motored after work last night and hit the gym for 20 minutes on a stationary bike and 10 minutes on a rowing machine. felt really good. gotta keep it going, though. none of that 'tomorrow' crap, unless it's for real!

after the gym and dinner, i had to buckle down in the studio to finish off my remix of The Luxury's song "Let Go." i think it turned out pretty well, overall, though i think i can improve the levels a bit. maybe i'll be doing that tonight.

but i had a really good time twisting the hell out of that song. another guy -- lexi said that steve is The Luxury's drummer -- remixed the song, too, so i had to approach it in a much different way than the original and his remix attacked it. so i started out by time-stretching a loop of the drums and then laying the vocal overtop of it. really turned it around and gave it a much darker, almost claustrophobic vibe, so i began programming sounds, processing other original tracks, editing, etc., trying to push it in that dark direction.

lots of fun... now i've got so many things on the back burner awaiting my attention. i owe david kirkdorffer a call today, and we've got to get back onto that stuff. i did get some drum loops happening for one of the tracks, but they've not gotten as much attention as they deserve yet.

it's no wonder i don't have a lot of readers on here, given the "joe's life recap" approach i've been giving this. almost every day, i say something to lexi and she replies "that's how your blog should start, and you should write about that." but i don't do it right away and i forget the interesting things i said. then, sometime later, i say "crap, i should update that damn thing," and i fill it with the recap since i can't remember all of the interesting things i say.

really, you can't imagine all of those interesting utterances. not amidst all this droll crap.

we picked up a few new cds in the last week. lately, i can't stop listening to the new TV On The Radio album, Return To Cookie Mountain. some really great stuff throughout. the tune that is on infinite repeat in my head is Hours, and the remix of it that sits right by the end of the record kicks the crap out of me. SO awesome. also digging on some Gnarls Barkley, but that hasn't sunk its claws as deep as TVotR. at least not yet...

busy! crazy! mostly studio work...

i should write my blogs as soon as i think of something. or i should tape myself talking, transcribe/ edit those utterances and turn that in my blog.

busy last couple of weeks. banilow show and the rehearsals that go with it. onlyone studio work. commercial production work. production of a demo for my good friend t max.

i did receive a twisted and bizarre new piece of gear from a couple of guys that call themselves Folktek. they design and build specialty electronic instruments and devices, and this thing is out there. needless to say, i love it. i like to think of it as a short-wave radio or scanner that only picks up alien transmissions, mostly 'cause that's kinda what it sounds like. i've already used it to build a new experimental electronic track ('ROBOTFIGHT,' so named by lexi) hosted on my myspace site.

essentially, the device (which is a Pluton X2) combines voice synthesis and chance somehow, and gives you a handful of switches and a couple of buttons to control it with.



dig that sexy beast. the eye in the center lights up, too, for added mystery and fun.

i'm still working out how to do things with it. but as one of the few instruments/ devices i've found that i can't control (yet), it really captivates me in a strange way. i'm sure a lot of strange samples will be extracted from it, too. i'll probably get to play around with it more over the next few days. considering utilizing it for some odd sounds behind the Kirkdorffer/ Kowalski project. could be fun.

anyway... t max is back over friday night to finish off his song. the commercial project is awaiting word from the agency. i got that in early, and i'm hoping the song will be embedded in their heads enough that we'll have a leg up on the competition. worked with neil (the banilow collaborator) on it, and chuck showed up saturday to pick up a cable. while he was over, we took advantage of his considerable musical talent. he pitched in some ideas to improve things musically, and he played some great guitar for us. if i'd have played those guitar parts, it would've taken twice as long to get something half as good, so that was great.

wish us luck!

stay tuned for more...