Is being alone better without you?

So I've been away from the blog for a while - I can make excuses if you like. But there is a reason. I've been spending my spare time with my face in my computer screen, making music. And now that I've found out that google gives me 100 megs of free web storage, I've decided to post some of the stuff I've been working on.

First out of the cutting room is a recording done on the old pentium 2 at my parent's house back in 1998 or 1999, I believe. Kaleb and I were up late one night loafing around, and we decided to write a song. I believe he had just bought a brand new microphone from Thorold Music, and we wanted to test it out. We fired up good old Windows 98 - I had this software called Musicator that my Uncle John had given to me. Musicator is an ancient program, I believe meant for midi creations, but it also could perform crude multi-track recording (crashing intermittently due to memory overloads). Recording was a sketchy procedure. When laying one track over another, the speakers would play the previously recorded tracks, but it was really quiet and fuzzy. Not only that, but when we listened to and mixed the tracks, all we had were these old crappy computer speakers.

I recall that this song writing experience was similar to most: Start with some chord progression - okay that's the verse. Now, how about a bridge, let's try this. Good, it works. Lyrics? Sure, lets write about past bad experiences with girls... doesn't everyone do that? Okay, now we need another chord progression... let's call it a chorus.

So we laid down the tracks, and decided that we needed piano during the bridge, so I (literally) banged out some chords. Backup vocals and guitar solos were added, (including some weird crazy one at the end.) And that was it. Done. All in a couple hours. Turned out pretty good, basically because of the decent mic.

Kale and I tried recreating that creative moment one other time that I can remember, like a year later, but it never worked out. It never works out.

Anyways, last year I decided that I'd better rescue the original wav files from our old beast of a computer. I transferred them onto my machine, and remix mania begun. So here it is.

One to Think About (Ragabrash, 1998)

Let me know what you think. I use Cool Edit Pro, and some Creative built-in software to convert wav to mp3. I added some effects to my vocals (to try and disguise the flatness), not much to anything else though, a bit of reverb and EQing and some panning. It's just a first shot, mostly just me screwing around - not meant to be perfect. Perfection is elusive, and I can work for hours and hours to get that last 10%. Instead, I'll give you what I got, and I can always go back later if it needs work.

More to come from the Surewould studio.