wow I'm lazy

I haven't posted in about a month cause I have been in and out of Portland, I went to Nashville for a week. Talked shop with my stepfather, got some ideas on better drum placement.

I picked up my two guitars while I was there. One is an Epiphone Les Paul II, which is a total piece-o-junk BUT, I am hopefully going to do a KP1 mod to it, and if so it's going to be amazing.

Then I bought a Lawsuit Gibson Les Paul, which is basically an Identical copy of a regular les paul for about 1200 dollars cheaper. Dude was kind enough to put in some really awesome pickups so now I have an amazing LP.

So I got it and I was like WTF I need an amp. So I went down to trade up and bought a Peavey Stereo Chorus 212. Which is basically the amp I wanted(I used to have one). So that worked out nicely.


The shoegaze hasn't been worked on, but Planes has a bit. I am getting ideas for things. Just been knee deep in Math homework so i can't do anything.

Gods last name is not DAMN

Ok, well I was saying something about new developments, and either A: I posted it somewhere else or B: I completely forgot to post it. Anyway, it's been an interesting few weeks around Planes world HQ, IE my bedroom. I bought a rack sampler. An EMU ESI-32:

It's nothing super fancy, it's not expanded but the memory is maxed out, at 32 megs so that is nice. I also got about 7 disks with it. Surprisingly the Strings sound better than the M1 does.

Moving along:

I went to trade up with Paul, and we were toying aroudn the idea of rack gear and I foudn a monstro rack nox with hinges and awesomeness that I can't seem to remember the name of so I can't find a picture, I will update later with it though. I also picked up a rack light for it. It's red. Sup @sex lights, and so I threw everything in there it's nice to have a cable management system and only have to run out one power outlet.

Lastly, the major purchase, I have spent a really long time trying to save up or have enough money to get out of the bargain basement synths. I have waited YEARS to be able to get something really nice and finally after a really long time and plenty of comparing and a/bing and reading

Matt bought a motherfucking Triton:

And it is amazing, it came with the Studio Essentials, which as far as I can tell has a bunch of EP's and choir sounds....less than impressive. BUT I can max out the sampling and have a total of 96 megs of ram at my disposal between this and the EMU, that's a whole lotta sampling. That and I mean....seriously...It has a touch screen. What more could you want?

I spent about 20 minutes with it last night and almost rewrote the Keely violin parts in it, it's just ridiculously easy to work with and I love it.

I was thinking of buying an RM1x, but my gear lust only goes so far, I have the money for it...I just wonder how much use I will get out of it.

woo, sorry for the lack of updates, I don't know who I am apologizing too no one actually knows about this let alone reads it, whatevs.


Anyway, Keely is almost finished just have to mix it and rearrange a couple of the parts then comes vocals, and voila finished song.

Other then that the shoegaze is going a long at a steady clip and I am on my way to purchasing a bunch of new boards.


so yeah things are on the upswing.

wow, haven't updated in like 2 weeks. Well I went down to Klamath with a mission for some clarity as to where I was going. Planes as just me is/as/was is always a big crapshoot I never know where I am going with it. What's funny as I am better at handling direction when there are other people in the band. I ran most of the myspace/website/promotion with Travis, yet by myself I have no direction. It's weird. Anyway, I went down to get some direction and I did. I figured out the cover of the CD The track listing and the all around concept of the album. I came back and have promptly done nothing for two weeks. Well not nothing I wrote a lot of lyrics. I was trying to record vocals but my voice has been super tore up from having a cold, and then I tried to quit smoking..or am trying..it's going...ok. Vocals should be got going this week. I changed my mind it isn't going to be 2 e.ps it's going to be one full length. Shooting for 12 songs. I have 14 in the works, but most likely will have to bag at least two for lack of motivation or general flow issues.
So there it is.
I have a prototype of the cd, but I am not going to put it up here. I like how the booklet came out. Still some sizing and etc. issues, but it doesn’t need to be actually done for a long time so whatever.
So yes, expect some song leaks soon.
The shoe gaze band is going along at a steady clip it seems whenever we get together we record something new. Paul and I have gotten together 4 times and we have 2 finished songs, and one partial. I have to record another string part for a song. Layering 3 string parts sure is fun let me tell you. 1 reason one, one from the ESQ1 and one from the M1 = LOUD
I also finally get to use the ESQ1 minimoog bass line that I have been wanting to use for like ever.
For some reason the multimix works BEAUTIFULLY at Paul’s but not at all at my house. I don't fully understand that.

The Common Law Marriage

Well, going down to Southern Oregon over the next few days, no updates from down there, as I won't have intertubes. Which is good. I want to rejuvenate myself. I have been pretty down on working on stuff. Even though I DID write the most amazing piano part for Escapism last night, I am now referring to it as "Away with Words".

I was complaining to one of my roommates about not knowing how to solder and how I wanted to fix the broken ESQ1, but couldn’t afford to/didn't want to pay someone to look at it, and he says, "I can solder anything." So I pull out the broken ESQ1 and he solders it in and voila I now have two ESQ1’s. The keyboard doesn’t work for some reason, but I wasn’t willing to look at it last night. When I get back I am going to try and get it at full specs then probably flip it and buy back my DW8000.

Back to Escapism, I never fully liked the song. I thought there was more we could do with it but we didn't. I am bringing the little midi board and the laptop with me; so hopefully on some down time I am going to fix up Escapism some more. I have MOST of the lyrics written so it's on the chopping block.

This weekend I am going to be putting the finishing touches on Separation Anxiety and Away with Words. I keep telling Tara I am going to work on Manhattans but I haven't got around to it yet. Sorry Tara :-/
I was discussing with Paul about how to do the album, if I should do two eps or one full album, a lot of the songs reference the same things and the ones that Travis and I were working on had been written AFTER the original songs, so they reference the original 5 songs. I can't really release the 5 songs, as it won't make much sense in the grand scheme of writing things.

So Paul suggests two EP's one of older stuff rewritten now. What that means I need to think of names for two e.ps that sort of go together or at least are a running theme. The songs that are going to be involved are, as of right now:

E.P 1

Keely
The Santa Monica Pier
Subtle Changes of The House
A Cartoon Sketch of a Decent Sensitive Guy
Arkham
Rabbits
Tennessee

E.P 2

Manhattans
Separation Anxiety
Alternate Separation
Malachi
Away With words

I will go through figure out what will work what won't etc, and well basically see what happens.

My Sunny Day Diary of The Rising Tide of Circles

Ok, well we finished two of the shoegaze songs. I guess not TECHNICALLY finished due to Sam needing to record his bass parts on both but hey I mean that's something write? two songs in like 3 weeks? Shit yeah.

Anyway, I spent the past 4 hours trying to record a violin part the multimix kept fighting with me and I guess Cubase doesn't understand 6/8 time signatures so I couldn't get the metronome to work like at all. Finally though at a little past 3 it worked and I mixed it in finished some mixes on the other parts and here we have two new songs:

Http://www.myspace.com/thecanceryears

weeaboo

woo no updates for a bit, I was a little sickish. But I'm feeling better. Still feel like I got kicked in the junk though. Anyway,
Tremendous headway on the Shoegaze project tentatively titled The Cancer Years. Yes I am reusing a band name I have used in the past, bad form? I doubt it.
Sam has to come over and record a bass line and we have one shoegaze song finished. I have to record another synth bass line and we have 1 and a half songs finished. Hopefully doing that tonight.





Planes has been off to a rocky start, mainly I have been concentrating on the shoegaze so much I haven't had a chance to work on it.
I finished the new lyrics for Manhattans, having some issues with For Hannah, which is probably going to be called separation Anxiety. I can't get the feel I want. As it is I am recording the Marimba for that tonight since I have the main progression finished. I really need to clean up the prechorus/chrous's and I'll be done with those.
I also need to write the guitar part in the new key.




Then it's off to reworking Manhattans, I don't really have much to do on that one, Pretty sure I handled a majority of the parts. so that one should go quick.
Still trying to get the parts right for Keely, need to clean up my playing A LOT.
Regular updates will commence this eve.




If I get the shoegaze song finished tonight, I will pull down the one on the myspace as it isn't EQ'd and the lead part is off.