NEW:
I’ve been doing some sound design lately, and just uploaded a Synth1 preset bank. You can find it in the Sound Design/Synth Programming section of the site.
WEBLOG:
Construction on our new home is almost done, except that my recording studio is still all bare concrete. It’s been a nightmare trying to gather all the needed knowledge in order to finalized the construction details of my studio. I’m not a structural engineer, or an architect, or an acoustician, or even a recording studio designer–I’m just a musician that wants a nice space to make music in. So I have to basically research my ass off to come up with a design that experts in those various disciplines would actually approve of. Of course, I could have hired experts to do all the work, but that is something very rich people do–not folks like us. The fee for an expert would exceed my budget for the entire studio, and that’s even before a single brick has been laid. So that’s pretty much what I’ve been working on–the actual design and construction details. I’d draw a bunch of construction detail schematics, floor plans, wall/ceiling/floor structural designs…etc, then post them in pro audio forums to get feedback from experts (mostly Rod Gervais), and then incorporate their suggestions and do more drawing, then repeat the process until every single tiny detail has been decided on. This process alone took months, not counting the books I’ve read on the subject.
At this point, I’m very close to finalizing all details. I still have to do a round of math to calculate all the weight distribution of the various wall segments and ceiling segments, and then calculate where to place isolation hangers, pucks, sway braces…etc. (Those of you that know me are probably laughing your asses off right now, since I flunked match twice in school.) Speaking of isolation products–even finding the resources to buy trustworthy products from in China has been an uphill battle (importing from elsewhere would cost too much due to import tax). Once again, Rod Gervais has been a Godsend. If any of you ever want to build your own home recording studio, just google his name and you’d find his book. And if you’re rich, you could just hire the guy to do everything instead of suffering through it all like me.
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Over the years I’ve noticed something that reinforced my believe that kindred spirits are connected in a specific way. Those that know me know I have eclectic taste in most things, including music. I usually separate musical artists into different tiers like:
Composers – Musicians that compose music for various industries (film/TV, video games, concert halls, theater…etc).
Orchestrators/Arrangers – Musicians that orchestrate and arrange music composed by others, but don’t usually compose original music.
Instrumentalists – Musicians that concentrate on a particular instrument such as the bass guitar, drums, cello, trumpet…etc.
Songwriters – Musicians that write songs in the format that we usually associate with songs (verses, chorus…etc).
Singer/Songwriters – Musicians that both sing and write their own songs.
Singers – Musicians that only sing and do not play any instruments or write any music.
Entertainers – People who I don’t really consider to be any kind of musician, as they mostly sell their looks and dance moves, and their singing is usually not anywhere near the quality that one would associate with a “singer.”
I usually prefer Singers to Entertainers, and Singer/Songwriters to Singers. Once someone enters the world of music writing, in my eyes, they have taken the “next step” in music-making and in a way have “graduated” to the next level. This isn’t to say that people who only sing don’t have my respect–they do, and there are plenty of singers that I love, but my kindred spirits are people who have decided that they want to dive into the world of writing music, and that’s a very different world from singing only.
The thing I have noticed over the years is that the singers I like the most almost all eventually learn to play instruments and start writing their own material, thus “graduating” into the next level of music-making. The strange thing is that when I discover singers that I love, they were just singers, and then over the years, they slowly start to show up on stage with instruments, and eventually start to write their own material and produce or co-produce their own albums. Recently my favorite Korean singer, Lee Soo Young, have started to hit the stage with a guitar, and that put a big smile on my face. Looks like another one of my favorite singers have decided to dive deeper into the world of music-making, no longer content with just singing what others write for her. I love seeing artists evolve and pushing themselves to do better and to do more.
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Quickie movie review:
Domino – I know that Tony Scott has fans, and when he’s not editing his films like a madman, I like him, but when he goes overboard with all the crazy camera moves and chaotic editing it just grates on my nerves. I know he’s trying to be cerebral about the way he edits, using certain effects to convey a character’s inner emotions and so on, but there is a line you do not cross, and that line is when you start to make the audience physically ill from too much unpleasant movements on screen. Domino is one of his more grating films. I managed to sit through it, but I can’t say that I liked it. All that jump cutting and stylized presentation just takes you out of the narrative and it’s almost impossible to develop empathy for the characters because you feel like you’re watching a music video or a TV commercial.
