Tag: Music

New Porcupine Tree?

I thought Steven Wilson ended Porcupine Tree? They released a single today (I think it came out today at least) so I guess not. There is a little blurb on their website that implies this is not an outtake from a previous record. Cool!

I’m only a couple of minutes into it which is much further than I got into Steven Wilson’s last record which was just too awful to deal with (To the Bone was the first record of his I ever heard and I loved it, but I guess that turned off a lot of fans too?). My ears were insulted, but I still tip my hat to the guy for doing what he felt he needed to do. Maybe he made the god awful pop record knowing that a new Porcupine Tree record would follow it and that would earn his fan base’s forgiveness?

Too bad the PT album doesn’t come out until June. Eight months away. Oh well.

Air Pods Max Weirdness

I worked on some lyrics for three of the November songs tonight. I won’t do car music tomorrow, but whenever I do it I’ll have November stuff to work on.

I had my step son’s Air Pods Max that he loaned to me on when I started and there was weirdness. I had two guitar tracks. One was panned hard left so it only plays out of the left speaker. The other is panned hard right so it only comes out of the right speaker. When I had the Air Pods Max on I was getting stereo output, meaning I had music in both ears, but the right guitar wasn’t there. I switched to wired headphones without changing any of the tracks and the right guitar was there.

Most peculiar.

Two Days in a Row

The guitar was played today. That’s two days in a row. Glorious.

Yesterday I worked on four songs for the November Music thing. Today I worked on two songs for the re-recording thing. I wasn’t very good, but I didn’t suck too much. That was nice.

Okay, time to go cook dinner for the love of my life and then maybe do something else. She’s working today and I did a little cleaning to go along with the guitar playing and there is some stuff in the works for the cellar and shhhh I can’t tell anyone yet but shhhhh stop talking about it you moron.

Walking Dead spin offs tonight. Hate watch Fear then actually watch World Beyond? Yeah, I might do that. Or I might not. I don’t know. I’m sure when the hate watch starts I’ll post a bitch-fest post or two. Ya’ll have that to look forward too.

Rock and roll, zombified boys and girls.

Rats

As mentioned yesterday, I put the Rat clone back on the board… because I am ridiculously easy to influence via YouTube videos… ummmm… Let’s just hope I don’t start watching flat Earth or anti-vax videos or anything.*

Note the drive is set pretty low! Inspiration!

Sorry, Aaron Rogers types. I’m dumb, but I ain’t that dumb.

Pedal Board Change is Coming

This week’s episode of That Pedal Show is once again forcing* me to change things in the bedroom recording nook. They keep doing this to me!

The topic is using overdrive pedals in a band setting and it didn’t really teach me anything I didn’t already know. The what not to do examples were things that I used to do all the time, and the what you should do examples were things that I have decided were good ideas over the last 6-7 years or so. I guess I’m like Fredo Corleone. I’m smart.

Nope, what got into my head was just one of the pedals they used for the demonstration. They were using a Rat. Last year I bought a decent Rat clone. It’s on the table next to my desk but tomorrow it’s totally going on the board and getting used on some November Music stuff.

Inspiration, babie!

*Ain’t nobody forcing me to do jack. It’s just inspiration. Oodles of inspiration.

The Simpsons Explain Every Pink Floyd Album

This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to YouTube, The Simpsons, or (The) Pink Floyd.

One Simpsons clip to describe every single Pink Floyd record. Some are a touch too obvious (Animals) but some (looking at you, Atom Heart Mother and A Saucerful of Secrets) are so spot on it’s literally terrifying. Also, you will all finally understand what the hell was going on in The Final Cut.

WTF Reading List

Marc Maron’s WTF podcast had Bob Spitz on today. Maybe it was yesterday, but I listened today.

Spitz is best known for writing a gigantic biography of The Beatles. I bought it and devoured it the instant I leaned of its existence. I’m pretty sure someone got it for me for Christmas or something. It was a great read and I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in The Beatles.

He was on the podcast promoting a new music biography that comes out next week. It’s on Led Zeppelin. That brought me back. The first rock band biography I ever read was Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis . I bought it on my high school band trip to Connecticut in 1986. It was an industry eye opener for this particular high school freshman, let me tell you.

Pretty sure I’ll be reading this one, for old times sake, and I don’t think I’ll be waiting for Christmas.

Attenuating

I think it was yesterday that I posted something about messing with the attenuator settings on my Vox MV50 Clean, the amp I’m using for this month’s demos.

It has three settings; 50 watts, 5 watts, and 0.5 watts. I usually use 0.5 but today I turned the volume knob way down and tried five watts.

I want to say it sounded better, but I only played for a short time and I kept things mostly clean and quiet.

I’ll try it again with some dirt and some serious signal boost into the front of the amp and see how the little Nutube (which totally is not a gimmick) responds.

I’ll let you all know how it goes.