[Art, Justin, New Bain Song, J.D. Mixing, Slick, the Sampler]
So the last week has been relatively eventful, which is to be expected given the the nature of the several weeks preceeding it. Nothing flashy, but constructive just the same.
Last Thursday I met with Jessica Ray, artist extrordinaire, at Trio on Market Square. She had a few drawings ready: one of the Han Shot First t shirt design, and one of Peter Chimpanzee, one of the main characters (if not *the* main character) from the Zombies! musical. They both look outstanding. It prompted me to start a Zombies! MySpace page, which is relatively sparse as of now...but we'll slowly add content, in tendem with the constuction of a proper web page, which will promote Zombies! in a very vague, viral kind of way. Hopefully it will pique interest.
Jessica didn't include a sky for Peter's drawing, as she wasn't sure what it should be like. Her boyfriend Andy said that he could fly in photograph of real sky behind Peter, which could look really cool, especially if it could be color treated beforehand to be purple or orange or something. Also, Andy is a professional web designer (primarily for the government, apparently, so he has some serious chops), and we're setting up a meeting with him...sometime. I'm excited to get someone involved with Migrant who actually has some web skills *and* the ability to work with others in a relatively demanding application. We've yet to find that particular balance as with most of the web folks we've worked with over the years. Maybe this will be different.
Late Thursday night our friend Justin Jordan rolled into town to spend the weekend with us. He actually stayed with Val and Yon, who were consumate hosts, as usual. Friday Justin came and hung out downtown while Yon and I worked, and we got to grab lunch at Tomato Head and talk shop. Justin seems rather ambivalent about the closing of his studio in Memphis. The space, while nice, had a lot of cons attached to it, and the tornado was just the final straw. I was hoping that he'd still want to produce people on a case-by-case basis, but he seemed fairly disinterested in production as well, citing his short attention span and lack of time/drive to finish his own music, let alone other people's.
I see where Justin's coming from, and you certainly can't *force* someone to be motivated, but I feel that he has both the right personality and the right musical range to be a really, really good producer for other people's music. He's not forceful, but he has enough ego to insist on getting what he wants. But he'll compromise as well. And he has a lot of good ideas in his magic golf bag of tricks. But that just doesn't seem to be the place he's in right now. Dammit.
Jeremy Bain sent me and Yon his latest demo, and it's beautiful. I hope that he keeps putting these demos to tape, as pretty soon he'll have enough for an entire full-length CD worth of stuff. Including the new one, plus the song that he's played for us but yet to demo, that makes four tracks in all that he definitely wants to put down in an expanded form, and Yon and I would be more than happy to oblige him in that arena. I'm not sure, still, what song of his will end up on the Migrant Music Sampler, but whatever it is, it'll be really, really good.
Speaking of which, the Sampler continues to settle in. Some songs that have been decided:
The Passport Again --- "This Charging Beast" [Remix]
J.D. Reager & the Cold Blooded Three --- "Ballad of Max & Grace" [Migrant Mix]
The Rockwells --- "The Quarterback" [From the new CD]
Several of the other acts have songs that are "front-runners" (to borrow a political term---I'm topical), and slowly but surely the whole thing will fall into place. We seem to actually have too *much* material, which is really good problem to have. J.D. should be sending us a DVD with the WAV files for "Ballad" for us to start mixing. Yon played french horn on it, and I played bass. So we're already pretty familiar with the song. I'm excited to see what we can do. J.D. will be heading to SXSW with Justin and Two Way Radio---along with four other Makeshift bands---for a Makeshift showcase there. I am both excited for them and envious.
The Slick track for the Sampler is wide open. We had a major breakthrough with the material last night, which involves trying to remove an annoying noise from each of the tracks that was mistakenly put there when the songs were transferred from analog tape to the digital realm. The only problem with removing the noise is that it also removes a certain amount of bandwidth from the music itself, making the songs sound muffled and "far away" sounding from the removal of some high frequencies. But Yon and I just got the McDSP ClassicPack, which includes FilterBank. It works wonders. We were taking out the frequencies with the noise then putting them back in, boosting them without the original noise. Amazing, wonderful results. You practically can't tell that anything was done to the songs to "fix" them...and after mastering, you'll never be able to tell. We're really excited.
Okay, that's enough for now. Next time: how the Rockwells' Disc Exchange In-Store performance went, promoting it through Benny Smith at WUTK, the status of the WUTK compilation, more mixing news, and adding saxamaphones to the Brown EP. Whoo!
Last Thursday I met with Jessica Ray, artist extrordinaire, at Trio on Market Square. She had a few drawings ready: one of the Han Shot First t shirt design, and one of Peter Chimpanzee, one of the main characters (if not *the* main character) from the Zombies! musical. They both look outstanding. It prompted me to start a Zombies! MySpace page, which is relatively sparse as of now...but we'll slowly add content, in tendem with the constuction of a proper web page, which will promote Zombies! in a very vague, viral kind of way. Hopefully it will pique interest.
Jessica didn't include a sky for Peter's drawing, as she wasn't sure what it should be like. Her boyfriend Andy said that he could fly in photograph of real sky behind Peter, which could look really cool, especially if it could be color treated beforehand to be purple or orange or something. Also, Andy is a professional web designer (primarily for the government, apparently, so he has some serious chops), and we're setting up a meeting with him...sometime. I'm excited to get someone involved with Migrant who actually has some web skills *and* the ability to work with others in a relatively demanding application. We've yet to find that particular balance as with most of the web folks we've worked with over the years. Maybe this will be different.
Late Thursday night our friend Justin Jordan rolled into town to spend the weekend with us. He actually stayed with Val and Yon, who were consumate hosts, as usual. Friday Justin came and hung out downtown while Yon and I worked, and we got to grab lunch at Tomato Head and talk shop. Justin seems rather ambivalent about the closing of his studio in Memphis. The space, while nice, had a lot of cons attached to it, and the tornado was just the final straw. I was hoping that he'd still want to produce people on a case-by-case basis, but he seemed fairly disinterested in production as well, citing his short attention span and lack of time/drive to finish his own music, let alone other people's.
I see where Justin's coming from, and you certainly can't *force* someone to be motivated, but I feel that he has both the right personality and the right musical range to be a really, really good producer for other people's music. He's not forceful, but he has enough ego to insist on getting what he wants. But he'll compromise as well. And he has a lot of good ideas in his magic golf bag of tricks. But that just doesn't seem to be the place he's in right now. Dammit.
Jeremy Bain sent me and Yon his latest demo, and it's beautiful. I hope that he keeps putting these demos to tape, as pretty soon he'll have enough for an entire full-length CD worth of stuff. Including the new one, plus the song that he's played for us but yet to demo, that makes four tracks in all that he definitely wants to put down in an expanded form, and Yon and I would be more than happy to oblige him in that arena. I'm not sure, still, what song of his will end up on the Migrant Music Sampler, but whatever it is, it'll be really, really good.
Speaking of which, the Sampler continues to settle in. Some songs that have been decided:
The Passport Again --- "This Charging Beast" [Remix]
J.D. Reager & the Cold Blooded Three --- "Ballad of Max & Grace" [Migrant Mix]
The Rockwells --- "The Quarterback" [From the new CD]
Several of the other acts have songs that are "front-runners" (to borrow a political term---I'm topical), and slowly but surely the whole thing will fall into place. We seem to actually have too *much* material, which is really good problem to have. J.D. should be sending us a DVD with the WAV files for "Ballad" for us to start mixing. Yon played french horn on it, and I played bass. So we're already pretty familiar with the song. I'm excited to see what we can do. J.D. will be heading to SXSW with Justin and Two Way Radio---along with four other Makeshift bands---for a Makeshift showcase there. I am both excited for them and envious.
The Slick track for the Sampler is wide open. We had a major breakthrough with the material last night, which involves trying to remove an annoying noise from each of the tracks that was mistakenly put there when the songs were transferred from analog tape to the digital realm. The only problem with removing the noise is that it also removes a certain amount of bandwidth from the music itself, making the songs sound muffled and "far away" sounding from the removal of some high frequencies. But Yon and I just got the McDSP ClassicPack, which includes FilterBank. It works wonders. We were taking out the frequencies with the noise then putting them back in, boosting them without the original noise. Amazing, wonderful results. You practically can't tell that anything was done to the songs to "fix" them...and after mastering, you'll never be able to tell. We're really excited.
Okay, that's enough for now. Next time: how the Rockwells' Disc Exchange In-Store performance went, promoting it through Benny Smith at WUTK, the status of the WUTK compilation, more mixing news, and adding saxamaphones to the Brown EP. Whoo!