May 2014 update

I missed my April update - too much happening, as both life and career took most of my time away from me. But I have made progress in setting up my office as I was able to find a very decent desk (modern and slightly industrial looking) for a very reasonable price. I've also set up pretty much everything now - just had an issue with my main PC's motherboard which Asus is remedying by supplying a replacement. Other than that, I'm now sitting in my office and executing on tasks for my day job and simply taking a few minutes for this update.

It may not be the neatest or most organized looking right now, but everything is set up and will be fully functional shortly. As you can see, most everything is within arms reach - now as spacious as the Bothell house media room, but very comfy cozy and simply needs to have some repainting to make it less of a cave.

I've gone through another round of gear swapping recently - in the process of swapping my recently acquired Yamaha AEX 502 in exchange for a Godin 5th Avenue singlecut with P-90 pickups. I also acquired a really nice La Patrie Etude (made by Godin) classical guitar in exchange for my Yamaha classical with someone at work. Both changes will get me a much better playing instrument, with a slightly different tonality that I think will work better for what I plan on doing.

One of the big challenges in the new office/studio is the echo from bare walls and high ceiling. I've got some instructions on building "decorative" sound absorption panels that will hang on the walls like artwork, and up in the cathedral sloped ceiling on the front and back side of the room. That will make the room less obvious for sure when recording, or in the case of executing on my day job - taking conference calls over the hands free feature. The high ceiling also has a dome type light which is very difficult to change bulbs out as well as even with 3 60W equivalent LED bulbs, the color of the room is so dark and not terribly pleasant color either, that the light just gets sucked up like a black body object. I get pretty fatigued working in the room as a result, so a new paint will be needed soon.

To close off the post, I'm getting more chance to play around with guitars and keyboards these days - the proximity of the instruments helps with that. I've been getting some interesting ideas, progressions, & riffs happening. Such that I think now that the new mobo is due to arrive today, once that's swapped out I can start doing some recording and lay the ideas down before they disappear. Don't expect anything to appear terribly quickly - this is still embryonic stage, but in a month or two I'll be able to call up the other guys and have something as a starting point to jam on.

Have a great month and I'll post next when I have anything to report. Hope to have audio tracks to demo here for you.

New Home, new Android phone... what else could possibly change?

As mentioned, we've moved to another home - we sold our home early January and then closed on our new home in February. Which meant we had to live in an apartment for about two months as we got through all the trials & tribulations of the financing and then closing on our new home. Now that we've survived that, and we've been in our new home for just over a week now, we've been unpacking and setting up all our stuff - including getting my stuff up in my new 12x12 office/studio :)

I divested myself of some gear that wasn't working out well for me - MOx6, Novation K-Station 49, Boca 12 string electric guitar, the 60's Tribute Gibson Les Paul Studio goldtop... there's other instruments and equipment as well, but those were the major casualties of some turnover even though they hadn't been used on any recordings at all (the instruments listed above).

Setting up everything in the 144 sq ft room is challenging, as the drumkit by itself takes up almost 1/4 of the room. I don't have my desk of preference, nor a credenza that I'll convert to hosting all the rack units - but the cheap Ikea desk will do for the time being as I set it up for my home office, working remotely 2.5 days/week. My employer has decided to increase my commute by about 8 miles forcing me to drive or bus to Seattle - and that last 8 miles will add another 20-25 minutes to my commute. Which has led me to decide on working from home part of the time to save on miles, time and gas. While its nice to be allowed to work from home, I was very comfortable commuting to Bellevue daily. But such is the ways of life - I can't do anything about it at this point.

So anyways, it's 6:30 pm on Saturday night, and I'm looking out my family room window down into the Snoqualmie River Valley and north along the Cascade Mountains to see Mt Baker and the top of Glacier Peak. Its an amazing and tranquil view that helps to settle the stress of daily life, and even though the cherry blossoms will soon obscure our view, I'm very happy in our new abode.

Music News - nothing specific or at least more than what has been stated her and on FB. I'm planning on some remixing and revisiting of songs on the first three CDs, doing some cover tunes that strike me as interesting to do, and then looking to write the Dream Suite. I'm awaiting the new Gazpacho release "Demon" as it's both fascinating on its own, but also for the business model the band follows. They keep full time jobs to support families and such, but write, record and release projects on a 18-24 month cadence. That is a working example of what model I'm trying to follow - I have my full time job to support us as needed, and not being dependent on music means I can follow my muse and create the music I enjoy myself, in effect writing for myself.