Saturday, March 27, 2010

do you ever get the feeling?

do you ever get the feeling that you've accomplished nothing after a full days work? doesn't that suck.

I was just looking at the clock and it's four nineteen pm.  I woke this morning with a little bit of a we-forgot-to-turn-off-the-heater-before-bed-again hangover and the fact that we're out of coffee hasn't helped any.  at least i had one last little cure in a baggie to partake in, so the headache has mostly subsided.

What I've been up to all day since waking up is trying to recreate my scratch tracks for comfortable skin.  I decided that I would turn it into a video since I haven't posted one of these in a while, and I wanted to do something a little different than my last few posts.

I think after I post this I am going to go and get some coffee and check out the georgetown music store again.  that place is becoming a home a away from home lately.




when i was seventeen i could already tell
leaving town was heavan and sticking around was hell
i had to wear my camoflauge but i
never liked it when they called me sergeant

cause that ain't the kind of skin that i'm comfortable in
this is my skin to get comfortable in

oh, then i got fired from an office job
cause i wasn't gonna slob on nobody's knob
i wouldn't wear their oily ties
cause that ain't the way i like getting by

this is my skin to get comfortable in
so find your own skin to get comfortable in

next thing you know i'm living in a van
and a tramp making music is all that i am
and i think to myself hey man this is more like it
i'm getting closer to getting in

to the kind of skin that i'm comfortable in
only got one skin to get comfortable in

through all the highs and all the lows
there's been so many times i
couldn't change my clothes
but i wouldn't have it any other way
this is the life i chose

well i guess that brings us about to the stage where
i'm really starting to feel my age, and
i've had my share scrapes and such
yeah i've played my share of double dutch
to get

in to the skin that i'm comfortable in
this is my skin to get comfortable in only
got one skin to get comfortable in

through all the highs
and all the lows
i've played my share of dives and i've
taken my share of blows
but i know i got to get on
cause ain't no use keeping dead crops up in rows
life is sometimes just the way life goes

mmm---
m-m-m---
mmm---
(humming and stuff)

this is my skin to get comfortable in
got one skin to get comfortable in

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Double Dribble

Hey all,

I just want to let everybody know that even though class is over, I am going to continue on with this.  And by everybody I mean you.  Thanks for sticking around, eh?  I mean, really, with all of the different information and entertainment you could be consuming right now I'm pretty stoked that you made it to this, the day of my daughter's...wait I'm thinking of something else.  You're the best.

Since you're here, you might as well share in my misery.  I was working on recording some tracks for Comfortable Skin on Tuesday afternoon and I was almost done with my "test run," which I made with the intent of posting, and audacity crashed when I had only one track left to put down on it.  The worst part?  Though I thought I had saved my changes as I went, I had apparently done nothing of the sort.  What a doosh, right?

You think after having had that happen to me so many times I would have learned by now.  One of the biggest problems with Audacity is it's inability to auto-save, and another is its tendency to crash when you have made too many changes without saving.  Sometimes trying to apply a certain effect such as fade in/fade out to an area that has already been altered in some other way.  I'm very happy with its ability to give you real-time playback so that you can record accurately because of that way that it is designed to be very lightweight on the memory drain for running it...it's a very compact engine.  If Audacity were a car, it would be a Geo Metro.  I should know, I drive one.

So I guess the lesson of the day is to know your enemy.  In my case the enemy is the fact that I can't just make the music come out of my mind the way it happens in there without me going through the motions of creating it with my imperfect limbs on instruments and electronic devices that are imperfect by design.  Wouldn't it be great if there were a device that you could hook up to the head of a musician that would make the sounds inside of the folds of their mind erupt?

Monday, March 22, 2010

ROOOOOAAAAAARRRRR!!!!

I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who came down to TRx on Sunday afternoon to support Something Lovelies and our surprise guests Sonic Mustard and double thanks to all of those who through some money down to support Childhood Cancer Sucks, an organization that has been founded to fund research that is focused on finding a cure for Childhood Cancer.  I know when I looked down I saw multiple tens and twenties in there, so that was great!  F U Cancer, Thank you Nich, for having us down to your awesome shop in DTR because it was a great time.

The morning before the show I didn't feel nervous at all, which was kind of weird for me.  But then half way through the day I started to feel like everything was going to go wrong and like everything was going wrong already.  For example, running through my head was the thought that maybe I wasn't good enough at guitar to pull off some of the simple songs we were going to play;  Why did I have to get this cold and why wasn't it gone yet;  I don't even think anybody's going to be in to it while we're playing...on and on and on.   Thank god for Zach who gave me some sound advice, namely to can the frustration and throw it out the window.  It worked.  Even though I didn't pull off some of the guitar, even though my voice was a little bit off from the cold, and even though we had only played these songs together a handful of times, we had fun.  And so did everyone else.  Fun.  Isn't that what it is all about.

I leave you with the sound advice of a six year old girl on how to become a great musician.  "All you have to do is have fun, and it will sound better."  Rock on Millie.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Demo anyone?

This is the final mix of the demo that I'm burning off for booking and such.  Hope you like some of the finishing touches that I've put on everything, and I would love to hear your feedback on what you think it it all.

Grey Matters:



Hot Potatoe:



What Do You Know:



The Stranger:



The jacket cover:
something cover small.jpg

The CD Label:
something label.jpg

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

another potato for your sack

i couldn't stand it.  the vocals on all my mixes have been bad.  the tone of the instruments has been clashing like a titan and an iceberg.  i used a not so subtle tonal shift with the wah effect so that it would soften everything.  While much clarity has been lost, i think it's easier on the ears this way.


Monday, March 8, 2010

For better or for worse (or, let's play a little game)

I've got an idea. I'm going to post a new mix of hot potatoe and you comment me with a simple "better" or "worse" and a short explanation.

not that I'm trying to tell you what to do here, people, I just...ugh.

:)




the heat will get to you
but don't let it fall
when she waits at home for you
and she is hot for you to call

the least you could do is call

she goes out of her way
to make you happy,  yet
you find it inside of yourself to complain
and the one sure thing is that

you're gonna do your thing
so are you happy yet?

the heat just got to you
and you let her down
then you had to yell at her
cause she turned your excuse around

and you just let her walk right out the door
so what the hell are you standing
around here for?

when all others have long since signed off

in the next room there lies a woman of unprecedented charms and here i am letting my blessed dexterity waste away the new fashioned way at this plastic tray that is only warm from my touch and not from it's own heart and hearth within the way that she is.  and as i puff and puff with no one to pass to i feel content and yet somehow aversely inflamed with the thought that i could ever be comfortable with who i am now when i know inside that there is so much work left to do before the Sistine chapel of my corpus humanus is completed.

And that's what's been on my mind lately.

it's not that i assume you were wondering but that i might as well just say it because who cares if i do any more than if i don't is a valid question.  i've been sitting on ideas my whole life and i just want to see if they're worth anything to anyone cause most of them don't fit me anymore.  it's like giving away old clothes to goodwill so that someone else can find a use for them. or maybe it's more like putting up the stepping stones that i've used to get to where i am now on craigslist in the free section so that i don't have to carry them with me anymore.

And that's pretty much the reason i write.

m and i drove down to PDx today, her in her black geo metro and me in the white ford econoline 19' bus trailing behind.  for the first fifty miles i was feeling a little tense about the way he (and by he I mean the good ship USS Sir Moby Broke-Dick) steers, but once i got used to it (and may i mention that the drivers in tacoma and lakewood didn't help me out one bit) i relaxed some and enjoyed the smoothness of the road as it pulled the fish-eyed earth away only to reveal more earth, which i might add doesn't in fact come to an end but instead eerily continues to be in front of us come hell or high water as stories from the past have revealed.

And that is a digression from my day.  It was a good day.  I got a t shirt and she got some books.   Unfortunately we weren't around long enough to see some family that I am long overdue in seeing.

I hope this finds you well,

M. Chase

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

news flash

recording music is a science.  as long as you are willing to learn, you can figure it out.  at least i hope that is true or i'm totally screwed in the end.  but for now, i'd like to re-present to you, my second mix of "hot potatoe" as it stands today, and most likely this will be the mix i use for the "all get out (demo version)" cd that I am just one song from finishing.  In the end, I'm going to have six songs on it.  they will be (not necessarily in this order though) 1) grey matters 2) the stranger 3) comfortable skin 4) hot potatoe 5) what do you know 6) hey, man.

i've always really liked the way that hey, man turned out so mad props to kristie fike the baddest assed lady engineer i know.

anywho, here's the song.  i've got to get started on the aforementioned comfortable skin.  is it taboo to use the syllable "fore" so close to "skin?"  Or am I still thinking about that lady killer Jonah Falcon?

Damn you John Stewart!




the heat will get to you
but don't let it fall
when she waits at home for you
and she is hot for you to call

the least you could do is call

she goes out of her way
to make you happy,  yet
you find it inside of yourself to complain
and the one sure thing is that

you're gonna do your thing
so are you happy yet?

the heat just got to you
and you let her down
then you had to yell at her
cause she turned your excuse around

and you just let her walk right out the door
so what the hell are you standing
around here for?


***Update:::  I, Rather Quite, your diligent man-servant of the latest and greatest news about yours truly would like to announce that in a fortunate turn of events, I was done with work at 1:15pm today and then after finishing my mix of "hot potatoe" I got a call from South Seattle Community College to let me know that class had been cancelled for tonight.  So now here I am with the amazing opportunity to lay down some tracks for the final song on the demo.

now wa'im saaaynnng'!  shout out's to j-roc and the trailer park.  i wish i could watch trailer park boys seasons one and two for the first time all over again.  and if i could say anything to bubbles it would be, when i die, do you think they would let me be reincarnated as you?  i'd really like that.  

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Au Gratin (or, the curse of the love song)

"the thing about love songs" says m, "is that every body thinks theirs is good because it really happened to them."  I may be slightly misquoting, but I'm pretty sure the intent of her statement is intact.  i've noticed that I think my songs sound good to me sometimes just because they're true to me so i refuse to look the gift horse that i've given myself in the mouth.  then again, that may just be the masochistic devil on my shoulder that is trying to get me depressed enough to do some serious destruction in my life for his enjoyment.  what's a devil to do, eh?

anyways, this is the last track I'm doing of this new song for at least twenty four hours.  i would like to unveil (cue "the final countdown" and watch Gob so some amazing magic for a minute...ok now back to what i was saying) my new tune

and let me also say first, it's not really a love song, but more of a story about a love.

"Hot Potatoe"



the heat will get to you
but don't let it fall
when she waits at home for you
and she is hot for you to call

the least you could do is call

she goes out of her way
to make you happy,  yet
you find it inside of yourself to complain
and the one sure thing is that

you're gonna do your thing
so are you happy yet?

the heat just got to you
and you let her down
then you had to yell at her
cause she turned your excuse around

and you just let her walk right out the door
so what the hell are you standing
around here for?

---

Ok now for my comments, and you can post yours too.

1) I was disappointed to have to use Audacity's crappy noise removal tool on the vocals because of a loud hiss that was too much in the forefront to ignore.

2) After having laid down the instrumental tracks I decided that this song is too rigid in this format, and I want it to get a little more groovy when it's played live.

3) I mad a lot of progress vocally during the many takes I did for this song, but I think I've still got a long way to go before I reach my ideal self as a singer.

4) I wish the drum machine I am using didn't sound so fake sometimes, but I'm thankful for what I do have, and can't wait until I have a silent sound booth with a full backline in it to record at my leisure.  But for now, please bear with me.  I had to start somewhere, and what better place than here?  What better time than now?

5) I think anything else that I have to say is babble.  Talk amoungst yourself.