Robot Cousin Soundworks

So I was looking into seeing how other people managed to somehow come close to getting the ever-elusive ‘Pumpkins-tone‘, and I found this, which has to be one of the more musically-inspiring things I’ve read in a while…

Yeah, on a side note: I saw them live at Madison Square Garden in the late 90s. I had tickets to the show that was cancelled because their keyboard player overdosed and they kicked jimmy out of the band. So a few months later they played a makeup show. It was like an out of body experience. I though Id be disappointed because Jimmy Chamberlin is one of my favorite drummers, but the drummer from Tool filled in and rocked it.

Their intro literally brought tears to my eyes. The Garden was pitch black, and this piano loop started to fade in, real gradual for about 5-10 minutes. I forget what song they opened with, but they snuck on stage while it was still pitch black, and then they hit the opening chord and simultaneously these blinding white lights came on from behind the band and I swear it was like seeing God.

On a side-note of my own, the ending piano to ‘Farewell and Goodnight‘ will always ‘get me’. I tried to pay homage to it in my own way, but I don’t think it’s nearly as good.

I’m starting to document my possibly-long-road to success in building my own home recording studio.

I currently own a duplex, and am only using one-half of it. It came to me while we (my fianceé and I) were in search of tenants that I could apply for a government loan to actually build the beginnings of a home studio. Since I’ve graduated, I’ve always wanted to start my own studio, but I kept thinking “too big” (rent out building space, thus incurring even more monthly rent fees, commercial ones at that), or “too small” (Hey, I can work from my basement! Yeah!!). Being a duplex, it obviously has its own entrance, independant of where we actually live. It has 3 bedrooms, at least one of which would be used as a “live” room. The living room is very open and attached to the kitchen. This all came to me one night, and kept me up until 4am. It was wonderful and terrible all at once.

So I’ve decided to take this little corner of the web to document what will be happening over the next… however-long in my quest to finally build my own studio.

Here’s hoping this all comes together. In saying that, does anyone have any idea of where I can go to get money? I’ll be going to try and get a SEED loan, but who knows how that’ll work. I’m totally in the dark when it comes to any sort of Federal loan or grant program. Help?

So, in a perfect world, I would’ve been linking to an as-yet-unheard track (well, heard by you, Mr. Harris, but I think you’re the only one so far). However, my uploader here only allows files smaller than 7mb. Now, I’d gladly redo the track and lower the bitrate (set it at 320k/s), but Logic doesn’t want to play nice with me. This is a regular occurrence, which is why, in a matter of a few business days, I will be one with Snow Leopard.

10.6, here I come. The random “I’m not opening until you restart your system” Logic behaviour should be left in the dust. Well, here’s hoping.

I refuse to upgrade to Logic Pro 9. Why? Because I paid full (Academic, $299) price way back when for Logic Express 7… and then, since it was the academic version, I couldn’t just upgrade to Pro, I had to buy Pro straight out. That (again, all I could afford was the Academic version) was $699 (instead of $1299). And when Logic 8 came out, and I was no longer in school, after a few months, I went and got the full, non-academic version of that. $499. Awesome price, taken out of this specific situation… but it’s still $499 on top of what’s already been spent.

Now, I haven’t been keeping score (and please, don’t post and tell me the damage), but I’ve paid a lot for Logic so far. Since getting LP 8 only 4 months after it was released, I have only seen two (2) updates that came out for it. TWO! And then what do they do? As Carlin would put it, they “Sneezed, and all of the numbers in their head went up by 1″.

I’m done buying Logic for a while. I’ll wait for 10. Or perhaps 9.5, if they even get that far.

With all of that ranting aside, I give you the very calming Copacetic at 5 a.m. (click for description, or listen at the bottom of the page).

I hope you’ve all been enjoying the show so far.