For my part, this song came out of a weird creative period for me, and while the recording is imperfect in a lot of ways (oy the timing on that opening banjo track!, etc), it's also something that, going back to on a lark two years later, I really like a lot of.

I don't do that much stuff with synths and VST in my recordings, so trying to meld those into the original track guitars-and-vox tracks that me and my former bandmate Brian was an adventure in after-the-fact... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:02 AM on July 25, 2008

omfg <3
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:59 PM on July 23, 2008

No, this is totally fine for Music Talk.

I have a hard time seeing CDs themselves disappearing immediately, but there is a sea change coming for sure. At the individual level, though, it's as much as anything the utility you personally, as an artist/band, see coming from having the physical product—and, to some extent, whether utility is what you care about.

Utility stuff:
- What are you going to do with the CDs you print?... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:22 PM on July 21, 2008

Also, I miss having the challenges listed on the front music page. Maybe there could be a quick summary?

LYRIC 'I burned this song' MUSIC spy WILDCARD style hatin'

Something like that might work, yeah. We went with the "hey look over there" kicker at the top of the main page as a short term re-orientation device, but we'll probably tweak it in the next month or so and incorporating a challenge-prompt one-liner isn't a bad idea.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:11 PM on July 21, 2008

And if this is too chatty or too broad for our new feature, please feel free to delete it mods, but these are the things I'm most interested in with relation to songwriters.

Nah, this seems like good discussy fun.

For me, I'd split it between "radio" and "literature", with the caveats that by radio I really mean CDs and live shows—I just didn't listen to the radio all that much growing up, and have... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:12 AM on July 12, 2008

*attaches micayetoca's tastes to pirate radio transmitter*
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:42 AM on July 12, 2008

You could throw together a muxtape and link it in a comment here. That'd be unimpeachable behavior, as far as I'm concerned.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:34 AM on July 12, 2008

I grew up playing at open mics in high school—coffee shop stuff, mostly, in between emo-before-it-was-emo kids and crusty old poet drunks—and never really knew what to make of it at the time, though I was glad to have an audience.

I played some coffeehouse gigs in college, generally solo still.

My first real gigs didn't come until I joined my first band, and we started playing shows out around Portland where we could get them. Mostly... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:17 PM on July 7, 2008

(because if my wife and current bandmate is any indication, eyes glazing over happens at some point)

I'm considering making myself a new t-shirt to wear next time I go over for practice. Just a nice clean sans-serif font, black on white:

"tl;dr"

We played an event at a Chuck-E-Cheese type kids venue once for some festival they were having. That was traumatizing.... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:36 AM on July 10, 2008

I can't tell you how pleased I am that GarageBand has a built in "megaphone" filter. Here's hoping the next release will add "obnoxious screaming" to the palette.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 7:03 PM on July 9, 2008

If I remember right, the hacky way we ended up calculating "plays" via the flash player involved counting the number of times a song creaked past the minute mark -- shorter stints being shrug-and-give-up type stuff.

No idea how playback from playlists aside from this or the front page are calculated.

But since this song is super short, it never crosses that threshold. I think the 1 play must be from someone hitting the direct download... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:54 AM on July 10, 2008

Am I getting you right that your mic collection is a few SM-58s right now? They're nice and versatile instrument mics and you can use 'em for just about anything, but a solonoid mic like that is pretty noisy compared to even a cheap condensor mic, and I'd personally recommend looking into spending a hundred bucks or more on one—your ability to record really clean acoustic tracks (vocals, non-amplified instruments) will just shoot through the damn roof.

Depending... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:05 PM on July 7, 2008

The downside to recording on a computer is that Metafilter is right there. I've pulled out my ethernet cable more than once just to keep myself focused.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 2:14 PM on July 8, 2008

I think I've talked about my dining-table-studio setup in the comments of a song, a year or two back, and I'll see if I can dig that out, but the short version:

My main mic is a Studio Projects B1—solid, nothing-fancy condensor mic, costs about a hundred bucks. I've got a small Yamaha mixer with corresponding not-totally-shitty pre-amps that provides the phantom power the B1 (and most condensor mics) need; I run that through a little two-channel M-Audio USB sound... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:06 AM on July 3, 2008

I tend to apply compression to one track at a time to reduce the dynamic range of that track somewhat; I rarely put more than a touch of compression on a final mix. I'm not sure how you're using it, but if you're trying more that latter case, you probably won't get anywhere significant because mix-with-vox-too-loud plus some compression will just give you a less-dynamic-mix-with-vox-too-loud.

Case study:

I have three tracks. Electric organ,... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 4:54 PM on July 3, 2008

Tape Op

Seconded. It's a great mag, even if I don't have any practical use for 4/5th of any give issue.

I'd love to see a What Did/Do You Read thread, actually. I'd start one myself, but (petard-hoistery ahoy) I posted a "test" thread less than a week ago and I don't want to make Matt or pb go tweaking the db just for me.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:32 AM on July 4, 2008

That's wonderful and awful, COBRA!. Can I suggest you look into a USB sound device? We miss you.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:02 AM on July 8, 2008

I use this thing with an ASIO driver and the latency is pretty minimal. I haven't really dabbled, so I can't speak to the overall hardware market on that front, but there may be a difference between bad experiences (or bad specific driver situations) and the actual viability of USB controllers in general.

I've heard nothing but happiness re: firewire devices, though, and if you're looking at going beyond just one or two channels at once then it's probably a necessity,... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:48 AM on July 8, 2008

I regret not spending more time over here lately, mostly. I've been slacking horribly on my own recording, but I also haven't been making nearly as much time to come over and listen and comment as I would like.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:24 AM on July 2, 2008

that could be a problem with tagging

It's a challenge that might be more subjective (if smaller in topical scope) than the general back-tagging marathon we had for askme and mefi last year; and I wonder if we might not want to try to do some collaborative tagging/organization pass on Music at some point in the future. It'd certainly be nice to leverage community eyeballs to make interesting stuff more findable (or findable in more ways) in here.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:07 AM on July 2, 2008

We sort of talked about the idea of Music Talk vs. Gigfilter. General takeaway was that it's not really what this place is meant for—this isn't the Gigfilter/MefiEvents thing we'd like to build at some point and it shouldn't probably be used that way.

One thought I had when we were hashing that out is that a monthly open Gigs thread or something might be worth experimenting with: let people pop in with an "I'm playing here on the 4th and here on the... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 12:00 PM on July 2, 2008

This place is a bit of a workshop and I get to see people's songwriting and recording processes.

Absolutely, man. And I'm hoping that Talk will indeed get more of this stuff out and available.

gnfti started a blog a good while back that was intended to be sort of a collaborative recordist workshop/howto kind of thing, and to which to my shame I totally failed ever to contribute. One of my desires for this part of the site is... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:47 PM on July 2, 2008

When is there going to be another compilation album? It's been two years, already!

Man, I still need to do a wrap-up post on the first one.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 2:55 PM on July 2, 2008

I don't think it's productive to force people to comment.

Yup. Folks have said it well, but from an administrative perspective I just want to kind of officially get behind that. I'd love to find ways to encourage people to get engaged in commentary, because more real talk about song posts is a great thing—and I'm hoping that that's one of the things that the Talk section might help make happen—but the last thing I want... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:37 PM on July 2, 2008

I am with you, dobie. I am thirty-one flavors of with you.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 7:20 PM on July 3, 2008

Well, you don't need to wax lyrical. You can just wax plain-spoken—if there's something you don't like, just try to figure out if you can articulate what it is that you don't like and why. Constructive criticism doesn't require authority, and you can always provide your own context for your criticism instead of worrying about what context they were posting in.

As long as folks aren't jerks, criticism should be fine. I can't promise that no one... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:35 AM on July 4, 2008

omg love

The balance is actually pretty good. Lead is nice and clear throughout, and the timbre on the two guitars is different enough that they don't seem to muddle together at all (which is one of the biggest challenges I have when I record multiple acoustic guitar tracks together in the same piece).

My only complaint is that a little bit of left-right stereo separation between the two parts would have made it pop even more. Was this both... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:55 AM on July 3, 2008

Months-later note: I think there's a lot more of my fondness of Hedwig and the Angry Inch in this song than I realized when I first wrote it.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:10 AM on July 2, 2008

woot
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 12:24 PM on June 27, 2008

On the bright side, we can finally test the autoban-nosy-users tool we've been building.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 2:45 PM on June 27, 2008

More inside is my friend.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 12:24 PM on June 27, 2008

That's enough out of you, buddy.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 1:43 PM on June 27, 2008

I had a nice thing once, but then it turned out I couldn't have it after all and so I ended up not having it.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 2:27 PM on June 27, 2008

Hrm. Not sure what's up; flash player fails it for me, too, but the direct download is fine.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 4:17 PM on May 20, 2008

Ha! I like this a lot, freya_lamb.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:59 AM on May 20, 2008

Ha! Thanks, everybody.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:53 AM on May 19, 2008

No, I don't think we go back that far in the RA check against Music. Though maybe we should.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:24 AM on May 8, 2008

What I never understood is why they didn't just like aggressively prune the grove so there was more sunlight. Is what.

I, uh, that is, nice work, sir.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 9:11 AM on May 5, 2008

Man, I missed this when it got posted. Awesome work, god hates math.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:31 AM on April 29, 2008

My feelings on this haven't really changed, in fact.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:19 PM on April 19, 2008

Post away, indeed. There's a site-enforced 24 hour timeout between posts, but no other specific hard-and-fast mechanism beyond that; as danb says, protocol is hazy. I wouldn't post a song every day for a whole month, necessarily, but short of that you're probably fine.

And do post more; I liked this. I always forget who made Reason, so I was thinking Take California initially when I hit play. Coffee first, music second: okay.... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 9:52 AM on March 26, 2008

Man, that's just dang fantastic. And now worries, umbú; misreading one another in several directions at once is pretty much a mefi tradition. For what it's worth, the process for me went something like this.

1. Man, this is really great.
2. Whoa, what the fuck? Did his tape recorder have a spasm?
3. Or, maybe he was just—
4. Oh, I guess so: "something weird happened with my tape recorder".
5. But, wait a... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:07 AM on March 7, 2008

The recording is really clean sounding, how do you record a piano in a room and still have it come out sounding good?

Audio out port on the piano! One of the nice things about a digital. The thing actually has some very nice speakers buit into it—playing out loud in a room, it sounds like, well, a piano, which is great—but for recording I can run a 1/4" cord straight from the output jack into my mixer, and it's just super clean.... [more]
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:43 AM on March 7, 2008

You, sir, are depraved. But I kind of like it.

This is one of those songs that, every time I hear it, I think to myself that it'd be really fun to cover.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 7:54 AM on January 17, 2008

Ha! I really like what you did with this. Bizarre on my head to hear some of the rhythmic shifts from the version we were playing out months back.

Did Melissa record that vocal intro in the last few days, or was that sitting around on tape?
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 2:47 PM on December 31, 2007

Looks like we've got an m4a file here. Hrm. Will look into it.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 11:01 AM on December 31, 2007

Ha!
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 12:26 PM on December 29, 2007

*studies his Agrippa*
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 10:13 AM on December 31, 2007

So awesome. I feel like a complete goof for not getting tracks off to gnfti. Oh, the Rick Astley counterpoint that could have been...

Full tracks are available here.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 6:53 AM on December 31, 2007

Bravo, sir.

However, it's not MILL-erd, it's mih-LARD. But I get that a lot.
posted to MeFi Music by cortex at 8:54 AM on December 29, 2007