Chris -- Don't start getting to excited about the vocals on that Braman stuff. All we did was set up the C-1000 with a pop screen where he could sing into it, put the d112 (near the sound hole) and one of the 690s (near the neck) on the ukele (that he found in the trash), and pressed record. It was before I had the RNC or the RNP. The way it sounds: that's him. He has an amazing voice. The coolest thing about it is that when he gets loud it goes into this Billie Holiday-esque self-compressing distortion. He played and sang each of those songs through together. He did each one at most three times before getting all the way through, with many done in one. I was very happily surprised about how the c-1000 sounded on his voice since it was the first time I'd used it. It has a slight upper-mid grating harshness, but besides that is just about right. I compressed it in the mix, but besides that (and about a million things I did to try and fight various strange noises the ukele made) what you hear is what he sounded like.

just sitting here listening to jonathon braman, wishing greg would post an account of things like his RNC settings and where the mics were. pop, vocals, it is.

once i was in the gregory heights band room, putting amps behind pianos, when the drums started to sound funky. i went nuts tuning the room, and then clicked one button, turning M/S on in cubase, and it all fell into place. i still can't decide if opening all the locker doors and pushing bleachers around while listening in to mid in one ear and side in the other, instead of the stereo mix m/s provides, had been a help or hinderence in the process. at least it had me concentrating on the room. the balance is very tight.

http://www.krecs.com/cgi-bin/YaBB/YaBB.cgi?board=news;action=display;num=1091225662;start=15#28

coolhunting, nabbed um beyondwhich there are deamons. wierd how apple could strike it on better terms. that's not something you wanna involve the law in.

Last night we played a show in Denton, TX, a college town just outside the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex. It was about a four hour drive from Austin that we did starting at about four-thirty. We got to the club right about at nine at the end of our assigned load-in window becuase of difficulties finding the club -- the Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio and bar -- which was bizzarely located in the middle of the industrial zone on the edge of town.

When we finally got there, the show ended up being about average for tour: a dark divey-looking place that turns out to have some history on the circuit that good bands play (posters for Mates of State, Don Caballero, others), starting late and playing to only a handful of people -- this time aggravated by the fact that this was a college-town bar in the middle of a summer rainstorm. There were, as always, a couple of things that set this show apart: while waiting for the soundguy, we ordered a pizza, not expecting it to arrive until after our set as the club was pretty removed from what passes for Denton civilization, only to have it show up seeminly instantaneously and be quite good: J & J's knows their stuff. The two other bands, The Glass Factory and The Tah Dahs, each had members that qualified as (very) minor indie rock celebrities: Glass Factory bass player had been in Mineral and The Tah Dahs singer/guitarist has played with the Polyphonic Spree. Both bands were pretty good, a strong 7 or 8 each on the scale of the bands we've ever played with.

After the show, we loaded our stuff into the van and headed back towards Austin. It was about 1am and it's a long drive, but we'd been getting to sleep pretty late on each of the previous nights so we figured we might as well do it and have the full day to spend with Chris. When we finally found our way onto the highway going the right direction, it started raining. Or, more accurately, it started raining again, since the condition of the road showed that it'd been raining pretty heavily on and off for a while. The rain built and built, coming down in heavy sheets reducing visibility and roaring as it banged on the van's roof. Then it would suddenly die off for patches between torrents. Each section of the storm was worse than the last, finally forcing me to slow the van to about fifty since I could only see for feet in front of me. A new and exciting danger developed then in the form of speeding towers of light and noise -- big rigs that couldn't slow down safely in the wet and couldm't see small cars (like our enormous, SUV-limo sized van) in the squall. We pulled off the highway, fording a side road ankle deep in water to get to a Mobil travel center and gas station. We took a Polaroid under the gushing overhang overflow and then headed inside, standing momentarily inside the sliding doors shaking our head in disbelief and an attempt to dry off, as would, we'd soon see, every other incoming customer. After using the bathroom (and especially the hand dryer, for cycle upon cycle) and wandering around the inensely-white-lit store staring at candy and leafing through Maxim, FHM, and Smooth (the particularly excellent latino version), we sloshed back out to the van to decide what to do.

After a discussion with a kindly highway patrol officer with a deep and wide scar on his left cheek about road conditions and a vote of two-to-one, we decided to drive over and park in the McDonalds parking lot to sleep until sunrise. We called Chris to leave a voice mail telling him not to worry about our absence. Just after getting off the phone, as we were settling into our cramped quarters in the van and preparing to grouse about the flood lights in the parking lot, there was a particularly forceful blast of lightning and all of the ourdoor lights went out within our field of sight. We slept fitfully for about three hours in the half-gloom.

After a relatively uneventful, if wet, morning drive (featuring a particularly pleasant listen to Mingus' Ah Um) we arrived back, alive, at Chris's apartment and fell on the floor asleep. Now, food and some solid loungin' hours later, we're getting ready to go see I Robot. We probably won't tell you how it is.

here is the cut-up i did of Colin Blunstone and the Alan Parsons Project. i always find doing the song in one sitting better guarantees that you'll get it done at all. this one was quick, but hayden took off to party with anthony, so he's letting me mix on his gear.

the m4a file

we're thinking about going live. welcome. if your reading this, it';s not entirely by accident.j

amy and i are discussing hierarchy in organization. how easy is this new animal kingdom to navigate? perhaps a helpful signpost is in order: You Are Here.

on the agenda - content for the various java frames. i believe i deserve a self-congratulations for my work in the scripting department. also, thank the author of Just One Bite for her wild and wacky code that i ripped off and repurposed for the purpose.

as far as studio trickery goes, another thing on my agenda is to distill the hours of footage Amy and i grabbed into some sample sets for reason. like the good lord says, "I am the bread of life," whatever that means.