I’ve been listening to Aimee Mann’s “The Forgotten Arm” the last few days, and it’s making me depressed. Not “cut my wrists and bleed out into a warm bath” depressed, but that almost pleasant self-indulgent melancholy that some music can provoke. This is actually a glowing endorsement for the album by the way. It’s really very good.

Songwriting-wise I don’t seem to do “happy” very well. It’s not that I’m not a reasonably happy person (at least sometimes) but rather that I don’t much like happy music. I think Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree has a quote along those lines – sad music can actually be uplifting because it’s so honest and visceral. Happy, jaunty tunes always seem to come off sounding so… contrived.

La de daa, roses and fluffy bunnies and lace, oh me oh my!

Please.

I was recently informed by my esteemed musical colleague Andrew that my blog was extremely fatiguing to read. Ordinarily my response to such a statement would be “fuck off won’t you, there’s a good chap”. However, as he’s also rather a good graphic designer and I am, as it were, colour blind, I thought I probably should pay him some attention. So I have switched to this (hopefully) far more legible colour scheme.

In other news, my office chair appears to have broken. I’ve swapped it for one in the lunch room, so it’s all good. Nobody saw a thing. It’s the perfect crime.

It’s 5pm and I long for a beer.

This is not an interesting entry.

This is a beer.

My father helped me to pick up our new washing machine yesterday (rock and roll!), and we visited a friend of his on the way home. This friend had recently had his lovingly restored Mercedes Fintail ploughed into by an over-zealous Ford Escort, completely writing it off. Worse, they were both competing in a competitive motorsport event at the time, so it’s very much an “at your own risk” venture. No insurance. It puts my phone into perspective somewhat!

I really admired his “get back on the horse” mentality. Only a week after the event, he’s already entered his Riley into next year’s competition, despite the fact that it’s little more than a chassis at present. However there’s nothing like a deadline to motivate you to finish something – and I suspect he will.

So I’ve been toying with the idea of setting myself a deadline for finishing this long-considered solo project. I’ve been writing and recording little bits and pieces for years now – well before the advent of The Third Ending – but without a focal point, it’s all too easy to put things off until “a better time”. Sometimes that actually does lead to a better result, but more often than not it just means nothing gets achieved (except maybe another hour of television might get watched). T3E progress was slooooooooooooow, but we did eventually get there. Without some sort of external impetus, I fear my own venture may stall at the gate.

So I’ll get around to doing something about that… sometime.

And now the insurance claim on the Nokia has been declined.

Apparently the mere four doors the thief had to walk through to get to my private office means that it constitutes a public area.

Let’s hear 3 big cheers for ACE Insurance!

After a few increasingly terse emails with the (interstate) retailer, it’s beginning to look more and more like I’m stuck with my pretty blue and silver paperweight. I could probably kick it along to small claims court, but to be honest, I’m running out of motivational steam. The time & effort it would take to argue is beginning to exceed the AU$470 purchase price. Chalk this one up to experience.

On the plus side, if I ever want to make a dramatic film-clip, I can bring my Mbox and laptop in lieu of a wind machine, so there’s some money saved perhaps. Plus if it’s a night-shoot, the crew can huddle around the laptop to keep warm.

So I’m left with a conundrum… I have all this gee-whiz-bang-industry-standard-dontcha-know Pro Tools software, and while I’m completely enamoured with REAPER, there’s still a stubborn streak in me that says “You’ve paid for Pro Tools now. You should use it”. Not on the laptop obviously (I don’t particularly fancy having to prise a heap of smouldering melted plastic off my studio table after each session) but perhaps on my old faithful studio machine.

It’s a stupid compulsion really. The software itself is clunky and bloaty – I needed to upgrade the RAM on the machine just to get it running somewhere near smoothly, and even then it didn’t match the performance of my previous software before the upgrade. Plus it neatly sucks you in to this cumulative payment system whereby you have to cough up extra dollars to unlock Digidesign’s arbitrary restrictions. I understand the need to segment the product range and retain a market for the high-end stuff, that’s just good business sense. Hell, I cut my teeth on 8-track tape, so a 32 audio track count limitation I can live with (or work around). But MP3 export, non-realtime bounce… these are universal and rudimetary features. I’d happily trade all of the “looks just like a photo of an 1176, sounds like a photocopy of a digital ass” plugins for a solid set of useful features that don’t damage my machine.

Is there a “laptop non-combustion module” upgrade available by any chance?

Anyway, I’ve been compiling a pros and cons list for persevering with Pro Tools.

PROS

• It’s the “industry standard”, and therefore worth learning
• It came with a lot of useful bundled software and plugins
• I paid for it, and dammit, I’m getting my money’s worth

CONS

• It’s the industry standard, but probably shouldn’t be, and deserves knocking off its perch
• The bundled software and plugins are absurdly limited in their functionality, and in most cases are easily surpassed by freeware and open source alternatives
• I already wasted my money – no sense also wasting my time
• I am neither insane, nor a masochist

So I’m afraid the cons have it. Pro Tools for the round-file. Thank God for that. May it never blight my door again.

If you have a laptop, think very carefully before you buy anything with “Digidesign” written on it.

I picked up an Mbox 2 Mini in late January. “Marvellous”, thought me. “I can dip my toes into the wonderful world of Pro Tools, and have a portable USB interface to use with the laptop”. It was quite expensive compared to the non Digi hardware, but that’s the price you pay for quality… err, right?

Pshaw.

I had some audio work to do this weekend just gone, and I was away from home. The perfect opportunity to use my nifty little USB doohickey. Loaded in the ASIO/WDM drivers, and the strangest thing happened – the CPU meter pegged up to 100% and stayed there until I shut down the audio application. “That is rather odd”, thought I. After quite a bit of hunting around, I came across a rather enlightening discussion on Digidesign’s support forum.

After acknowledging the problem, a Digidesign representative promises to investigate, and later informs people that they are working on a fix. Then they return (after a lengthy delay), not with a solution, but rather to inform the large number of unhappy customers that this is infact a feature, not a bug. Apparently the variable CPU speeds of some mobile chipsets offends the delicate sensibilities of the sensitive new age Digi drivers, so they just bung a 100% load on the CPU all the time so it doesn’t get a chance to slow down.

What it does do is heat up. Quickly. Then of course the fan kicks in – so you end up trying to record audio on a machine that’s uncomfortably hot to touch, and sounds like a Boeing taxiing for take-off. The fan I could live with (although it’s rather frustrating), but the heat is un-tenable. It will shorten the life of the hardware, and as far as I’m concerned that is beyond the point where it’s acceptable.

The funny thing is, I then installed the tiny, free Asio4all driver, and everything ran absolutely bulletproof using the laptop’s built in sound chip. The altruistic spare-time coder trumps the monolithic industry standard.

Again.

I’ve now officially got more album-recording time behind me than in front. And I’m starting to arrive at the conclusion that I’m not going to finish. Balls.

I’ve got some good work done though, so I’ll keep plugging away, and see what comes of it. The thing is, it’s dead easy to fill 35 minutes with music – it’s just making good music that is the trick. If I get even half that time filled with quality material, I still say it’s been a productive month.

I’m being brief for now, as I’m as tired as a very tired thing, but I’d say it was generally a success, more or less. I’m watching the video recording now, and we seem to have acquitted ourselves reasonably well – and in the face of considerable organisational adversity!

More soon. Thanks to all who came along and clapped & cheered. You rock.

About 4 months after our first web-sale, we’re finally going to give this CD a proper send-off. This Saturday night, December 2nd at the Republic Bar, 299 Elizabeth Street North Hobart.

As we have two sets to fill, and a little under an hour of album to fill them with, we’ve been madly rehearsing some songs by other artists. I’m reluctant to call them “covers” per se – you won’t be hearing “Unbelieveable” or “Hit Me Baby One More Time” in there (although, that could be interesting…). We’re going to bust out a few songs from our favourite artists & influences though. Current plan is to record the show in some form or another, considering the bulk of the fanbase are actually offshore. Hopefully we’ll be able to make at least excerpts available on the website for all to enjoy.

More information as it comes. In the meantime, clear this Saturday in your calendar if you’re anywhere near Hobart!

We had another T3E rehearsal this weekend gone. It’s starting to sound something like a band now – as opposed to the first one!

I am utterly daunted by the prospect of setting up my equipment for each gig. Not that any of it is terribly complicated on its own, but the sheer combination of devices. We’ve been silly enough to record an album that’s layered and fairly keyboard-heavy. Now I have to play all the bloody stuff, and sing at the same time. A challenge

Whose Idea was this?