beautiful, funny, sad & true

Jan 28

iPad

This is dying to be shared with everyone.Â It’s the original Apple iPad, courtesy of Mad TV, FIVE YEARS AGO.

Jan 25

machine

blogging, music, Oregon, pictures 1 Comment »

I’m kind of obsessed with this song lately.Â I first heard it when my friend played it on his radio show one night.Â The singer’s voice sounded familiar, and the pianist clearly had classical chops.Â I was mesmerized, and I called my friend at the station to find out who that was.Â It turned out to be a new song by Regina Spektor called “Machine.”

The song’s subject matter and the detached quality of Regina’s perfomance always remind me of a beautiful, enigmatic and very dark anime series called Serial Experiments:Â Lain, which I recommend whole-heartedly, although I would add the caveat that its darkness and strangeness is not for everyone; certainly not for the faint of heart.

[UPDATE:Â Click on the picture, and that will take you to the first episode of the show.]

In other news, I spent this last weekend at the coast for a much-needed getaway.Â It allowed me, among other things, the luxury of enough time away from all of the usual nonsense, so that I could cut out the noise and think about the people and things that are important to me, and one of them was this blog.Â I needed some time away from it to appreciate how much I enjoy having this particular outlet, and you’ll be glad to know that I plan to write much more often, like I used to.

The hiatus is officially over.

Jan 14

it’s not for shaving

music, recording 1 Comment »

In the gentle art of music production, it’s almost always the simplest instruction that gets the best results.Â Naturally, that always reminds me of the scientific principle known as Occam’s Razor. Â For the last few days, I’ve been working on a very fun project with a couple of my neighbors (who are very busy professional musicians) and an excellent singing bassist with whom I’ve played with a number of times before.

This evening, we were working on vocals, and Singer took a few takes of one of the songs, but the vibe wasn’t quite happening.Â It’s a very strong, haughty song, and she felt she was being a bit too gentle with the vocal.Â When you’re working with amateurs or people without much experience, sometimes you have to hold their hands a bit, but when you’re dealing with professionals you can push them a little bit harder.Â I told her simply to “Step back from the mic a little, and just sing the hell out of it.”

She did, the song completely came to life, and we had our vocal take.

Occam’s Razor strikes again.