April 20, 2016 - 2:09am ... I'm sorry everybody... I'm sorry... but recording just isn't that exciting. It's starting to become apparent that all the stuff that goes on in my day that I find somewhat interesting, happens outside the studio... and anything interesting that happens in the studio, should sorta stay in the studio... see previous blog post for reasons why... combined with it being just another day at the office for me. ... I'm super tired right now too... just finished uploading some drums for Alex (Gerst) in case he wants to bring them into the session early tomorrow. Figured it might save some time... it's a 45 min drive. (... another huge thunderstorm just rolled in... the thunder just shook the house!) ... I have no idea where the time went this morning. I woke up, did some emails, skype meeting, checked facebook... ate breakfast, shaved/showered (day 1 at Empire Sound today!), then started transferring the sessions for the studio (guide tracks for drums). ... totally forgot Kev made some edits on his end that I hadn't yet done on mine... so something that should've taken 15 minutes ended up taking 45... to get one done... I'm glad the plan was to just do the one song today... since that's all that was ready! lol... *tear* So... Wing Stop... me likey! Kyle took me there for lunch... I'd mentioned wings (aka when's wing night?) and he immediately said/suggested Wing Stop. .... Wing Stop is good... and considering the price... it's going to be tough to not go there... everyday. It's dangerously close to the studio. (... this thunder is MASSIVE!!!) They have all these flavours... you get to pick two... I went with traditional hot and mango habanero... it was so good! ... I want more right now. Only complaint... and I saw it happening in real time... the guy prepping my fries... his saltin' was a little too free spirited... a little too lax. The amount of salt that I saw go into that big ol' metal bowl... it was "end of shift" salty... it was "salt water" salty... he really should've just shook some fries into a bowl of salt... not the other way around.... so salty. ... I powered through most of it... they were so salty that I was using blue cheese dipping sauce to tone down the salt! ... think about that! (... sweet fudge bars this storm isn't messing around... I'd heard about Houston but hopefully that doesn't happen here... I am curious to see how the flooding on the roads works around here though... there are signs all over the place.) After lunch we headed to the studio... Empire Sound. ... it has vibe, cool staff, and tons of instruments. ... I love it! I'll take more pics but today/this morning I thought I'd update my apps... but my POS 16GB iPhone 5s decided to max out the storage, somewhat bricking my phone for most of the day. I know deleting a couple videos would solve the problem... but I'm just not ready to (although they are backed up) remove Loaner Cat and tour videos... I like having them on hand in case of emergency. (... if this storm finds my remaining fries... and washes them into any waterways... they will become undrinkable water supplies.) The ESP (guitars) dealer dropped by soon after... they wanted to show Kyle a few guitars... he's PRS endorsed I think, and also reps or distributes a few companies... or something along those lines... I was too salted to hear details today. ... there's no TV in the control room... I found this interesting. Howard got in around 5pm and we got to tracking the first (only... lol... *cough*) tune. Despite not having much time at all, he threw down pretty well! Side note... it's a pet peeve when people announce they haven't had much time to sit with a song or even practice. In the studio, you get several swings, and then you can comp or further examine what you're playing. Of course it's nice to have learned/practiced tunes... but the time necessary to track either preparedness level... it's not far apart.... seriously... if you have moderate ability. Write the arrangement, add a few notes (make it a cheat sheet), run through the tune a few times, listen back, run through it a few more... should be good to go! ... even easier with guitars and bass since you can scrub through them. Somehow it was like 9:30pm by the time we left... I wanted to stop by Walmart but Kyle was pretty set on grabbing dinner... dinner was Whataburger. ... I kept thinking everyone was saying "Water Burger"... was pretty curious what the water was all about. ... Americian accents, eh? *pfft* Burger was good... reminded me of a Whopper but better. Side note... the drink sizes here... I'm at a loss for words... our medium cups could easy fit inside their medium... I'm convinced "Large" is just a hose. Started editing around 11:30pm... surprised it took so long for me to get working... it's not like I've been doddling. ... alright... I should put MST3K on and get to sleep... I'm starting to do that thing where I rest my eyes while I'm tying to type and then I doze off... then read what I type and ot ;;pls like tjis. Full day tomorrow... good times. Mike :-) P.S. I need sleep. P.P.S. I just woke up... I dreamt I'd already moved this from my gmail into my blog... not cool! ... and a bad use of dream!
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April 19, 2016 - 12:39am ... I don't know why I can't get to bed before midnight. It's even later here because I'm an hour behind Toronto time... so it's really almost 2am... and I'm doing emails, chatting, and watching horribly awful movies on Crackle... Crackle is like Netflix... but mostly with crap... but I sorta like crappy awful movies. Spent this afternoon doing some vocal editing and prepping for tomorrow... and this evening Kyle, Aaron, and I demoed up another tune. Odds are I'll use the demo sessions as our guide tracks... I think the tempos are fine and they sound good enough to start tracking drums to. ... so last night I meant to talk about something... but when I went to type it out... I couldn't remember for the life of me what it was... then I remembered this morning. Long story short, I helped Kyle move a treadmill Sunday, and I had this uber weirdo moment where I wasn't sure what I should do... I was stuck at the threshold of the door way... the edge of the carpet. I finally sucked it up and just walked in to help... but I hated every step... it felt so weird! ... overall things seem pretty normal here... but one thing I'm having trouble getting use to is people wearing their shoes in doors. I've heard this is an American thing... but it really seems to be a normal thing... which shouldn't be a big deal, but mentally it is... not that I think it's gross that people are wearing their outdoor shoes inside... but because I feel SUPER weird wearing my shoes in someone else's house. ... it'd be like me putting my feet up on someone else's dining room table. ... that's all. I just wanted to get that off my chest. ... I regret not bringing my indoor shoes. Starting our studio days tomorrow. Good times. Mike :-) P.S. I'm excited to see the studio... studio Christmas. April 17, 2016 - 11:23pm ... nothing too crazy today... we demoed up another tune this afternoon and wrote/demoed one this evening. Sometimes "riff happens" and it's good to just get something down. I made a template for Pro Tools so we can quickly demo things up... 4 guitar tracks, bass, MIDI drums. This comes in really handy getting ideas down... it drives me crazy when I hear bands are taking weeks to demo up tunes... should only take you 3-4 hrs to demo up a song! ... seriously. Also, if we have something decent, we already have a session set up and the guides done... granted the tempo is staying the same... even then it's not a ton of work to adjust the tempo... or the key. ... I was only out of the house for about an hour today. Going a little stir crazy right now, but mainly because I'd like to go walk around some stores or something... we're sorta out in the suburbs, which is nice and quiet, but it's tough when you need to drive everywhere to get anywhere. ... a lot of sweet trucks in the area though. Aside from that... "that" being demos... Kyle and I were hooked on the show "60 Days In"... it's a show where they took 7 normal people, and put them in jail to a) see how they'd adapt and b) do research on how the jail is actually functioning... aka corruption. Give it a couple episodes... so good! I'm off to bed before midnight. Currently watching Dead Rising on Crackle... zombies. Good times. - Mike :-) P.S. No pictures today... so here's right now! P.P.S. I thought I was off to bed before midnight... I tried!
... the last thing I did before I officially gave into sleep was pull the post down from Facebook and remove the slide show. I was in no condition to judge what I was actually posting... April 17, 2016 - 8:44am So I just re-read my post from late last night... it's not horrible... better than I thought I did actually. I wanted to write about this trip but didn't think I'd run into that wall on day 1! Ah well... I could walk everyone throughout the day again in detail but I think the moment has passed... I find it really difficult to write about the previous day the next day... or after I wake up. Only thing I feel I missed... things feel surprisingly normal here. I've been in the studio non-stop since March 1st, and then traveling with Age Of Days prior to that... so it's been "go, go, go" for a couple months now. Maybe I just haven't changed gears yet but it sorta feels like just another day at the office... not sure how else to explain it... sitting in my pj's, holding off skimming Facebook while friends and family text and message. ... that's probably a big part of it. ... there's quite the thunderstorm going on right now. Kyle joked last night about maybe seeing a tornado... at least I think he was joking... maybe he wasn't joking... ... I've seen all 3 Sharknados... there are no sharks that I know of in Texas. ... saw what I'm pretty sure was a roadkill armadillo yesterday... that was different. So today we have a couple songs we'd like to focus on in preproduction... sight-seeing might force us to work a bit more than we'd like (I'm saying this on behalf of Kyle) because of the weather. Just a quick note about the blog for this trip... it'll be a bit different than my usual tour blog. There's a lot that goes on in the recording process that I believe needs to stay within the studio walls... good and bad, it needs to be a safe zone for ideas, politics, egos, emotions, conflict, etc. There's a reason I don't normally blog about studio days (and sort of why DearBands was born), and it's along those lines. I don't want people I work with to feel like they're under the microscope or worse, everything they do will later be documented and on display. I'll still share some thoughts, but it won't read out like a reality show... wait... those are scripted... you know what I mean. ... time for breakfast! - Mike P.S. Apparently people don't have basements around here... yeah... I know!!! P.P.S. Here are the pics from yesterday. I totally forgot to finish the last tour blog. I was right. Grand Corral was closed.
April 16, 2016 - 11:58am ... I had big plans today... all the things I wanted to talk about... unfortunately I went to bed at 2am last night, and was up at 4am... to catch a flight to Dallas. I got a message from Kyle maybe a month ago about my thoughts on the idea. I do have my visa so travelling for work isn't an issue... and there could be a window of opportunity since The Sole Pursuit was scheduled to finish tracking around this time. I said "sure, let me know." ... and here we are... that's right, I'm in Dallas, for 2 weeks... doing some writing and recording with Parabelle for what I think is there 6th album...?! We have the tunes selected we'd like to do. The demos I got in advance were in various stages of "ready" and that's totally cool. I enjoy being involved in the writing process... and even if you end up with a turd, odds are you'll have a laugh over that turd of a song you wasted your time trying to save from turdom, but you still had a good time! (I'm so tired.) ... a couple quick highlights. I didn't know what to expect flying to the US... over the past few years I've always crossed the border in a tour van. In short, it's not that bad... even as a musician... and accept regardless how early you show up, you're going to be later than you think, and you're going to be rushing... a little. (... I might have to continue this tomorrow... I can't see straight.) ... details. So the seat I was assigned on the plane was actually blocked in by a broken, "always in recline" seat. I still climbed in anyway... it's a plane... whatever... but the flight attendant couldn't believe that was my actual assigned seat... the plan was only 2/3 full. Fight attended said "it's unsafe", I said "it looks pretty relaxed to me". She then made a comment about how if we all need to "GTFO", that seat is going to make it difficult. ... my reactionary laugh held off my urge to respond with something along the lines of "... if the plane ends up nose first in the ground resulting in 54, plus crew to end up spooning in the amount of space of a single bed, or on fire, or both... I think that seat won't make too much of a difference." I had time to think about that as I got up from my assigned seat. She gave myself and the woman in front of me any open seats to choose from. I slept most of the way... definitely during take off... we were just all of a sudden in the air. I SAW ANOTHER PLANE WHILE IN THE PLANE TODAY! I felt like a little kid... I wanted to point and take a picture. It actually looked fake... like a toy zipping across the clouds. It was one of those things that when you see it... you have questions. I snapped a quick pic of it. (I really should go to bed... I've been awake (except dozing off a couple times on the flight) since 4am. I was afraid of sleeping through my alarm... Murphy's Law thing... I feel this isn't going to go well... I'll pick things up in the morning... ) ... long story short... I made it to Dallas... never been to Dallas before... demoed up 2 songs today... everyone has trucks, gas is cheap, there's a lot of green space around the roads/highways. Uber Wayne was a great Uber driver, there's tons of food options here... They're calling for a huge rain storm tomorrow... everything is apparently bigger in Texas so we'll see how that goes... ... bed time... I keep changing positions to try and stay awake... I was actually falling asleep around 10pm trying to program drums... it's 12:31am now. ZZzzzz. - Mike |
Mike Langford - Official BlogBeing on both sides of the glass, I get the chance to wear many hats in the music industry. This is a place to share my thoughts, views, predictions, rants, stories and news! Categories
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