Ahh, Christmas over for another year. Not too bad a one overall, family time, some nice gifts on both the giving and the receiving side (at least I hope so on the latter). My lovely wife bought me various bits and pieces for the studio in the new place and I’m itching to get it set up. Speaking of which, there was a tiny bit of a scare with regard to the house arrangements, but that seems to be OK now. Hurrah for banks being open between Christmas and NYE, and sighs of relief all round 
Frankly, the move can’t come soon enough. The new neighbors moved into the house up the road recently. They’re the third bunch in the place since we moved in, and also the third to have a dog who sits on the balcony and barks. Hey, that sounds strangely like the neighbors on a 90 degree angle as well. It seems obvious to me that if you place a territorial animal in a position where it can see lots of people moving around what it perceives as its territory, it might just have some words to say.
No incredibly bad visual joke picture up there today. I’ve spent the day buying tap fittings, packing boxes, and throwing things out, and I don’t really have the energy 
Ahh, Christmas over for another year. Not too bad a one overall, family time, some nice gifts on both the giving and the receiving side (at least I hope so on the latter). My lovely wife bought me various bits and pieces for the studio in the new place and I’m itching to get it set up. Speaking of which, there was a tiny bit of a scare with regard to the house arrangements, but that seems to be OK now. Hurrah for banks being open between Christmas and NYE, and sighs of relief all round
Frankly, the move can’t come soon enough. The new neighbors moved into the house up the road recently. They’re the third bunch in the place since we moved in, and also the third to have a dog who sits on the balcony and barks. Hey, that sounds strangely like the neighbors on a 90 degree angle as well. It seems obvious to me that if you place a territorial animal in a position where it can see lots of people moving around what it perceives as its territory, it might just have some words to say.
No incredibly bad visual joke picture up there today. I’ve spent the day buying tap fittings, packing boxes, and throwing things out, and I don’t really have the energy
I just got an MP3 from the esteemed Mr Curtis such that I might lay down my vocals for the Christmas bonus song. Hurrah! Sounding good, and it’s nice to hear some real drums on some new T3E material. It’s still very much a demo-standard thing, and I’d like to get the whole thing a bit tighter on the album version, but it’s a great little taster of what the album might sound like. I’ve liked the song ever since Curtis sent me the demo a few months back, and it’s passed through the T3E group collaboration gauntlet with only minor cuts and bruises.
In matters professional, I’ve realised that the cartoon job has passed the 50% mark for this contract period, so I’m starting to casually browse the employment pages again, as well as starting to brainstorm on other ideas. Not that there’s any pressing concern for a little while, but I don’t want to be caught like earlier this year. Especially with a mortgage on the way…!
Speaking of mortgages, with less than a month before the big day, pre-settlement packing has begun, and the inside of our house resembles a furniture and applicance warehouse crossed with a municipal recycling depot – a combination that has somehow failed to take off within interior decorating circles. Clare has been extremely diligent with wrapping, boxing, taping and taggine a good portion of our wordly goods, and I have been helping in my own inestimable way by building a home theatre PC. It’s a tough job, etc. etc…
I’ll be tearing down the home studio for the last time over the next week or so, leaving myself with a skeleton system comprising Macbook, UMX49 and Mbox. The rest shall join the ever-increasing pile of “things to be loaded into a truck” that is currently filling up the spare room. I’m also starting to get into some serious planning regards the new digs, and how best to turn a garage into a work-space worthy of my talents (some might say it would be more worthy of my talents if I knocked a hole in the wall and poured pond-water on the floor, but I wouldn’t talk to those people if I were you – they’ll burn your crops, and make merry sport with your more attractive daughters as soon as look at you). Ideas are still coalescing, but I’m currently envisaging a sort of semi-wraparound desk-type arrangement, with a separate section for less audio-centric tasks. One of the problems with my current arrangement is that it’s great for working on the PC, but there’s no actual useable desk space for when you might want to perform such arcane tasks as writing with a pencil, or placing things on a clear horizontal surface. Well, there’s the floor obviously, but that’s a gambit that only works for a limited time. I’ll also probably have a couch or a couple of chairs in there for the benefit of collaborators/clients (and myself from time to time). No doubt I’ll throw some pictures up here for anyone who might be bored enough to want to look at them.
I never thought the iPhone would be something I could use for nostalgic purposes, but I recently found a little application which turns it into a 4-track recorder. You’ve got record, stop, play, forward and back, with level and pan for each track. That’s it.
I sat down with the acoustic for guitar and the phone for a few minutes the other night to test it out and managed to come up with a nice little ditty. There’s something very liberating about limiting your technical options. I usually write music on the main studio PC, and while it’s very flexible, it’s all too tempting to start worrying about how the thing sounds. Switching the musical hat for an engineering cap, if you will. It’s hard not to start thinking along those lines given my day job, so removing that option completely for songwriting is a nice way to get into a more appropriate mental space.
In other news, my limited edition bonus-DVD version of Frost*’s new album arrived, so I’ve been listening to the supplied instrumental mixes of the album. Very interesting to listen to all the details that are hiding beneath the vocals, and it seems to be a lot less agressively mastered as well.
I’m sitting in a comfy chair in the Hobart State Library, writing this entry on my brand spanking new iPhone. There’s not really any compelling need to do it this way – I’ll be back in front of a “real” computer in about half an hour, and I don’t have anything particularly pressing to divulge – but I’m still riding that wave of novelty-factor that Apple products provide so effectively.
We had a t3e get together on the weekend, and pit down some drum tracks for a little song wer’e planning to have ready by Christmas. Felt good to be working on something that people are actually going to hear.
Actually, I think I’ll pick this up later, as I’m getting a sore index finger from typing…