Category: Old Blogs From MySpace

I am a musician and therefore artist, however, I am cynical, and my dealing with fellow artists and their useless narcissism has left me somewhat jaded when it comes to creative process. I only say this because in coming weeks I most likely will come off like some kind of blunt asshole. Frankly, I am a blunt asshole. I hate art for arts sake and if someone is not good at their craft, they need to practice and get better. Formless emotion is simply that, formless, and no amount of trying to understand where it comes from will change the fact that it’s a blob. These are basic tenets to how I think, however, I always have mad respect for someone if they are trying to improve and improving. I will also strive to look at the good in someone’s blob if they seem to truly be coming from a place of humility.

This first time around for this blog is somewhat of a free pass for me. It will be shorter and it’s not that deep. These were and probably will be hit and miss. I am somewhat disappointed that I made the first installment after about 3 years a simple explanation of what I think this has been (rants) and definition of what will be (rants) but I really couldn’t think of anything to write about.

The previous statement was an outright lie, I do want to write about something–specifically, that I wish I could load a certain woman into a canon and shoot her into Mexico. But that wouldn’t be the honorable thing to do, would it?

But seriously, it was not my fault we couldn’t hang out for three weeks, for various reasons that were both our faults it didn’t happen and frankly, I think my cousin having a kid and flying up to Seattle to meet him is way more important than getting a drink with a woman. But writing about that kind of thing wouldn’t be the honorable thing to do, would it? Especially since she is actually pretty cool, and even though nothing will happen, ultimately does not deserve to be shot out of a cannon.

Just a sign of things to come.

I am at heart a colossal dork who loves recording technology and have had a few people message me with questions about how the production was done. Simply put, a lot of software synthesizers and samples with live players thrown here and there on top of the patches to add realism.

The main rig in my lab where this album was created is centered around a Mac running a DigiDesign HD system with Logic 7 as a front end for composition and ProTools HD 7 for mixdown. I could go into a litany of what software synths, samplers as well as the synth hardware that was used, but that would take a very long time.

As far as interfaces and analog gear, the main interface is a DigiDesign 192 I/O with a Tampa Mic Pre, Focusrite ISA 220 and M-Audio Octane. An M-Audio ProjectMix was used as a control surface and the monitors used for initial mix were BX5′s from M-Audio while referencing Dynaudio Bm5a’s (following the NS10 rule of if you can make it sound good on BX5′s, it will sound good anywhere). I also did a lot of field recording for the samples with an M-Audio MicroTrack.

If you are still reading, you are also probably a dork, and I salute you. Hit me up with any questions or if you have constructive advice, I would love to hear it. One of the reasons I am on this rock is to continue to grow and learn, so if you want to help, shoot me a message.

The album title is a reference to the violence that occurs in the first two stages of an Apollo moonshot that is required before TLI or the 3rd stage ignition that is the relatively smooth ride to the moon. The last track on the album is indeed called Third Stage Ignition and you can read into that however you would like to.