Never been one to let the carrier drop

So, apparently when it rains it pours. I was originally going to just do this track as a test to see if I could record multitrack while I had ivory up, to see if I could use ivory instead of my keyboard’s internal TG in order to get my keyboard’s internal drum machine on a different stereo pair so I could record me and mike’s musical stylings in *true* multitrack

I decided to do “Dry County”, since Gayle had mentioned she liked my version better than Bon Jovi’s

But I couldn’t do it without blowing take after take. So I decided to cheat a little and record the piano part and drums first, and then the vocals.

And, once you get started doing studio tricks, it’s hard to stop. Before I knew it I had a cello, a voilin, two different synthesizers, some filler drums, four vocal tracks, and it was starting to sound awfully good to me.

So I’m kicking it over to bunne for remixing – since he is much more in tune with mixdown than I am – but I thought I would share the rough track with my fans out there.

Here it is: http://sheer.us/stuff/2012/Sheer/DryCounty-Rough.mp3

The *very* astute will notice the lyrics are not quite the same as the original. Bonus points to whoever comments on the difference first. (Except for Gayle, since she already knows because I told her about the change when I was dithering over whether to make it or not)

So, it’s been a long time since I posted anything music-related. I got partial multitrack (the keyboard and the drums were on the same stereo pair since I was using the integrated drum machine in my new keyboard) recordings of me and Mike Mesford playing three songs. I’ve made a rough mix of them, which is available at http://www.sheer.us/stuff/2012/SheerAndMike/.

I don’t know how I feel about them. Usually when I’m working on a mixdown, I either love the material or hate it. With these tracks, I sort of went back and forth. I do think that ‘The way it is’ is worth a listen, especially if you’re a Dead fan since it has that sort of trippy laid back jam feeling to it.

I’m giving the stems to a friend of mine who’s more of a audio guru than me, and it will be interesting to see what he does with it.

So, as some of you may have read in previous journal entries, my old music recording computer died.

Dan Spisak thoughtfully sold me a somewhat-used-but-new-to-me MBP, which I’ve loaded with the latest and greatest Digital Performer. Here’s my first ever track recorded with this new setup.. this isn’t really intended to be brilliant, just to test out various things to make sure they all work (i.e. ADAT interfaces, Analog interfaces, MIDI interfaces, clock sync, etc). They appear to. 😉

But, if you like my dark/atmospheric new-ageish stuff, this is a classic example. I think I probably ripped bits of the theme from many other things I’ve written, though.. it definately was a off-the-cuff, one-pass-per-track sort of thing.

HelloWorld.

http://www.sheer.us/stuff/LiveAndLoving2009/DarkMind.mp3.

Here’s another Sheer Jam track – Kayti was feeling sad and asked me to play her some love music, and so I did – I recorded it in case she wanted to have it to listen to later, and she’s graciously allowed me to share it with my 2.5 fans out there. 😉

http://www.sheer.us/stuff/kayti/KaytiLoveSongs.mp3.

[Actually, by my download numbers, I apparently have more than 2.5 fans. Some of my tracks get hundreds of downloads a month – but they’re mostly in China. I don’t really understand this]

This is also one of the few tracks I have up recorded with Ivory, which I’m very fond of. I’m looking forward to sometime soon (maybe as soon as the 30th.. *bounce*) having enough spare change to buy a friend’s x86 mac, and finally having enough CPU to run Ivory for 64/128 note polyphony. For my friends who are musicians, if you haven’t played with Ivory, it is the holy grail of software pianos. It is kind of big, though.. it wants 2G of RAM minimum, and it comes on 9 DVDs.

http://www.sheer.us/stuff/esen/EsenMovieJam-071609R.mp3.

What is it? Well, my friend Esen is working on a movie for her parents – a bunch of photos – and wanted one of my jam sessions to go with it. So this is raw, uncensored, one pass to tape, no rehersal, improv. Hence, there are a few minor trainwrecks, especially in transpositions which I haven’t totally mastered, but this is 100% sheer jam, mostly piano with a tiny bit of panflute and pad thrown in for good measure. Please let me know if you enjoy it.