The Pudge Song of the Month for July

This month's song has a long history. This is my third attempt at
recording it. I first recorded it about 20 years ago when I was in the
band The Noise Factory with Jamie Hodge, then while I was in DragKing we
recorded it again for our 1999 release “Indie Authenticity Crisis”.

So why did I record it again? A few months ago I was going through my old
cassettes and I found some of the mixes that Jamie and I had made from the
8 track recordings we did years ago in the Noise Factory. I listened to
the old cassette and loved it. One of my fave songs was “King Richie I”.
Then I listened to the DragKing version again. I decided that there were
things that I liked in both versions and thought it would be fun to do it
one more time since it was one of my favorite songs. So I created a
mash-up of sorts that I think combines elements of both versions. I hope
you enjoy it as much as I do.

http://www.pudgenoise.com/july.html
http://www.pudgenoise.com

Mixing and being a perfectionist

Moving along on the song. Spent some time on Wednesday re-recording the bass and guitar lines and everything sounds great right now. My "problem" is that I made a quick mix of everything and I think it sounds like crap. I've got to spend some time working on the mix now.

but... to do this I need several hours of uninterupted time to really listen to each track and get everything sounding right. I have no idea when I'll be able to get this uninterupted time however... hopefully this weekend? I'd like to get this song out.

It worked!

My samples and my beats are in sync and sound amazing!

holy shit... you have no idea what this means to me. I've been working on trying to make the samples and the beats sync in the particular song I was working on tonight for at least ten years. I first recorded this song with Jamie in the Noise Factory. Did it again in DragKing and made it more sample based but could never get the samples to "work" quite right. We released it anyway on our first album even though I was never completely happy with the way it sounded.

Tonight for the first time it sounds like I've been wanting it to sound. I'm really excited about this! I will be releasing this as my song of the month for July shortly.

and this opens up a whole new door for me... wow...

Went to Garageband school

so for the past two days I've spent hours looking at videos on YouTube about how to use Garageband. Go to YouTube and type in "Garageband tutorials" or "How to use samples in Garageband" and you can find some very interesting stuff.

One of the things that cracked me up was one of the tutorials is done by a kid who seems to be about 10 years old. He was good. and I really did pick up some great tips how to do some of the stuff I've been trying to do.

My main issue/problem is getting my samples to link up with the beats. In a book I got it said that if you take your sample loop and save it in the library if you use it in a song it will automatically sync with whatever beat you lay down. It doesn't seem to work that way for me. When I lay down my beats at a certain bpm and then put down the samples in a loop they never sync up. Or at least they never sync up for the length of the song.

but several of the videos seemed to give a hint to what the secret is. I was thinking too literally in a way. When I would lay down my sample loop tracks I would put them on one track. Repeat the same thing over and over again. After awhile it would start to go just a little out of sync.

so instead of putting the looped samples on one track what you do is use two different tracks. alternate between tracks with the sample. and on each track make sure the samples are synced up with the drum track.

I'm guessing this makes no sense to 99% of the people reading this. but for me it's a massive epiphany. If this works the way I think it will work it will allow me to create the kind of music I've been wanting to make for years. but haven't had the technology to create.

It's about 10pm on July 4th. I can hear the fireworks going off all around me. I'm going to run down to the basement and fire up the studio and try this theory out. If it works I have a feeling I won't be able to sleep tonight.

Haven't done crap...

I haven't done anything in weeks. nothing... have barely thought about the site and/or my music.

To be honest I got totally caught up in life. The second week of the month was my son's birthday and it seems like I got totally caught up in that. Then last week Julia and I flew off to SF for a week to celebrate our anniversary. I spent a lot of time before we left planning and thinking about the trip. When we were away I didn't even think about updating the blog. I didn't bring my computer with me so I couldn't work on the songs or anything. It was an awesome trip though!

so now it's July 1st and I have nothing ready. I'm trying to figure out what to do? I could just skip a month. blow off July and post a new song on August 1st. I also have one thing in the can that is totally 100% done. but it's sort of a "cheat" in my mind. It's the version of Dead Pope with Tommy singing instead of me. I only released Dead Pope a couple of months ago. It seems too soon.

so what I'm thinking of doing is just putting something out there late. give myself a week or so. got a long weekend coming up with the holiday. and I always can just blow off the month as a last resort.

slacker...