Friday, April 23, 2010

First Post (Day after seeing Owl City)

So after 20 years and around 200 odd days of living, this is my first blog post ever. Words can many times be just as, if not more effective than anything else, so I hope I can exercise that here.

Right now I'm currently working on Hazel Balloons, mostly working on the beats because after starting every one of my 7 or 8 songs with nothing but Garageband loops, I decided to stop using that crutch and actually lay out my own drums like a legit musician and not just a kid in his room playing around in Garageband. And yes, I'm still in Garageband... I do own Logic and read the manual and watch tutorials ALL the time, but cannot seem to get a tight grasp on the program yet. Fortunately, however, because nearly all of my music other than vocals recorded with the microphone, is recorded through the ever amazing MIDI, the sound quality is very very good. My plan is to get a good amount of songs completely finished in Garageband and then later go into Logic and tweak things a bit in the songs and work on the mixing, but Garageband is so much more user friendly and easier to get the main songs down. Logic, to me, is more of a shoe polisher and Garageband is the shoemaker.

Anyways, enough about that... I just got home from the Owl City concert in Washington, DC. The show was swarming with screaming 15-17 year old girls, which was quite expected... I almost thought about going outside during Fireflies in fear of having my ear screamed off. I didn't check out the setlist beforehand though, so by the time it came on it was too late for me to escape unfortunately. The opening band, Paper Route, from Nashville, TN, was pretty good. Definitely a louder, more rockier band than I expected at an Owl City-type concert. Every one of their members played different instruments, which is always cool because bands with the ability to do that are fun to watch live because they are all over the stage. The highlight of the show for me though was Lights... AMAZING stuff! Check out her album The Listening and the title track from that album if you're into indie electronica type music. Very good show she put on. I have mixed feelings about Owl City. The highlights of that part of the show was the way Port Blue was mixed into the show, and songs were interwoven together and all of that. It was also cool seeing Matt Thiessen from Relient K playing with Adam Young. The reason it wasn't all amazing was because some of the songs were SO different that it was almost hard to enjoy it because you hear a song a certain way in the studio and then live it's like totally different. I love bands like Dave Matthews and Phish and how they make their songs extended and different live, but with a band like Owl City, it should really stay true to it's sound live I think. Also, Adam was a bit overdramatic live, considering he is too shy to conduct over-the-phone or in-person interviews. He did sing through his shoe though, which was pretty cool. I admire mr. Young greatly though, and he is actually my greatest inspiration for writing music because he, like me, really started when he was 20, writing and recording songs in his parents house. So I have more than 100% respect for him and knew that I needed to see him live at some point in my life, through all the screaming girls and fireflies flying into my ears.

Well if you read all of that, congratulations, you've survived blog post #1...

-Adam (Odyssey Aquatic)

2 comments:

  1. Well, thats a long one, I would have to agree that I almost wanted to walk out at fireflies too, we honestly should have. Anyways Good luck with the blog, ill keep reading as long as you keep posting!

    your dearest fan,
    Louis

    ps. he really hated that mic stand... just sayin :p

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  2. Solid. I bet it was sweet seeing Thiessen there.

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