I've realized since starting this blog how difficult it is to consistently keep up with it. I don't understand how there are people out there who are busier than me can possibly keep up with it.
School is finally over so this summer will be more focused on working on my music, hanging out with friends who are back from college this year, and unfortunately working. It's nice though that on my days off from work I can focus on music and fun activities as opposed to feeling like I should work on a paper or some homework. Lately I haven't worked on my music as much as I would have liked because I've been working so much. As expressed in previous posts, this is quite an inconvenient but necessary task (work that is). I'm hoping that one day music can be my full time job, but I'm willing to work my way up to that.
I always found it interesting how Fall through Spring is the big time for all my favorite TV shows, the NBA regular season (which is really the only sport I follow consistently), school, colder weather, and work. While Summer there is no TV shows, no NBA, no school, hot weather, and a lot more free time, which usually equals out to more work and free time to hangout with people. I know this is an obvious statement, I just think it's crazy how different Summer feels compared to the other three seasons.
Well I'm heading out to the YMCA to fall asleep in the steam room and workout a little. There's supposed to be a big storm coming later on, so my happiness level rose to 9.3.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Rearranged room/studio
So a couple nights ago I spent a few hours rearranging my room to accommodate my musical needs. By this I mean I turned my walk in closet into a homemade vocal booth with it's very own blanket nailed to the wall to act as that sound foam that costs hundreds of dollars to buy. There are many other things I did with it to make it a lot better to record vocals. Let's travel into the actual room: I moved the furniture and electronics in such a way that now I'm able to hook up my Mac to my 42 inch TV so I can work with Logic on the big screen. I think something that's been an issue with my recording process has been the fact that my 13 inch computer screen just isn't doing it for me. Plus if you look in any professional studio, there's always a nice HD TV that's showing the DAW software, and that seems so much cooler than a stupid little laptop screen.
I also wish there were 32 hours in a day instead of 24. I think everyone would agree that we would need those extra 8 hours to get stuff done. I would probably be done with 2 albums by now if there was more time in the day... Sadly though I spend 30 hours a week at work while taking 4 classes at community college. This does not leave for much time to spend on music, which is quite unfortunate. I'm hoping that the coming summer will allow for more time to spend on music.
-Adam (Odyssey Aquatic)
I also wish there were 32 hours in a day instead of 24. I think everyone would agree that we would need those extra 8 hours to get stuff done. I would probably be done with 2 albums by now if there was more time in the day... Sadly though I spend 30 hours a week at work while taking 4 classes at community college. This does not leave for much time to spend on music, which is quite unfortunate. I'm hoping that the coming summer will allow for more time to spend on music.
-Adam (Odyssey Aquatic)
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)
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)
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