Month: June 2022

Here’s two songs from my SP-404 SX project, the first featuring legendary Lawrence artist Approach.

I’ve started editing the first set of jams to come out of my MS-20 & DrumBrute semi-generative rig. Here’s an amazing waveform I encountered. This is unprocessed MS-20!

This started as an email to Cory, on the heels of finishing Fight Songs bass lines.

One weird thing about writing and playing bass lines is that, the way my brain works, it feels like I’m searching for the ideal platonic form of the bass line for each song. It feels like there’s only one mathematically correct answer and I have to play around until I find it; which notes and rhythms, which octaves for the notes, where to put the runs, etc.

It’s not entirely literally true; I can hear some spots where two notes might be equally valid, but 99% of the time there’s an obvious right choice and it feels right and moral, even, to play it. That doesn’t at all mean the first note I try is right! Often the first 80% of the line will come to me pretty quickly, on my first few plays through the song, but I’ll spend a good amount of time on the last 20%, especially the ascending / descending runs, to make sure I hit the exact right notes. It feels like working out a proof, and it’s very satisfying to get right (and frustrating to get wrong)!

On one little line in “Lost,” the very end of the chorus that leads back down to the start of the chorus progression, I tried a ton of different combinations of notes for that 4-note descending run before I found the “right” one.

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This is a leftover thought from the “A Life Without Fireflies” episode of The Long Play Listening Party that I found in the email archive.

Talking through my early recording experiments and gear I realized that prior to the purchase of my Digi001 ProTools LE system in November 2022, I had only ever self-recorded acoustic music with either my MiniDisc player and a computer mic or a 4-track tape machine. (howie&scott’s near and far was done by Fred Ritter, Jacob’s dad, on a digital 8-track.)

Just ten months after buying the 001 rig I was in Doug Van Sloan’s mastering studio with signs.comets, plus we had also recorded Shacker’s Pardon My Pretension…, Rob’s A Life Without Fireflies, and Blame The Game’s EP. That level of productivity is bonkers to try and wrap my mind around now! Plus, Scott and I were landscaping in Lincoln full-time that summer, we weren’t just making music!