JBCMusic Weblog

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

“As We Bow Down,” revisited revised

As we bow down, Lord, lift Yourself, magnificent and glorious!

Back to work on “As We Bow Down” on Garage Band, take 3.  I’ve got new tracks recorded and a mixdown that sounds great on my headphones - but then the vocals sound like they’re coming from the bottom of a deep muddy well on the speakers, either the iMac’s little speakers or the studio monitors.  So some more learning is in store about what Garage Band can do to fix it.  I’ve set myself a goal to get a decent recording of the song out this week, but more work to do, or start over with take 4.  This is one of my best songs, one of my favorite songs, and one that people have actually used in worship, so it deserves the best recording I can make of it.  (Or please, buy the sheet music, let me hear what YOU can do with it.)

Friday, September 03, 2010

“Empty Air” - New MP3 - Done!

2nd Garage Band recording of “Empty Air”

I got a 2nd, improved version of “Empty Air” recorded Wednesday night before a quick trip out of town for work Thursday.  It’s got the piano, drums, bass, vocals, a little rhythm guitar, and just for fun a trumpet track playing a lilting counter-melody over most of the song.  The trumpet may not fit into making it as country-sounding as I originally intended, but what the heck - I’ve always set the style of my songs by what I think the song needs, not by someone else’s ideas about a specific genre.  Besides, I tried it with a fiddle first, and the trumpet sound just seemed to fit the soul of the song more.  My voice was a little hoarse Wednesday; still mostly sounded OK, but Friday night I went back and recorded a new vocal track, and improved the rhythm guitar track.  The result - I like it!  I think it’s by far my best home studio recording to date.

So the “Empty Air” mp3 is now posted here on the site, on Reverb Nation, on Bandizmo, and also on Musician Forest (which seemed to have disappeared for awhile, but is back online line now) .  The chord sheet’s been posted here awhile.

Monday, August 30, 2010

More Sunday night Garage Band (well, almost)

Nothing weighs as much as that empty air.

Sunday night seems to be shaping up as my Garage Band recording night.  I laid down a pretty decent recording of a little country song I wrote called “Empty Air”- piano, vocals and a canned drum track off the Yamaha keyboard.  It all sounded pretty good to me except! - Dang! - that’s why I don’t have more songs posted - seems like there’s always that “EXCEPT” hanging around.  Anyway, this time, the “except” is an annoying over-buzz from the equipment that came through onto the recording - pretty much makes what would be a decent recording not worth posting.  I adjusted some things and finally got the the buzz out of the monitors right now, so I’ll try re-laying the keyboard tracks, at least.  I’m tired and will probably make mistakes, though, so I’m not really expecting a finished recording tonight.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

New re-mix - “Bullfrog, You Don’t Know”

Better balance of vocals & keyboards

As promised Monday, I re-mixed “Bullfrog” to better balance the vocals and music, cut off the intro, and added a little something.  I think you’ll like it.

Monday, August 23, 2010

New mp3! - “Bullfrog, You Don’t Know”

Home recording of a fun swamp-boogie blues song.

I made this quick-and-dirty recording of “Bullfrog, You Don’t Know” in about a half-hour Garage Band session Sunday night.  After working on “As We Bow Down” all afternoon, I wasn’t quite happy with the results on it, but the recording setup seemed to be all working, so I decided to prove I could get something done.  A cute, fun swamp-boogie blues song.  The lyrics reflect the kind of backwaters my mind wanders into to occupy itself commuting to and from work (what, you want me to concentrate on driving?).

The vocals on the mp3 file seem to play much louder than coming out of Garage Band and cover up the keyboards some, so I’ll probably adjust it some and re-post it tonight or later this week.

Links:  Lyrics; mp3 download; or streaming on Reverb Nation and Bandizmo.  Chords are pretty simple, B-flat major with A-flat for the verses and B-flat with F minor on the chorus, but here’s the chordsheet.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

As We Bow Down, revisited

New score & audio(?) coming!

Look for it “real soon now” - New score and (maybe?) some audio for As We Bow Down. I copyrighted the song back in 2002, and it’s one of the songs I’ve actually gotten a small amount of royalties from through CCLI.  I started out just to record it into Garage Band, then started modifying the piano part to play less of the melody.  In coming up with some counter-melodies, I realized the major chords should have set the key signatures instead of the minor keys I used in the score (The song alternates back and forth between a minor chord and the major chord one step below, and changes key up a whole step 3 times).  So I re-wrote the score with the corrected key signatures, and found a couple more minor mistakes, probably from transposing it from old PC software to Allegro, then to Finale on the Mac.  I’ll get it posted to the web site after I find out what the procedure is to submit a revision to the copyright office, then to CCLI.

I started out just translating the midi file from Finale into GarageBand - but I’m sorry, midi files always seem to sound like midi files no matter what you do to them.  I know you can do a huge amount of work making sure every note is the velocity, duration, etc. that you want to make it sound more “human,” but - well, that’s a huge amount of work.  So I recorded the new, hopefully improved piano part (not written into the score, not sure it ever will be - pretty much ad-lib at this point) onto a “real instrument” audio track, recorded some OK-sounding vocals over it, and added the flute part I had written for Debbie (when I wrote the song, she was thinking of taking up the flute again).  It’s sounding OK, except I made a few mistakes I went back and corrected, and the transitions to the cut-ins aren’t always the smoothest.  The vocal track also came out all on the left channel - I got it panned over near center, but I’ve still got to smooth out the volume settings where I cut-in different segments.  The first verse also sounds a bit rushed (I found out you “can” change the tempo of an audio track in GarageBand - it just makes the piano sound like it’s underwater when you do).  So I may re-record the whole thing instead of patching up what I’ve got.  I’m encouraged, though - after not working with Garage Band all that much, I think I can actually get something decent out of it, given a long afternoon’s work.  It’s definitely a lot of work though, especially since I don’t use it enough to remember all the settings and I’m fighting hardware as much as getting music done.

Bottom line - a new score and audio for “As We Bow Down” should be coming “REAL SOON NOW!”

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Americana, that’s me!

Reply to an ad for “Americana” music

I answered an ad on Craigslist for “Americana” songwriters (at least I tried to - that’s the week my email was screwed up due to hackers, and I don’t think it actually went out).  I looked through my songs and came up with a list something like this (the original email wasn’t saved), saying “Yeah - I do Americana!”

• -Near-blues, like Tracy Chapman- About You Blue
• -Country love song- All My Hungry Moods
• -Christian techno-rock- Armageddon (What is Wrong With Man?)
• -Worship- As We Bow Down
• -Americana banana humor- Banana Boat
• -How to build a boat- Beulah Lynn
• -Springsteenish pathos- Big Old Long Buick
• -A real sign on Windfern Road- Boogers from a Five-Year Old
• -Blues swamp boogie- Bullfrog, You Don't Know
• -Lightly jazzy love song- Circles and Lines
• -80’s Integrity-style praise- Clap Your Hands & Sing (Jehovah Rises)
• -If you’ve read Fred Gipson’s “Hound Dog Man”- Dog Go Howl
• -Redneck humor- Don't Buy Momma a Truck!
• -Piano-driven runaway bride- Eighty MPH Blues
• -Country breakup- Empty Air
• -Contempo Christian/crossover- Every River
• -Christian rock- Going Too Far/A Whisper Came Medley
• -Country heartbreak w/drinking- Hey, Bartender, Should I Drink Out Loud?
• -I always wanted to use that line- Lonely Songs
• -Before Rita and Ike, remember Frances and Allison?- Lord, Don't Float My House Away
• -Jazzy old girlfriend song- My Shoes
• -For my Father, west Texas- Old Kermit Cowboys
• -What else to do with a Texas shrimp boat- Port City Blues
• -Gilbert Allen piano classic, my way (arrgmt)- Praise Lament
• -The thing you gotta do- Sing Out the Blues
• -Ev’rybody knows the scene- Singin' on the Street in New Orleans
• -Send him down the river- Sonny Boy (I Don't Want You)
• -Beautiful Dreamer meets Jimmy Buffet- Tropical Breezes
• -The subtitle says it all- Walkin' the Dog (Alligator song)
• -Floating the river, and the taxman - that’s Americana!- We'll Take the Boat to the Riverside (Let the Time Just Slip Away)
• -Christian pop-rock- We Were on the Mountain (The Voice)
• -While we still can, America!- Won't You Come Drive With Me?

Monday, July 26, 2010

Back on line, again

New server, again

Back on line with the site and email, again, new server.  Three hacks in 6 months is inexcusable, after 6 years on my previous server with -zero- hacks.  I won’t publicly berate them, but email me if you want the name of a server company you should NEVER do business with!

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Blog Archives

jbcmusic weblog has been archived into html files.

I finally got around to archiving old blog entries into a series of text/html files.  Not that I think anyone will actually read them, but there they are.  I’ve left just the 2010 entries and older ones related strictly to songwriting, new songs, etc. in the blog.  The archives are:

The San Juan 24 Project Log (2008-2010)
Weblog 2009
Weblog 2008
Weblog 2007
News and Progress 2006
News and Progress 2005
News and Progress 2004

Tuesday, July 06, 2010

You’ll shoot your eye out

Red Ryder Daisy BB gun, and toad hunting (again)

Yes, we’re rednecks, but we can spell.  After Jeff moved back home for awhile, we developed our own “triathlon” competition among the three of us - 1, shoot pop cans off the compost pile with a BB gun, 2, 8-ball, and 3, Scrabble.  I think Deb’s currently ahead overall, but I can at least clean up at Scrabble.  I used to be an excellent shot, but just don’t seem to do that well with the astigmatic contacts I’m having to wear lately.  During the shooting competitions, though, the old pump Daisy, which I think I got when I was 8 or 9 years old, finally gave out.  First, it seemed like it was losing some of the oomph and accuracy it’s always had, then BBs just started rolling out the barrel.  Then the thing started going off while it was being cocked.  We figured out you could hold the trigger forward while you were cocking it and it wouldn’t go off, but we still didn’t feel too safe with it.  “You’ll shoot your eye out” - or someone else’s eye more likely, was a little too germaine at that point.

So Father’s day my kids went together to purchase me a replacement - it probably started in jest with them, then proceeded to “Well, why not?”  What they found was the exact model made famous by Ralphie in “A Christmas Story” - a Red Ryder lever-action Daisy (In keeping with the Christmas Story Theme, they also provided a nice pair of safety glasses).  So of course we unwrapped it, loaded it up, and set up the cans on the compost pile.  After a few shots, we figured out it shoots slightly to the left and high, so after we adjusted the back sight down and started aiming to the right, we started making most shots count.  Those cans didn’t stand a chance.

Of course, that couldn’t possibly be the end of it.  It’s early summer, and the toads are back in the pond.  We had the pond drained for cleaning for a couple of weeks, so the toads weren’t much of a problem, but then Hurricane Alex, as far away as it was, brought us torrential rain and refilled the pond.  The toads were back in full voice within a day.  I ignored them a couple of nights, but I was up late last Saturday, and one little fella was being particularly annoying.  I decided he had to die, and what better trial for the new firearm?  I had high hopes for a single-shot kill with the new gun, but like I said in the last Great Texas Toad Hunt story, these toads are tough!  Or maybe it’s the steel BB’s they sell these days - they just don’t seem to do the job of the old brass ones.  Two shots hit the mark, but only sent him into hiding under a rock.  In a few minutes, he was back out, singing his heart out again.  Two more shots finally did the trick.  I fetched him out of the water and gave him a solemn burial in the compost bin.  Of course, I thought later I should have grabbed the safety glasses - shooting at a creature sitting on a rock without them isn’t the smartest thing to do, if you happen to miss.  You’ll shoot your eye out.

Monday, July 05, 2010

Put y’self in a boat!

Yo, Ho, put y’self in a boat, and you’ll have a story by-n-by.

I wrote a line in a song awhile back (Jan. 07) - “Yo, Ho, put y’self in a boat, and you’ll have a story by-n-by.”  We did some motor swapping back in the fall, got a working 15-HP Yamaha on the fishing boat, then finally got the boat to the lake in April.  We got launched at our marina, and I got the motor started and motioned to Deb to step in. She looked down from the dock and replied, “Uh-uh.  I’m not getting in with all that water coming in the back!”  WHAT?  YES, I had put the plug in!  But then it seems that while starting the motor, I had stepped on the live-well pump, and the nipple for the hose connection was old, brittle plastic, and had snapped right off.  So we got the boat back on the trailer with some effort, and I was able to replace the pump that evening, but the wind was howling and the lake white-capping the next day, so no boating that weekend.

Due to some travel, the registration expiring, and some delay getting the boat and motor re-registered in Deb’s name from her brother’s, it was Father’s day before we could attempt to take the fishing boat out again.  Jeff and I decided to try the north end of Lake Conroe instead of Lake Livingston this time, so we launched at the National Forest Service ramp off Farm Road 1097.  It’s a difficult ramp to launch on - there are no-wake buoys about fifty yards out from the ramp; at 52 yards from the ramp, boats are going by full speed, still causing waves at the ramp, with no dock to tie up to, just high wooden bulkheads.  At any rate, we got launched, tied to the bulkhead, to find - YES, I HAD forgotten to put the plug in!  But we finally did get started around 4:30 that afternoon, with a fair amount of water sloshing around beneath the floorboards.  I’ve got to install a bilge pump in that boat.  Or a brain in my head.

After boating in a small boat one afternoon on Lake Conroe, I’ve got to tell you - I LOVE LAKE LIVINGSTON!  Conroe seems to be full of those very wide, very deep, 20-25’ ski boats created mainly to make huge wakes, full of bronzed beauties (those are the guys - and some girls in bikinis, too),  blasting very loud music I don’t listen to (Jeff thought it was Lady Gaga).  But there’s a pretty narrow channel they have to stick to in that area due to stumps - after crossing a couple of wakes, we picked our way across the stump-filled middle part and got to the other shore.  We tried fishing a couple of coves and were going along shore to the next one with Jeff watching the fish finder when he noticed what seemed to be a ridge with fish around it, so I decided it would be good to drift back over the ridge.  I was planning on the wind to carry us parallel to shore over the ridge, but instead it pushed us into the shore a lot quicker than I had hoped for.  As I was getting the motor re-started, Jeff was watching the depths again, saying it was getting shallow pretty fast, in fact, he could see a big rock right - a small wave lifted the boat, there was a soft thump, and we stuck.  Backing up didn’t help; backing down with Jeff moved to the back of the boat didn’t help.  Finally, I turned the motor all the way to starboard and gunned it in reverse, then the same to port, hoping that the prop wouldn’t hit another rock if we did pop free.  After pivoting around a bit, we did finally slide off the rock and I steered away to deeper water, luckily with no bashing of the prop against the bottom.  Whew!  The fish didn’t seem to be biting anyway, so we headed back to the ramp, and got the boat back on the trailer before sundown.  Looking at the bottom of the aluminum boat, there’s one slightly flattened shiny spot, wouldn’t really call it a dent, no real damage.  But it’s inevitable - put y’self in a boat, and you’ll have a story by-n-by.

Friday, July 02, 2010

Texas in the Man - good music

Good music from fellow Texas songwriter Mike Parrish

I like to plug local and/or Texas songwriters when I can.  Although the CD came out in 2006, I just now got around to buying Mike Parrish‘s CD Texas in the Man. from MyTexasMusic.com.  I’ve been listening to Mike for awhile on ReverbNation and finally decided I’d like to hear his music away from the computer.  The more I listen, the more I appreciate the songwriting and lyrics of Mike Parrish and collaborator Sammy Hundley.  Great guitar licks and songs you just want to sing along with.  The heart and soul behind the album expresses exactly why I had to give up a solid civil service job in DC and make my way back to Texas.  And any country dance-hall band that doesn’t have “I Can’t Tell You Goodbye” in their two-step lineup is just clueless.

Blog back online again- new software

Blog back online again- new software

The blog’s back online with new software, Expression Engine.  Not that I really felt like writing anything the last month or so, but to the dumbasses who hacked my pMachine installation, uh, dude, I keep backups.  Anyway, I’ve had to dump pMachine because it’s outdated and vulnerable to hacking.  Expression Engine is made by the same people and I’m not too sure I like it yet - this is the second upload of it because it allowed me to dump everything by clicking one innocuous-sounding button in the control panel screen.  To recover, I had to dig through and edit some php config files - which a well-written control panel would keep me from doing, not force me into doing.  I’ve barely played with the EE software and already found other small annoyances.  There’s stuff like category assignments, links, and pictures that didn’t transfer from pMachine right, either, but instead of fixing all that I still plan to archive everything and start fresh - “real soon now.”

So anyway, I’ve asked my server guru, who happens to be my daughter, to install Wordpress to see if I like it any better.  We’ll see.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Blog back on line

Offline for awhile - database problems

I’ve had some trouble connecting to the database that contains the entries to this blog for awhile.  It appears to be fixed now.  But anyway, the pMachine software I’m currently using is no longer supported by its developer, who now does Expression Engine instead.  My daughter’s getting me set up with Expression Engine and maybe Wordpress to try out; still planning to archive most of these entries into simple html text files when I can get to it, and start over.

Monday, May 10, 2010

San Juan 24 sailboat FOR SALE

San Juan 24 sailboat completely refurbished for sale

Well, after getting the San Juan 24 “Freedom Song,” Hull #849 completely refurbished and launched in September and sailing it a few times, we’ve decided it’s just not the boat for us.  The little Starwind 19 we sailed previously and still have sitting on a trailer, as slow and frustrating as it can be in light winds, spoiled us in a lot of ways.  Mainly, as I’ve said many times, the Starwind’s cockpit is one of the most comfortable I’ve ever sailed in.  The San Juan cockpit, with it’s straight-up walls and pinched IOR stern - isn’t.  The Starwind’s cockpit is actually larger and more workable. 

The Starwind’s also very forgiving and we’ve always felt totally in control in it, and we’ve had it in some pretty rough weather for a 19’ boat.  The San Juan moves incredibly well in light wind but gets to be a wild ride in around 18-20 mph wind - would have been a FUN boat in our 20’s and 30’s, but we’re a little past that now.  Just a little too physically demanding to enjoy it at our age.  So the San Juan 24 is FOR SALE.  I’ve replaced my San Juan page with an ad and posted ads at SailingTexas.com and Craigslist Houston.  Surprisingly, I’ve already gotten a couple of inquiries in only one day.

So we’ll clean up and fix the hurricane damage to the Starwind, maybe get new sails and enjoy sailing it while taking our time looking for another bigger boat.  One I’m really interested in is the Santana 525 - although it’s a racy “sport boat” like the San Juan, the cockpit is larger and it looks like it has some of the characteristics that make the Starwind comfortable, just bigger.  In fact one comment I’ve read online is that the cockpit is, yes, comfortable.  I think I’ve also come to the conclusion I like a fractional headsail, which the Santana has, better than the SJ’s masthead rig.  The masthead genoa is just that much too big and powerful, for us, anyway.  Like I said, great if you’re younger.  I’ve found exactly one Santana 525 for sale right now.  Won’t tell you where in case the San Juan sells quickly, so we can snag it.

Things we’ll miss about the San Juan?  One, the cabin interior came out very nice with fresh paint, the woodwork refreshed, all new lighting and cushions, and the table and standing headroom (for Deb, almost for me) are nice.  Two, it really does MOVE in almost no wind, which tends to be most of the summer on Lake Livingston.  But all in all, we’re frankly not enjoying sailing it in much of a blow, and this spring’s weather has been anything but light.  That doesn’t mean that you won’t love it, especially if you’re younger and more sprightly than us.  Buy our boat! (Please).