The album cover for The Rule About’s Saying Hello EP.
In other words… new musical project! Friend Rachael and I put this together for her music production class, and I’m pleased with how it turned out!
Enjoy!
my friend rachael and i are working to record some songs for our band project ‘the rule about’ and i thought i’d share some of the process with you. i worked on this timeline during the downtime during our first recording session.
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12:54: decide to blog about the recording session. fingers hopped up on caffeine and potential. rachael’s quote about the computer: “i just wanna fucking record.” should be a good day!
1:18: starting record! ‘skate dates’ take 1.
1:36: we recorded a few ‘skate dates’ with combined vocals and guitar. now putting it onto the computer so we can record the tracks individually. so stoked, it’s sounding really good.
2:05: just finished individual vocals (rachael is too good at singing!) and individual guitar for ‘skate dates’ and we’re getting ready to move on! three songs to go!
2:17: We’re moving on to ‘heart wrestling.’ new lyrics plus different musical style, so we’ve got to practice a bit more before recording. promising start, though!
2:47: Re-working to get the feel of the song we’d like. Aiming for a poppier version. Going to add extra vocal shouts too, just for funsies!
2:59: Rachael is recording her vocals for ‘heart wrestling.’ I just noticed my guitar pick is yellow, and matches my shoes.
3:06. Rachael is killing it!
3:27. That’s a wrap on ‘heart wrestling’! On to the next one! On to the next one!
4:43 first run through of ‘fashionably late jurassic’. EPIC 10 MINUTES. plus the iphone’s a little broken, but whateevr. most importantly = EPIC
4:52 another run through. very loud! very sweaty!
5:26 brief phone malfunction and run to get microphone doesn’t work out, but another recording of jurassic down, and figured out the song part to the last song for the day. the train moves forward!
5:44 acapella rendition of dinosaurs. when we play the hollywood bowl this is going to be huge.
6:04 this goddam iphone. ha.
6:10 trying to slow down the recording a bit… not sure if the lyrics were even audible. we move on!
6:19 we have four songs! except for the fourth! we have to record the fourth before we have four songs!
6:36 so this song is actually challenging. there are some pretty obvious influences, but it’s still a gem. takign a break to listen to some music and marvel at ray allen’s first half efficiency before getting underway.
6:40 oh my god rachael’s gone mad. BJORK HAS TAKEN HER BRAIN.
6:54 wow. this song is great, but mosly because of her singing.
7:13 Only vocals and instrumentals left to record and we’ll be out of here. c’mon iphone, stay strong.
7:33 fingers shaking. but it’s for art! my last request is to record ‘cardigan swagger’s instrumentals against our last vocal part… and it may have killed the iphone. oop!
7:52. Let’s get outta here! Gotta mix the songs and lotsa other junk, but we can talk about that later. For now, fresh air. Peace.
have spent that time
with my family and the friends
i love with my short life i have met
so many people i deeply care for"
vegas was groovy. miike snow rocked. judd apatow and jason segel tomorrow. banquet wednesday. thursday play. friday museum and neon indian and sausage. banquet saturday. recording EP sunday. final. release EP. andrew bird. final. graduation. jury duty. home. road trip.
let’s go!
a lot of how people perceive you is how you let yourself be perceived. if you make available every rough draft, unedited picture, unfinished track, you make yourself too available.
what’s made public needs to be guarded, for the public sphere is more valuable than we give it credit for. it’s very easy to ask for input from everyone at every point of a project. this transparency to every step is why people herald the connectivity aspect of the internet. it gives the sense of a grand community. while this has some positive aspects, i find that there are more drawbacks than gains.
it’s very easy to need that input, to crave it more than to use it, because any input is feedback on something you’ve done. but that’s not at all what you need. you need the pointed, poignant criticism. it’s like playing a sport. if you played basketball at the same local playground every day for a year, you’d be one of the best people at that playground. but you wouldn’t grow. you’d face the same challenges, by people who are not necessarily interested in getting better at basketball.
in that vein, show your work to people better than you. sure, the people that are on the same level can have input, and the people that have different career and artistic paths have nice opinions and valuable thoughts, but those that are doing what you do and want to do matter the most.
grab hold and ride their wake of experience, until you waterski smack dab into your future.
just saw the national at the wiltern with lauren and daniel, followed by a very prommy dinner at canter’s; just two days ago i was watching edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros at royce hall.
film festival finale tuesday, vegas weekend and a miike snow concert next monday.
things are floatin’ along better than ever.
i started writing this post in the belly of the beast (aka, the office of the boss), but then i got an assignment and ended up working till the very, very last minute of my internship. i emailed the final document, closed my laptop, walked to the lobby and had a piece of ice cream cake.
and that’s all she wrote. i’ve gone through this post-internship exercise before, where i sum up my experiences, my learnings, which of the relationships i found most fascinating… a word on this that and others.
what i learned about higher-ups: they work harder than we do. for whatever that means, it’s true.
what i learned about peers: hang on to the smiling ones, be wary of the sneaky ones, and let go the boastful ones.
what i learned about myself: at some point, it’s not about doing a great job with only what’s asked of you. achieve even when you’re on the sidelines so the gametime performance’s even better. in other words, hit those orange peels.
what i learned about paninis: it’s tempting to overload them with so many things, but really, they’re best served sleek.
on to the next one. which, in this case, is a spec television script, four guitar songs for an EP, and an end-of-the-year video for judd apatow’s award ceremony.
gotta be underdog because he’s the come from behind guy. got a script to read and cover for my last day of interning, a video to make progress on, my own scripts to write and some songs to sing.
if there was enough time, i’d probably squander it anyway, so let’s make this an ode to dealing with what we’ve got, not for what we wish we had.
ah yes, the familiar habit of blogging before bed. it feels nicer than i thought it would feel to slip back into this routine, but this familiar habit of going to bed post-three (at this rate, if i truly am going to read a script) does not feel as nice.
i should mention the excellent night of comedy i went to on monday, headlined by aziz ansari, because it was very funny. i should also mention that super mash bros. + far east movement put on a decent music performance tonight. these are things worth mentioning because i feel like i’m at a junction of one of the busiest, most productive, creative junctures in recent memory, and i like that i am still enjoying myself with enjoyable friends at these enjoyable activities.
… and with three upcoming concerts, Shorttakes film festival, a video compilation to make and some screenplays to draft, there’s no end in sight! l’chaim!
