Archive for the ‘Recording’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Pick Your Poison

Tuesday, October 19th, 2004

My first ‘official’ solo CD, Pick Your Poison, is finished. I went all the way on this one — it’s being printed up by CD Print Express, so there will be a profesisonal-looking eight-page color booklet (well, as professional as I made it). It will be here within the week and will officially be ‘released’ on Tuesday, October 26.

I’m planning to sell this bad boy for $6.00, which means I would made a whopping $0.25 profit off of each disc sold.

The CD expresses my frustration with our current ‘all or nothing’ political system (see my rant below), which values the snide remark over the well thought-out argument. More than half the songs are political in nature, but it’s not like I wrote one called “Vote Bush Out” or anything like that. I’m disgusted with the whole system, not just Bush the Younger.

The music is all over the map, from driving rock (“Double Take”), to epic folk (“Lonely Planet”) to hymn (“Starting a Religion”), dreamy, tripping ballads (“Dreaming Awake”) and fast-as-hell punk rock meets medieval military marches (????) (“Good Fences”). This is also the first project I’ve recorded that I put money into — $100 for a cheap condenser microphone and stand, as well as the cost of having them printed up.

As always, it was recorded at Why?-Fi studio in Corvallis, which is slang for my pump house and dorm room. The photo of me on this blog was actually taken while I was “in the studio” (slang for ‘next to the boxes of macaroni).

Tags:
Posted in Recording, Recording News | No Comments »

Camping Galore

Tuesday, June 29th, 2004

Current Listening: The Queers — “Surf Goddess” (Surf Goddess)
There’s no doubt that you’re just about / The prettiest girl that I’ve seen / You look so cool hanging by the pool / You’re the only girl for me / Surf goddess, I’m in love with you”

I just finished up the website for my family’s reunion at Priest Lake, which can be viewed at www.shortfamily.net. I had a program that did most of the stuff, but — me being the perfectionist that I am — I went through and changed the style a little bit, using a handy little relative expression technology called grep, so it only took me a couple of hours instead of a couple of days.

Carrie called last night and said that she has three days off next week, on Monday through Wednesday, which is perfect! We were planning on going camping, and the perfect time off for her would have been three days off early in the week.

My solo album, Pick Your Poison, is finished. I will make up some copies sometime, then offer to sell them right from this very website! I’d give them away, but it costs money to print and ship, so there you go. In the meanwhile, you can listen to the three MP3s in the litle bar to the left.

I watched Adaptation last night. It was pretty good, I thought; and the irony at the end was very fitting. The whole Nicholas-Cage-playing-his-own-twin-brother thing threw me at first (it was, after all, a Charlie Kaufman film), but I managed to adjust. Expect a review soon!

Tags: ,
Posted in Journal, Recording | No Comments »

New Album in Works

Sunday, November 2nd, 2003
Current Listening:
Drag the River: “Forgiveness”
My daddy preached to me

Everyday for years

The day that he died

I swallowed my tears

The tip of the bottle

And a wish you were here

I’d trade forgiveness for a beer

Wow. Somebody threw strands of toilet paper through the trees in front of Jesse. In its own way, it’s really pretty. Like streamers of garland. That are supposed to wipe asses.

I was a Ninja for Halloween. Black pants, a black t-shirt, and another black t-shirt to make into my mask. There was this other guy in a ninja costume, but he was wearing a long sleeve shirt (with a logo!) and a bandana for a mask. I was so much sweeter than he. We did Trick or Eating, which meant we went to the Davidsons College and got a route, then went door-to-door collecting canned food. We got two bags full, which is a decent amount. Then we watched a late-night screening of The Shining. Interesting flick. So much so that I want to read the book.

I got some books at the library, thanks to Carrie. an Amiri Baraka treasury, Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys (A Very Short Book), and Stephen King’s autobiography/work about writing, On Writing. I’m about thirty pages into each.

So I’m slowly collecting another album’s worth of material. If all goes well, I should record it over the Thanksgiving break. This album will be my most acoustic yet: acoustic guitar, piano, and few electric guitars. It has some of my strongest stuff yet, though (I think). “Starting a Religion”, a slow, hymnal number; “Double Take”, an offbeat song about the similarty of the two ‘opposite’ political parties, and “Danse Macabre”, a visual, piano-driven piece.

Left Hanging

Nobody wants to explore anymore.

All we want is a copy of National Geographic and

a bologna sandwich, preferably with Super-Size Fries.

Can you blame us? Who’d want to leave

the serenity of a newspaper floor, our own feces

floating in a water dish, and pretty, shiny bars?

Thank God for the bars. If we squint and look

with what little imagination we’ve got,

we just might see a menacing cat staring us down.

He’s got mange, he’s missing an eye,

and a gleam in his good eye like a madman’s watch.

Watching the birds outside the window, we laugh nervously,

dismissing what we fear most. Let them live on the edge each day,

just outside the cat’s cracked paws. Let them live.

At least they don’t have to read old issues of National Geographic until they die.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Journal, Recording, Recording News, School, Writing | No Comments »

Update

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2003

I worked Monday. Same guy as before. He’s moving, so we hauled furniture into his U-Haul, then down to a storage unit. NWI is playing at the Poetry Slam on Friday, as well as (maybe) the FMZ. If any of us practice. I’m in the most recent production of Lab Rats, onstage this time — as Watson. Thursday I’m going to see Laurel’s dance thingie. I was gonna bring Maggie, but I just don’t think she’d enjoy it. I’ll take her someplace else this summer — maybe to the play at the playhouse.

I’m finally finishing my pop-punk (real pop-punk, like Queers and Screeching Weasel) record from my band The Suckers. All it needs is backup vocals.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Journal, Music, Recording, Recording News | No Comments »

Last American Hero

Friday, July 11th, 2003

This is our new Seinfeld-inspired answering machine message:

Click here

It’s only 156k. “Believe it or not, the Shorts aren’t at home….”

Tags:
Posted in Recording, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Update

Sunday, June 22nd, 2003
Hot and Not

Lay’s Chicago Steakhouse Loaded Baked Potato Potato Chips
“Paradise Hotel” on Fox

There’s no better idicator of the health of free enterprise than a business hiring the homeless to advertise for it: Pizza Company Hires Homeless to Advertise. By the way, be doing this weird thing, they also get free coverage from major news sources like CNN and crummy online diaries like this one! What a bunch of friggin’ geniuses.

Last night I watched Big Trouble, the movie based on the novel by the funniest man in America, former Iraqui information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. No, sorry, I mean Dave Barry (who also has a blog). It was quite funny. One of those fast-paced, cram-as-many-jokes-into-an-hour-and-a-half movies. And the hallucinagenic-squirting toad (a great name for a rock band, zing! Dave Barryism) was classic.

I would like to point out the new feature on the blog for Sundays, the icon “Hot and Not.” Every week, I’ll pick something I find so freakin’ awesome that it blows my mind, and something so freakin’ lame it’ll make the Backstreet Boys look cool in comparison. I drew the icons myself, aren’t they pretty?

Well, today I did some work. Paid work. I had a hell of a time finding the place, though. It seems that Mapquest (I am not linking to protest) told me to turn onto Main Street in Hamilton, then left on Ricketts. For those of you familiar with Hamiltonian geography, Ricketts obviously does not go past Main Street; it stops at the graveyard. So I drove around up by Schneeb’s house for close to a friggin’ hour trying to find the damn place. I finally stopped at this bed and breakfast thingie and called the guy. Maybe I should have chosen Mapquest for my “Not” pick of the week.

Current Listening:
Bad Religion: “Change of Ideas”
So many theories, so many prophecies
What we do need is a change of ideas
When we are scared we can hide in our reveries
But what we need is a change of ideas
Change of ideas, change of ideas
What we do need is a change of ideas

Remember the mouse? The dead on that scared my sister half to death? This guy’s daughter, who is about Maggie’s age, found some live mice in their animal food bucket thingie. A mommy mouse and a baby mouse. Maybe the mummified one my sister found was their daddy, huh? Zing!

I have written three songs for the record NWI is supposed to be recording. We might learn one. They are: “I Really Do Have a Girlfriend”, one of those joke songs about a guy who makes up his girlfriend, “Someday”, a song about living in a boring, tiny, dead town, and “United We Stand”, a song about Americans standing together in ignorance. The highlight of that tune is the a capella break that describes the flag as John Ashcroft’s “stained shit rag.” It’s harmonized! I bought a special T-shirt for our next show; it’s so awesome! It’s an American flag, and below it are the words “UNITED WE STAND” in block letters. And it was only $5.99! Imagine that; patriotism can be bought so cheaply. With that digression over, I’d like to finsih by saying that I’ve also written a couple of songs that have lyrics that are too emotional or aren’t fast enough to be punk, so those go on the next solo record, which I will probably record before the end of the summer.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Journal, Recording | No Comments »

Update

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2003

Quote of the Update:

“Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.”

— Sydney Smith

All is well. My tummy kind of hurts. My new solo record is almost complete; I just have a few more tracks to lay down.

Peace.

Tags:
Posted in Journal, Recording, Recording News | No Comments »

Update

Friday, April 11th, 2003

Super-Long Special Small Font Movie Quote of the Update:

Frodo: I can’t do this Sam!

Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back — only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to Sam?

Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo and it’s worth fighting for.

— The Two Towers (Indirectly J.R.R. Tolkien)

Throughout the war, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf has been keeping me in stitches with his announcement about the advance of American troops (go to Something Awful to see what I mean). But this levity got me to thinking. Now, obviously, our government wouldn’t lie to us; and there’s no way that the media isn’t getting at some of the truth. But how do we know that what they’re telling us is the truth? After all, they’re still clinging to the pretense of ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ Anyway, something serious.

I got mega-drums done, including (finally) drums for “Knockout.” That song has some bar of 6/4 time! Wow! I should actually have some demos for the band by the end of the weekend.

I wrote a poem comparing somebody establishing in his or her niche to a Hobbit. It’s long, but not too long. I think Mom will like it; she’s a big Tolkien buff. I’m thinking of creating a ‘band’ to showcase my Poppier music (‘poppier’ is so close, keyboard-wise, to ‘poopier’):

  1. Eye Candy
  2. Knockout
  3. Old People Scare Me
  4. Not My World
  5. Laura
  6. Am I Immature?
  7. Mama Said Knock You Out
  8. Scene

And I could write more. I dunno. I’m still toying with the idea. Ideally, NWI would learn almost all of them.

Man, it’s damn nice here, weather-wise. Warm, light later. The Oval is, as someone on my floor said, like a resort. I’ve been out to play my guitar several times. I hope it lasts and we don’t get a friggin’ snowstorm.

OK. It’s bedtime. I’ve been oversleeping and missing waaay too many early-morning classes lately.

Peace.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Music, Recording, School | No Comments »

Update on New Album

Wednesday, April 9th, 2003

Blatantly Liberal Link of the Update

The ABC’s of War

Well, I wrote Misanthropomorphic. It’s your standard rock song. Sequenced the drum tracks. It looks like my solo will have seventeen or eighteen tracks. I’ve been working on tracks for other NWI tracks, as well. Hopefully I can get 3 or 4 new NWI songs on tape this weekend for the rest of the band.

Tags: ,
Posted in Recording, Recording News | No Comments »

Solo Album Update

Monday, April 7th, 2003

Inspirational Song Quote of the update:

“The old men march slowly, all bent stiff and sore

The forgotten heroes of a forgotten war

And the young men ask, ‘what are they marchign for?’

And I ask myself the same question”

— Eric Bogle, “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda”

This weekend was all about my solo album. I got all the electric guitar parts done (including a bitching blues song, “The Waiting.”) I borrowed Chris’s bass, his 5-string, which was fun. I managed to incorporate that low B string into a few songs (no super-poopy-low nu-metal songs, though). I got some of the vocals done, too. I think I might call the record “Misanthropomorphic” and write a title song for it this week, depending.

Tonight I did a 4-page paper for my British Lit class in about an hour and a half. To be fair, I marked the novel (Heart of Darkness by Conrad, which I did read for Senior English) as I read to get good passages for my thesis. I actually think this paper is pretty good.

Anyway, gotta get up in two hours, but my paper’s done, so I don’t have to scurry to work on it. Good night.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Journal, Recording, Recording News, School | No Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »