Archive for 2003

I’ve been working on Harmony Assistant all day again (all day yesterday I mean!).  I might as well stop mentioning it as if it’s something unusual; I’ve gotten very hooked on it and I’m going to keep on composing with this software every day unless I’m just not working on music that day.  That is, when I’m in composing mode, which is where I’m at now.  I don’t ever do any songwriting on the road, but now that it’s so easy to express these things by jotting them down in MIDI form, maybe I will!  Well, when I’m in touring mode, which is definitely not where I’m at right now.  I’m still paying for the last tour, fer chrissake.

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One of my special pet peeves is when people* send me file attachments via e-mail without letting me know beforehand.  I don’t have that kind of space on my mail server, and more importantly it sometimes causes me to be completely unable to retrieve my messages, i.e. when I’m away from home and using crappy dialup connections.  I explain this on my contact page, which is the only place you’ll find my e-mail address on this site (link has been removed — please post a comment instead!).  I do want to hear new music from anyone who wants to turn me on to it, but I’d much much rather follow a URL to a file on the web than get two and a half megabytes of god knows what in my e-mail.

* When I say "people", I mean just random people that I’m not really expecting mail from.  I am not talking about this person, in case he’s wondering!  Because coincidentally we have been trading Norma Jean MP3s via e-mail for the past few days… but we agreed to use that method so in that case it’s fine.

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Last week’s Mystery Song was Johnny Buckett’s "Let Me Play Wit’ Yo’ Poodle".  One song always reminds me of another one…!

I’ve added nice titles to my front page.  Now I just have to do it on the other pages, and remember to always put a title along with the URL when I make links.

Just wanted to say "I told you so!!".  Elsa is now completely under Marcy’s spell; they’re suddenly BEST friends.  The transformation is extraordinary; it only took about 48 hours for her to fall in love with this kitten.  I’ve literally never seen her so happy before.  They’ve been romping around and playing with each other almost 100% of the time, if they aren’t sleeping or busy making trouble.  It’s so heartwarming because Elsa never really got along with my old cat Junebug; I didn’t even know if she had it in her to be friends with any other cat.  I’m so glad we got her a little friend.  She’s being really good with her too, not too rough at all.  I haven’t heard any yelps, and the kitten always comes back for more, so I guess she knows what she’s doing.

I got my CD in the mail today, and wow, the sounds are amazing!  I didn’t think it’d be that much of an improvement but it really is.  I’m having so much fun with this program.  Finally figured out how to make different sections, and repeat them in different orders with different lyrics each time, without having to write the whole thing over again each time.  I have one song practically written, I just need to finish the backing track and the lyrics.  The chords and the structure and melody are all done, it sounds pretty kewl.

Marcy’s so cool.  I just heard her purring for the first time!!  Elsa is totally cantankerous about our new addition to the household, but at the same time she’s fascinated and I can tell she wants to love her.  John doesn’t believe me but I know.  Meanwhile Marcy could give a shit; she’s all but oblivious to Elsa’s bitchiness.  She wants to play, and getting swatted or snarled at only makes the game more challenging.

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Her name is Marcy.  Yup!! :-)

Our new little bundle of joy.  What should we name her???

I’m still playing with Harmony Assistant, it’s kicking my ass.  I didn’t get my sounds in the mail today.  I need a good celeste; can somebody send me one by e-mail?  I’m only half kidding.

…has now been posted. Last week’s mystery song was "The Rib" by Jeannie C. Riley.  Ripped it from the vinyl, sorry for the pops ‘n’ hiss.

I got the Harmony Assistant CD in the mail today from Myriad.  Not the one with the sounds, that’s coming separately… this is just the program itself on CD, plus a bunch of extra stuff, music demos and trial versions of all their other programs, etc.  Also a folder full of tutorial videos, kick ass!!  That’s exactly what I wanted, short of having one of the authors coach me in person.  :-)

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My head’s been totally buried in learning all this music software, and figuring out how to use it with this keyboard I just got.  I bit off way more than I can chew, for sure, but that’s a good thing.  My brain is exploding… I have so much to learn before I get to a point where it’ll be easy and natural for me to work on a song this way. I’m new to everything!  I don’t know jack about MIDI, for one thing.  And it’s been 17 years since music school so I’m pretty rusty on notation and theory in general. I have all these primitive chord-charts and lyric-snippets laying around and I can’t quite figure out how to translate them all into this sheet music / MIDI format.  But I’m getting there little by little and learning how to control it a little more every day.

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I hurt my right thumb.  Jammed it good, I just kinda sat on it when we were getting into the cab on the way home from the airport.  Smooth move!!  Now I’m having a hard time lighting my lighter and grabbing things with my right hand.  It’s not super painful but it sure makes me appreciate the usefulness and utter necessity of those stubby little things we’ve got.