I've just more or less finished up 2 songs today, one being a VBE-influenced kind of arpeggio-laden groove. Just 4 more songs to go...

just finished repairing one of my guitars that fell and split the headstock. glued it and then glassed it. so now it's not going anywhere ever.

depending upon this evening going to go record a couple of scratch tracks... maybe lay down the drums.

I'm finishing up the songs for the MA Songwriting Contest Number Three, then I'm going to begin working on my second EP for Damnum Animus, considering how well that last one was received.

I bought the body and neck of an old Jackson Kelly and I'm putting new hardware/pickups in it, and also finishing up a flying vee that I'm building from scratch. As far as music is concerned, I'm finishing up the last of my thrash metal songs and I'm making the switch to melodic death metal. I think I wrote some really great thrash songs, but I think my playing style and voice are better suited to melodic death metal. But since I'm temporarily stationed here in west texas for a few months for some military training, recording music is kinda on hold. Ah well.

Blending together classical and metal is hard and frustrating

I know this, but it can be done! *points to signature*

recorded a scratch track and drums. yay

Man, the respones in this thread really keep me motivated. Keep it up people!

Got home from vacation yesterday but man, I'm so happy to have my guitar in my hands again. Got 1 week off now (about 10 weeks more if I'll get accepted at the music school and don't have to do work replacement for my current education) before summer vacation starts so now I'll focus on 2 things;

1: Actually learning whole SONGS. Months ago I'd start to play a song and get bored easily. Right now I'd like to learn Dream Theater's ''Pull me Under'' without the guitar solo in it. That riff that's over the whole fetboard is quite hard to play.

2: Start writing some own stuff and work on the little things I've written so far. Some month ago I've wrote this Egyptian interlude kind of thing. I hope I can do something with that.

today I scratched out a guitar track to a song I wrote on friday and got the drums down and wrote another and recorded the drums for that as well.

so that's 3 songs for a split release in the future. I'll probably do the bass and guitars later this week.

also did vocals for 5 tracks of the pv shit I recorded back in dec.

have to go get some new pots that got busted off another guitar I was exclusively using to record for a different project. so that's on hold till I get that fixed.

now that i'm home I need to start writing a ton of lyrics. shit's piling up.

I'm currently reviewing material I wrote over 6 months ago for my long-overdue full length, and most of it really blows. Hard. So, I'm rewriting most of it to fit better to what I want to play and enjoy playing. Also, the drums are pretty sterile in all my tracks, so I'm trying to program them to be more human. Anyone have tips on the latter?

If you can, track down some cymbals and record yourself playing individual tracks for hats, rides and crashes. Makes a world of difference.

Otherwise use a humanize function (or program it yourself). It's pretty simple- it just slightly adjusts things like volume, tone, panning... whatever you want/think sounds the best. So if for instance you have a snare fill hammering on 16th notes (which usually sounds obviously programmed) it will make subtle changes to each hit so that it has some dynamics and sounds less like the same sample being retriggered.

hopefully I'll be writting more thrashy stuff, and hoepfully getting my band on board with it. if not, I'll form a new band somehow. It'll work...again, if there are any drummers in IL, PM

Try to come up with some interesting drum beats for my band's latest song and some good lyrics we might use in the next one.

My double bass skills are finally getting better again. I wasn't able to play even the most simple of double bass lines without fucking up for at least two months now, but it finally seems like this crisis is over. Still don't know what the cause was though, certainly not a lack of training. Probably psychic reasons, I went through a lot of stress lately...

if anyone is interested and remember the death metal ep I submitted for the last challenge has just been released by plague tapes. it pretty much sounds exactly the same, I did do some slight adjusting to the guitars to make them a little less muddy, but not much. I made a thread about it in the promotion thread.

^I listened to that when I was working out yesterday, good stuff man.

My drummer and my (hot lady) bassist are moving to california together, so we;re gonna try to have one last blowout show, playing a two hour set, maybe trying to write a few more originasl. We play on the 31st of this month. We've invited almost 700 people, so hopefully the turnout will be decent.

I remember when it was just the drummer and I, in his studio tracking all day for the fun of it, with no intention of playing live, and then one day, I got offered a show, and we made it happen. Gonna miss those fuckers.

FTW, looks like my password has been seized. time to change!

thanks! I appreciate it man!

well tonight I wrote 4 songs. and finalized a 5th for the starting of recording tmwr. 3 of them were completely from scratch.

tmwr morning shall consist of a ton of recording, and then making up for the time I didn't spend in the gym yesterday.

recorded a scratch track and then recorded drums to that.

after that recorded guitar & bass for 4 songs for a split.

I've been practicing covers, trying new things, and trying to just get better overall. I'm finding drums to be quite annoying at times but super fun.
Wish I was in a band, but then again I don't feel like trying to find somebody here that plays a style I play. I'll just do my own thing and worry about a band later.

two scratch tracks, two drum tracks. I feel pretty good about the day. Maybe I'll continue mixing some drums down tonight.

Fucking busy. Three rehearsals, two shows and one recording session in the next eight days. Normally I'm into it, but I'm also looking for a new place to move into for June, so it's a bit much.

Ah well. I'll always chose busy over bored.

recorded bass to 5 tracks yesterday. Might go on and start guitar today.

Last night my high e broke on my acoustic, so I downtuned the fucker and had a funeral.
Pefectly described the day I was having, depressing as fuck. It is also my first attempt at vocals.

http://www.mediafire.com/?dmirb657jrj4592

Writing material for another demo. I don't have a time frame when I will be done, just taking my time with it.

just did all the guitar tracks today for what I've been working on all this week.

new 5 song Draug split coming soon.

I've been busy doing fuck all. I might get around to recording bass tracks to ONE song from my future demo, but that's a ways away.

Got one of my RABM/Atmospheric/Raw Black Metal songs done, up here:

http://soundcloud.com/greendestroyedrabm

Tomorrow I'm most likely gonna get the intro down for the other song I'm doing now (planning to get a 2 song demo/EP out soon) as well.

Finished another song's outline today. Will improve the drum parts, add in the bass lines and jam up some solos tomorrow.

Also I've been on a real Sleep Terror kick lately; I made several riffs influenced by Jaeger's wacky style, though I'm nowhere as proficient

I'll listen to that if you ever post it up. I think luke thinks way too much of himself.

Anyway wrote 3 songs and recorded drums for slam grind band.

wrote 3 more songs for draug and one for another death metal band. going to go tmwr to demo out and record drums for them. maybe write some more for draug and record it all for another split.

any non-tape draug releases coming?

it's in the works. out of the two splits planned. one will be tape as well, the other... is still up in the air in discussions.

I will post it if I ever get finished with it, lol. Although it'll just be lame Guitar Pro midi sounds for now.

Ugh! I guess i'll still take a listen.

Fucking tapes! Its an obsolete medium with no redeeming factors whatsoever. Other than nostalgia I suppose, but I junked my last tape player in like 1997. Anyway, I dig the music, I'll be checking it out if it's available in any other format.

Me, I'm working on 12 active musical projects.

Everyone hates all of them for various reasons. They hate some because they think the songs aren't serious, when they totally are. They hate others because of all this stupid bullshit it is not even funny.

I have one project that I actually asked what people thought of it (it's the first one in my signature, Brutal Jackalope Attack with Unicorn). One guy said it was decent but the "shit guitar tone" killed it, which I use Amplitube 3 VST for it because my guitar amp sucks donkey dick. He suggested some other different, free VST that supposedly was way better sounding. I tried every single combination of the VST out, especially in the ways he told me to and listened to it. When I did, it sounded weak to me, and actually just sounded almost MIDI like. When I say that, I mean it didn't sound like I was listening to a MIDI track of distortion guitar, but if you compare what a MIDI clean guitar sounds like next to a MIDI distorted guitar, the distortion sounds weak and unrealistic and completely digital (which is understandable as IT IS! MIDI is a fucking square "wave" and not an actual acoustical waveform). I tried tons of combinations and it was crap. He had told me to use a certain one, but I went to their site and they had a ton of different ones, so I got them all. All of the heads they had sounded EXACTLY the same. The only difference was that a few of them had a crunch channel in addition to the clean and distortion.

I could make a rendering of what it sounded like with that one he suggested, but it sounded like asshole, I don't even feel like wasting my time trying to do that. I couldn't get the VST to bring out a tone that anywhere near matched the style of music.

Then I have other ideas, and they're comical, and people are all "why?" Not everything always has to be serious all the time. I am generally a comical person, I like to laugh and cut up and joke around. Music is a form of personal expression (or real music is anyway). Therefore it only makes sense that some of my music would be joking around. Though when they hear about one thing that is sort of facetious, they blast me and then assume everything from ALL TWELVE OF MY ACTIVE PROJECTS doesn't count and only the one thing I'm talking about does.

I have another project that actually is about a lot of really deep, personal shit I go through. Nobody cares about that though or takes ALL that I do into the whole picture and just rails me on the individuals when they come up.

So, fuck it.

Well for the last decade I've been working solo on an instrumental keyboard project, and haven't really gone anywhere with it but has been both fun and productive. For now though, I may put it on hold since I recently joined a band. Pretty stoked as well being it's my first real metal gig. So most of my time will be going toward learning the material they've written so far. Hopefully I'll be ready when they schedule the next live shows.

Just learned Frantic Disembowelment on guitar!!! So proud! Only riff I have trouble with is the really fast chord-sliding one. What should I learn next? Don't really care what genre, would prefer (tech)death metal but I don't care as long as it's not slow.

Congrats! That's a pretty damn hard song. Try some Necrophagist, maybe?