I've been writing and recording music quite a lot. I participated February Album Writing Month and the goal is/was to write 14 songs in 28 days. I reached the goal and even more. I'm now mixing my punk grind speed metal stupidity EP of 18 songs and I also have written five new proper heavy metal songs.
I hope to get to record the songs soon, because as much as I like midi I think that it's not really enough for these. And I guess that I have to learn to sing properly. Oh, well... there's still time.

That's probably for the best, but hell I wasn't overtly interested in the lyrics anyway. Just the overall musical approach is what I'm about esp since yo boy is doing guitar/vocals.

not gonna lie, been in the doldrums for a bit now. Motivation is almost in the shitter today, I already completely forgot to work out today no idea how the hell that happened

yea that's insane. I never forget to workout, I have to actively miss. which I did today... well I mean my afternoon workout after work. I still did my morning regiment. I opted to go visit my mother and just chill at home and play some max payne 3. Tmwr I'll hit it twice. Mon and thurs are the busiest days at the gym anyway.

oh yeah? well it sounds like you've had a good day at least xD
well, hey things can only go uphill from here, though...

What I'm thinking of doing is changing the lyrical direction from a concept record with a horror film storyline to every song being about a different horror film, giving me more freedom with what I can do in the songs. I've been on a roll the last few days with horror/thriller films in the found footage genre and anthology films (in particular I've watched Megan is Missing, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Gacy House (which sucked), Paranormal Activity 4 (which also sucked), Amber Alert, Murder Collection V.1, and The ABCs of Death), so between those and the obligatory classic horror staples I've got more than enough material to write about.

Well maybe this will amuse you.


Decided to get some more gear to play with so I have even more options when recording stuff. So I won a Randal RH200c for 200 and that includes the shipping off ebay. Paid for it the very day I won, probably an hour after it. The next day I get a refund of my money and a message through ebay saying that he wasn't going to ship to a PO Box cause he wanted to ship it Fed Ex. And sent a cancellation of the auction for me to approve.

Here is a quote from the auction:


here is the auction listing if you want to see:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/160975550779?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649


clearly nothing said about not shipping to PO Boxes nor only shipping Fed Ex.

I responded in summary 'You don't say you won't ship to a PO Box, I figured since you used all shipping carriers that you would be intelligent enough to choose the appropriate one to ship to any address.'

no response after 2 days

Went on and was looking at the cancellation and it's stated that the reason he wanted to cancel the transaction was because I requested that he mail it to an unverified address. Which I didn't, hell if I wanted it shipped to my home address, it's verified as well. So I cancelled his cancellation and I'm going to report him to ebay tmwr. I believe he isn't happy with the final purchase price and doesn't want to sell it to me, nevertheless the obvious lie about wanting it shipped elsewhere.

I don't even want it from him anymore, I just want to make it difficult for him to sell anything on ebay again. I already purchased the same head from another site that i've used occasionally to get used gear that isn't auction style.

hopefully you can make it interesting. And not a direct summary of what the film is about, more along your thoughts or ideas to explore within each.

I just finished a concept piece that's based on the movie Martyrs... well it's directly about martyrs. but my lyrics are abstractly references to how I divided the film up into 3 main ideas. The album is about half as long as the movie is. lol.

heh .. I can't actually fit myself AND my guitar in my closet. Just my amps/mics/gear to record in there and contain the sound as my living room is pretty big and that wouldn't work out. I'll pad out the closet, get the set up proper and run the cables out into the living room. it'll do.

No, I don't play in a band. Honestly, there's only my brother in my friend group who's a metal head and he lives really far away, sad to say, and one other friend but she doesn't play anything. It would be really fun, though, I think .. I played in a band when I was in high school/early college. But I didn't listen to metal much then, which was stupid. very very stupid. so it was jammy stoner alt/grunge meandering that was more fun that it was good work, but the drummer was fucking great and we're still in touch. No, it's just solo stuff at home and the occasional discussion of collaborations at the moment. But that's from lack of opportunity, really.

Well the idea I had for that would be not to do a narrative of the movie itself, but focus on an aspect of it and focus the song on that, be it a character or a primary theme or what have you. For example, with The Poughkeepsie Tapes, it'd be about the Water Street Butcher, but it'd be descriptions of his crimes through references to lines in the movie and anecdotal mentions of what he does and how he does it. Basically it'd be me combining violent topics with a semi-character study. Kinda the same with Megan is Missing, which would focus almost solely on the last 22 minutes and what happens in there. Both would jump around the narrative at will and not really follow a chronological structure, rather using events from the movies less as a way of moving along a story as much as a way of talking about the killers and who they are as villains.

Here's a video of my band's most recent show (1/25/13). This is the first few songs we played that night. Sadly, we have nothing recorded...yet. But if you like the video, visit your Facebook page. We have a few shows coming up, with bands like Absu, Ectovoid, Hellgoat, and The Day of the Beast.

http://www.facebook.com/OfficialOakmoon

The video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tn6WWOxfEY

that sounds more interesting in itself Subrick. nice.

That's too bad, what style are you going for? If any of those collaborations materialize I'd be interested in hearing them.

My main band has a split we've been working on for over a year now with Fabricant dropping this month I'm pretty excited about. Been playing music for years now but never done anything with a label before so even having a small one behind us for one release is pretty cool. We're also just about writing our first full length and getting ready to go up the west coast again, play a fest in the woods opening for Absu, and play a ton of local gigs. In addition I just joined a tech-grind (a-la newer Noiser) band which is shaping up to be pretty awesome. We're looking to get working on recording a demo in the next month or two.

I got that split with fabricant on pre-order. fan of both you(bands).

Working on riffs and drums for an LLN styled project with Noctir of Blackmoon, Mutilation, Bloodfrost, etc. He also runs a great website, mainly featuring black metal, but delves into other genres as well. http://ritesoftheblackmoon.blogspot.com/

neat.

went and knocked out some gurthang drum tracks for something to be released.

wrote and recorded a new uzumaki song. and for some reason my left hand feels like it was crushed in a vice. No idea why.

finally did a rough mix of this song I recorded with my friend last week. no vocals, but if you are interested in hearing it.
http://www.mediafire.com/?h546ej78qh9oi9o

I decided to now start mixing down all the vocals to this Draug full length. I'll work on artwork this weekend as well.

Cool. It'll be a while, but it's a sure thing. I'll definitely be letting the hall know of my offerings.

edit: pff .. got so scattered that you're opening for Absu I forgot to answer this part. I have a couple projects in the works, but only the doom stuff I'd let anyone know was me in a Promotional Forum post or maybe even this thread. The others just seem more private somehow and even influences would be telling, so they'll just be out there in the woods. But the doom project(s?) are more straight forward, so I'll be more overt about it/them. But my work changes so much from however I start out that it's hard to say. It will be trippy, though, because I like to head bang almost as much as I like to hallucinate. so .. I guess I should say Epic Doom, but dude .. I'm just gonna go for it and whoever wants to can classify it however. It's going to be massive, though. With much transition.



.. wat. That's fucking awesome! Are you playing in the DNA lounge throw down?

G'luck on the projects. Let me know how I can hear 'em! I will do this:

I've finally started seriously writing and recording. I've done this instrumental song as basically a test, just to get the hang of the whole process. I think the most intimidating thing is the mixing process, but after watching some tutorials it doesn't seem quite so esoteric. That said, of course, it's going to be a long and gradual learning process. Practice makes perfect and all that.

Listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=walYU3hH ... e=youtu.be

Anyway, feedback would be good. Particularly any ideas on how to clean up the mix, links to good tutorials etc. I am using Reaper, and recording guitars the old fashioned way with a mic (Shure SM-57).

I like the somewhat hazy sounding guitars, but I think the bass guitar sounds shitty. But then, my bass rig is shitty (cheap starter bass and 15 watt practice amp) while my guitar rig is actually decent (Gibson SG plus old Tubeworks amp and 4x12 cab).

As far as song writing, there are sections in the song that I wish weren't as long. The repetition gets a bit much, especially without vocals. So I know the song writing side of things needs some work. Something I will try to improve on the next song.

Here are the rough lyrics for a Blasphegram song I am calling "Water Street". It is based on The Poughkeepsie Tapes, with half the lyrics being said from the perspective of the Water Street Butcher and the other half being from an outside-the-story perspective. I even threw in a reference to the Nekromantik movie series because of the Butcher's propensity to rob the graves his victims and fuck their corpses. I might add a couple more verses in, hence the "rough" part, but this is what I have for it now (ShaolinLambKiller, I expect no more but comments about how lyrics aren't really important to you yet you'll give your thoughts on them anyway. )

Yeah, just checked out the sampler off the Promo Forum. Fuckin' A you're excited. That's good work.

Band prac today was a big ol' ball of "wut".

Last night the guitarist we are trying out messages me and tells me she can't come in because she is super fucked and needs to go to the hospital. All good. This morning the drummer ain't feeling at all up to it, so I meet up with just the guitarist and the singer/guitarist, not sure how much we'll get done. Run through some shit, and then end up working on some ancient riffs we'd written ages ago, a Blue Oyster Cult style number, and then my singer out of fucking no where pulls a badarse Immortal/Bathory song out of his arse (not a full song, just some ideas and shit). We work on all three a little bit. Much more productive than I thought it would be to be honest, and I'm really happy with how weird we are starting to sound, haha.

Just because they aren't important to me.. doesn't mean I'm devoid of an opinion. If I feel something can be done better I'll let you know.


These are a vast improvement over the others.

I know. I'm just busting your proverbial balls.

You can polish them for a fee as well.

meet up with the full band. For once I didn't have to direct/write/compose they came in and started working off a bass line and pretty much have a whole song off two different bass lines with alternations that make up for it just being 2 riffs. I think it's pretty cool, kinda reminds me of Yeti and the Atlas Moth

Atragon got two new songs finished tonight. One's got vibes of Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, the other is... weird. There's a part that's kind of reminiscent of Yob, but most of it's pretty strange and (dare I say it) unique.

Also getting the artwork for my solo doom project EP finalised. This includes the track I entered in the last doom songwriting challenge, which a few people here seemed to like.

It is a great feeling when a band starts working together as a band, and not just a dude composing plus some extras. I honestly don't get it when musicians don't want to write anything for the band they are in.

Released that doom EP: http://nestofvipers.bandcamp.com/album/eternal-doom

I'll leave that to whoever you have stored in your dungeon basement, thank you very much.

Soooo... Aarni meets Scald??? Sounds amazing actually. I've been wanting to tackle something like that for a while now but it's never worked out. It's a style I'm not really familiar with outside of a few bands that I enjoy immensely.


Ahhhh, if only. We'll be playing a festival in tahoe with them the night before (actually we're playing Friday, Absu's playing Saturday but that doesn't have the same ring to it.) The first day of the fest will probably be shamefully under attended being a work day for most people but the guy behind it pulled some of my favorite bay area bands (Hazzard's Cure, Badr Vogu, and Larvae are all amazing) so I'm really looking forward to it.Day 2's got some real winners as well. If we get back in time I'm hoping to catch them at DNA as well though (hangover permitting haha)




Thanks guys!

I suppose you're not far off there, but not as clean. Though not "stoner", either. I'm into other people playing with that much fuzz, but I can't personally. I'm glad you mentioned Scald. I would feel like an ass to copy them, but I'd be lying if I said they fell short of awesome. Well once I get it more fleshed out I could share it with you.

Have fun at the fest!

Big show tonight! Suit jacket is pressed, mustache is trimmed, beers are on ice. I AM PUMPED.

Mixed a Vahset track. It has a weird DsO/Immolation feeling to it.

Damn, I was absent from anything related to music production for months.

I want to hear that Vahset track!


wrote and recorded another 54R song

I'll send it to you tonight. It's not as ridicuously fast with the feet as the 3rd song.

eh .. actually, replace Aarni with disEMBOWELMENT.


sweet! What project are you crushing the audience with?

Solo recording time. Not much of a solo player at all, but hopefully i will be able to contribute at least half of the leads for our upcoming album. btw i am drunk as fuck

My new wave/post punk band Cygnets. So less crushing, more moody dancing. It was a great show actually, we opened for Trust who are getting quite popular in the synthpop world. Really great turn out for a Monday and the crowd was very receptive. We also debuted a new single- bit of a different vibe than a lot of our stuff, both the vocalist and guitarist are huge My Bloody Valentine/The Jesus and Mary Chain fans and wanted to do something a bit noise pop/shoegazey. Just put out the video this morning, the concept is (very) loosely based on JG Ballard's Concrete Island.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPb5OqB_o_s

In other news: tomorrow a rather talented guitarist I've recently befriended is coming over to jam on my DSBM songs. I'm pretty stoked about that, if it goes well I'll finally be able to get an album finished.

Even better!

In other news, I finished tracking scratch guitar tracks for my newest band to get a drummer up to speed last night. No one in the band has seen him play before so we're all moving ahead just kind of assuming he's up to snuff. If all goes well we should be recording in the next month or two which would be great.

WOOOOOOOOOOO!

Jam with my guitarist friend went really well. He came in with great ideas, was able to improvise some really good stuff (way better than I can) and was totally cool taking some direction as we worked out the parts for one of my existing song. Plus, he digs my music and is a chill guy. I've got a good setup in my studio, I feel like my writing is better than ever, and now I've got a talented and cool guitarist to work with. I am elated. This DSBM album is finally gonna happen!