Heartbreak, For Art's Sake

I was up in Binghamton at On Point Productions for 4 and a half hours this evening, finishing what is going to be the single for my band's upcoming album. It is sounding great! When I left, Damien was just starting to bring the track into Reason (an alternative recording software) to be mastered. The final mix already sounds so good, I can't wait to hear what the real master track sounds like. In case anyone out there cares at all, the song is called "Heartbreak, For Art's Sake" and the graphic for the single looks like this: 

Working

I've been getting a lot more recording done recently. Here is a screenshot of me working on a new song with Joel Beckwith:

This shows what the software actually looks like while recording. You can see all of the tracks and their faders along the bottom, as well as on the left-hand side. The names may not make sense, as most of them are abbreviated, but they just indicate what is being played on each individual track. I'll go into a lot more detail on this in my final presentation.

I had Kristian come in to record vocals on another song as well. Looking forward to finishing the several works in progress that I have sitting around on my computer.

Upload of Rough Mix

I finally got it to work. If you want, you can take a listen to a very rough mix of and instrumental version of the song that I've been working on as of late. A lot of the stuff you hear will be changed, re-recorded, etc. by the end, but I wanted to put something up. The song's working title is "Argyle," and was written by Max Gaeta and myself. It will most likely end up being a song for my band, as is meant to have vocals. I have to get Kristian Wood-Gaiger in to do them some time soon. Guitars: Max Gaeta. Bass: Joel Beckwith. Drums: St. John Faulkner. It's super rough

https://soundcloud.com/stjohnfaulkner/argyle-instrumental-rough-mix

MM

Today's mentor meeting went well. It was shorter than most, but we just got right down to business. He told me stories of his previous mentees' successes and failures, and made sure that I was where I needed to be, only having one month left. More talk went into my plans for the presentation, and just finding a good balance. I'm happy with everything, and he seems to be too. Wahoo!

Advancements

I still haven't found out why the uploading wasn't working the other day, but it's alright. I have scheduled a session with a musician that I haven't yet worked with - Parker Callister. He goes to SUNY New Paltz and studies Jazz Guitar. He applied for transfer to Ithaca College for Composition, but I'm not sure what became of that. Either way, he's done with school on May 11th, so I'm going to have him come in any day now. He plays cool stuff like the banjo and ukelele, and is constantly writing music. I've always wanted to collaborate with this dude, so I'm excited. Otherwise, I have plans to schedule a session with the indie-acoustic duo, Allie Young and Vanessa Anderson. They play some sweet stuff, and I've never recorded an all-acoustic anything, so that should be fun. Either way, my project is starting to really come together.

Trouble Uploading Mixes

Today I spent about an hour trying to get a track uploaded, so that I could share it on here. I was all ready to post it, but nothing worked. I tried uploading it to SoundCloud, but it couldn't process. So I tried uploading it the old fashioned way by putting it on YouTube. It couldn't process. So I tried something obscure - uploading it straight to blogger in a blog, but to no avail. It was a frustrating little while, to say the least. I'm still not sure why nothing is working, but it's definitely a problem. I have about 4 rough mixes now, that I'd like to be able to share ASAP. This is definitely something I'm going to work on. I'm just very perplexed. I'm usually relatively tech-savvy, but I just couldn't figure this one out. More on this to come, I'm not giving up just yet.

Happiness Revisited

1) I feel most happy when I'm busy. The more things I have to do, the more ways I will be able to expend my energy, and the more effort I will be able to put into everything I do. Especially when I really care about the things that I am involved in.

2) This was an interesting read. Some of it was ver informative, and made good historical connections. However, I felt that it was very repetitive in most areas, and its point was made on like the 2nd page. The rest of the article was different quotes about happiness from random people. It also felt pretty pretentious to me, telling people that they could never be truly happy if they ever questioned themselves. I don't know. It just rubbed me the wrong way for the most part.

3) Just about the middle. I have relative skill set and am moderately challenged now.

4) This has changed because when I started, my skill set was much smaller and I had many more challenges. As I grew in my understanding of what I was doing, I began to feel much more comfortable and confident, without ever feeling bored.

5) One can achieve flow by putting themselves in the right mindset for the task at hand, then staying busy enough with what are doing as to not get distracted. After this, make sure that the work they are doing is interesting enough to keep them engaged. Set goals, and complete them, but always with a next step in mind. Just get into it.