Pagemaker & A Dream

Posted on September 6, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

I really don’t understand what is up with my Pagemaker software exporting PDFs.  It worked for making three today, then it started issuing errors.  Sometimes I reboot my computer & it works, sometimes I reboot it & it doesn’t work.  So it’s been frustrating.  I know the solution is switching over to InDesign.

Doing some work on another wave of promo of the new releases.  We’ll see if it generates any extra reviews or orders or anything.

Last Night’s Dream:
There’s a blond woman in black underwear (I think it might be Bonnie Tyler) on the back of winged white horse on the beach with the waves lapping on the horses feet.  It’s for a music video for Remora.  I go out to stand by the horse & it attacks me & I swim deep out into the ocean trying to avoid getting my head bashed in by one of its hooves.  The sun is setting & in the darkness whether the sky or sea or land is meant to be my final home for the night seems confusing.  Eventually through no power of my own I make it to the shore.  I’m wandering soaking wet on the streets of this city that I don’t know & I’m hungry.  I start looking for a mexican restaurant that will be low class enough to let me eat in it as my clothes dry.

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Mixed Views of the Day

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

So last night’s show was interesting.  It started off on a bad note with a crazy lady (also an employee of the venue) yelling, “It’s too loud, it’s hurting my ears!”  We were slightly louder than the hum of the Coke machine & kept things at the level of the Coke machine the rest of the night.  We got the check for playing (it was at ArtSpace which I think is pretty unquestionably the most famous & popular gallery in the region & so it was a bit of a nod of “having made it” by being selected to play there), so in the end I can’t complain about anything on the end of not meeting up with my artistic vision.  If it’s a free gig I want to be allowed to do what I want to do as an artist.  For $25 an hour, I am willing to look at myself as a contractor doing what you want.

I just saw that YouTube extended (or actually retragraded to) the longer video length of fifteen minutes for uploads.  Kind of excited about that as far as certain ideas I want to try to do where 10 minutes really wouldn’t cut it for me.

I was getting ready to fill out my paperwork for a grant & found out I was ineligible because the state changed availability to previous recipients so I won’t be eligible until 2013 (if then based on the way things seem to work in the arts field in this state lately).

My ability to make digital booklets is on the fritz again.  It’s really confusing how computers work sometimes….

Talked to Ben & the thirty second comp looks like it should be shaping up to have about 40 tracks.  So I feel pretty good with that number.

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Comps, Comics, Dreams, Cartoon

Posted on September 3, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Got my tracks off for the thirty second compilation.  8 tracks all together from 5 different projects of mine.  I’m a nut sometimes.

Here’s my latest little cartoon video (just a few seconds long):

Got in some art for a couple of my comics today.  It’s going to help me get some juices flowing for writing more comics & help me to get going on writing to get my grant.

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m staying at a hotel & in the next room a family of 18 checks in & is making a racket so I look out of my room.  They end up with some of them sleeping in the hallway.  I look down the hallway & it’s filled with people who couldn’t fit into rooms.  I don’t know what’s going on to cause the hotel to be so full.  The end of the world I imagine.  I just go back into my room & pretend everything is fine & start typing on my portable typewriter.

I’m standing on the deck of a beach house.  There are a bunch of garbage trucks filling themselves up with sand & going out into the sea dumping it out.  The ocean comes in & over takes the trucks & washes all the trucks out deep into the sea & starts lapping on the deck.  I dive into the ocean off the deck.  When my head comes up there is nothing but ocean.  No shore, no houses, no trucks.

I open the guitar case that has my guitar strung with wires in it.  The guitar isn’t in the case.  Instead it is a three string electric cello.  Where did this thing come from?  & should I keep it or try to track down the wire guitar & swap it back?

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QRD is Up & Recording Leads to Inspiration

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Finally a break through & visible work is done!  QRD #43 Twenty-one in-depth interviews about playing guitar with:
Jon DeRosa of Aarktica, Brian McKenzie of Electric Bird Noise, Invisible Elephant, Wim Lecluyse of Circle Bros, Nick Reinhart of Tera Melos, Matt Stevens of Fierce and the Dead, Dan Cohoon of Moral Crayfish & Empty Shapes, Clayton James Mick of Booze Brothers, John Trubee, Agata of Melt-Banana, Bones Denault of Shady Lady, Eric Hausmann, PD Wilder of Hotel Hotel, Ryan Wasterlain of Summer of Glaciers, Miguel Baptista Benedict, Jim Dennis of Random FX, Jon Attwood of Yellow6, Travis Kotler of Pineal Ventana, Brian Elyo of mobdividual, Joe Morgan of The Late Virginia Summers, & Bill Horist of Master Musicians of Bukkake.

I also did some recording for the thirty second comp.  I got four pieces done, which is all I originally envisioned doing (there’s a limit of two pieces per contributor, time for an alias to come back).  I have one harmonica drone, one vocal drone, & two witty acapella pieces.  I kinda want to do a couple guitar pieces as well & maybe an SLF drone & maybe an optical theremin thing.  So the question becomes what band names to use?  Small Life Form & Remora & do I use The Undermasks (vintage), Vestirse (even more vintage), Vlor, Muscle Mass, or Brian John Mitchell?

Just mentioning the name “The Undermasks” makes me want to get that project going again.  Or at least some version of it.  I’ve been talking with a friend of mine about trying to do some doom/sludge band.  So maybe….  Mentioning Muscle Mass makes me want to work on that again too.  & I just sent Brian McKenzie an email about my jazz-metal project (working title is Jazzus Priest, which is pretty awful so I might change it).

I’m kind of inspired by the thirty second thing.  I might try to do some kind of concept piece for Small Life Form where I record a whole bunch of short pieces with the idea that it works with how people listen to music these days with things on random play or alternatively I will design a special website where they can play the tracks so they loop over each other in dense funky interactions….

I got in my new mic (Sennheiser MD421U MKII).  My voice seems a little boomier here at home than it did in the studio (maybe the use of speakers instead of headphones or the interface I use with my computer).  I might start doing something where all my vocals are double mic’d with the Sennheiser & the Shure Beta 57.

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Deer Bug Dream

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Not much work done today.

I keep getting paperwork in the mail from people saying they owe me money from licensing fees, but no checks.  Sounds like the future to me.

Got asked to do a radio special about Silber Records in France.  So it’s nice that someone still cares.

Last Night’s Dream:
I’m sitting in the shower exhausted & used up hoping the water will somehow clean & revive me.  A bug crawls out of the drain which is indicative of the kind of place I live in.  I hope the water will wash it back down, but I know from experience that it won’t go away until I kill it.  I’m about to mash it when I see that it isn’t a roach.  Its head isn’t right.  Its head looks like a deer complete with antlers.  I stare into the blackness of its right eye like I’m looking into outer space.  Somehow its eye will let me escape this life.

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Comps, Zombie Kisses Video, Dreams

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

I have a summer cold now & it kinda has me out of wack.

Finished up the MySpace promo for The Wet Teens & started up the one for Irata.

Still working on the proofreading for the next QRD.

Talked to Ben Collins a bit about the thirty second compilation he’s assembling from Silber.  A bunch of tracks in from Moodring, Rollerball, & Electric Bird Noise.  More spots available for those of you waiting until the deadline.

Made this little video based on a segment of Zombie Kisses #2:

Last Night’s Dreams:
I’m recording at a house that has been converted into a studio.  The house is four floors including the basement & the attic.  The control room is in the attic & there’s a series of holes cut in the center of the house so there’s a ladder going all the way up from the basement to the attic.

I’m on tour with Brian McKenzie (Electric Bird Noise) doing Small Life Form.  It’s time for my set & I’ve lost my portable Roland recorder & as I’m looking for it I realize I’ve also lost my bass & ebow.

I’ve reverse engineered my ebow to build a massive one that stretches over all six strings simultaneously & I’m wondering if this is illegal & copyright/patent infringing or a derivative work.

My girlfriend’s host-sister (my girlfriend is a foreign exchange student) is pregnant.  She’s been missing a lot of school & the principal calls over & I answer the phone.  He’s saying his teenage daughter is pregnant & there’s no excuse for my girlfriend’s host-sister’s poor attendance.  Somehow I feel responsible for this, because somehow I always feel responsible for anything that goes wrong.

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QRD, The Wet Teens, Google, A Fire is actually Burning (help a Silber artist)

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Most of the time the past two days I’ve spent doing proofing for the next QRD.  Always goes slower than I expect.  I think part of it is the change in format from four 5-page interviews to twenty 8-page interviews with the relaunch.  Also spent some time working on the questions for the next series (bass players & label owners).

Finished up the MySpace promo campaign for Remora & started the one for The Wet Teens.  Not sure if it’s worth doing.  The Google Adwords campaign for The Wet Teens gets a ton of clicks.  I might should change the wording around because it might not be getting people looking for music.  It says “The Wet Teens: Glam Rock loved by Ron Jeremy.”

Yesterday the Silber website started looking all screwed up on my computer (grayed out with no links working).  It ends up it was caused by a combination of internet cookies & the Google Analytics javascript.  I cleared my cookies & now it looks fine, but I feel I’m going to have to take out the analytics so no one else runs into it.  I’m kinda glad it happened to me so I know about the problem.

Put up a special page for the mailing list/contest page – http://silbermedia.com/contest  Five free album downloads to a different fan each month.

Martin Newman (Plumerai/Goddakk) just had his apartment catch on fire yesterday.  Why not buy one of his releases so I can cut him a larger royalty check in a couple weeks?

I ordered a couple more little flower lights for trying to use with my optical theremin video projects.  I like www.Meritline.com

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video, QRD, lots of dreams, a complaint

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

So I have a complaint about something that is common in the music industry that is maybe common everywhere.  Why do people make out checks to the wrong name?  Is it an honest mistake or a business practice to try to get out of payment?  If I send you an invoice saying to make payments to “Silber Records,” why send me a check made out to “Amerse Music” (my publishing company name, which I think it’s safe to say will never have a bank account)?  I’m not the only one who I know who has run into this problem.  It seems a pretty common thing.  I don’t know if it is in a book for “how to be a douche bag businessman” or what.  But I find it annoying that it happens around half the time with the first check from any music oriented business I work with.

I made another little video from a classic Remora a capella song that will probably never be recorded properly.  Really having fun wasting time with this program.  So maybe I’ll make one a day until I’m out of ideas….

Got in the last of the interviews I wanted for the new QRD.  So I’ll be working on proofing them over the next few days.

Working on questions for an interview series with small label owners if anyone has suggestions for questions (as mine will be pretty business oriented more than likely) or labels to contact (rules for labels – must have at least five releases, no more than 20% of releases can have label owner as a band member).

Doing some processing for signing up some Silber stuff with yet another music library for film placement.  One day….

Last Nights Dreams
I trapped myself in this flesh for a reason.  So I could travel forward through time in a slow & perpetual way to escape eternity.

A friend of mine is letting me stay at his spare downtown apartment.  He’s explaining to me why he has it to entertain clients, but it still sounds more like a place to meet a mistress.

I missed my flight to Hong Kong to start my Chinese tour because I misread the date on it.  I feel like faking my death & starting my life over rather than tryoing to fix the situation.

I’m at the SPACE comic convention & nearly everyone is selling t-shirts instead of actual comics.  Not sure it’s a good idea for the future of comics.

I’m getting hot & I look down & I’m wearing three dress shirts on top of each other.  Am I homeless or something?

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Broken Briefcase, Skype, Grants, Interns, Label Owners, Bandcamp, Label Reflections

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

My briefcase for my laptop broke where the strap hooks up to it.  Not sure if I’ll be able to fix it or not.  But if that’s the biggest problem in my day I guess I have nothing to complain about in life.

Got asked about doing an interview over Skype for the third time this year, so I just ordered the stuff that should make it possible to do that. (Note: my computers are old, you’re on Windows 7 & I still have a machine with Windows 3.11 (granted I mainly use machines about 7 years old instead of 15))  Kinda excited about the idea actually as I think I can make really simple videos or a webshow using Skype.

Finally made a packet of work for one of my new interns to do.  Should’ve done it a couple weeks ago.

Trying to get some questions together for a battery survey of label owners if anyone has suggestions for it.

Helped a friend out with her grant proposal.  Did a lot of shifting the words around from “what I’d like to do with the money from this grant” to “what I will do with the money from this grant.”  I think the element of confidence that suggests can go a long way.  I need to get to work on a couple grants of my own.

Working on the MySpace promo campaign still.  The changes MySpace has made have made it more time consuming & of course it’s probably less effective today than just a year ago.

So it seems like a lot of musician types I know are still excited about Bandcamp.  I’ve used it three or four times now & the link email has never made it through my spam filters.  Not really the best delivery system….

In the recording sessions McKenzie had me play along with click tracks & did things with shifting riffs around to be closer to perfect both in timing & pitch.  For the idea of a “perfect album” it probably makes sense, but it makes me think about what is my goal in music.  Do I want to write & assemble songs or be able to actually play my songs?  Hard to say.  I’ve always been of the school that recordings should be captures of perfect takes rather than assembled from individual notes of different takes, but with the volume I use loops how can I complain about that type of assembly?  & of course Remora: Mecha is all made by a computer program (Little Drummer Boy).  But I do think I should start practicing playing along with a click track to tighten up my timing a little bit more & make any recordings I do easier for people to do remixes of.  We’ll see what all happens for me actually shifting to being a more professional & competent musician.

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End of studio time & a fun/crap video

Posted on August 19, 2010 by Brian John Mitchell

Got a bunch done in the studio today.  It was my last day in for this trip & we banged out 8 songs, though I’m not convinced all of them are complete & some might need some more added when it’s time to mix.   Not sure when there will be stuff ready to present to people.

Just made a dumb little video for the Remora song “Peanut Butter Cup” –

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