Solder Fail & Movies

I tried to do a music soldering project, which is something I always fail at.  So I had an optical theremin kit, I seemed to solder everything together, it doesn’t make any noise.  One day I’ll have things figured out on this kind of thing.  Maybe it’s that I use the same soldering iron I use to fix a dryer on tiny little circuit boards.

I watched the remake of George Romero’s The Crazies.  I’d heard from a lot of people that it was good &/or better than the original.  I’m of the opinion that anyone that says that, I shouldn’t trust their taste in movies.  The intensity of the original & the bleak view on the human race were both lost so you ended up with just a pastiche.

I also watched La Jetee again & it was pointed out to me that I quote a dozen lines from the movie in my lyrics.  That it’s unintentional I suppose points to how much I like that film.

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A Couple Days

Sorry I have missed a couple days of blogging.

I finished a bunch of demo recordings for Remora (about three hours) & sent them off to Brian McKenzie (Electric Bird Noise) to let me know what I should focus on for recording when I go into his studio for a couple weeks.

The show Thursday went pretty well, despite a slightly sparse attendance (up against a sold out Aerial Pink show half a mile away).

I’m thinking about signing up for a Reverbnation account because a friend of mine uses their mailing list feature & it seems to work pretty well.

The MySpace promo campaign isn’t going too well.  MySpace has changed some of their things around so it seems I need to enter Captcha codes around 20 times as often, so it takes a lot longer to do.  In addition there seems as yet to be much interest generated from it.  Maybe it’s time for me to abandon the idea of social networking.  Of course I guess it gets to the point that I really have no idea how to promote anything.

I got in an interview with Melt Banana for the guitarist interview series (mid-August issue) in QRD.  Still not sure what the future holds for QRD as a monthly as it isn’t generating the revenue I’d hoped for on advertisements, nor are all the filler ads I’m giving away to myself at Silber generating that many clicks.

Last Night’s Dream:
My Grandmother is crawling up the stairs calling for help.  I don’t know why I’m sleeping so soundly that she gets to this extreme to get my attention.  I don’t know how I’ll get her down the stairs without killing us both in a fall.

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Monitor Problems & a Dream

Did some more recording today & ran into problems with my studio monitors.  Rewired the thing from running digital to analog (it used lightpipes) & I’ll see tomorrow if they now work better with my setup.

Did some instrumental mixes for potential television placements for some Vlor stuff.

Last Night’s Dream:
It feels like someone is reaching in through my back & squeezing my heart with their fist.  So I’m guessing it’s a heart attack.  I’m fine with it.  It feels like a relief.  Except in the end I’m still trapped in my body because I still have work to do.  I have to animate my corpse.

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Small Worlds

I’d planned to do more recording today, but ended up going out to a show with Jason Ward of Irata instead.  Irata is being re-worked into a two piece (bass & drums) & out of commission for a couple months.  But I’m interested in seeing what happens.  They still practice together four hours three times a week, I wish I could act as professionally.

Anyway, the show was a band from Detroit (I think they were called The Summer Promise) & one of the members was a member of Big Black Cloud who I played with in Columbus several years ago.  The world is small sometimes.

I saw what I thought was a brilliant flyer, but then I realized was actually a kinda crappy piece of art.  I don’t know if I want to give it away, because I want to use it in the future.

Got out the last set of press promo emails for the first wave about the new releases.

Doing some more sifting on the MySpace promotions for the new releases.  Trying to widdle down the number of people I send it to by not bothering to contact folks who haven’t used their MySpace account in over a year & not bothering to contact people with more than 20,000 friends. & over the next month it will hopefully generate a few extra sales & a few extra fans & no extra enemies.

Got a wave of follow-up done for the mini-comics.

Went ahead & paid for my table to appear at SPACE next year.

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Recording/Promos/Web Updates

Did some demo recording for the upcoming Remora.  About 20 ideas that had been on my phone re-recorded on my machine (there were about 20 other song ideas on the phone that I abandoned, at least now I can use my phone to record again if I need to as I cleared them all off).  Did some stuff with trying to mic my electric guitar as well as having it go direct line in just to give it a little more interest.  Haven’t double checked for phasing issues yet.

Working on the MySpace promo.  I’m starting to feel like it might not be worth it.  It seems to generate an income level of one $5 order per 500 people I message.  But I guess right now that is a good number?  I don’t know.  Sometimes it seems like when it comes to making money off the music business, your probably best off just closing shop & spending your time on another job.

Spent the majority of the day populating the slightly altered top banner on the Silber website.  I moved the one java-script from in the header to in the body & it makes it so it doesn’t issue an active-x control warning in Internet Explorer on the site.

I saw an ad that the reality show I meant to watch a year or two ago about life after the apocalypse is coming back.  It’s called “The Colony.”

Last Night’s Dreams
Wandering around the city with a girl I’m romantically involved with.  I run into a friend of mine who says to the girl, “I hear your relationship is in trouble because you’re not slutty enough.”

I have a revelation that all humans are the same human, just subjected to conditions (many pre-natal, some pre-conception) causes the apparent variety.  So by trying to help anyone, I am helping myself, because we are all one.

I can’t figure out my level of importance in the world.  If my minor roles in so many other people’s lives are at pivotal moments of importance or just moments.  Am I the center of the universe or an accessory; & more importantly, which do I want to be?

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Solicit/Robot/Early Metal

Sent out some emails soliciting for ads for the next QRD.

Sent out some more of the MySpace promo blast.  MySpace keeps altering minor things in their setup that keeps my one stat robot from working properly to figure out who to contact.  Hopefully that will be fixed fairly soon.

Went through a bunch of bounced mails associated with running the promo, it seems like half of europe is on vacation right now.

I got in an argument with my buddy Darin today about if Black Sabbath stands mostly alone as the first metal band or if Uriah Heap & Deep Purple stand next to them.  Personally, I think if you are going to expand it beyond Black Sabbath, you go to Deep Purple & Hawkwind & Blue Cheer, but it’s a long time since I’ve listened to any of it.  The last time I was listening to Early Sabbath & early Hawkwind was probably four years ago.

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Promo/Talking/Zombieland

I’m getting some work done.  More emails out for the promo of the new releases.  Finally got everything situated for starting to send the message about the new releases to fans on MySpace.  21,000 potential fans to contact.  I’m going to have to siv through so I’m not contacting robots.  It is weird to me that there are 75 people who are “friends” of all five bands (Rivulets, Remora, Lotte Kestner, The Wet Teens, & Irata).  Probably a big part of that is those of you who read the blog as I don’t really think those are bands that have a lot of natural overlap based on style or even geographical region.

Got a couple reviews in today for the Lotte Kestner & Remora.

Talked to Sarah June a bit about trying to get some video stuff worked up.  We’ll see what happens.

Talked to Michael (of The Wet Teens) about a few things.  We’ll see how things roll out with the promotions.

Watched Zombieland tonight.  Strangely let down a bit, I guess I hoped for too much.  & I have a question, there’s a part where Woody Harrelson says, “There are six people left alive & one of them is Bill Murray.”  So there are the four main characters, Bill Murray, & who else?

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Remix Fail, YouTube, Magnets, Bodies in Cows, Dreams

Tried to do a remix today & I don’t understand how things work.  When I ran the beat analyzer it listed a different beat between 100-110 for each of the pre-made parts to mix, so then how can I make my retarded little electro-drums?

Doing some experiments on YouTube with altering video names to get better search engine results & hopefully more people stumbling across the videos.  We’ll see if it really helps.

My experiment with the magnets under my pillow seems to be coming to an end as after a week they seem to have lost their effect for intensifying dreams.  Which is really bizarre to me, because how does my brain get used to being exposed to magnets a few hours a day?

So I’ve been reading the Robert E. Howard letters & in one of them he tells a story about a local murder where after killing a man a local farmer killed a cow in a field & cut it open & shoved the body inside & left the two together to rot.  Wow.  Maybe the first body disposal I think is too extreme for me to use in XO.

Recent Dreams:
Walking around town & I run into a kid I went to high school with, but I can’t tell how old he is or how old I am because it’s dark out.  I know I’m coming off as crazy & that I am in fact crazy, so I try to play it off by saying I’m wasted.  Then I ask what year it is.

I stand up & someone has cut my belt in half at the back.  How could someone sneak up & do this?  I am losing my edge.  It’s time for someone to kill me.

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Placements & Promos

Did some work to day for some potential television placement things.  I don’t want to jinx them, so I won’t mention anything unless I’m told it’s about to broadcast.

Registered the new Remora songs from Mecha with BMI.

Got back the answers to the questions I had for Michael who shot the Vlor “Watch Me Bleed” video for writing the article for Music Think Tank about it.

I don’t think I complained about it here already, but I ordered a few books that according to Half.com were written by Robert E Howard, but they were actually pastiches starring some of his less known characters.  I thought I was getting all of the Bran Mak Morn stories in a volume, but instead have some random person’s story.  I can make my own REH pastiches at this point, but I guess I’ll eventually read them anyway.  At least they’re from the 1970s so might have a little of the edge I like in my sci fi books.

Got some more promo messages out to reviewers.

Working on building the promo lists for the new releases on MySpace.  I assume some of you have checked out Irata which is pretty much as close to straight-up metal as Silber gets.  Anyway, in prepping their promotion I found out either (a) the metal bands that sound similar to them are all quite popular, or (b) all the labels they’re on use MySpace robots way more aggressively than I ever would. It’s kinda interesting.  I guess I should research where the fans are.  Could be they’re all in South America or something….  Of course does the fan number really matter?  I mean, does Mastodon have gold records?

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POG, Recording, Promo, QRD

I got my POG pedal from the post office.  Pretty stoked about adding it to the set-up.  It’s just going to work as a replacement for my octave pedal until after the recordings next month.

Did some recording today.  It messes with me when I’m doing really out there recordings & the signal goes into the red, but the pitch is either too low or high for me to hear.  I wonder if it still creates digital peaks & glitches in the audio.

Got some more promo messages out for the new releases.  So hopefully some reviews will start trickling in.

Got a couple more interviews in for the August QRD.

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