music
What have I been doing?
Well, last week I began my new summer job at the school I attend, Heritage College. I am an Electronics Technician, in a manner, in charge of preparing the electronics labs for next semesters students. I am setting up a computer systems class’ components, as well as a networking lab, and various other organization and preparation tasks. Cool!
It also means I have less time to work on certain projects and music, but it also means that my off-time will be better spent doing these things I enjoy. Today I went to Allan’s house, a former band mate, and we jammed all day, and his father, someone I would consider a seasoned musician, gave me motivation to get much more involved in my music again. As a result, I’ve got several new song ideas and projects I’m excited to work on. Expect new posts on that soon!
I also ordered and received a battery desulfator, which is designed to revive batteries that no longer hold a charge as a result of sulfation on the plates. I have many batteries I suspect of having this problem, and tonight I have just begun revival attempts. From what I understand, it can take several weeks to fully revive a battery, so I won’t know if it worked for another while, but naturally updates will follow!
SoundCloud
Through a friend’s MSN name I discovered SoundCloud. Essentially what it is is a system allowing registered users to share their own songs on the Internet, in order to promote themselves. I figured, what the heck, and I posted a couple of songs there, with plans to put more up. Check it out, the songs load a bunch faster than from this server.
My profile can be found at http://soundcloud.com/danjoannis/.
Moved, new song!!!
The move is now complete. The server is back up and running, and hopefully there won’t be any issues for the next long while, thought if I move the server around in the room it may go down for a couple minutes. Good news: the internet here is faster than the last neighbourhood! Upload is around 540kbps, vs. the 280kbps I got at the last place. Upload is now 4.5mbps, vs. 1.8mbps. Nice!
I recently began a new song, and it has evolved into something of intricate instrumental interaction that is enjoyable to listen to. It is long, however I have always been a fan of long songs with many faces. My music, being instrumental, does not follow a pattern such as radio-bound music. A pattern of intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus simply becomes too boring in an instrumental. Therefore, the music I write often does not have such defined sections, and instead takes advantage of multiple alterations of notes and instruments in order to keep it interesting and enjoyable.
Head on down to the music section to hear the new song!
Hard at Work
“DJ Dan” is back: after getting myself a beautiful M-Audio Axiom 61 keyboard, I’ve returned to recording music.
After the move, I will be organizing my room such that it is a studio before anything else, so that I can truly focus on making music, without clutter and distraction.
These are the results of my hard labour: a full 19″ screen worth of tracks.
Rhythmind
Hello all,
Over the last few days I have again begun working on my musical compositions. So far, I have a good half-dozen songs that are near ready for publication (this is around 2 years of work, mind you, not overnight). The idea and goal is to publish my first set of around a dozen songs in an album entitled “Rhythmind”. Naturally, it is a compound word meant to relate rhythm and mind, and to hopefully convey the connection and importance of both. Below is a low bit-rate version of a song I began only last Wednesday, but that is already coming along quite well!
Cityrise – MP3 (64kbit) – Embedded below
To record my music, I use Reason as the central program.
For those not familiar, Reason is essentially a virtual rack, with multiple virtual tools for recording music. As a physical recording studio would have a rack-mounted mixer (or even more commonly a desktop model), Reason has a virtual mixer, with virtual wires, allowing for control of audio parameters. Reason offers both sampled and synthetic instruments, which can be controlled by a MIDI keyboard controller. This is my setup, using either a Peavy DPM-C8 Performance Controller or my Roland D-20 Synthesizer keyboard. All the music itself is crafted by me.
My Workstation
My next post should be about the FM Radio Transmitter I assembled in my course. So far, I’ve tested the range to be about 2 to 2.5 houses down my street (when the transmitter is inside, at my front door). Not bad!