I have been an active user of the SixtyOne (t61) for a few months now, and I’ve noticed a few artists using Pump, basically an independent, non-exclusive publishing house.

It looks pretty interesting, and I really appreciate the non-exclusivity of their agreements as well as the potential for exposure. While I think it goes without saying that my exposure will be nil, it is, I believe, a worth while exercise.

So I’ve created an account, and am waiting to see what happens next. I’ve also been working on music too, heh yeah, the actual job of this record (everything else is just window dressing until the record is actually finished and done).

I was working on guitars today on an older song that I’m brushing the dust off. I’m not entirely convinced it will be on the record because its really different than the stuff I have been producing of late. Its more guitar-driven rock stuff, but it does have that “feel” that I’m looking for. I know I mentioned something about posting a rough cut of it, and I still will in the next few days. Frankly I’d like to get some feedback as to whether or not it should go on the record.

The absence of a post doesn’t mean nothing is being done on the record. In fact, quite the contrary. I was having considerable difficulty coming up with some new material, so I made the decision to look back at older material.

I have volumes of older songs, in various half-finished states that while I may cringe when listening (the quality of the recordings are dreadful… I’ve learned A LOT over these years) but there are some songs that have suitable foundations. This is what I’ve done, I found an older song I recorded in the summer of 2004, and basically gutted it completely. Recorded over the guitar tracks with new guitars, scraped the drums entirely and am in process of re-doing the bass guitar. This song, called “A Simple Restart” will most likely also go some other changes, adding some noisy synth parts, and things of that nature.

I like this song for its simplicity and melodic sensibilities. It has a “feel” that I appreciate, so I’m going to spend some time this weekend developing it, and probably post another rough mix.

Well, I should probably get back into the studio, but I’m completely engrossed in this John Adams mini-series. Paul Giamatti as John Adams is brilliant. Absolutely.

This aside is brought to you by the letters p r o c r a s t i n a t i o and n.

Whilst I continue to work on “Fly by Wire” (the record project) I’m wondering, what are some good avenues for review to send it to? It has been such a long time and the landscape has changed so radically, that I find myself completely clueless as to what are some worth while channels for promotional copies. Back in the good sort-of-ok-days I would send copies of records to MRR, Factsheet 5, Punk Planet, and a few other decent zines (and some other unknown zines)… but we are talking 15 to 18 years since that has been the case.

Hell, I’m not even sure I know how this works any more. Do you send CDs? MP3 links? What’s the custom? I’m just out of the loop.

So if you got some linky clicky things for decent and worth while intertubes that take submissions for review, I surely would appreciate it.

I’ve started working on some new material for the record, and decided to drag out my dear old friend, my Marshall JCM2000 amplifier head. Now this thing packs a huge amount of power and be so stupidly loud if played at moderate to full power through the 2-12″ cabinet I have, so to save myself the jail time and the ensuing legal battles and fines, I have decided to use a THD Hotplate attenuator which is then run into my Digi002 (rack) audio interface. I then used a convolution system to model a mic’ed cabinet. Its actually really decent sounding, and I had done something like this before, but since I had put away the amp in a closet I forgot about it.

It wasn’t till I started writing this new song where I wanted some really nice warm sounding guitars that I remembered, “hay! my amp! its in the closet! I can use it!”

I haven’t worked with guitars, for real, in a long time and figured it might be nice. Nice to write a sad melancholy song with lots of guitars. Yeah just what this world needs, another song about loss, about suffering, about realizing you have nothing, nothing is left, a song that’s called “what else is left?”

So instead of actually working on this song, I’m writing about working on it. How useless is that??? Also I hadn’t posted in a while, so a post is what I have made.

Anyway, record making progress is going slow, but I have about 6 songs nearly ready, but I should have more than that to choose from. Also because of some financing problems, the CD will come out first, before the record. Translate that into, I’m broke, and won’t have the roughly $1200 to press the record for a while. That makes me sad, and very very disappointed, but that’s life. Life is disappointment. I’ll figure it out.

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So while doing a “car test” of two songs I posted I realized the mixes needed some attention. So, I took a stab at cleaning up a few things.

I cleaned up Airport Exit, by taking out some of the muddy lower-mid frequencies from the distorted guitars, which did a lot in clarifying the mix.

The other song that got some attention was Something Not New got a whole new mix, mostly cleaning up the bass line. The apparent loudness is also improved.

These are probably much closer to what will be on the record.