So friday i jammed with my band, the same guys that i played with for the last couple ATO Band Parties that i might’ve mentioned on here. we came up with some cool stuff again, and afterwards, somebody mentioned something about recording. It became known that i pretty much had all the stuff we need to seriously record ourselves, and then the question became, where.

David Milligan, our newfound keyboardist who plays a crazy 90’s synth, has keys to Newton Chapel, the on-campus chapel. He also happens to know that in the abandoned basement of said chapel, there lie a couple soundproof booths, complete with interior lighting and air conditioning. How coincidentally appropriate.

Friday evening, in my dorm room, Alex Daugherty and I layed down some guitar dummy tracks in tempo for Steven, the drummer, to play to.

Our task was, on Saturday morning, to roust about at 9:00 AM and haul all the gear down there and get a some drum tracks and some bass guitar for the 3 main songs with lyrics.

So we did it.

And it was freaking cool. A day in the studio. Our own studio. I took my imac and my soundboard and monitoring headphones and my cables and mics and stands and we loaded up the truck with the drumset and bass amp and retreated underground, and recorded music until 3 or 4 in the afternoon. That’s a full days work. And it was the best day of work i’ve ever had in my life.

don’t worry, i have pictures (thank you, timely birthday presents).

I now have raw audio tracks that are just waiting to be trimmed and cut and marinated and cooked to a juicy, punchy perfection. Over the next couple of weeks, i’ll be adding in some thick rhythm guitar and some hot guitar lead sauce. Oh, and we’re now going to call ourselves The Newtons.

twenty years old, buddy.

valentines day / my birthday this year was celebrated late on monday night through email and reading old love letters over the phone to des. we reminisced for a good while about the summer before senior year in HS, when everything was so new and pure and passionate, and talked about our early days of dating. Of my last 20 years, that is the single most happy period of time in my life… i’ve talked about it before in this blog, a whole summer’s worth of cross country and good humor and effortless happiness and friends (spending almost every day hanging out with buddies) and on top of everything, the beautiful and romantic flowering buds of a relationship.

That’s cool.

and once again my family and friends (even michelle who sent me a postcard) all gave me a nice message wishing me happiness and good health, and that was much appreciated.
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Just recently, about two or so months ago, I cut my hair. I know, I know. It may not sound like a big deal, but actually, it brought to a close an almost two year ordeal of growing my hair out. Over the course of that time, I think I learned a lot about myself, about the way I feel about my appearance, about the way others feel about looks in general, and about what people deem socially “appropriate”. To be truthful, it was a trying time. As I’ve explained to many of my friends, some people seem to view some radical external change, like growing your hair out, as indicative of some inner rebellion. Or of some poor life decisions. Or of some personal hygiene issues.
But really, I just wanted to grow my hair out for *gasp* the experience. anyway, I’d like to share a few pictures and thoughts about what I learned:
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dragging dead feet across a brown dead lawn at night
the books and binders piled on back
up the stairs to slump down in a vacant chair
put your head in your hands because you know
you can’t possibly do it all

try to soothe yourself with a little rich chocolate cake
and some hot cafe au lait, estimating when exactly
you’ll get to slip into some short slumber for a couple hours
or how far you’ll get before you involuntarily droop your eyelids

beat yourself up a while for not working harder before now
imagine yourself being proud and studious
looking over notes with your pencil sitting on your ear
pages and pages of sample problems with hand-drawn diagrams
as a physical testament to your devotion
make a vow or two that you know you’ll break

catch yourself staring at an art major doing his homework
a sketchpad and some charcoal
jealous and wanting so bad to be that
with an endless supply of creativity
and a blank canvas to reflect anything upon

thanks to the great folks at DB Multimedia (my recently sketchy, but cheap, web host), i have suffered a little bit of a loss. I’ve had to change some things. several of the music files that were previously stored on my server had to be deleted because they were taking up too much space (i’ll put them on daddy-o’s server).

Included in this loss is my last post, in which i talked about several important things that i don’t even remember.

But, fear not, for i am still alive, and there is much more for me to say.
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