Howard's Morning Routine

Not A Lot To Show After Week Of Recording

I have been glued to the Audacity program and "in the studio" just about all week, not even coming out to blog.

The money that I made last weekend, lasted me until about 9 p.m., last night. It is Thursday, and almost time to go back downtown (I could go tonight, being broke and all; and giveen that I only made 3 bucks last Thursday, here in Scotlandville..
Last Sunday morning, I got an all day bus pass.

First stop, LSU campus, where Howard ran into me at the Circle K, as he was coming out of the door with his noontime hot dog, and I was heading in to get a quart of Milwaukee's Best Ice, to take with me to the recording spot on campus.

I told him that I was seriously thinking of putting my thumb out the next (Mon) day. I had about 30 bucks on me, and that is about the best that I can expect to amass, living as I do; where I do. 

One guy alone gave me 25 bucks Saturday night, as he sat by me and we took turns playing the guitar. That guy doesn't come along every night.

Howard bought me a snack, and we sat under an umbrella and ate.

I had decided to take the risk of setting up behind the little brick wall next to a door on the Baptist Student Center, and make a recording.

The campus was pretty much deserted, either because of Mother's Day, Sunday, or the semester ending soon.

I figured that they wouldn't have a whole slew of LSU Campus Police patrolling on such a day. I am pretty much out of sight, after I make it the100 yards or so, across forbidden territory and duck into the doorway.

The best thing to come out of that session was just a jam, based loosely around the chords of a John Waite song -John played Saturday night in a club on Third Street, and the song got stuck in my head, even though I didn't see his gig. 

Here is 45 seconds of it, the "intro," recorded behind the police's backs...

I called it "The Fighting Authority Song," 

but went on to ruin it, back in Scotlandsville, by adding too much to the mix and learned more valuable lessons about recording in the process.

I learned that when adding echo to a section, for example; you lengthen that section because the last few echoes echo past the end of the section; they don't overlap what comes next; this pushes the music after it back in time the length of the last echo, maybe 120 milliseconds; a minuscule amount but enough to take the groove out of the rhythm. This explains some of problems that I was having with stuff falling off the beat, even by milliseconds.

This jam above is basically how I sound on guitar when just making stuff up and can go on indefinitely doing so, unless I run out of stuff.

After the 45 second intro; it fell apart, after I performed many experiments upon it, like cutting out bits of guitar solo, doubling the pitch and then pasting it somewhere else. Backwards.

I was aiming to create another Seargent Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, there behind the boarded up builiding...

I was like the gardener who digs up the seed to look at it every day, to see if it is growing, then buries it back. You can stunt the growth of the plant, that way.

Howard's Morning Routine

The whole week, I worked about from 10 in the morning until 10 at night on the studio, each day.

I learned about equalizing the acoustic guitar and about using noise removal to reduce the sound of cars going by on Scenic Highway...still, I have concluded that the Scotlandville "Studio" is just too noisy most of the time to record there seriously.

Not Ready For Facebook

I wound up trashing most of what I did the whole past week, and just took the lessons learned, ready to move forward.
Martin W. from West Virginia gave me the advice to focus upon my "strengths," which he assessed as being "guitar playing, minus the harp and effects."
I admit that I'm not where I want to be on the harp (I want to have every note memorized and be fluent in bending, so that I can play precise melodies, not just stuff that fits in and sounds -at least when putting a lot of energy into it- good). Also, it takes a bit of fortitude to start playing as soon as the green light goes on in the studio, blocking out fears of having to re-do the part over and over, should mistakes be made.

That being said, this morning, I grabbed the guitar, scribbled down a few lyrics and knocked out "Howard's Morning Routine," which plays to my "strength" of being able to make up "half humorous" stuff on the fly.

It is a raw first-take and has its glitches, but, I feel that if I tried to get the recording perfect, I would spend the whole day eventually ruining it; probably because after 3 hours, the novelty of the little ditty would have worn off.

Hopefully, some of the techniques that I experimented with all week will rear their heads and these songs might actually be approaching becoming "listen-able." That is my first goal: listen-able recordings!

Cursed For Forgetting Mom's Birthday

Hey, a gif is almost a gift...

"The ice cream song is pretty funny and cool, but i dont know about using other peoples beats in your song. Even if its free to download an use, and you sing over it, can you really call it yours?" -Dazar G.

One of my readers has posed an interesting question, above.

I guess the question can be bullshitted, er, I mean answered, in a couple ways.

For example, the backbone of the blues is the same three chord combination (I-IV-I-V-IV-I-V for you music theorists) which appears in 787,019 songs, and counting.

If I were to write "40 Ounce Magnum Blues," to give a plausible example, and use that chord progression, and then tell someone "Listen to this song that I've just written," that person could technically say "You didn't write that song, that's Statesboro Blues, by the Allman Brothers...
As far as the drum beats, there are basic bass-drum, snare and high hat beats that are the backbone of a lot of songs, and I think the same rules apply.

A live drummer would be tailoring that beat around the individual song, punching certain beats harder, laying back when there is someone else getting "busy" with his part, or taking a solo, and the resultant beat would really only fit that song, and would grate against another piece of music by accenting beats that aren't there, or laying back for no apparent reason at all.

That being said, I think that if I modify the stock beat that can be downloaded royalty-free, to fit my own composition, then it could qualify as being an art form. All I would have to do would be to use the 5 gallon bucket, hit with a stick, to spice the rhythm up a bit, and to selectively delete a snare hit, here and there, or to digitally slide it over to the off beat or the upbeat so that even the guy who recorded the pattern and made it available for free downloading wouldn't recognize it.

Of course, one of my old friends, Stefan Arsenault, back in Massachusetts once told me "If you can make a drum machine sound like a good drummer, then you would be a good drummer..."

Stefan went on to have a much more (at the time of this writing) successful career in music than I. ...but could he pull in 80 bucks in three hours, playing his upright bass on Bourbon Street?..

A Miserable Night

#1

I busked in front of the Chevron, where people seemed to either be mocking me by throwing a penny in my case, or to look at me and the spot where I was sitting as being a black hole, where money goes in but nothing comes out, and to avert their gaze.

Every other driver that pulled up left his hip hop cranked to full volume on his stereo, as if to show off his sound system, or to remind people that license plates are really only affixed by two screws and have a lot of wiggle room.

I made about 3 bucks, which I promptly drank, as a prelude to going back to the boarded up building and plugging in my laptop/studio to record what I was hoping was going to be something excellent.

#2

I recorded something that I thought was pretty good, but in the morning deleted it. Woke Up Depressed

#3

I woke up depressed, thinking of a lot of things in the past that might have been; and not being able to talk myself into thinking of enough things in the future that could be...

The American Dream

I feel like my back is against the wall. I will be busking tonight, in front of the same store where, after knocking off last night, I told the cashier "I hate these people. They don't care if I eat today one bit.."

I'll be busking for whatever I can get to make the night a little more special, as I sit by the boarded up building with my studio plugged in, preparing for the contingency of having to walk the five miles to Third Street to play this weekend, if I have to. I'm already going without cigarettes and beer, what's a little more hardship...I might pick up some butts along the way, or find change on the sidewalk!

The people don't necessarily know that I have a food stamp card and the three dollars in change in my case, they might have assumed, is all I have to live off of.

Meanwhile, most of them were flaunting pimped out cars, gold teeth and jewelry (which they pronounce "Jury") and buying little cigars to roll blunts with; coming out of the store counting their change, to make sure the cashier broke their hundred dollar bill correctly, carrying bags full of stuff to their loudly thumping cars; walking past me without apparently even seeing me.

Before I left for the building, there was already a heavyset black man perching on the milk crate which I had vacated. As I espied him, someone was handing him some change.

Growing Pains

The Man Who Couldn't Decide What Flavor He Wanted
The Man Who Couldn't Decide What Flavor He Wanted

Yesterday, I left the library, after I had sat for three hours, reading the Audacity Manual and experimenting with mixing stuff that I already had recorded onto my hard drive.
Then, I got the brainstorm of thinking: "I wonder if there are drum beats out there (made with real drums; not 5 gallon buckets hit with sticks) available for downloading for free, even.
Sure enough, I grabbed some beats and that is what you hear in the "flavor" song, which I wrote in 1985, about a guy holding up the ice cream line at Kimballs Ice Cream, where they make their own ice cream (and you can hear cows mooing in back; to prove it). Google say's it's in Weston, Mass. But they have more than one location, and I think we went to the one in Littleton, Mass.
It is a very popular place (we drove like 30 miles to get there) and the line at the window can get pretty long, especially if there is someone who can't decided what flavor he wants...

I Will Cross This Bridge...

Busking At Dusk

Do The Hustle

Then, I decided to busk in front of the Chevron on Scenic Highway, which I did as the sun went down and I made about 3 dollars in an hour and a half. I might have done better if there wasn't a pan handler siting right by my side hollaring to everyone for money.

He was giving me beer, though.

He said that he sympathised with me, because he is "out here," too.

He handed me a styrofoam cup and replenished it a couple times out of a 40 Magnum Malt Liquor bottle.

I thought that was very nice of him, since I wasn't making that much money and certainly wasn't going to spend "all" three bucks on beer, maybe just half of it.

Then, as I was getting ready to leave to go make the recording above, he wanted me to buy him a beer, out of the money that I made.

I then realized that his giving me beer was like a ploy, so that he could spend the money that he panhandled on beer, and then spend the money that was in my case on more beer, by making me think that I owed him something. He probably thought that I was going to make more than 3 bucks and was planning to get back more than he gave me, like a true hustler.

Studio By The Roadside

Anyways, I went and made the recording, learning more by making more mistakes.
I grade this one a D+.
I forgot to include one of the best lines: "He asked for a minute in which to decide; she said 'no problem.' She lied."
Techno Talk

And I had to scrap the entire lead guitar part in the morning, after discovering that I messed up the echo effect on it.*

*You should record one track of just the raw guitar with no echo; and then an adjacent one with just the echo, no guitar; that way, you can mix the two in any proportion, making it really echo-y or just a little bit echo-y. I think I saved only the track with the echo on it. It sounds funny hearing echoes without having heard the original sound; funny, but not musical.
I might have given it a C- had the lead guitar come out alright.
Geek Speak

One cool discovery that I made was to use the "change pitch without altering tempo" effect to drop the sound of my guitar down one octave, effectively making it the "bass guitar" that you hear on the recording. Again, I would have been playing it a little differently had I known what it was going to sound like upon playback, but it was getting to be almost sunrise, at that point in time. It sounds more like an upright acoustic bass than an electric one; probably because my guitar is an acoustic, rather than an electric.

I hope to soon be making decent recordings that I can unleash upon Facebook.  
These aren't ready for prime time; and I include them here only so that my readers can suffer along with me with the growing pains of learning to use the studio!

All I Have To Show

I Haven't Been Very Mobile,

since being in Mobile a year ago...

For the past couple days, I have been sacrificing

busking time, in favor of trying to produce something on the music studio.

I have made minimal progress with last night's version of "Subterranean Mobile Homeless Sick Blues"
Using:

• 5 gallon bucket hit with stick (compressed at 7.5:1 ratio)
• Acoustic guitar (slight echo)
• Acoustic guitar (wah-wah -"factory" preset) 
• Vocal (long delay, barely perceptible -for ambiance)

I'll grade this one at D+.

LOL No More
Of course the one that I had done the night before, which got lost when the program went haywire, was better, more spontaneous and funnier, but, this song is a "work in progress" that I improvise each time, trying to remember the better lines from the past.
It is definitely time to busk, unless I just don't want any cigarettes or beer.
When Martin from West Virginia sent me this laptop/studio, he wrote on his note "Don't get zoned out and forget to busk, LOL!"
Well, that's kind of what happened, and I'm not LOL anymore LOL!
As far as leaving here is concerned, plans are pushed back just one week. It would be wise to try to make the 50 bucks that I have averaged downtown on third street each weekend, this weekend.

Even If Only In My Own Esteem

It probably wasn't a good idea to post the first rudimentary experiments with the Audacity program on my blog (do ya think??).
I may have had some readers who probably had (previously) thought that I was a gifted musician who is just struggling, based upon my having been promoted to Bourbon Street in, excuse me, New Orleans ...(where, if you don't have "the goods," you'll be out of there in two weeks)...others, who have heard me play in coffee houses, are probably thinking: why did you post your first rudimentary experiments with the Audacity program??*
*"first impressions are everything" has been an interesting concept in my life; I can't think of one..well, yeah I can, but...there are many good friends of mine that I hold dearly in my heart, who have told me: "When I first met you, I hated your guts. I came this close *holds fingers 1.2 inches apart* from punching your lights out; but; then I realised that you're just Daniel..")
Well, I can at least say that my faithful reader in Gabon seems to have found some value in the music that I posted. Maybe he plays guitar and absolutely sucks profusely and sees me as a kindred spirit now LOL!
I read a lot of the Audacity manual yesterday afternoon, into the evening.
I learned a lot about the million buttons and sliders.
It wasn't even dark, when I started working on a project, not behind the boarded up building, but in front of it (where the electrical outlet is).
I was aware that I was visible to anyone walking up "Scenic Highway," with my laptop glowing, guitar propped up next to me, and even a pack of cigarettes, to tempt.
Then, Mother Nature helped out by unleashing a pretty severe rain storm, one that I was out of, being under the little portico; but one that nobody would be out walking in -not up Scenic Highway- there is just nothing worth getting wet for on Scenic Highway.
So, after messing around with an acapella piece, called "It's Raining In Baton Rouge" (later discarded) and trying out all of the techniques like cutting and pasting and duplicating and splitting tracks and generating click tracks and adding effects...
I then got serious, and ran across the street for a Hurricane Lager.
Returning, I played a rhythm guitar along with the click track.
Then, I added the 5 gallon bucket, hit with palm and stick as the drum kit. I compressed the track, making each hit tend to be the same volume, evening out the sticks tendency to be erratic, due to its irregular shape (and the fact that I'm not *technically* a drummer; though that's no excuse, because Paul McCartney was not either; and just listen to the drums he played on -I forget which Beatles song it was...)
Then, I did a vocal improvisation on being homeless, borrowing from a song I wrote called "Subteranean Mobile Homeless Sick Blues," before I even had a harmonica, and in anticipation of getting one, and already imagining the part for it.
To the vocal, I added a bit of echo, using the convenient "effects" dropdown  menu; just enough so that it had ambiance; something that is almost required in this world where every musician has at least a little reverb; or an instrument so loud that it reverberates off of buildings and alleys.
The lyrics came out just like I remembered them in Mobile. Losing my jump drive, I am vulnerable to losing lyrics, and maybe even entire songs that I might forget that I wrote, but, somehow the homeless sick blues are kind of imbued in me.
Then, I added a lead guitar track and was pleasantly surprised after choosing "wah wah" from the list of available effects, applying it and hearing the result. The "default" parameters were well chosen by the programmer.

Let me just cut in here, to say that my problems pale in comparison to my brother,
Lil Boosie (I'm not sure if that's the name his parent(s) gave him) is in jail-
right here in Baton Rouge...

Then, content to keep going on into the wee hours of the morning, I kept going, until the point where the whole program crashed in spectacular fashion, when I was in the middle of editing the harmonica track, which came next.
I had played the harp through the whole 11 minutes of the song, and then was going back and cutting out the parts where it stepped on the vocal or when it detracted from something else that was going on, especially with the wah-ed out guitar, which came out pretty lyrical...or when it sucked (having been a first take) when, after I clicked on something, or dragged something at the wrong time in the wrong way, probably uncovering a bug that was hitherto unknown; the screen began to roll like an old TV with the horizontal hold out of whack.
The mouse was useless. Every key that I pressed was useless. All I could do was unplug the thing (couldn't even log out and shut down properly) and hope that the next day (today) when I turned the computer on, it wouldn't be doing the same thing interminably.
It's the next day, and it wasn't.
I guess I learned to save my work regularly while recording.
This project is kind of an obsession, and I am staying over a few more days, just to complete it. I want to do something kind of special, even if only in my own esteem.

Coming Friday: The conclusion of The Girl Who (owned a house, yet) Slept In A Mustang.

Go Fish

Saturday, on an all day bus pass, I went to The Guitar Center and bought a new set of strings, then it was over to Wal-Mart, where I bought 2 pounds of Whiting Fillets, along with some tomato paste.

I already had the ingredients, hanging in a plastic bag in a bush in Scotlandville, to make my own salsa, mainly, vinegar, olive oil, garlic, hot sauce and seasoned salt. Stirred together, this mixture will rival anything that comes in a jar, at a fraction of the cost.

Then, it was back on the bus, to connect at the terminal to Scotlandville, where, with time running late (it was already around 4 p.m.) I decided to hang the frozen fish in the bush with the other bag, and then hop the next bus downtown.

Arriving downtown, I set up and played, and made around 30 dollars, before quitting at about 1 a.m. Half of the money came after midnight.

I slept in the little courtyard at the St. James Episcopal church, until about 9 a.m., when they have their first Sunday "Eucharist" and someone was nice enough to raise their voice as they walked past the courtyard ("Sure is a beautiful DAY!!") whereupon I rolled up my blanket, shouldered my bag and guitar, and got the hell out of there (excuse the pun).

Then, I made haste towards the bus terminal, and ultimately a fish fry in Scotlandville.

I ate all the fish, along with two ears of corn on the cob, which I had wrapped in tin foil and placed near the fire, until they were done perfectly. It was my weekly meal. I think I will try to make a habit of eating, at least once per week, from now on.

Hey, I Googled "Sue, The Colombian Lady"

and this is what I got, so I guess this is her...

Now it is Monday, and my plans are pretty simple. I will e-mail Sue, the Colombian lady in New Orleans, because I woke up thinking about her. 

I will also e-mail my mother in Massachusetts, because I have an uneasy feeling, a little bit like home sickness, but also just a hope that everything is alright up there, and that they have just been too busy to e-mail me, lately.

What do you say to a son who washes his clothes behind a building in a 5 gallon bucket, after you sent him to all the finest schools, and taught him right from wrong...hope your fish comes out well?

Next, I will find the Audacity tutorial/manual/instruction guide type thing on the net, and I will try to absorb as much as I can from it.

No Save Button Could Save Me

Last night, I was in the middle of what I thought would be my first decent sounding recording, when the program locked up on me. Every time I tried to go back to it, the computer told me that "Audacity is already running" and that to open two instances of it might cause problems, probably as both of them would be competing for the same memory space or something. I even tried shutting down the machine and rebooting and still got the same message that Audacity was already running.

What did work, though, was logging in as a different user. Audacity came up, and even had a different look and feel; different colors and styles. That's a Linux kind of thing.

My excellent recording, I assume, is lost.

I had success by raising the volume of the click track all the way (even though it distorted it) then keeping time with it, using a single acoustic guitar, playing a rudimentary, though slightly interesting rhythm part, focusing solely upon staying on the beat, nothing too fancy.

I then took the 5 gallon bucket/washing machine and a stick which I found, and reinforced the beat by playing along with the click track, using my palm on the top of the inverted bucket as a "bass drum," and the stick on side of it (or alternately on the rim) as the "snare drum."

It was sounding good, I was "getting into it" and was deciding upon the eventual subject of the song and a few lyrics, when, the program just stopped. There was no "save" button that could save me at that point.

Time To Eat

One Thin Dime
Last night I started with one dime.
I put the dime in my case and then started to tune up, playing Chinacat Sunflower and While My Guitar Gently Weeps, two harmonica friendly songs.
Soon there was a garrulous, obnoxious bum, who was acting crazy, standing right in front of me at times and saying all kinds of off the wall stuff, but throwing in "Give me a dollar," to everyone who passed by.
He babbled something about me playing guitar, saying that I wasn't going to make any money doing so, and thet "I'll show you how you make money" before launching back into his babbling lunacy.
Soon a black man came and put $1.15 in change in my case.
Then another guy put a dollar in.
Then a band started its set in a club down the street. Every song they played was one that I do, with the exception of "Living On A Prayer," the Bon Jovi song, which the guy (as the band seemed to be mainly a singer, acoustic guitarist, with very little, if any, background) did very slowly, in the manner that I think that I've heard Bon Jovi do off of an "unplugged" kind of disc.
Between the bum and the band, and the $2.25 in my hand, and the fact that it was only about 8:30 p.m., I decided to leave to run to the store, giving the bum a chance to peter out, and the band a chance to take a long break, or finsh up, should they have been playing for a wedding reception for the wedding-attired people who were everywhere.
As I got up the bum said "Keep singing, man, I'm enjoying it!" then correctly assessed that "You made yourself some money, now you're gonna go buy something...I know." Pretty astute for a babbling lunatic.
On the way to the store, an inebriated appearing guy stopped me and asked me if I played the guitar which was on my back. He wound up giving me two dollars after I explained about the noise situation, and why I was taking a break.
The Abandoned Dairy Drink
I made an interesting discovery, through the circumstance of having had my food card run out five days earlier, and having no cash, either.
I really hadn't eaten in the past day, and I was feeling that light headed kind of peaceful calm which sets in, after the body is so empty of food that it stops craving it, and goes into a different mode, one of fat burning.
This is when, amongst other things, all of the THC, which is in marijuana, and which is famously stored in the fat cells (it takes about 28 days to "get out of your system," according to folk lore espoused by people who have to submit to drug testing) and is released back into the bloodstream, when someone is fasting upon water (and plenty of it) alone.
This has you walking around kind of high after about the third or fourth day of water only consumption.
I was in this state in the afternoon, when, preparing to meditate for a while and then gradually work my way into playing music, taking it very slowly at first, I came upon a cup sitting atop a trash can in front of Community Coffee.
It had some kind of strawberry and vanilla ice cream concoction in it.
I wondered if it was milk or soy based. It was full, had the lid on it, and was apparently untouched, so, there was only one way to find out.

This was a perfect time to experiment directly with the matter of food allergies, which I have determined that I have to soy and/or dairy. I have always thought that one might "trigger" the other.
I walked in the general direction of my playing spot, sipping on the concoction, which I was pretty much determined was dairy based, with sugar, and strawberries added.
It gave me energy, causing me to break a sweat in the 90 degree heat.
I soon upgraded my intentions from "starting off very slowly" to jumping right in and playing up to speed right off.
Then, I realized something interesting; I wasn't craving a beer at all.
When I began to suspect my dairy allergy, at about the age of 17, I stopped consuming it in all its forms; even butter was cut out of my diet. This is the very same time that I began drinking beer.
I practically never drank before that time.
Then, as I perfected a diet based upon fish, olive oil, vegetables and apple cider vinegar, I added wine to the recipe and began to consume one bottle, just abut every single night, as a supplement to my healthy diet.
So, last night, I had broken my fast with dairy, and, even though I had run to the store on my first break to get a beer; that one beer satisfied me, and I did not return for a second one, which had become my habit; rather, went back to play, at a different spot up the street, and wound up making a total of $12.88, a terible sum for a Friday night, but an amount which will allow me to get an all day bus pass today, and to go to perhaps Wal-Mart, to get some fish to grill, behind the building in Scotlandville, where I can pop into the library to upload what I am now writing as I sit in the downtown River Center Plaza.

I will then go over to the boarded up building ( where I am allowed by the guy who washes cars in front, and who knows the owner; to use the electricity) and use the electricity. 

It is fairly quiet there, especially behind the building, and I can do yet more music with the Audacity program, not being content to give up on trying to make recordings which are representative of the way that I truly sound.
So far the stuff I've done drags like a dirge and falls off the beat annoyingly, but, in my sleep, I have been solving problems in my subconscious mind.
My brain torrent of late is: I will devote the first track to playing the beat, along with the click track -the one that is so soft that I don't notice that I have fallen off of it.
I will play along (on a five-gallon bucket if I have to) keeping strict time. Then I can use the booming bucket rhythm as a guide; a guide which will cut through the sound of what I am playing at the time and allow me to stay in time.
So, without further ado, It's time to get that all day bus pass, and, I'll see you all in Scotlandville.
Howard, by the way, seems to be doing just fine without me. He knows that I can't go on campus, yet, he continues to live there, seemingly not caring to move off of it, so we can be chums. He has found an air conditioned Student Union Hall with TVs that show sports, to go along with all his other creature comforts there, and I think that he is being weened off of me, as his "homelessness guru" and spirit guide in general...

Scotlandville

There is once again a white guy in Scotlandville. 

I plan upon cooking some food, perhaps recording, at least a click track (a loud one) to use in the near future, and then getting on the #10 bus back downtown, to totally cash in on my all-day pass. First, I will lighten my pack by a few pounds. I plan upon coming back here tomorrow.

A Certain Place At A Certain Time

Monday, I might, just might leave out of here without telling Howard, if I determine that that wouldn't be cruel.

There is just a whole different feeling when you are free to do whatever you need to do, in your own best interests, without having to tell another person what your plans are, and then to feel tied to those plans, because if you deviate from them, you might screw the other person up, who was expecting you to be in a certain place at a certain time. If that makes sense...

My Audacity

Get Help

I need to get help, I really do.

There is a help screen on the Audacity music editor, and I need to just click on the links and take like a whole day to read up on the thing, before I plod ahead with things like the version of The Carcass Song that I recorded last night.

Not only did I go on Campus, I had the audacity to go right into the air conditioned church and recorded in there, using their piano to add to the mix.

The tempo is still a nuisance; I wonder if there is some kind of sync-locking which needs to be done; I know there was a way to set my Alesis drum machine's resolution, so that it would move sounds to the nearest beat that you just missed by a hair...

It made for a more machine-like, precise, kind of robotic dance style, but for the most part it cleaned up slight errors (not intentionally off the beat a little to create a certain "feel").

And a majority of peoples tastes, lean toward the robotic, anyways. That being said; here is a song that only Van Morrison's mother could love...

I guess I will read the manual, before I try to record any more Carcass Songs; which, maybe I'll have time to do at the truck stop in Port Allen, next week.

I know, Port Allen truck stop was supposed to be last week; but the purchase of guitar picks and headphones, a rainy day, and a day spent playing with the computer and the new headphones, instead of using the picks to busk, led to my ruin. I figured that much out. Alcohol is often a factor in those decision making processes.

The good news is that Howard has found a place called "One Stop," where he got a shower and was given clean clothing. He is now hitch hike ready.
Now, it is Friday and my back is against the wall and the chips are down.

The other good news is that I am only about 16 hours away from having my food stamp card charged with 200 bucks. I have gone 5 days "without food" (though someone gave me two slices of pizza yesterday, and I had a couple doughnuts and coffee in the morning).

I'm really not hungry at all; have just kind of forgotten about food...
One of the upsides, I guess, about posting these early experiments, is, the audience will be able to track the improvements in my recordings, which will hopefully come..

I think the stress of watching the church door for silhouettes of LSU campus police can be heard on the recording.

Pushing My Luck On Free Bus

Also, the drivers of the free buses, which go all over the campus before coming downtown, are starting to give me the willies. When the bus I'm on pulls into the hub in the campus "center," if the bus that will take me downtown isn't there, rather than sit and wait for it in "cop central" I often stay on the bus, as it goes around its route again.

One driver asked me "Where are you trying to go?"

I thought about saying that I was homeless and looking for a place to camp off campus, now that the semester is ending and the cops are cracking down on non students (except Howard; he's been unmolested so far, and he even goes into the air conditioned Student Union building and watches TV in the evening, right alongside peoples sons and daughters) and that's why I am riding the  route; I'm sightseeing. 

I finally said I was looking for a Starbucks -someone told me they thought there was one off this route. Which turned into a much too long discussion, as she tried to think of all the Starbucks that she knew of. ...maybe ask this cop coming down the street...

Too Much Stress

The rewards are not worth the amount of stress around here.

What Was Really Bothering Me (2 Songs Added)

Yesterday morning, I woke up with 4 dollars and change in my pocket.

With my luck, I'll get here and Leroy will already be set up...

It was what was left over from the five bucks that Howard had slipped to me, behind the southern live oak trees, in the forbidden zone; the campus. 

Howard had understood why I wouldn't be joining him in the church entranceway to sleep. "Don't take too big a risk," he said. 

I went and got a 32 oz. Milwaukee's Best Ice beer, using $1.30 of the four dollars; intending to drink it at a nearby bus stop which is off campus. 

As soon as I stepped out of the store it began to rain hard. I finished the beer under the overhang in front of the store, then got another one when the rain wouldn't stop after 20 minutes.

As soon as I stepped out of the store the rain stopped and the sun came out.

My plan was to take the free purple bus to a spot near where the downtown bus stops. I wound up walking along the downtown bus route and never saw a bus stop sign until I had walked all the way downtown. I guess no students live in the ghetto in between campus and downtown, or if they do, they get no service from the Tiger Trails bus line.

That didn't really put me in a foul mood, but maybe it was strike one.

Then, I logged on to my blog and read that Alex in California for one, agreed that the song that I posted yesterday, as my first attempt at using the Audacity program, sucked. 
I knew it sucked, but wanted to have a song; any song; up on my blog. Something told me to be patient, figure out the software and when and only when I felt that I had made something worth posting, then post it. I will call that the "Julian Lennon process."

Julian Lennon was approached by the record company after the death of his father. They probably told him how saddened they were, and somehow convinced him that their offer to release his music wasn't just them trying to cash in on the tragedy; "Your music is great, we've heard it, we really think that the public should too. We feel really terrible about your loss; but, why not try to make a positive out of it. Maybe the best thing that can come out of the situation is that it has put you in the public eye; why not strike while the iron is hot, and release an album, er, as a tribute to your late father, of course."

Well, Julian did decide to take them up on their offer, but, instead of the record company being able to release the album in the wake of John's death (the poor boy must be grieving terribly; why not buy his music?) it didn't come out for almost a year later.

The reason was that (unlike me) when he started to work on the album, he was very picky and determined to not release anything until he was proud of it and felt like it was the way he wanted it. So, his first album "The Secret Value of Daydreaming," I think it was called; wasn't bad; not bad at all, I recall.
Second Effort

But, since the cat is out of the bag and I have posted my first "sound check"  song, I might as well post my second song, in which I managed a small improvement in sound quality by doing the tracks separately.

I don't think the built in mic can handle a guitar and vocal at the same time; it confuses the digital circuitry, so I recorded guitar first; sang second (with the harmonica in hand) and then added a second guitar/vocal/harmonica track -all done one at a time.

The drawback is something I will have to address in the "using a click track to keep everything in time, because if one instrument wavers just a hair from the beat, the other instruments have no way of anticipating it and staying on the beat" chapter of the online manual. *note to self -try to find the online manual.

OK, Yesterday's version of "I Know You Rider" I will give a grade of D minus.
Staying On The Beat

Last night, in direct willful, knowing defiance of the order given to me by the LSU campus police, I snuck behind the little brick wall which blocks about half of the unused doorway at the Baptist Student Center, and recorded "China Cat Sunflower," by the Grateful Dead, and I will grade the result as D+.
Sloppy Start To Recording Career

"I draw motivation from people who tell me to 'give it up'" -Daniel

It has tempo problems (see "click track" comment above) but, like a lot of Dead stuff, there are spots where it is "tight" and, why throw out the baby with the bath water and delete the whole song...maybe readers will TELL me why...
So, here is the illegally recorded China Cat Sunflower...
And, I also did Crazy About A Crazy Girl  -a sloppy version of one of my originals. I swear that I played these songs a lot tighter on the street, but I am working out the bugs...
And, For Martin in West Virginia, a sloppy snippet of how I play For Fruits Basket

Oh, Wow!

I'm in downtown Baton Rouge,

and night is falling.

Last night, I made a daring run into the LSU campus, going behind buildings and staying in the shadows, where I found Howard and explained about my run in with the law "..Oh, wow!"

He lent me 5 bucks, and I had one beer and played across the street from the Varsity Theater. I thought I sounded pretty good, though not as loud as Leroy does when he plays; nobody came across the street to throw me anything, but I didn't care because sounding good is its own reward and practice makes perfect.

Things are not that great right now, and I might just quit. I don't even think my mom reads this blog anymore...

First And Last

• First Recording Sobering
• Banned From LSU
• 4 Day Fast

Where To Begin...

2006

Yesterday, I attempted to record a song, using what I had, where I was and set up the way it is.

I plugged in to an outlet outside the Baptist Student Center, behind a little brick wall in a doorway which looks like it is never used. I was about 75 feet away from the traffic of Highland Road, which was moderate and accounted for a certain amount of background noise.

I was able to record two tracks, but, when I decided to re-do the second one, I wasn't able to.

The end result was; after doing what I thought was a passable two track recording (two guitars; two voices; one harmonica), I somehow botched the saving process.

The Audacity program has a million menus and buttons and, when I went to "export" my finished song; I guess I exported it to Siberia, where it will remain until receiving further instructions...

I really debated with myself about posting the only thing that I came out of that "session" with; the first (sound check) recording -the one that I decided to re-do because it wasn't up to my standards and it was very sobering to listen to ...do I sound THAT bad??

But, for the sake of letting everyone know the sound quality that I am dealing with at this point; and to establish a starting point to work to improve upon, and to see if the whole process of "exporting" files to my desktop, then uploading them to kiwi6.com, and then linking to them on this blog even works...

Here is the link to an uninspired version of "I Know You Rider," by The Grateful Dead, during which I lost a beat when my glasses fell off my nose, as I was trying to lean in so that my mouth would be closer to the mic than the guitar...and during which one of my harmonicas holes was plugged with a popcorn seed from the night before, or something.

The sickening harmonica note comes during its second solo when I went up a register (to the higher notes). I normally don't tolerate off notes; and usually can go a whole night without playing such a bagpipingly irritating tone; but, as I have said; I haven't found the right buttons and menus to press and click on to cut out the bad and paste in the good..


  http://kiwi6.com/file/nxlvl1z4kz

Listening to the above on my headphones reminds me of when I was 14 and had a Realistic brand monophonic cassette recorder with a built in condenser mic (which recorded as much of the sound of the capstans churning and the motor humming as it did the music, and which cut the bass out of the vocals, making me sound like a whiny little girl)

Last Visit To LSU Library

Then, I went to the LSU library, in order to sign up for a free account with kiwi6.com, so that I would be able to upload my crappy song today, which I do now. It would be my last visit to that library.

After the visit to the library, I found Howard sitting on a bench in front of the Law School building. I sat with him for a while, until he started asking me the usual questions. "Not too many people out, Saturday?"

"No, there were people out, but by midnight I was tired and I really wanted to go plug in my computer and mess around with it and listen to some of the music that I've downloaded on the new headphones that I have just gotten."

"Oh," said Howard, with a frown that I can probably interpret as ...well, I was going to offer to lend you some money so you can eat, but, I guess it's your own fault that you didn't make much Saturday...you wanted to play with your computer.... 

I'm starting to figure Howard out, a bit. 

I stood up, ready to go wash some clothes out, in the sink behind Serrano's Restaurant.

"Are you going to go get a beer?" asked Howard. I guess he's starting to figure me out, a bit.

Campus Police

you don't look like students...

I got back from washing clothes to find Howard no longer on the bench. The book that he had been reading was sitting there.

I decided to wait a while to see if he had just run to the store.

Then, along came two uniformed officers of the LSU Campus Police.

They smiled; asked me how I was doing; asked me for ID. The routine. why do you need to see ID, I'm just sitting here...

It was a black cop and a white one. I actually told them that I didn't have ID, just to see what they might say.

They asked me if I was a student, as if already sensing the answer. Then, question after question. Did I go to the church, or was I just sitting in front of it, enjoying the shade.

Then one of them noticed the laptop protruding slightly out of the top of my pack. "I notice you've got a laptop, mind if we run the serial number on it?"

I got irritated and said, "Assuming that a homeless guy could never have a laptop?"

"No, we're not assuming that at all," said the black cop, speaking for the first time- blacks being very sensitive to issues of profiling based upon appearance...

To cut through all the boring details, they told me that I was banned from the LSU campus, unless I became a student, and unless I was going to a football game and had my ticket already in my hand.

They ran my record and saw that I had open warrants in Saint Augustine, for littering and trespassing, and said that they couldn't let me on campus, because I had "a history."

The ironic thing is; if I made myself look like a student, I probably could go around stealing laptops right in front of their eyes...

4 Day Fast
I went and slept behind Serrano's by my drying clothes.

In the morning I got on one of the free buses, which took me right through campus and downtown, where I now am.

Plans are up in the air for the immediate future.

I won't get any food money on my card for another 4 days, and I have no money. There are the downtown shelters, where I can probably get that sandwich and a glass of iced tea that keeps homeless people alive everywhere.

There is always busking on a Tuesday night...

I can't go back to look for Howard, because he is on campus, that is if they haven't profiled him as someone who isn't a student and banned him yet...