Category: New Release

From the Vault: CRAXYBRAIN

A month or two back, Steve and I attempted a one hour challenge.  That in itself wouldn’t be much of a surprise, except that this time we nearly kept it to 60 minutes.  That’s probably the reason this track never got finished…

There’s a few other interesting tidbits about CRAXYBRAIN, though.  Most of which you can find out by watching the documentary of us writing and recording it.  Eagle-eyed viewers will notice a tired basset hound throughout!

The documentary concept is one we’d definitely like to revisit in the future, and, if nothing else, we got a sweet video intro tune out of it!

-Mike

Zeppelin by way of M-Audio

During a visit to Narragansett in preparation for the Newport Jazz Festival a week or so ago, the opportunity finally arose to put my new M-Audio M-Track II to use.

maudio

My three year old son was looking forward to seeing Robert Searight of Snarky Puppy.  He’s already declared that he wants to be as good of a drummer as him, and I applaud his (extreme) ambition.  The Puppies tightly funk-jazzed their way through a handful of instrumentals in front of Fort Adams as the sun threatened to set.  We capitalized on the energy the bands brought by playing some music of our own.

What better way to celebrate modern jazz than to learn a Led Zeppelin cover and adapt it for two acoustics and a mandolin?

I plugged the M-Track II into my Surface Pro (1st gen) and ran everything off of battery power.  We gave Jim one mic and positioned it so that it picked up more of his vocals than his guitar.  The second  condenser sat between Steve and I, slightly favoring Steve’s mandolin.

So far, I have two concerns with the M-Track II.  First, it doesn’t have any MIDI inputs, which the competing PreSonus Audiobox USB includes.  Second, the Zeppelin recording came out nicely, but the other two jams we recorded had a hiss on the mic pointed and me and Steve.  This could be due to a number of factors not directly attributable to the interface (too hot with direct sunlight? bad cable? bad microphone?), but either way I’m leery.

Hopefully I’ll know more when I get to record something else.  Until then, though, Steve has a few originals he’s been working on that might get some drum tracks later this week.  In addition, I’m still telling myself I’ll rerecord some Rama Ram Jat.  We’ll see!

-Mike

From the Vault: Drum Test Songs

In my continuing journey to consolidate my recordings and refresh my setup, I discovered a few tracks that would lead up to the release of Meat Without Feet’s WPOP.

In 2010 I bought a Roland TD-4 powered electronic drum set and the Superior Drummer VST plugin in order to get some more freedom and flexibility recording and mixing drums. Before jumping right into a named project, I fooled around with playing and editing the midi drum tracks. I’m not sure what the original release plan was for these, or if there were ever any lyrics penned for them, but they’re not nearly as terrible as I expected when I opened up the long lost folders nearly five years after recording them.

New Drum Song 1

New Drum Song 2

After completing these tracks, I started work on WPOP proper.  However, a few tracks of writing and recording later, I scrapped what I had and started over with the song that would become “Technology Approaches!”  The unreleased and unfinished first version of WPOP will be detailed in an upcoming post.

Until then, enjoy the summer!
-Mike

From the Vault: "For a Mother"

Now that I’m off of work for the summer (ah, the luxurious life of a middle school teacher), I’ve started organizing my computers and music recording folders.  I suppose after nearly fifteen years, my process was worth revising.

I’ve been working between two desktop PCs and a Surface Pro, and file management has gotten a little sticky with legacy files.  Steve went with a NAS, which has been great for sharing wavs while doing long distance recording (some of the recent THC songs have been recorded this way).  Currently, I’ve got a “Things” folder for all random nonsense and an “ACID Stuff” folder for songs that are in progress.  Then I’ve got an external hard drive that has backup versions of these folders along with pictures and videos and stuff.  It’s all manual and it’s all sort of a mess.

I have a few options.  I could get a NAS or use synctoy to keep the external up to date, but these are either pricey or cumbersome.  Why not let the internet do it for me?

At this point, I’ve got over a terabyte of space in my OneDrive account, and it’d be silly not to use it.  The only problem I can see with this method is that the Surface’s hard disk space is limited.  Should be an easy solution, though, since I can tell OneDrive which folders to keep locally and which to leave up in the ether of the web.

The next step is to get a small USB Audiobox so that I can record using the Surface and the AMD computer (which lacks the firewire port necessary for my 8 input Firepod interface).  If recent email chains are to be believed, the band not formerly or currently known as GrllBrsh may be making a comeback along with the 90 degree days.  Should that come to pass, having the Surface function as a live recorder would be sweet.

Anyway, while digging through songs of musics past, I uncovered one that I thought I lost in a hard drive failure a few years ago.  It was written after a student’s mother passed away, and it not-so-subtly tackles the issue of longing.  Despite some rough vocals and weird sound/mixing issues, it still mostly holds up.  I had it labelled as Victor Frankensteins, which means I was thinking of working on it with Blonski for the Antimony album.  That puts this track somewhere around 2010 or 2011.

For a Mother

Steve and I are still considering a release of the unfinished Steve Blonski is Go!, which could show up soon.  I also found the old Rama Ram Jat recordings, which could be fun to re-record…

Until then,
-Mike

Resistance is futile…

I’m really pushing it by calling this one a Two Hour Challenge.  I mostly just don’t know what else to call it.

This latest release started as an acoustic faux-bossa sequence of chords and mediocre finger picking.  I wanted to avoid having it sound too samey with some of the other stuff we’ve recorded, so I stepped only barely outside the comfort zone:

  • Programmed drums using sampled beats (not unlike some of The Name‘s stuff)
  • Finger picking instead of strumming (mostly)
  • Weird effect laden chorus that includes reversed guitar

Then Blonski completed it with some inspired out-of-the-box thinking of his own.

  • Lyrics vaguely about terrorism?
  • Smooth, relaxed vocal that lays just behind the beat
  • Lyrically repetitive but harmonically interesting chorus
  • Trumpet/melodica solo
  • Awesome picture of a guy in a red scarf

cover

Two Hour Challenge – Resistance

Bonus side effect of mixing this track: I realized that I’ve been mixing down in mono for the last few songs!  Hooray, now Universe 25 sounds better too!

Until next time,
-Mike

We shouldn't call these Two Hour Challenges any more…

I’ve been dishonest.  Well, actually, I’ve generally fessed up to my inability to complete a challenge in a set number of hours with each blog post announcing  a release. It’s the cover art that has been dishonest.  “Two Hour Challenge,” it proclaims stubbornly, refusing to acknowledge my greater-than-120-minute writing and recording sequence.

But I’m the one that makes the cover art.  The blame must, therefore, reside with me.  I figured it was time to talk to Steven.

After a discussion that may or may not have occurred while licking people into a pile of bombs, we both agreed we should re-release all of the challenge tracks as an EP or even LP at some point.  Calling them “One Hour Challenge” or “Two Hour Challenge” seems a little silly at this point.  As we’ve done so many times before, we’ll look to the Desert Sessions for inspiration and try to come up with something.

This time, the release is “Universe 25,” a song that started as an acoustic idea and then went to Blonski for some lead guitar.  We worked on the lyrics, each writing a verse and a version of the chorus, and then I tracked the vocals.  For inspiration, we researched the eponymous Universe 25 and placed the narrator as a mouse in the experiment.

THC-Universe25Two Hour Challenge – Universe 25

A few more tracks and we’ll look to compile under a new name that probably won’t be GrllBrsh.  There are a few more on the burner with Jim on vocals, though schedules seem to align about as frequently as the planets.

When they do, you’ll know!
-Mike

Three Hour Challenge! – Blizzard

THC-Blizzard

In my unending efforts at one-upmanship I took today’s “snow day” to write some music in my new music room, taking 3 hours to put a song together that I’m fairly happy with! First, check out the digs:

The new Blonski music room!It’s kind of a mess, but it’s my mess! and it’s a work in progress. It’s nice to have all the music stuff in one place, and a semi permanent setup for recording.

For this song I decided to keep things simple, both musically and recording-wise. As its been quite some time since I have recorded something on my own I didn’t want to get discouraged, knowing the only thing I am still up to snuff on is probably the bass playing. Mixing, guitar playing, and singing in key were the bigger challenges, which is actually why it took 3 hrs instead of one or two.  At some point I had to settle, but even the settling allowed for some interesting choices.

Steve Tree's amp sounded very nice

Additionally, I was able to send Mike a working copy of the song and with minimal direction, he layered on some awesome shimmery guitar work and a reeeally cool synth part… seriously, it makes the end of the song, I just like the sound so much.

So without further ado here it is, appropriately entitled “Blizzard” (it actually didn’t snow all that much in the end, but hey, a day off is a day off!)

Two Hour Challenge – Blizzard

Mike and I hope to do more of these collabo’s thru the interwebs in the future… it sure was fun!

-Blonski

Dios mio! Another challenge!

yamahaIt seems that Small Glowing Pig has been relegated to only producing music that is part of a failed writing challenge.  Cause for celebration, for sure!  What better way to celebrate, than with a tribute to cheap two-octave Yamaha keyboards and Dio. cover (Fun is) What We’re Made of

The new rock and roll band remains nameless, but not showless.  We’ll be playing a Jack and Jill for a buddy of ours in a few weeks.  The plan is to tape it.

-Mike

Writing and recording music inspired by very high places in other countries and the people who live there

Despite prolonged blog silence, things are happening in the world of Small Glowing Pig!  First, a new challenge is completed.  I played the ukulele and programmed drums, while Steve played the acoustic guitar and programmed the bass.  Be both “sang.”  Was it written and recorded strictly in two hours?  You be the judge!  Also, no, it wasn’t.  Also, read this for information on the inspiration.

Two Hour Challenge - Tibet

Two Hour Challenge – Tibet

Next, a new band has been formed and has begun working towards a live performance or two by the end of the summer.  No name yet, but we’re looking to cover a pretty eclectic mix that so far includes Stevie Wonder, Beck, Steely Dan, Cake, and Men at Work.

Hopefully we’ll have some practice recordings in the next few weeks and a name to go with them.  Until then, enjoy the challenge rok!

-Mike