This was done with the same philosophy as my other remix projects: nothing new is recorded, I only use what's there, and I keep the same feel of the originals. 

I went into this process thinking it was going to be a breeze - I mostly liked the sound, there were just a few flubs and clicks I wanted to patch up. Those damn pops that creep up now and then were caused by a piece of crap Tascam interface I used for a couple months as I was finishing the original recording. Unfortunately, it turns out there wasn't much I could do with those - the underlying audio was pretty twisted, so it wasn't possible to gracefully remove the pops. So pretend you're listening to it on vinyl or something, I guess!

It turns out that most of the work to be done wasn't with pitch, because by this point in my musical career, I'd mostly figured out how to sing without sounding like a theremin next to a ceiling fan. The bigger challenge was timing, mostly caused by my foolish thinking that buying a drum set would instantly make me sound like Neil Peart. Luckily, Sonar's AudioSnap has come a long way, but it was still an incredibly tedious process on some of the songs (especially Deaf Dreamer and Goodbye to Spring).

The overall production was pretty good to start with, so I didn't mess with it much. I did pull back a little on the limiting on the mastering, and added a little ambience to some of the tracks that sounded dried out (especially Deaf Dreamer). I still had a little residual overbrightness on the mixes, but not as bad as the first two CDs. The bass bomb on the first two was already fixed. There were a few tracks that were frozen as 16 bit files, which overloaded and distorted them. I redid them as 24 bit and they sounded much nicer. The piano on Fit For a King was switched from the unrepairably noisy The Grand to the much cleaner Akoustik Piano. Many tracks were hissy from my crappy audio gear at the time, so I did my best to fix those up.

The other challenge wasn't a technical one so much as a logistical one - this was the first (and only) CD I've had professionally pressed. That means I have boxes and boxes of discs in pretty shrink wrapping up in my attic gathering dust, each CD with the original recording eternally pressed onto its shiny butt. I've decided that rather than trying to throw a new disc in the old cases, I'm going to keep selling the shrink-wrapped version (collector's edition, I guess?) and include a link to the FLAC download so you can burn your own updated version. But who's still listening to plastic discs these days, anyway? The FLAC link is updated if you already have it, or if you've already bought a CD, just drop me a line and I'll hook you up with the updated FLACs.

As always, this is free to download and use for any purpose under Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution licensing. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I didn't think this would have a big effect on the overall quality, but I'm very pleasantly surprised what I was able to squeeze out of these songs. 

• Five Minutes
  
• Dark Roads
  
• Parasite
  
• Zero to Phantom
  
• Texas
  

I bent the rules with Zero to Phantom because the lead vocal track on my backup was completely messed up, but everything else on these used the same raw tracks, just remixed. The instrumental mixes are also now available, up on my music page. Enjoy!

I first heard the news of the Haitian earthquake when I woke up this morning. I grabbed my guitar and a song spilled out. Here's what I wrote. This is just a rough guy-and-guitar demo (as is the video), but you get the idea.

If you enjoy it, please take the time to make a donation to Doctors Without Borders. It'd mean a lot to me, and it'd mean way more to those in need.

Motionless Land: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

Hey everyone! I'm going to try something different in 2010. Every week, I'll be releasing a video of some sort. There'll be some acoustic performances of album tracks, some interesting covers, some behind-the-scenes studio footage, and videos from live shows. I'm also going to share my new songs this way, instead of the usual demo MP3s.

For my first installment, I wanted to share a brand new song I'm working on writing, called "Already There". It's not quite done yet, but that's the fun part of this format.

I should take this chance to invite you to subscribe to my YouTube channel, which is the main place I'll be posting these. You'll also be able to get to them on my Facebook page, which I'd be thrilled if you'd take the time to fan that up as well.

Enjoy, and let me know if there's anything you'd like to see me do with this project!

Seems like there's definitely a lot of interest in a remixed Only Whispering, so I'll probably tackle that soon. In the meantime, I'm working on giving touchups to some of stuff in the reject bin. As much as I'd love most of those songs to die a humane and peaceful death, they're still getting a lot of downloads and use in projects. So I'm tacking them in batches.

The first batch of 2004-era stuff is now online and ready for download:

• Across the Dusty Plains
• Fear is Free
• Gigolo
• Keep in Touch
• Upcoming Downtime
• Wrong Side of the Revolution

All of these will get instrumental mixes as well (one of the main reasons I wanted to do this). I'd say "enjoy", but that might be a little ambitious. How about: "may your ears no longer bleed" instead? :)

Thanks for all the great responses on the favorite album poll this week. It's really interesting to see the results. The winner of the moment seems to be "Only Whispering", which I never would have guessed!

That brings up another question for you guys. I wasn't planning on remixing that album, as I had done with Here Today and Crawford Street recently. The main reason is that I had that CD professionally pressed, and I still have hundreds of shrink-wrapped CDs up in my attic. But there have still been some quibbles that have annoyed me over the years, so I'm considering tackling it as a download-only remix - the MP3s free as always, and when you buy the old version on the CD, you get the new version on FLAC as well.

This one would be far less extensive than the last two - I'm mostly happy with the recording, I just want to fix a few bugs, make a few of the tracks a little less dry, and remove those super-annoying random clicks that my crappy old interface caused.

So what say you? Is this something you'd be interested in?

With the new CD, I've decided to drop the Share-Alike clause from my license. My music is now all available as Creative Commons Attribution. This means you can use my music for anything, as long as you give credit for it. [More Info]

I've been debating on this one for awhile. Obviously, I prefer that derivative works are also licensed as Creative Commons, but pretty much every day I'm waiving that provision for someone, so they can use it in a context that doesn't play well with CC (YouTube, movies, ads, etc). Now there's no ambiguity, and you can hack apart my music at will, as long as you give me credit.

This applies to "Breadcrumbs" and all of my other albums and songs, including the instrumental mixes. Enjoy!

This CD was done a little differently than the ones before it. I used to go on songwriting binges, writing and recording songs in rapid fire spurts, then spending months touching them up for eventual release. I made a conscious decision this time around to focus on one song at a time, taking around a month to polish it and get it right. One of the odd side effects of this is that I didn't end up with any songs for the reject bin this time around. (Or, more to the point, things got dumped before the demos ended up in your ears)

You'll recognize the eight songs that were released as demos, and there are three more songs that haven't yet been heard. By a complete fluke, the final song order very closely reflects the order these were written in, with the three new songs right at the end. There are only 11 songs, but it's actually the longest CD I've released since "Crawford Street".

A number of the songs had invasive surgery since their demo versions. "Swansong" has a new first verse and chorus arrangement. "Private Hurricane" has new instrumentation, led by a Wurly now. "Grey Snow" slimmed down and went on a diet.

As always, without touring or major label support, I rely on you to get the word out! Please please please, if you enjoy what you hear, I'd love it if you'd take the time to send a copy to some of your friends, or to share it your blog, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, shaved into the back of your head, anything. Thanks a million. :)

Oh, and it's called "Breadcrumbs".

I stayed with the same rules as the "Here Today" remix: (1) use only what was there when I recorded it, and (2) keep the spirit of the arrangements intact. In other words, this is just a polish job, not an overhaul.

This was easier than "Here Today" in some ways, because everything was recorded in Sonar to start with, but it was harder in others because my first computer recording interface was terrible. The mic preamps in particular were terribly distorted and noisy. I used a ton of noise reduction techniques to clean up the tracks. Another complication was the introduction of real drums for this album - and a drummer (me) who had no idea how to play them. Let's just say I became good friends with AudioSnap during this process. :)

One notable exception here was the song "The Spirit World". I had saved the backup of the session incorrectly, and the original source tracks are long gone. I did, however, have an instrumental mix laying around. Turns out if you put the original mix on one track and the instrumental on another, line them up perfectly, then flip the polarity on one of them, you have an almost pristine vocal track that you can fix up. Splice that back on top of the instrumental track and you're good to go. It definitely would have sounded better if I'd been able to get the source tracks, but hey.

The most improved award goes to "Waiting Takes Time". I'd chosen a horrible patch for the bass synth, and switching it out made the low end so much tighter. That, and a bunch of other tweaks, and that song will rock your world now. As much as a Cher T-Pain Kanye West parody can rock your world, at least.

I'll be going through old orders over the next week and emailing anyone who bought the CD in the past with a free link to download the updated FLAC files. It's not up yet if you have the old link.

This is probably the end of my remix trail. The next CD, "Only Whispering", has hundreds of shrink-wrapped copies sitting in my attic. So for that reason alone, I think that one's pretty much set in stone. ;-)

That said, I've got a few more songs in the pipeline that will (hopefully) finish up the next album. They're all very odd, but I think they'll do a good job of the hard task of pulling a bunch of random songs into a semi-coherent album. I probably won't release them until the album comes out, so that there'll at least be few new things to chew on. :)

I always hate to give estimates, but I'm looking at probably September, give or take a month. I'm pretty excited about this one, and I'm even more excited to get working on my next project, which will be a big departure from my previous work. More to come on that later. :)

In the meantime, I have another little project that I'll be unleashing over the next couple weeks. Stay tuned!

I've been really happy with my Aphex 1100 preamp unit over the years. But the past year or so, it's been having some audio problems with some crackling on the decay tail of notes, as well as some general button flakiness. I decided to contact Aphex for repairs, sending a detailed description of the problem, and an audio file to demonstrate it.

That was a month and a half ago on March 1st. A week later, on March 8th, I hadn't heard anything, so I wrote again. The next day, an engineer replied saying the waveform was too distorted to analyze. Ok, fine, I replied with another example a couple hours later.

11 days pass. No response. I send another ping.

8 days pass. Still no response. I send another ping, this time CCing the president of the company and a couple other relevant people.

2 days pass. I finally get a response, asking a few questions about trying another method. I track down a cable for this, and reply with new audio files a few days later. The engineer promises an RMA number when he gets back to the office on Monday.

Monday passes. So does Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I send another ping. Friday passes, then Saturday, Sunday and another Monday. Today is Tuesday and I'm sending yet another ping.

At this point, I've already purchased another preamp because I'm afraid if I ever do send the unit in, it'll take an eternity to get it back. I'll be updating this post as the saga continues.

Update, an hour later: I now have an RMA to return the unit for repairs! They claim to have sent it five days ago, and though I don't see any records of this in GMail, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I'll send this off in the next couple days and keep updating as I find out more!

Update, April 24th: They received the unit from UPS.

Update, May 4th: Haven't heard anything from yet - no confirmation, no estimate. Emailing to see what's up.

Update, May 5th: They responded quickly that they would be repairing it, burning it in overnight, and then contacted me today. The total came out to $98 plus shipping, which is very reasonable if everything is working well.

Update, May 12th: It's back. I just plugged it in and strummed a few chords, and guess what? Not a damn bit of difference. FML. Demanded a refund on the repair charge.

Update, May 19th: Maybe not a happy ending, but at least one good note: refund has been processed with no hassle.

Here's another new tune! This one is almost definitely the creepiest song I've ever written. I won't give it away, but I'm guessing after listening to it, nobody will be brave enough to tell me they didn't like it. ;-)

Under the Stairs: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

Production Notes:

Just a typical recording. I think the guitar is in mono, which I've been enjoying lately. There's a real cello and a sampled piano (NI's Akoustik). There's also a really quiet bell sound, but I think it's more subliminal than anything.

Anyway. Here's a new one called "Overthrown". It's been earworming me for weeks, so I guess that's a good sign. Here's hoping it ends up driving you nuts as well. :)

Overthrown: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

I've been wanting to write a song about immigration for years, but I could never figure out how to tackle it. I finally got my thoughts down on paper and said exactly what I wanted to say. Enjoy.

Border Blaster: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

Production Notes:

Simple arrangement here - just vocals, acoustic (in mono, for a sparser sound), a cello, and an electric (direct in, through Guitar Rig 3 for now). I'm using the stock preamps on my Onyx 400F for this, since my Aphex 1100 has been doing some annoying crackling on note fade-outs.

I dusted off the 12-string to record this new tune. It's a bit cheerier than the rest of the new batch of tunes, musically at least. Enjoy!

Stars Collide: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

Production Notes:

I'm going to try listing out the tracks this time, to give a better idea what's there. The mic is listed in parentheses after the track name. Let me know if you're a production geek and this is useful to you.

1. Lead Vocal (414): Melodyne > De-Esser > REq (150hz high-pass and a 5dB bump at 1khz) > RVox compression (moderate) > Delay (my usual settings, 6% mix) > Doubler (two doubles, panned almost center, mixed -15dB).
2. Background Vocals (414): Melodyne > De-Esser > EQ (same) > RVox (same)
3. 12-String Acoustic (Stereo 414s): RComp (aggressive threshold in louder parts, 3.5:1 ratio, 16ms attack) > Stereo imager (60% width) > REq (125 high-pass and 4dB boost at 1.8khz). Recorded in the live room instead of the usual dry control room.
4. Akoustik Piano (Bechstein in concert hall): RComp (catches peaks of louder notes, 3:1 ratio, 22ms attack). Panned 25% right.
5. Glockenspiel (Stereo 414s): RComp (Aggressive threshold, 2.25:1 ratio, 25ms attack) > REq (340hz high-pass, +11db at 1.9khz). Panned 27% left.
6. Shakers (Stereo 414s): Straight, panned 33% left.
7. Tambourine (Stereo 414s): Straight, panned 37% right.
8. Hand claps (Stereo 414s): 7 takes at different points in the stereo spectrum, frozen into a single track.
9. EZDrummer (Pop/Rock Kit): For the cymbal rolls only. I don't have any marshmallow mallets to do that myself. :-(

The non-vocal tracks are mixed to a bus as usual, but I didn't use any compression like I normally would. The reverb is TrueVerb's Studio A preset with a decay time of 1.5s. The master bus has an L3 with a gentle threshold.

Here's one that's been gurgling around my head for a couple months now. It took forever to nail down onto tape, and I'm still not quite done, but this is a 2008 song and doesn't want to wait an extra day.

Oh, and this is my 150th song to be released! Granted, one of those songs was "Danger Bus", but I'm still pretty proud. :)

Private Hurricane: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

Production Notes:

The electric guitar is all Telecaster. The main riff is with the middle pickup position, going into my new toy, a Deluxe Memory Man analog delay/chorus pedal. It went into the Pro Junior amp section with the Blackface speaker cabinet, then into a blend of three mics (Apex, 414, and a little SM-57). It was noisy, so I set up an X-noise for each mic, and enveloped the reduction parameter to take more out in the quiet parts where you hear it more. I might try reamping it again to make it sound smoother later, but for now it'll work.

The vocals (except for the last chorus, where I needed more brightness) were recorded with the Apex 215 ribbon mic. I love the richness and smoothness it gives when you don't need something super-bright. And for an $80 mic, I have no complaints!

I screwed up my left hand while recording the drums. I didn't quite have a good take of the last section of the song when a blister broke, but I had to finish it up, so I did one more take and nailed it. From the solo on, the drums were played in agonizing pain. :D

There are a few random background instruments. The banjo kicks in for the middle of the first verse. The accordion shows up through most of the song. There's a piano part that plays low arpeggiated 1-5-1 chords at the start of each measure of the loud parts.

For mastering, I've been going toward the direction of even quieter and more dynamic than before. It'll be a challenge to make the quiet intro mesh in an album context, but for now I like the way the loud parts punch you.

I finally have instrumental versions of the songs from "Here Today" available! I originally couldn't do these, but the remix project made it possible to make instrumental versions. You can download them all for free, and use them for free in your projects as you would with any of my other music.

I also have another new song that's about ready to launch. Check back in a day or two!

Here's another new tune. This one started its life as an acoustic song, but it never quite gelled for me. But since I've spending more time on this batch, and working with new ideas, I decided to try a completely different arrangement - an almost 70s soul feel - and it made all the difference.

20/20: (MP3, Lyrics, Share)

Production Notes:

One odd aspect to the production of this is that despite using mostly virtual instruments, it's one of the more organic songs I've done. The keyboards and bass were all done in one take each, with no envelopes to fiddle with dynamics. The whole song could be done as-is with a power trio (assuming the keyboardist was nimble).

Stuff used: NI Elektrik Piano (Wurlitzer), NI B4 Organ, EZDrummer Vintage.

And speaking of Findlay brilliance, Revolver is featured in the most recent issue of Bon Appétit magazine (September 2007). Congrats, guys!

How much do they cost, you ask? I'm leaving that up to you: you get to name your own price. Starting today, none of my CDs have fixed prices; you pay what you can. There's a fixed $3 shipping fee for any number of CDs, and a minimum price of $2 per CD. Those numbers are enough to cover my raw materials needed to make and send physical CDs (blank CDs, cases, paper, ink, envelopes, postage, etc). Anything more that you want to kick in is gravy.

The updated non-demo MP3s, tracklists and album art will be unveiled on the 11th. Whee, mystery! ;-)

Place Your Preorder

Temporarily Out Of Stock - Sorry, these have been selling faster than I expected and I need to save some for the release party. I'm waiting on more ink to arrive so that I can make some more, so check back in a day or two! Back in stock!

Over the next day or two, I'll be releasing a new ordering system, and you'll be able to preorder the new CDs to have them shipped the day before the release. There's going to be a big change to the pricing system, and I think you'll dig it.

I've struggled a lot over the years of keeping my master mixes organized. I figured I'd share my method for anyone who's in the same boat.

I always keep archives of every major mix version, using the filename convention of "Song Name - Version - Date.wav". For example, "She Dreams In Blue - 08 - 20070726.wav". I keep all of the songs I'm working on for the current album in one directory. Since it'd get crowded with all the old mixes, I create a subfolder called "Archived", and move old versions into this. In other words, the main folder has one file per song - only the most recent mix. Yeah, the version is kinda redundant, but it's helpful to give me context on how far a song is into development.

Just as I like to treat song mastering as part of the recording/mixing process, I like to start early with the album's song order. To do this, I use Winamp playlists. Just click and drag the songs into the order you want them, and save the playlist as a M3U file with a versioned filename, like "_Rock CD - 14 - 20070725.m3u". I give it an underscore as the first character to alphabetize it at the top, rather than in the middle of the songs. The neat part is that you can go to Nero, tell it you want to burn an audio CD, then drag the M3U file onto the window to burn the tracks in your playlist.

Sorry for the quietness around here. I've been hard at work finishing up the two CDs in time for the August 11th release date (a little over two weeks from now!). Just to show I haven't forgotten about you, here's a new and fun little tune:

Do Right: ( MP3, Lyrics, Share)

Production Notes:

This one was recorded entirely in the living room, instead of the studio.

The guitar part has a major highpass filter that sounds terrible on its own, but makes way for the sub-sonic piano part, which was recorded from a distance on a real piano. Since it has a broken middle C string, certain notes create a loud resonant buzz when you play them. If you listen in the intro, the part that sounds like a cymbal clap is actually this buzz. And the piano is tragically flat and out-of-tune, but I discovered that Antares AutoTune works magic for this. I shit you not.

The drums consist of drumsticks on the piano bench and pounding my fist into a wall for the bass drum.

I decided to give into the chorus of people demanding a proper CD release party. My next two CDs will be released on Saturday, August 11th at Coffee Amici. There will be special guests. There will be fireworks, marching bands, parades and Caligulian levels of hedonism. And there will be rock. It will be a grand time. :)

If you're like me, you can't afford to buy solid gold mic stands with gyroscopic balance circuitry, and you've had your fair share of valuable mics come crashing to the floor when you have the boom extended. Take out a $6 insurance policy: buy a 10 pound barbell weight and slip it onto the bottom of the mic stand:

Notice how it's at full height, the boom arm is fully extended, there's a heavy mic on it, and the arm is pointing out between two of the legs (the least stable position). It wasn't going anywhere. Neat.

Update: It's not officially cancelled yet but the radar's looking pretty bad. Come at your own risk :)

Update, afterwards: Thanks to those of you who came out and braved the sprinkles to bask in the rock!

Super-massive kudos to Findlay's finest restaurant, Revolver, for getting a rave review in the Wall Street Journal! I'm a foodie, and I do a lot of traveling, and I've yet to find another restaurant that's so reliably amazing. Congrats, guys!

Just got back from two weeks in the lovely Yucatán Peninsula and Chiapas. Tales of guerilla rebels, stray goats and my upcoming Food Network stardom to come as soon as I'm coherent.

I've been hearing buzz about the Recorderman method of recording drums, but it always seemed kinda strange, so I never tried it. I've really been missing out. Here's the basic idea:

• Put one overhead mic directly above the snare, looking down, at a distance of two drumsticks.
• Tape a piece of string where the beater hits the kick drum, run it to the mic, and down to the snare.
• Pinch the string where it touches the mic, and move it behind your right shoulder. Set up another mic there, pointing at the snare. Check that the second mic is two drumsticks away as well (it should be).

This makes both mics perfectly equidistant from the bass and snare drums, aimed right at 'em. Here's the A/B comparison with a song I've been working on. It starts off with the Recorderman method, and then goes to the way I had it before, then back and forth.

It really has a beautifully clean sound. The best part is that the snare drum is so much more present, and in some songs, wouldn't even need a direct mic. I added a little bit of gated direct mic with heavy compression and a medium attack time, just to give it a nice "crack". The phase coherency is truly noticable, and the stereo image is much better. I'm totally sold (as soon as I stop giving "love taps" to the the shoulder mic). Thanks Des and Recorderman!

EDIT: Link to the sample audio fixed - sorry!

After lots of thought and headbutting against walls, I decided to put off the album release for 2-3 months. But the good news is that it's not going to be a CD release: it's going to be two CD releases at once! I've been working on two very different batches of songs over the past year, and I realized that I'm 80% ready to put out two very different CDs. I need to write a few more songs to fill some holes, and then I'll be ready to unleash the fury.

Sorry for the wait. But it's going to be spiffy, f'real.

Right around the time I'm finishing an album and trying to decide what to put on it, I like to find out what you think of the unreleased songs I've been working on. It's still just the demos that are online here, but you would be my hero if you would go to this page and vote. Each song has a box to the right of it, and if you're familiar with the song, just choose your opinion from the list. It's anonymous, so please be honest with what you really think.

Thanks and stuffs!

Here's another new tune, woohoo! This one's called "Darién Gap", and is about the 100-mile stretch of rebel-controlled jungle between Panama and Colombia. Despite the fact that North and South America are connected by land that's 30 miles wide, there are no roads between them, so it's impossible to drive to South America from here. Ok, less geography lessons, more music:

Darién Gap: ( MP3, Lyrics, Share)

Production Notes:

The acoustic (my live one) is tracked in stereo, fairly distant, and with the mics lower than normal (below the bottom of the guitar). I was going to change this, but I liked the sound it got. I recorded it in the corner of the studio with a foamie around me to keep it relatively dry. I narrowed the stereo field, and gave it a bass cut around 180hz to tame the boomy demons. The same setup was used for the mando.

The electric guitar parts were all my Telecaster (bridge pickup) into the Tube Screamer (all 5s), into the Blackface with an off-axis close 414 mic. There are two tracks in the vocal part, and a third with a higher capo comes in for the solo part.

Drums, shaker, tambo, bass and vocals were all the usual. The vocal bridge has a center vocal, and two backup vocals panned left and right.

Update, 5/3/2007: Added a piano part, using Steinberg's "The Grand".

The style is going to be very different this time around. It's going to be much more of a rock CD than I've done in the past, especially compared with "Only Whispering". The demos on this site have been frozen for a couple months, and the unreleased new versions of the songs have come a long way. A couple of them are completely redone from scratch, and the rest have had fairly big overhauls. I'm super-excited about this CD, usually by this time of the process, I'm already sick of hearing the songs, but I still love them. I'll be curious what the reaction will be, since it's going to be a big style shift, but I think it's going to easily be the best I've done.

Since I decided a few months ago that I'm not going to try to make money from my music anymore, this release is going to be different than before. I'm going back to self-produced CDs, and the prices are going to be very cheap. I'm considering a sliding scale - for instance, my CDs would be a base price of $3 to cover my raw costs for the disc and shipping, and if you want to pay more, great.

The other difference is that I'm probably not going to do an official CD release party this time. It's partly because Amici is booked up from here to eternity, partly because I've been disillusioned with live gigging, and partly because the songs I've been doing lately don't translate to guy-and-guitar solo shows. There's been talk of a full-band rock show this summer. We'll see. :)