I meant to update this on the 19th, but sometimes shit gets in the way, you know? Anyways, what I would've said on the 19th still hold true --- I chilled with an old friend named Shane, aka Masheek Hype 5, and we wrote a bit of a verse together. Shane is an old friend of mine from high school, we used to rap together and do pretty much what friends did in high school, so it was cool seeing him again. Hopefully we make a habit of it.
We've been wanting to do an album for years, but I guess we just lost touch. Something else that hinders us (and many of my friends, it seems) is the fact that a lot of us are procrastinators. That gets in the way, we promise to ourselves that we'll do something and it gets put on the back burner. We intend to change this harsh cycle by sticking to a schedule. Setting dates for goals and sticking to them. Wish us luck.
Sorry for the disjointed thoughts, I was just typing them as they came to me.
So, I had a bit of a headache today and missed a BBQ, worse things have happened. However, it may have been a blessing in disguise because I made a beautiful tattoo. Other than that, no news, just art.
The super secret secret project is underway. It's not as much of a secret as I make it out to be, a few close friends have previewed what nick and I have accomplished so far. I think we recorded for almost 6 hours yesterday, quite a timely process. However, our recording has turned out even better than either of us had hoped. I can only hope the quality of work stays on pace, because I'm sure the amount of fun we have with the SSSP isn't going to fade anytime soon.
Don't ask what happened, I don't know. What I will say is, somehow, maybe through some sort of divine act from the audio gods, my Tapco drivers are now glitch free. Thank you Euphony and Melody for your acts of kindness, your deeds will not go without a blessing and a prayer.
In order to show my appreciation, I started to craft the beginnings of a song that I've had in my mind for months, yet I didn't have the appropriate tools to begin. Yes, there are vocals on it. No, it's not hip hop. Yes, I sing. No, I'm not the greatest, but I think I'm decent enough that it will pass, and the only way to get better is through practice and critique.
I sent it to Nick (because I send that guy everything) and he said that it shows promise. I don't want to give any information on the style of the song away, because it'll ruin the surprise or the styling of the song. Needless to say, I'm very excited about this project.
It came in the mail, delivered from the fine folks at UPS. Well, not that smoothly, now that I think of it. There was an attempt of delivery on Monday, which failed because nobody was home during the day, and I can't arrange a time for them to deliver it, so I went down on Tuesday to pick it up. I also had the fine privileges as a Canadian citizen to pay taxes on an American good. That brings my total up from around 180 to 205, still not bad at all, as that's about the price I was willing to spend.
The card itself looks quite stylish, and sounds well, nice. I had a few hiccups early on with the device not recording. The solution --- unplugging the USB cable and plugging it back in. Problems (mostly) solved.
Another oddity that I've yet to figure out it that recording just sometimes doesn't work with the default drivers, it'll record a very fast clicking sound, but no signal from the microphone input. Restarting the device works most times, but I decided to try the ASIO4all drivers, and see how they'd work out. Quite well except for yet again, another hiccup. The problem using these drivers is that anytime the mouse highlights or jumps from one section to another, the program seems to pause for a split second, for whatever reason. I'll be emailing the author with my findings, and I'll get to, in their own words, be subjected to many trial versions of test patches and such until it's fixed.
All in all I'm not displeased with the unit, as the preamps themselves sound *fuckin amazing*. The drivers are a slight set back, but even as is, they are workable. Hopefully, official and 3rd party fixes will be available, but I'm not going to rely on them. Soon, I'll be writing an official tag to slaughter and maim all of my beats with from here on in.
In other news, I'll have to find a spiffy way to present an archive section, as 3 months of news posts on the front page is a tad excessive. But for now, I'm stuck with the rather large news section. I realize that I could easily make an archive section, but I don't want to do it until I have my spiffy presentation to do it with.
