The Grand Fallacy

Linux, musical road-dogging, and daily life by Paul W. Frields
 
The Grand Fallacy

Shock to the system.

I had a rehearsal recently with members of another band, with whom I will be doing a few performances later this year. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, because I have been playing for so long with my drummer and musical partner in crime, Rich, that it’s always weird …

Mixed bag.

The last week has brought both good tidings and bad… Our van broke down, and we thought it might be the alternator. But we found out our extended warranty would cover that, so it would cost us very little out of pocket. Unfortunately it turned out to be the battery… …

Catching up.

Studio madness, part 1.5. My next date at the studio is on Thursday, to help Leah complete vocals. We have all the rhythm tracks in the can, and this week Tom is finishing the guitars, banjo, and lap steel, while Okorie lays down the cello madness. (By the way, never …

Buried alive.

It’s been a very hectic week between work, finishing preparations for a teaching gig in D.C. last week, and trying to complete rough mixes for the band’s preproduction demo that wouldn’t embarrass me in front of our producer. Thankfully, I got to see a lot of the kids this weekend …

Real engineering.

Spent a great weekend doing preproduction recording for the band in preparation for recording our next CD, a 5-song EP we’ll be recording at Assembly Line Studios in Vienna. An abbreviated journal: Friday, August 5 Kisses and hugs for the whole family as I leave for what Eleya suspects is …

Birds of a feather.

Karsten and I are so much alike in some ways it’s scary. On the other hand, he’s probably skinny as a rail, thanks to that healthy California lifestyle. Curse you, surfer dude! I am, however, a little worried by our mutual tendency to get bored; I hope that doesn’t bode …

Practicing what I preach.

When I first tried Ogg Vorbis, the free and open-source codec for compressed audio files (think “like MP3”), I was unimpressed. That was several years ago. At the time, even many MP3 compression utilities were using a substandard version of the MP3 codec — Xing springs to mind. These versions …