Peein’ In A Bottle Video on YouTube

Hola Geeks! Ok, now I KNOW some of you are World of Warcraft fans (lovingly known as Warcrack to those who are addicted) because it’s a proven fact that geeks can actually derive essential proteins and bioflavanoids via their eyeballs while playing this game. (No. Duh.) “Fans” is kind of a funny word to use, but the English language falls short for our purpose. Some of my friends and I simple call it “The Game” as in:

Muskratboy: “Hey, what game do you wanna play?”

RB: “Duh, THE game.”

or

RB: “Dude, you wanna play a game?”

Muskratboy: “What game?”

RB: “THE game!!!”

anyway, I digress…

Some of our best buds work for American Television Distribution (Producers of Stag) and luckily, they let us borrow their expensive cameras at night to film whatever nonsense we can come up with. Well, here’s your first dose of nonsense from the newly formed off-hours comedy troop known as “Skippy McLizard”.

Enjoy fellow geeks, we did this for you. And before you ask, YES, squirting that much EZ-cheese in your mouth and eating it like that IS pretty F’in nasty… Taken in that volume, it takes on a real strange cinnamony taste. Even stranger than that, is that my spell check let “cinnamony” go. That’s a real word? Even more strange-o than THAT is the second time, it DIDN’T let it go… What the F is goin’ on here?

Anyway, enjoy, fellow Warcrackers and EZ-Cheese gulpers.

-Love n stuff-

RB

Link to “Peein’ In A Bottle” Video on YouTube

Wooooooo! I can feel the heat coming off the Internet as that title got encoded into binary. FLAME WAR! I could probably end this now, and let everyone finish it in the comments section, and it would surely get ugly, but we’re not here for a big scrapple-dapple now, are we? I’m just going to throw my 2 cents into the pot, stir it, and hopefully you’ll come out feeling 2 more pennies worth of enlightened about DAWs and which platform to roll with.

First of all, I have been recording digitally on PCs since the Quad-4 from Turtle Beach came out (1995), and we had that whoppin’ 4 tracks of digital goodness to noodle with (that we could bounce to 2 virtual tracks! Wheee!)  So, you can say that I am a super freaky early adopter. Windows 3.1 was a great platform for audio recording, and I also believe heroin is really great for your health and longevity… All jokes aside, you already know I’m a geek (see URL above), and since I was 13 me and my computers have been tighter than Luke and R2… point is, I am not afraid of hardware or software of any kind. (That’s right, back off Excel, I’ll take you out just the same!)

Now no offense to Turtle Beach, because it was super early on in digital wonderland, but it outright sucked.  I could usually count on at least 15 crashes before I could complete any mix. I lost lots of great takes, and lots of thick hair. But what I did produce was leagues ahead of what was being produced with cassette based 4-tracks at the time, sound wise. There was a certain amount of hardship you had to endure to get music recorded sans that wonderful tape “HISSSSSSSSSS”… and we endured it.

Now as our systems grew, and got more complex, and multimedia became a more serious concern, our hardware and software got stronger and more integrated, and we grew along with it. Windows 95 made an immense difference (I know, I even feel funny saying that Windows 95 did something good for me.) and then we got DirectX and the audio mix DLL on Windows,
and things REALLY started to chug. With the consistent issues though, I was always extremely thankful that I was an IT person as well, and watched many of my non-techie musician friends say “F this, I would rather just pay a studio.”, understandably.  I had always heard that things were better on Apple, but I didn’t really believe it, and as a long time computer user, I go where
the apps are, and Windows just had all the apps…

So, fast forward to 2006. I was using Cubase SX 2 at the time, hooked up through a Presonus Firepod on an AMD X2. Now compared to the old days, it was AWESOME. Compared to the Mac I got at the end of last year, it just plain sucks. That’s right, flame me all you want. I have a flame retardant psyche, and I will continue to rock out in Mac bliss while you have at it.

Cubase doesn’t crash on OSX. If I happen to plug in or remove any hardware while any DAW application was running on Windows, I would be real lucky if I didn’t lock and lose my work. OSX handles this with grace and ease. Now I won’t lie, and tell you I’ve NEVER had a Windows machine running a decent DAW, I have had those lucky hardware combinations where everything was peachy now and then, but it always involved a lot of swapping out this controller or that interface because it didn’t agree with this motherboard or that memory… Always doing software tweeks, and dealing with random plug-ins not working, it was never perfect.  With my Mac, I can honestly say that I walk into my studio, and I work, as a musician, and a musician only. I have the chance to be creative, and think about music, not about gear. Macs are a little more expensive, but for me, those benefits are priceless.

You can use a PC, and if you are on a real tight budget, I would even recommend it. If you need to make music DEPENDABLY and RELIABLY though, and you can afford it, go with a Mac. I am not a Mac person, or a PC person, or an any computer type person. I am a computer user, and I go with what works, and I go where the applications are. Musicians have always huddled around Macs, so the software for musicians is always going to be there. We work with KNOWN hardware configurations on Macs, and that’s what makes it easier for them to keep things working correctly. PCs have an unlimited amount of variables affecting each individual machine, and that’s where unexplainable (and often unanswerable by any particular vendor) problems seep in.

For the uninitiated, OS X, although a newer OS, is based off of a Unix variant called BSD. Unix is old and strong, and has it’s own philosophy surrounding it, and there’s a reason it’s lasted this long running some of the biggest baddest machines on the planet… Because it works. If it can work for huge corporations, sorting and saving and serving terrabytes and terrabytes of data daily, chances are it will be able to swing the load on your desktop, even if you are running 4 separate effects on each of your 4 vocal tracks, and running 3 instances of that sweet new “Massive” synth from Native Instruments (have I mentioned that that thing rules? That’s
another blog day.).

So, in conclusion: We, my friends, are at the best point ever known for recording in the home. It’s cheaper than ever, and the tools get more impressive every single day. Whatever platform you wind up on, you will still have what you need to make great music and then some, for sure. You will surely have more than what the Beatles had available to them when they were starting out, and look what they did with what little they had!  BUT, if I have to cast a vote, I would surely say Apple is the way to go today. Yes Apple, even with all their nickel and diming. Yes Apple, with their crazy, borderline fanatical keynote speeches and fans, and their crazy patents, and all the other nonsense. Their computers just work, and I know that my life in my studio has been nothing but a joy since that shiny brushed metal monster showed up!

Fire away!

Love and stuff,

Right Brain

No, no, it’s not a hoagie, but by this time, you already know that, because Guitar Hero 1 has already swept the world and spawned a boatload of imitators and successors. Thankfully no one’s cholesterol has been raised by all the cheese factor being perfected as kids jump around on beds with their wireless 5 button guitars, imitating guys who’s names they don’t even know… That S.O.B. even comes with a guitar strap so they have insurance that you get nuts with it.

To get to the point, I’ve been playing music since somewhere around 8 years old, and now I’m 0×24. (Well of course it’s in hex, this IS ‘Two Bald Geeks’ right???) and my first and strongest instrument is guitar. I’ve taught a bunch, and teaching rhythm can be one of the most challenging portions of the process, depending on the student of course. I think Guitar Hero should be a prerequisite at this point for young budding musicians, because you can gather so much technical ability from this toy, reguardless of how old you are, and I can almost guarantee you will have a good time, unless you are more docile than a box turtle. Most of all though, it will help your rhythm. That’s right, no studies, no statistics, (sadly, no stock ownership either… blerg.) and I’m telling you flat out that I know this will help your musicianship. If you say you’re a musician and will whip this things ass, I say guess again, your rhythm isn’t as strong as you think it is. Think I’m joshin’? Go rent this bad boy, and beat it on hard. (No, I’m not even ASKING for expert… That’s just crazy talk.)

After spending some time with this thing, my conclusion is that it IS a toy, but not JUST a toy… If you focus on your form, and use your right hand the way someone actually uses a pick, when you get a real guitar in your hands, it WILL be easier. I convinced Right Brain to get one of these because of my incessant bragging about the songs I so elegantly whipped the night before, and now I think his wife has a reason to hate me. He’s a long time musician as well, so I’m sure he will have something to say about it…

Just for the record, I’ve been playing Guitar Hero II, I have no experience with I. What I’m saying here is that this toy will HELP things be easier when you approach a real guitar, not that they will just BE easy. It’s a whole new world when you move to having your two hands REALLY be responsible for the sound the strings are making, fine tuning your hands to differentiate between strings, reading music, developing your ear, list goes on and on…

We were talking about doing a sort of community service YouTube video demonstrating correct hand positioning, various moves required on Guitar Hero and how they relate to real guitar, and any helpful info we can come up with to help aspiring musicians get the most out of this game. Anyone have any interest in this? Anyone know of any other super-fun rhythm games? Anyone want to tell me “I’m a purist, go buy a Ramirez classical, send the kid for lessons with a guy who’s name ends in -slov, and kick his ass into shape, video games are for knuckleheads, and you don’t know jack!” (If that last one is your response, send me your address and I’ll send you a shoehorn to help loosen up your…