New Blog Site

So, after messing all day with the blogger site I decided to move to Tumblr. Even though they just got taken over by Yahoo haha! Anyway, the new site is at:

http://niacinlibrary.tumblr.com/

See you there!

More music news

Spent all weekend recording, mixing and mastering. And I think...I think...it's done lol. I think. Haha!

Although, if it's anything like how it's been for the last month, I may change my mind in the morning and decide that it's all crap. 

But I decided to cut it to my favorite 5 tracks and just leave it as an EP. I'm running out of time and so I might just have to release what I've got.

And I honestly think it's the best recording job I've done so far! Woohoo!

It's just vocals and guitar. Yep. Now I'm just waiting for a few key people to give it a listen and some thumbs up (dear god I hope). Then it should be out on something. Bandcamp, CDbaby, who knows. Somewhere haha!

But I have to admit that I hate the whole recording process. It's so weird to put on your musician hat to write and then switch into engineer mode. To be sure, my engineering skills have increased overtime but I would still rather go into a real studio. That however would cost $ that I simply don't have. Plus, how could I go back and "perfectionize" something to death if I don't have complete creepy control over it?

The best takes were while recording vocals and guitar simultaneously. I was able to pull it off with a Shure 58 on the vocal and an R144 on the guitar + putting the guitar directly into the recorder.

Unfortunately, that make mixing a beast on louder tracks because of the bleed from the guitar into the vocal. So I kept using my original tracks as scratch tracks and trying to create the "feel" of the original performances while re-doing the vocals. I think it turned out pretty well all things considered.

Anyway, should be soon...once I get the go ahead haha!

Thanks for your time-
Richard

8 Tracks Into Album

Well, I am now 8 tracks into the project! Woohoo! I still want to come up with 2 more tracks before I release it but I’m feeling rather positive. Some good preliminary feedback from folks is really making this  project come together.

I think I’ve decided to only have vocals and guitar on this thing. I’ve thought quite a bit about it, but if no one cares, then I would much rather just record what I can perform live. Unfortunately, I do not have the time or resources to devote to getting other players on this recording. In addition, I really like it when the recorded music you hear accurately reflects what can be performed on stage.

If I only do one instrument plus vocals at a time then I can at least pull that off in front of people. And that matters a lot to me. Even at the cost of a boring arrangement. I’ve done elaborate arrangements before and while they were great, I could never do it live and that drove me slightly crazy.

Anyway, I’m feeling really excited about the work I’ve been up to. The performances are really coming together.

Special Thanks to Dylan for the input! 







-Richard

Played an open mic at the Crux.

Took a break from recording and decided to go play and open mic night

The first time I’ve actually played in front of actual humans in years lol. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the guts to ask them for a chair. I just never practice standing up.  So instead I got up there, stood, had my guitar too low, could barely make out my fretboard and did two TERRIBLE versions of Moon Heard from Sun and Death Woke on Saturday. But by the time I got to the third and final song (Mesa Town) I was starting to feel a little more comfortable. 

Still, it was cool to be around people. I met a guy named Adam from this awesome band called The Author Us:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucEfm5Jxyr8

Also there was a rad guy named Chris who did two Pixies covers and Yellow Ledbetter by Pearl Jam.

And…one other guy…Justin I think? He had amazing playing skills! He was switching back and forth between finger picking and strumming while playing this really great harmonica. I think he covered Cash’s Ring of Fire. 

The Crux staff were definitely nice and it seemed like a pretty great place actually.

BUT… in the future…I’m going to ask for the bloody chair….

Thanks for Listening!

Thanks for listening!

I randomly looked at the stats for this page and I was like…wait a minute, someone may actually be reading this! So, I just wanted to make sure to say thanks for listening to the music. I’ve been writing songs for an eternity and it really means alot to me that someone out there is actually taking to the time to hear this material. Special thanks to Coda and Klayton for the recent support and interest!

I’m trying to get something decent recorded before the end of the summer. I go back to grad school in September and then I will be in educational servitude for another year. So….I’ve got 6 songs ready to record:

Who Bought The Sun
Death Woke On Saturday (Vulture of Man)
Moon Heard from Sun
Mesa Town
Hey My My
Hail Mary

Then I’ve got 2 that I’ve been messing with for a few weeks but still need a bit of work:
News from Saturn
Wait a Minute (working title)

Then I have to really kick my rear and get two more down so I can feel like I’ve created something that has at least 10 songs haha!

But I requested a week off from work (starting on August 10th) and hopefully that will be enough time to record everything. The arrangement should be pretty modest. Some minor percussion, bass, maybe a little keyboard or something to spice it up. I guess it depends on the time allotment. I feel pretty good with the crazy shaker action that I recorded with the first version of Death Woke On Saturday so I might just try to re-create that recording but with a cajon.  If…er..WHEN I finish it, it should be the 6th recorded body of work I’ve done.

The last 5 have been:

All Alone in Public Places
Pin Jacket Romance
When Will You Come Home
Roma
Trinity

This isn’t counting about 40+ songs that I recorded as weird little demos  and quasi completed ideas that never made it anywhere. And that isn’t counting the 100s of even sparser ideas that never made it in front of a microphone. I took my previous recordings offline because I felt the quality was just too subpar. I’ll always love the songs, but the recording quality makes them almost painful to listen to. And sometimes the performance as well haha! Anyway, I’m feeling pretty good about this new batch! But really I just wanted to say thanks for listening.

Oh yeah! And my friend Marcus looks like he is working on recording an album as well! So checkout

http://marcuseugene.blogspot.com/

for new info.

Also, the old duo of Steven Smith and Klayton Tietjen sound like they’re working on something awesome! But I don’t know what it is yet *sigh*. Still, I’m excited. Awesomeness is on the horizon.

Best of luck out there-
Richard

New Song: Death Woke On Saturday (Vulture of Man)

Okay, so I've been up to a little recording this week. There's a new song I wrote that I kind of like and I also have been experimenting with these new R144 Ribbon Microphones from MXL. Anyway, the ribbons have this cool figure 8 pattern that allows me to more or less play live while isolating each track! Which is pretty dang awesome. However, I'm not so sure I like the sound of the microphone as much for my style of acoustic playing. For example, compare the sound of the guitar in the Death Woke On Saturday Demo and the one in the song Caligula. Caligula was recorded one track at a time using the condenser mics on my Zoom H4 This is also totally different than the guitar used in the Who Bought The Sun song which is essentially a direct feed from an acoustic-electric. Not too shabby of a sound but I had to play with just my thumb on that one in order to avoid these horrible sharp sounds (well I don't like them at least) that I get when recording while playing with a pick. Anyway, all that being said I do like the new tune and I even got to use this cajone-bongo thing I got. Although I'm pretty terrible with it so it's buried in the mix under the shaker lol. New song is at Reverb Nation:

Email newsletters for bands at ReverbNation.com

Who Bought The Sun Demo

I’m procrastinating a research project. What better way to do that then to upload a song I’ve been messing with? As usual, my mixing and recording abilities are a bit sub par. Despite that, I still like this one so I thought I would upload it. Shazam!

Lyrics:

Well it’s not like I can complain.
Shiver red, Cold Blue to Green Again.
Words are hollow. Sound is close but, now as ever, truth escapes.

Gripping water, trying harder

struggle effort effort effort  effort effort effort end.

Who bought the sun yeah and who gets the rain?
Did you trade time for somewhere in space?
And who’s got a deal on the stars these days?

Watercolors
Bells and Hollers
Oil and Six and Simple
Strings

Jewels and eyelash
Makeup powders

Never rich but always vain

I don't know but
see the clouds?

Yeah?
Where's the effort effort effort effort effort effort yeah?

Who bought the sun yeah and who gets the rain?
Did you trade time for somewhere in space?
And who’s got a deal on the stars these days?