Well folks, it's been a long time. Which is not to say that I haven't been working. Oh, I have. Instrumental parts, vocals, harmonies, lyrics. The usual struggles. Just behind the scenes…

Nothing like a good SQL injection comic to start you off right in the morning…

I'm Sorry I Can't Embed This Video, But You HAVE TO WATCH IT…

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xkcd is the most brilliant thing on the web. Yeah, I said it…

Something about this cartoon struck me, reminding me of the original impetus behind the Nonsense Album, and reflecting a certain sense of inexplicable magic that is part of why I make the music I make. Enjoy…

Forbes just put out its list of Top 100 Celebrities. There are 24 people on this list that I could not possibly identify. Many others whose names I've heard but very little else. Actually, I was hoping to get a higher number. I'm much more tuned in than I expected. Dang Golden Age of Television. Anyone who gets higher than 24 please post in…

Worked on Far Side again this evening. It's hard to tell what's right and what's wrong, what's beautiful and what's just too much. Time for bed…

If you have it, put on Stevie Wonder's I Believe When I Fall In Love and listen to the piano going into the chorus right at 1:13. If not, you'll just have to read this entry instead…

More work tonight on Far Side. I redid one of the verses and made it sort of stark. I tried some reversed harmonies, but immediately it sounded like I was trying to do Radiohead. The song is Thom Yorkey enough as it is…

I've been working for the last two days on "The Far Side of Town." It's so nebulous right now. I'm not even sure if that's what the song is called…

So I didn't get any work done on the album Thursday night. But I had a good reason, really! I swear…

Lovely rehearsal tonight for our mini-gig on Monday. Come on out; it'll be great…

So, after a long day of work, then a visit to the doctor about the soft-wrapped marble that my throat has turned into, and an attempt to make dinner without falling asleep, I tried to get down to work tonight. I started in on 4ths again, trying to make some sense of the weird groove I put together last night…

So I just spent another hour working on La Da Da Dee. The keen readers among you may remember that just yesterday, I proclaimed that song "done." But you can never underestimate the need to revise, to perfect, to tweak. I started by just making innocuous fixes here and there, cleaning up the timing of a piano part, adding quiet strings to…

And La Da Da Dee is done…

I've been working some more on La Da Da Dee. Cleaning up those bridge grooves, filling out the 3rd verse, trying to get the ups and downs right. I don't like programming drums for slower songs. It's too easy to subvert the groove with a misplaced fill. I just looped a basic 6/8 patten and recorded everything over it. Then when I find a moment…

Last night, I got down to business with the bridge on La Da Da Dee. I really like bridges. I like that feeling you get when everything's going along as expected, and then something starts to give, and you know you're off on a new journey. My music has always been about motion, about getting from one place to the next; departures and arrivals…

I know what you're thinking. I can just see each of you now, shaking your heads, saying "so much for schedules." "So much for daily updates." But it's not what it seems. Really. I've been ill. Dizziness, coughing, a smattering of fever. Even now, a little delirium persists…

Last night, I worked on that Perfect Moment bridge yet again. Sometimes I reach a point where I'm just throwing things together with almost no regard for what actually makes sense, and absolutlely none for context. But then I'll listen back later on and realize that I've done something new. That once I've veered from the path of trying to make…

Another day, another hour. I spent this one, once again, working on this new bridge section to Perfect Moment. I have only a glimmer of how it needs to go, a sort of epic lightness, that reflects, as Matty suggested to me the other day, the way my characters wait. When you're lost in your 20's, your waiting is the biggest thing you've got. …

You'd think that, after a long day of fixing and setting up stuff, two more hours of driver-related troubleshooting would kill a man's spirit. But guess what, Digidesign? Even though I had to reinstall your drivers twice, even though you made me reinstall the whole OS 10.4.9 Combo Update, and even though your goods still stubbornly and…

Alright, folks, it's on. I spent another hour troubleshooting drivers today, and I finally figured out what was wrong. Anyone out there using a Digi 002 or Digi 002 Rack, don't buy anything from Ximeta. They write really shitty software for their NDAS drives. I should have realized this when I first installed the software and got kernel panics…

I just got home from rehearsal with the Geniuses. Since we don't have a drummer anymore, it's just me, Matty (our bass player), and my sister Marie (who sings). Matty forgot his bass, so he played acoustic guitar…

One day in August 2005, in a rented flat in Scotland, with a rented laptop, I suddenly had something. The day before, all I had was things. Machines and cables. Cases that nearly didn't make it onto the plane. Cheap surge protectors found at the end of a long walk with a bad map. But that day (let's pretend it was a Thursday), that Thursday…

I started on my new schedule tonight. I taped some logs up on my wall for filling out dates and hours and what songs I worked on and all that good stuff. I decided on a minimum of 1 hour per weeknight and 2-3 per weekend day. By the time my mixing appointment rolls around, I'll have put in some serious hours, and hopefully this thing will be…