New CD for download: Yellowgold - The Mellower

Yesterday saw me finally release a new album under the Yellowgold moniker! It's available for download and is completely FREE. It's being offered in a number of un-DRM'd (lossy and lossless) audio file formats so you can choose your favorite method.



Yellowgold is the name of a solo project I began way back in 1992. My buddy John Kuehne and I were playing a lot of music together, and both of us individually picked up a Tascam 4-track tape recorder. From there, we amassed a huge collection of master tapes filled with collaborative music as well as our own solo projects.

Each of us named our solo projects (his was The Fabulous Medicine Men) and we even went as far as to give them fictional histories and discographies, which we later went through and filled like requests. To this day, I've never finished the number of "albums" listed in Yellowgold's fictional discography. For the record, this album wasn't actually on that list either.

The Mellower began around two years ago when I purchased a new acoustic Ibanez guitar. If you are interested in spurring your creativity, buy new equipment! Works every time.

Then, over the course of the next few years, I'd record my own jam sessions to mini-disc. Later I'd sit down with the jam sessions, pick out the gems, and save them to audio files on my computer. This became my idea bank for The Mellower.

Anytime I felt inspired to produce a new track in Pro Tools, I'd pull open my idea bank and thumb through the ideas (of which there ended up being many!) If something caught my ear, I'd begin on that project. I tweaked these songs continuously over the course of the last eight months. I'd burn the playlist to CD anytime I had a lot of chores to run to get a sense of the current state of all songs. Also, I'd move the most recent playlist to my iPod Nano before going on a big trip with airplane time in order to listen in that noisy environment, writing notes about things that struck me during each listen. Then I'd incorporate those changes when I made it back home. I did this at least six times for The Mellower. I could definitely say that I am sick of listening to this album!

But I am extremely happy with the final result. At a certain point, you just have to pull the trigger when it comes to releasing something like this... because you can be too much of a perfectionist and never think it's "ready."

I used Bandcamp.com to host the album. Brent Kelley, a good friend and ex-drummer of Freak in a Jar, used it to distribute his own music, Laengthengurthe, and I was blown away at how clean the site is, and the amazing download options given to the listener. They make it easy to set up links to your Paypal account in the case that someone wants to give you a few dollars for your music (and people have in the case of The Mellower! Totally unexpected, but pretty awesome to say the least.)

Now, to move on to other projects. Does it ever end? Thankfully, NEVER! ;)

It's a remix release trifecta!

Just cuz I haven't updated in a while doesn't mean nothing is happening on the music front. Lot's to report:

I completed a total of three remixes of The Messenger tracks last year. It turns out all three of my remixes have been chosen for a new 2600 Recordings release filled with nothing but The Messenger remixes! My remixes take up almost half of the entire release! Very exciting, and I've never had a release on 2600 Recordings either.

Ivan-I and I have started and nearly completed (in less than 8 hours of work, I might add) a new track to be release on Jah Love Recordings. This is one of those "practically writes itself" type of tunes, with a super solid house foundation that is uber-mixable, and a verse/chorus/verse/chorus vocal structure. I normally don't enjoy working with full vocal lines cause they tend to be cheesy sounding vocals, but we secured some seriously sick dub/reggae vocals that sound awesome with our track. This could possibly be our most refined track, and could be a turning point in our production together. I absolutely can't wait for this one to see the light of day.

Finally, Sufi Life has seen its official release on Tarantic Records. Ivan-I and I finished this remix months ago so its nice to see it finally get its time in the sun.

Farmhaus Records Remix finished (finally)

Well, it took me... like... forever to finish my remix for Farmhaus Records (which is something I try NEVER to do, especially when a new label is asking for music... it's best to make, oh I don't know, a good impression, perhaps?) But Mr. Jones was extremely patient and gave me the room I needed to get the track done right.

Basically, when one of my hard drives crashed months back, the data on the drive was unrecoverable and I hadn't backed up my projects for a little over a month when it happened. I had started that remix within that month and I was nearing completion at the time of the crash. So all in all, I lost all of the work on the remix. I now have a Time Machine backup drive that backs up all of my data regularly so this type of failure won't happen again.

Starting up the remix had me a crossroads. I had already spent so much time with the sounds at the time of the crash, and starting over wasn't very appealing. I was ready to move on and instead, I had to start over. So the question then became "Do I try to recreate what I had done" or "Do I start fresh and take it in a different direction?" I opted for the latter approach which ended up being the right decision.

I'm extremely happy with the result. I'm not at all happy with the time it took for me to wrap it up, though. But what can you do. I didn't want to submit a sub-par remix, and Mr. Jones understood that as well.

I'm not sure right now when the release date for the track, entitled "Ambre Dor" will be, but I will most certainly keep you posted. And a big BIG thanks to the folks at Farmhaus for the opportunity to try something new.

Too many headphones to choose from

So I sit down today with the goal of picking a pair of all-around headphones for production. I had already decided that I wanted the ATH-M50s. Closed back design for sound isolation (good for recording vocals), excellent specs and reviews. I've always really liked the quality of Audio Technica products.

Well, I did what you shouldn't do (but are want to do when you have access to something as vast as the internet) and I started searching for runners up. This led to a 2-hour scour of around 10 different pairs. Suddenly, my quick purchase turned into an afternoon of research. By the end, I was so overwhelmed with options, I nearly gave up!

But dammit, I have some unspent birthday money (awww thanks mom and dad!) and I'm not leaving until I've spent it on something. Here's what I found:

Audio Technica ATH-M50

The phones that spawned my search for the perfect all-around cans. True sound, with frequency response of 15hZ to 28kHz. Everything I read claimed comfort for long sessions, but something tells me they match the comfort I get with my current phones, Pioneer SE-DJ5000. They look very similar, and man, I cant stand to wear those for more than a 15 minutes tops. I probably had my finger on the "Buy It Now" button about 5 different times.

AKG K-240 MKII
Everything I read about these emphasizes the extreme comfort. Man, this one was tempting. Only thing is, it has a semi-open ear-cup which means leakage of the sound. When tracking vocals, this leaked sound can end up in the recorded signal. BUT, some vocalists like this open cup style because it allows them to hear themselves outside of the just the signal in the headphones. This intrigues me as I am sometimes tempted to pop an ear out of the cans so I can hear my voice dry. Also, these come with two cords (coiled and straight) which can be really handy. Frequency range of 15Hz to 25kHz.

SONY MDR-7509
What more can be said about these. The Sony MDR-7509s are an industry standard. I've seen these headphones all over the production facilities at CNET. Great for field recording. Flat, true sound with frequency range of 5Hz to 30kHz. I've worn some that had been broken in over the course of who knows how long, and the cups had started to flatten out, making them a bit less comfy. But they sound fantastic.


Sennheiser HD-280
These sound like a fantastic budget buy for tracking purposes. They fit snug on the ears, and are rated high for isolation at 32 dB reduction. I've worn these at CNET a few times as well and they were fine. I wasn't astounded by the sound quality though. I'm in the market for great dual purpose headphones and something tells me these are better for tracking than no-nonsense mixing.


Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO
A last minute recommendation by kmbrown90, these sport a super comfy looking fabric ear cup. Reasonable isolation at 18 dB, wide frequency response at 5Hz to 35kHz. Dammit -- Coiled cable... I would so much prefer a straight cable, but I can deal with that. And man, I want to sleep wearing these ear phones thanks to that damned comfy looking fabric ear cup! Is that so wrong?


What do you think? I'm leaning towards either the Beyerdynamic or the AKGs.

Blessed Dub licensed to DJ Gianni N mix!

Got an awesome email today from Amit Shoham of Tarantic Records with the news that Ivan-I and I's original track "Blessed Dub" has been licensed for a double mix CD on Indigo. Sweet!

Not quite the honeymoon I envisioned

I arrived to my desk Friday morning following the studio recording of Buzz Out Loud to find a huge box blocking my seat. The Mac Pro I had ordered a mere two days prior was delivered, waiting to distract me from my day's duties. On top of that I had a dentist appointment late in the day across town, so I had plenty to keep me from going home right then and starting to tinker with it.

I was very anxious to get this bad boy home and start the long process of data swapping from my old G4, and re-installation of the software I use the most. Perhaps a little bit too anxious.

I popped open both machines to start doing the transfer of drives. The drives are so easy to install in to the Mac Pro. You simply screw the drives onto a platter (four screws) and then the platter slides into the side of the machine. No power or data cord to hook up manually. It's done automatically as you slide the platter in it's home. Awesome!

When I went to turn on the Mac Pro, I was greeted with dead silence, followed by the internal fan turning on so loudly, my wife could hear it form the other room in the house. I was perplexed. Then I smelled the burning. ACK! Power off. Did I just get a rotten Apple?

With the help of Allen099 on Plurk (oh and BTW, Plurk FTW cause this dialogue was a lifesaver for me!), I began to investigate the problem. I removed all drives and the Mac Pro powered up as expected. Well THAT'S good! I then dropped each drive in individually. The computer started the boot up process with all but one of the drives. I examined the drive only to see that one of the connection points was twisted, touching another point on the connection. I fixed that and threw the drive into the Mac Pro again. Boot up success!!!!

...except, now that I let the Mac Pro boot up to the desktop, I noticed that not one of those fancy drives actually mounted.

QUEUE "Jason is just smart enough to get himself into trouble" music.

When I took the drives out this time, I noticed that they all had twisted connection points in exactly the same areas (though none of them were touching other connections as they had in the drive above, so there was no shorting out occurring as a result.) This made me ask the question I SHOULD HAVE asked before I started installing the drives in the Mac Pro in the first place. Do these machines use the same type of hard drive?

See, the G4 takes an ATA drive... in my case, I have Ultra ATA drives. I've discovered in the past that ATA drives are backwards compatible with other types of ATA drives. The Mac Pro uses the new standard, Serial ATA (or SATA). Having never put my hands on a SATA drive, I never saw the difference in connectors. I just assumed that SATA was like all other ATA drives: Backwards compatible.

Also, because of the Mac Pro's "slide it in and forgetaboutit" drive installation, I never actually saw with my own eyes that the connectors inside the computer didn't fit the drives that I was installing. They slide into place, and all seemed ok (obviously). But all was not.

So now I just have to pick up some new SATA hard drives for my new machine. It's probably due time anyway.

Oh yeah. Remember that burning smell? Upon further inspection of one drive that I still haven't been able to mount, I found a burnt chip on the controller board! So my only recourse is to either use a data recovery service (that costs an arm and a leg...) or I find another drive of the same brand/model and swap controller boards in the hopes that it works long enough for me to get my data off of there.

The drive happens to be my music projects drive. Luckily, I backed up all my data from that drive one month ago so I only lost the last 30-40 days worth of work. Unfortunately, Ivan-I and I started a track last Thursday. That work is gone. Oh, and I was near completion of a track for a new label, Farmhaus Records. That's gone too. Otherwise, i have the rest backed up (thankfully because of these experiences!) This just gives me a reason to tear into a music project on it right away to meet the deadlines. What better way to get used to using a new computer then under the fire?

What have I learned? Read and understand all (and I do mean ALL) of the specs ahead of time! DER!

This won't be happening again. Why? I went out and bought an external enclosure for my 750 gig Seagate UATA drive so I can still use it with my Mac Pro as a (you guessed it!) Time Machine backup drive! Ahhhh, backup bliss.

Octocore beast! What the power?

A few days ago I officially ordered a new Mac Pro, with a total of eight cores. It's hard for me to even touch my G4 tower now. It's like the second I sent off the purchase email, my desire to even write music with my current computer dropped off the face of the earth.

But I must move on cause, let's face it, I have more projects in my queue now than I've ever had at one time. I have a handful of remixes in the works on Night Drive Music right now, a remix that is nearing completion for Farmhaus Records, and I'm starting a new remix with Ivan-I for Tarantic Records tonight.

The thing is, my current computer can do what you need it to do. I just have to be creative in how I do certain things. Processor intensive plug-ins and effects need to be written to disk as opposed to leaving them all playing in real-time. Otherwise, my computer chokes to a standstill and there's nothing that breaks your creative flow quite like that.

There is, however, something to be said for making a choice and sticking with it. In the days of computers that have eight freaking cores to manage the most processor intensive applications, it would be easy to keep everything streaming live within a project and never make a solid, concrete decision for the track because "why should you if you don't need to." Sometimes it's better to limit yourself. Make a decision, burn it to disk, and move on. Done. Boom. It makes the whole process (and the amount of time taken to produce) a heck of a lot easier in the long run.

Sure, you might have access to hundreds of plug-ins, and they may all do super-duper crazy things. But have you ever spent a lot of time with one plug-in? Used it regularly to the point where you learn it's strengths, it's weaknesses? Then it becomes a tool that you can use effectively when the time is right. All of that power and all of that freedom makes it easy to learn a bunch of things a little bit. Or leave a bunch of decisions in eternal limbo... and always with the same reason: "Cause you can."

I'll certainly have to fight that urge when I get the new computer in a few weeks time. Learn from the limitations that I already work with regularly, and apply that ethos to my new production experience. Cause let's face it. Just because you can doesn't always mean you should.

Funky Moves starting off strong

Ivan-I and I's latest original track on Tarantic Records, Funky Moves, has already made it into the Stompy Top 100 - Deep. Currently it's sitting at 34, and it's still only in pre-release! Awesome to scan the list and see that it's on par with offerings by Johnny Fiasco, Inland Knights, King Kooba and Jason Hodges. I'm looking forward to the official release this Thursday.

Some updates to the site... and more music!

What a digi-tastically productive Saturday. I spent a bunch of time on the site. You probably won't notice much, but I brought the Releases section back up to date. Added my Twitter feed to the front page (big deal, but it makes things look a little neater).

I also uploaded a 192kbps MP3 and FLAC version of Difference Engine for free download via my Music page. A new addition to the music downloads page is an old release of mine called An Intense Experience of Light and Sound V. I. This was one of my first compilations of electronic compositions and... well, you can tell. But I hold it dear to my heart. If you like the big beat sound that was so happ'nin at the end of the 1990's, you might find a track or two worth listening to.

As for current production news, Funky Moves is set to release on June 5th, 2008 on Tarantic Records. Stompy has a pre-release of the 4-track EP on sale already! Check it out. Ivan-I and I did the original. We also co-produced a remix with Adnan Sharif (aka DJ Adnan).

I have submitted my remixes for Mr. Jones' Cut One as well as Marc Cotterell's Tiz to Night Drive Music for release sometime this year. More on that when I find out a release date. I am cranking away on another remix for Night Drive. My remix of The Messenger's On the Edge of Love should get a release by the end of 2008, I'd guess. Night Drive has a release schedule set far into the future at this point, so I wouldn't be surprised if it actually hits sometime next year instead. (I'm just happy to be a regular contributor!)

And finally, I ran across an opportunity to remix a track for a new label called Farmhaus Records. The label takes a very techy, melodic approach. They also like the minimal, which has me stoked to no end. I'm not counting eggs before they hatch, so no more on this until I actually get a sample pack and start to churn out some tunes as a result.

Polyphonic audio editing by Melodyne

One of the best tools in my small arsenal of plug-ins is Celemony Melodyne.  I was writing tunes for Ed Goldfarb of Madcap Labs for a few radio spots at the time and he envisioned the need to do some pitch shifting with it at the time so he asked that I get a copy.  I got it as a student discount so it didn't put me out much.  Ultimately, I never got the chance to use it in the ways that Ed envisioned.


But i find myself turning to Melodyne for at least a part of nearly every track I write now.  Basically, Melodyne is an amazingly sick pitch/time shifting tool.  It can scan, for example, a monophonic sample (or a whole bass part for that matter) and convert it into a piano roll with each note existing on the piano roll seperate from each other.  What does this enable?  Real-time editing of a static wave file as if it were a series of midi-notes.  This is so completely useful, it's disgusting.

A few years back they updated Melodyne to work with polyphonic sound.  Essentially you could time stretch polyphonic material out as far as your little heart desired, and you would hear no side effects of the stretching.  Just pure, pristine stretched sound which, before I heard it for myself, I didn't believe.  This type of stretching is SO useful in creating your own sounds out of nearly nothing.

Try this:  Find a 20 second sample on a CD... atmospheres are AWESOME for this.  Bring this atmosphere into Melodyne, then stretch the audio file out so that it becomes a 10 minute sample.  With Melodyne's immaculate time stretching abilities, it creates an amazingly entrancing, evolving pad out of the sound.  A sound designer's dream, really.

So the big news comes by way of an email I received from Celemony this afternoon.  At the International Musikmesse in Frankfurt, Germany, Celemony displayed a new feature to come out in the Fall called Direct Note Access.  This feature allows you to scan a polyphonic audio file (for example, a 6 string guitar playing a soliloquy) and break EACH NOTE out on the piano roll.  You can then do things like make a minor guitar chord a major guitar chord?!  You could mute certain strings and allow others to come through.

Ladies and gents, this is something I have dreamed of but never figured I'd see.  How the hell do these people do this stuff?!  it blows me away.

Take a look at the video to see what I mean.  This is truly revolutionary in the world of professional audio, and I really hope Melodyne gets some much deserved time in the spotlight for figuring this out.  I wouldn't be surprised if these guys get bought out by some of the other big guns just for the insight into the technology.  Mindblowing.  Pieces everywhere.