jmccartie

Delta Spirit: Recording a New Album

I left the East Bay last night and made the 1 hour drive up towards Napa/Sonoma/Santa Rosa to visit my old friends in Delta Spirit.  I arrived around dinner time.  Jon was talking on the phone with his lady, Matt was recording a vocal track, Brandon was nowhere to be found, and Kelly was making dinner.  Guess which one I settled in with first?  That's right -- the guy with the grub.

After a magical dinner of salad and spicy sausages, Kelly picked some mint from outside and made us all Mint Juleps. Then, we cruised over to the studio where Kelly overdubbed a guitar part.  Following this, it was Brandon's turn to lay down a booming single drum track.  Two problems:  1) Jon managed to break the single mallet they owned while recording another track earlier in the week.  2) Brandon's kick drum was a little out of tune.

Step 1: make a new mallet.  We toyed around with grabbing the mallet from a kick pedal, but that was a bit unwieldy to handle.  So we did what any rational musician would do -- we used a sock.  We grabbed a drum stick, Brandon donated one of his socks, and we duct taped that thing together.  Wah-lah!  Insta-mallet.

Step 2: we needed to tune the kick drum.  What's that you say? Tune a drum?  Why yes.  Drums produce actual notes when they resonate.  Don't look at me like that -- it's true.  I remembered an old trick from my glory days: headphones can be used for "reverse transduction."  Basically, you can use the actual speakers in the headphones to convert (transduce) the acoustic sounds into an electrical signal.  It's basically the reverse flow of what headphones are designed to do (side note: I've also seen this done for recording a kick drum once.  Rather than using a microphone, someone placed a Yamaha NS-10 speaker right next to the kick drum, and ran the output into the tape machine.  Crazy.)  So we placed the headphones in particular spots on the drum, then ran the headphone cable into a tuner.  We first put the drum into Eb -- the root of the key for the song.  Too high for such a big drum.  We dropped down to a 4th?  Too low and made the drum sound bleh.  Major 3rd below?  Perfect.

Here's a incredibly grainy, crappy cellphone clip I took of Brandon beatin' the drum:

I'm really excited for these new tunes: I think they represent the perfect balance of progression and improvement for them, along with sticking to the raw sound that people have come to love.

Good luck on the rest of the record, gents -- I can't wait to hear the finished product.

PHP's "strtotime" vs JAVA's ... nothing

PHP's "strtotime" function is one of the coolest core functions of the language.  I never really noticed how great it was until today.

At my company, we import date formats from customers and need to store them in MySQL format. ('Y-m-d h:m:s').  In PHP, you can pass strtotime just about anything and -- with the help of the date function -- convert that wiley timestamp to what you want.

Consider the following time formats:

• 2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00 (ISO 8601)


• Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200 (RFC 2822)


• Monday, January 1st


• tomorrow


• -1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds

Let's convert these to MySQL timestamps with PHP:

echo date('Y-m-d h:m:s', strtotime('2004-02-12T15:19:21+00:00'));
echo date('Y-m-d h:m:s', strtotime('Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200'));
echo date('Y-m-d h:m:s', strtotime('Monday, January 1st'));
echo date('Y-m-d h:m:s', strtotime('tomorrow'));
echo date('Y-m-d h:m:s', strtotime('-1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds'));

This automagically outputs:

2004-02-12 07:02:21
2000-12-21 06:12:07
2009-01-01 12:01:00
2009-02-12 12:02:00
2009-02-06 09:02:41

I remember the first time I can across strtotime and thought "wow - it will take in just about any format."  Clearly, there are some limits (I can't enter "orange" and get a date back) -- but needless to say, the function is simple and powerful.

Back to today at work.

A developer (we've recently moved to being an all-Java shop) tells me he has to write a custom date parser for ingesting and converting partner's date formats.  And every time we see a new date format, he has to add to his parser (then we have to build it, QA it, release it).

Poppy cock, I say!  Isn't there something in Java like strtotime?  Turns out?  No.

I did my googling, nothing.  Then I turned to Twitter.  Watch as we go from "But you *can* do that in Java!" to "oh, well, you'd have to be expecting a certain date format" quicker than you can say "ISO 8601."

• Java Friend #1: "you can do that simply: String time = "12:31:24"; DateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss"); String result = sdf.parse(time).toString();"


• Java Friend #2: "Won't SimpleDateFormat.parse do what you need?"


• Me, to both: "Thanks for the suggestions. All the sample code I see is massive compared to the one-liner "strtotime." Sigh. Ah well.""


• Java Friend #1 replies : "a one liner, but not as short as strtotime: System.out.println(new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss z").parse(t));""


• I direct message #1: "Will SimpleDateFormat accept multiple input date formats: ISO 8601, RFC 2822, MySQL Timestamp/Datestamp, etc.?"


• His reply:  "you need to know the date format coming into SimpleDateTime. What format is it?"


• Me: "There's the rub. Could be ISO 8601, RFC 2822, MySQL Timestamp/Datestamp, etc. Was hoping to not have to write for each possible..."


• Him: "you'll need to do something about the type of date strings you operating on to make an error free conversion"

<slaps forehead>

And there's the problem -- I don't want to have to build in a switch for every known date format.  If partner XYZ wants to enter a non-standard format ("-1 week 2 days 4 hours 2 seconds"?), we shouldn't need to refactor the code to parse this.

Now.  A disclaimer.  I am not a JAVA programmer.  I consider myself an intermediate PHP programmer.  Programming is not my job nor is it my dream to become a full-time developer.

However, I've done my google...and I've asked 4 different JAVA experts who all agree it can't be done as cleanly as strototime.

That being said?  Booooo to you Java.  Boooooo.

buy buy buy!

please buy my guitar amp.

reasons i'm selling:

1. i purchased it cos it was hard to be a singer and play lead guitar. too much fred astaire on stage hitting all those pedals. i would frequently lose track of where i was in a song and blank on the lyrics.


2. i'd rather have a smaller amp cos most of the gigs i'm playing now are with a single acoustic player and keys. easier to transport and easier to have at home to practice with.


3. i need money

thank you for your support.

UPDATE: Sold!

conchords

one of my first projects at MediaFLO was to go through a bunch of video clips from the 2004 Comedy Arts Festival and pick out my favorites for an upcoming demo.

these guys were doing their act and i loved it. so glad to see they've got a show now.

missed the plot

these are the ones that you try to avoid
they're dirty and scarred and they're unemployed
you'll love them as soon as they subscribe

these are the ones that try to attack
pushing their thoughts and you're bound to push back
a boycott, a blacklist, a blackball from our tribe

all i see is a sea full of sinners
no saints in this crowd, no heroes, no winners
just drunkards and fools like you and me

your club it seems so god-damned exclusive
four easy steps towards heaven elusive
your payment goes towards these TV screens

these aren't the words that i read for myself
i never owned a god i could put on my shelf
wrap him in the flag and pretend he's figured out

the back of your car says you don't belong
so why the hell do you care what goes on
if you hate it so much stay at home and wait for the end

this is not ... not how the story goes
building castles and trading blows
making enemies

this is not ... not how a lover loves
guarding the gifts from above
holding tight the keys

Love, love, love

foreigner = awesome?

so on a recent trip to the desert, my friends and i engaged in a odd game involving using lyrics for our conversation. it wasn't a set rule that every word spoken was a lyrics, but points were certainly given for using as many as you could.

based on the current topic, i managed to start singing the few lyrics that i knew of "Hot Blooded."

"I'm hot blooded, check it and see," I sang. The others chimed in: "I got a fever of a hundred and threeeeee..." Then, of course, silence...as those were the only lyrics we knew. To be completely honest, I think it went more like: "Hot blooded, . I GOT A FEVER ."

Regardless, the song quickly became old after a few times through this short section and I was asked to stop. But to keep the laughs going, I decided I should sing the opposite of hot...

"Your as cold as ice," I seethed. "You're willing to sacrifice our love." My closed fist became my microphone -- the cars in front of us on the freeway became Shea Stadium. The sad part was, none of us knew who sang either of these songs!! Once we returned from our trip, I was determined to fill in this gaping hole in my musical knowledge. Wouldn't you know it -- it was the same band! Foreigner!

Not to be rude, but I (along with many of my friends) would put Foreigner into the same grouping along with Boston, Chicago, and Journey. I can't explain exactly why this is, but at some point or another everyone was SURE that "Hot Blooded" or "Cold As Ice" belonged to one of these bands.

I think it has something to do with these songs coming out in our grade school to middle school years ... the time when music was defined by the radio. You didn't really know the bands, you just knew the lyrics. (I put "Maneater" in that category for sure. I remember singing it when i was 5 or 6 years old and not knowing what I was saying...but thinking it odd there was a song on the radio about canibalism).

After setting "Cold As Ice" to my default ringtone, I further determined myself to get a hold of Foreigner's Greatest Hits record (all bands listed above certainly had to have a Greatest Hits record). But before I got the chance, I decided to get outside on a Sunday afternoon to play some tennis.

The game basically involved 4 men trying to relive their tennis glory days by pounding away at a fuzzy ball, and getting angry at the fact that the shot they planned for in their mind didn't come true. Odd that we all expected to play well...Knowing that my highest claim to fame in the tennis world was receiving the "Most Inspirational Player" award my senior year, I knew I could not rely on my skill alone. I huddled up with my partner and started frantically pointing at the other players and certain holes in their defenses. I explained to my partner: "I'm not really going to say anything here -- I just want it to look like we have a plan. It'll totally throw them off."

I backed away from my partner and prepared to serve. "What was that?" yelled one of my opponent's from across the court. I smiled and began to sing: "Head games..." (again, silence followed since I didn't know the rest of the lyrics...but I had nailed the melody!)

Wouldn't you know it...as I scanned the track list this morning of the 20-track Greatest Hits record..."Head Games" -- track number 9.

Amazing. Despite not knowing the name of their band, Foreigner had managed to write such catchy tunes with such memorable lyrics as to make me recall 3 of their 20 greatest hits during everyday occurrences. These were melodies and one-line-lyrics that were stored away somewhere in the recesses of my mind, but were recalled so quickly because they fit the real-life situation I was involved in. Amazing lyricists, these Foreigner guys are.

Granted, I can't foresee myself singing "Dirty White Boy" anytime soon, but hey...at least I've expanded my arsenal of one-line lyrics. Now I'm ready for another real-life situation in which my knowledge of classic 80's bands will bring joy and laughter to all that surround me.

i laughed so hard i started crying

wave o' the finger, Swedish Idol. And Sebastian Karlsson ... seriously. Don't mess with good music.

Derek Webb Interview

a little excerpt from the article on Derek Webb in the latest edition of Relevant.

RM: What does it mean on your new album when it says don’t label my music?

DW: It’s more of a personal liberty type comment, more than put a label on my music that I listen to so that I can discern between what is safe and right and what is dangerous and wrong. The whole secular/Christian thing, which is a total fiction, rather than just teaching me to listen to the Spirit and have the Spirit guide me into the truth and learn how to discern truth and beauty and find it in all kinds of places, which is more of the Francis Schaeffer model. Discern truth and beauty and don’t put your faith in categories.

Don’t let your local Christian bookstore do your thinking for you and believe that everything they have there for sale is good and spiritually beneficial to you. If anything, we have proven that the Church unfortunately is identified with really poor art. The Church certainly does not have the market cornered on beauty. A lot of what we do is not very beautiful. The art we make is not very good. A lot of the songs I have heard on Christian radio are just outright misrepresentations of the character of God.

I think you have to learn to discern and look elsewhere and say, “I need to learn how to engage with a God everywhere I can find truth and beauty, regardless of the intention of the maker of that art.” I really believe that is a more biblical worldview. It also keeps us from being people who live in fear. There is no room for living in fear. There is no reason to be afraid. There is no reason to be fearful of secular music. We should learn how to chew on the meat, spit out the bones, to discern the truth and beauty, to commend that rather than to be just completely fearful and put all our security in these categories that don’t mean anything. It’s a dangerous way to live.

first shot at a decent piece

this is new for me. very new sound and i'm having to study lots of other music to know how to write for it. no pedals, no 18" A-customs to hit...just layers. here we go...

slow down

You never cared for the windows and stairs
But the rooms with the views always treated you fair
And now all I can see
Are the leaves and the trees

Parking was difficult but similar medical
A raise with good pay and it's our lucky day
But you lost every year
Pushing paper and fear

Slow down slow down
Let me catch up with you
Slow down slow down
If you keep moving too fast
Nothing good will last

This place is a riot the kids won't keep quiet
Make them watch TV till they're falling asleep
And then it's my time
My wife and my wine

Slow down slow down
Let me catch up with you
Slow down slow down
If you keep moving too fast
Nothing good will last

Each deserving appliance and business alliance
We watch the balances trading allowances
And every dream that was fresh in my mind
Has now faded away with each bill that I pay