So anyway… The other day I before I got to feeling worse I managed to finish up converting Bloody Mary. I also made a new Piano version of it which I will be posting on the site later today.  I’m not 100% sure of when I done it, but Angel Incarnate has been finished now too.  I may of done this before I worked on Black Misery, but I’m not sure. Being sick has thrown me off a bit.  I also have a Piano version of Angel Incarnate.  By now I’m sure you can see the trend here. I’m planning on doing a piano version of every song if I can. 

I’m going to try to finish converting at least 2 more songs today, but I’m not sure which ones yet.  I’m thinking of trying to go on and throw in Born Into Christianity so we can practice it more. I’ll post again later today or sometime soon with more updates.

With the exception of level mixing Black Misery and Angel Incarnate are both finished. A Place currently only contains an acoustic guitar track.  A vocal melody will be written for the song when we decide to practice it, but we are not sure if we will add more instruments to the song or not.  A Place was originally written for WYRM and adapted over to the MK Musical Project that only used 1 acoustic or keyboard.  I personally feel it’s a little under orchestrated in it’s current form, and would like to at least brain storm on ideas to fill it out a little more. 

Today we are going to be working on converting more songs over to the GP6 format.  We are planning to do the fully written songs first, and then head into the mostly written area.  This process is going to take a while, but we feel that we are refreshed enough to get a lot of it done.  I’ll post more later on when I’ve finished up for the day.

I’ve also posted an exported GP6 demo of the song on our audio page in the media section. It’s been brought to my attention that the audio no longer works if using Google Chrome so do your self a favor and get Firefox. In my opinion it’s by far the best browser out there anyway.

Anyway, I’m gonna take the rest of the night off, and enjoy some video games.

We really had a lot of files. We deleted probably about 1,000 to 2,000 duplicate and out of date files already, but we decided to go on and get the file structure setup instead of continuing to delete files.  Every day now we are going to go weed through at least one directory in attempts to reduce our archive from around 35,000 files to something more easily managed.  Yes, I did say 35,000 files, but anyway on to the other parts of our update. UPDATE: I was wrong that’s 40,000 files!

One of the main reasons we wanted to do a restructure and file weeding is we upgraded to Guitar Pro 6 for our Notation Software.  While I have very mixed feelings on the program, it was the best thing to do.  After testing out things and learning the new format I am very confident our backing tracks will sound amazing and fit perfectly with our music and tones.

However, there are a few very shitty updates that took the program backwards from GP5, but overall there’s only one thing I really hate about the program.  In GP5 you could switch instruments via instrument mixer right in the middle of a track. So writing or playing along with a song was extremely easy to do as you didn’t have to watch different tracks in the middle of a song.  Now in GP6 you have to put new instruments on a different track.

For anyone lost… When a guitarist playing an electric guitar through an amp wants to switch sounds they step on a box to change from clean to distortion or cut on different effects. It’s still only one guitarist, but the program now acts like you have a different guitarist for every single change other than pickup position basically. This was a very stupid decision on the GP company’s part.

Anyway, let me stop rambling about that. Due to this new format in GP6 we have to take every single one of our songs and tweak every thing about it to get it to work right.  I don’t mind as I love playing with the editor, and working on music all the time.  We have decided to go on and convert what we have of the main originals and covers that we are playing as they are. However, as we come to songs we are looking at them, and figuring out our grand plan for them.  That takes us to… Remembering…

I just happened to pull up Remembering as the first song to convert. I was trying to think of something with more than one tone for a single guitar so I could get the hang of doing the conversions.  While doing the conversion, and tweaking the hell out of the score, I just had string ensembles playing in my head. I know that I don’t want anything overpowering at all in this song, but I’ve find some keys / synth string parts that I’m loving.  For now the keys are following along just adding a little extra padding to the acoustic guitar track, which really really sets it up nicely.  I will definitely be doing an acoustic and strings version without the clean, second, guitar part.

I am also going to be throwing in some vocal melody ideas as I progress through the song.  I already have pre-existing melodies for the first verse and chorus, so it shouldn’t take much to finish them up.

Woah.. Anyway, I’ve been on here writing for almost 30 minutes now.  I need to get back to writing. I’m going to be trying to do shorter updates at a faster pace from now on. Trying to tell about 4 or 5 days worth of stuff really makes me long winded.

\m/ Keep it Metal!

I just got everything installed back onto it yesterday, so today it was time for some testing practice style. This morning I pulled out the trusty ole’ silver EC, and started weeding through some OLD stuff. I said to myself “hell man I’m gonna play some of this old shit just for fun.” Boom! Tons of fun and memories came flooding out.

The set consisted of:

• Cold
• Dark Soul
• Born Into Christianity
• The Link
• Lunacy
• The Start
• Waiting (Reaper)
• Tired Of This
• Cycle Of Sins

Like I said old shit, but damn it was fun.  I ended that practice with Cycle Of Sins, which is a huge grooving song.  I admit I omitted several parts, mostly solos, because I just didn’t remember anything about how they went.  It was still great to jam along with those backing tracks.

Of course you know this means something.  I’m going to get busy and write some vocal melodies for Jessica for all of those songs plus The Madness and Remembering.  I have a lot ahead of me, but I’m back to getting that amazing feeling when I write something.  I can’t ignore that. 

With the exception of a very few, every song we have is considered to be in a rewrite or additional writing stage. When the songs are complete enough we will try to do videos of them. I usually rush videos out, because I get so damn excited about playing the song for some reason.  I wish just once I could capture a video of how I really play. Videoing things just make it so weird for me. 

We may have yet another practice later today, but I’m not sure yet. If we do you know I will post about it.

So this morning I get up early early, and paint my 2nd tier for my pedal board. I let it dry for about 2 hours. While I was letting it dry I looked up some Avenged Sevenfold stuff that Jessica is wanting me to learn for as covers. I couldn’t wait the full 4 it said to wait on the paint can. I threw some paper down on the table, cut on some music, and started laying down the velcro top.

Boom my hard drive with all the music I listen to while I work died on me. Pissed me off. Tried running test on it while I finished up laying the velcro. What should of only taken me an hour tops took 3 hours, because of the damn hard drive going out. However, I finished laying the velcro about noon, and fixed the velcro fasteners to the feet of the tier, so it would be removable too.

I got my wires in place and placed it down with great ease. Ah shit! it was rocking I thought I had miscalculated something. I went on and put the pedals on and hooked them up, and then decided to try placing the power supply in a different place. Well look at that! The damn ethernet cable from my PODxt Pro was under the middle leg right in the center. I worked the cable out from under the leg and BOOM! it worked and set perfect! Damn I love this thing!

Ethernet cable? you ask. Yes, Line 6 uses ethernet cables to hook foot boards to their heads, racks, and other devices. Look up Gibson Magic for more very interesting ehternet cable madness. Using a “Magic” guitar you can go as far as to amp up, effect, record, or do anything you want with each individual string! As the saying goes “That is some shit right there!”

So since around noon I’ve been playing guitar, and having band practice by myself. Jessica isn’t feeling too well today. So I mainly played around and re-tweaked my pedals since I had hit knobs during the modifications. I also rearranged the order I placed my pedals in, and it actually worked out great this way.

Finally I got around to song practice.  I pulled up some backing tracks in guitar pro and the set was…

1. So Cold (x2)
2. The Demon Within
3. Carnival Of Horror
4. The Madness (x2) : Re-Write
5. The Madness (x8)

After playing around with The Madness twice I decided to finish up re-writing the solo. Once I finally got that done an hour later I decided to try slowing the fastest parts from 160 to 140, and much to my amazement both Jessica and I loved it slower.  After the new version was finished I practiced getting the new timing down better. I finally got it right around take 6.  The video we recorded is take 8. 

Unfortunately my amp had made it close to 100 degrees in here, and my fingers couldn’t take anymore today.  So I’m out for the day. Hopefully it’ll be cool enough to do something else tomorrow. 

See ya!

I’m experimenting with two different ideas for adding a second tier to my pedal board  so i can access my back row of pedals over my huge line 6 controller board.  I love the thing, but I can’t turn anything else, but my wah and tuner on. I’m going to experiment with some other setups as well when I pick out the best option for the second tier, but I think I got it pretty much the best way I can get it. 

Oh well off to work some more on it!

The more I work on the songs the more I’m leaning towards not using tremolo bridges at all. Even if it means rewriting solos or parts it’s worth it.  I’m a pretty damn good guitar tech as long as I don’t have to fix the electronics. Setting up a guitar properly is no problem, but with aging tremolo bridges it gets harder and hard to keep them in tune.  The one thing I really hate is doing a pull up on a FR bridge and the whole fucking guitar going out of tune beyond quick fix tuning. Hell with that shit.

So far I’ve used 2 guitars, my Gibson Les Paul and my ESP MH400,  during the last 4 practices. Only on the first one did I use the MH400, although I absolutely love that guitar. It has my active EMGs and there’s nothing better for metal. That’s right to anyone who says different THERE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN AN EMG PICKUP FOR METAL! lol in the words of my good friend Don, “Yeah, Cornflakes!” Anyway, as I was saying before I started rambling… My Les Paul is just doing a wonderful job in all tunings on all of these songs.  Now soon I will be throwing in my Dean Inferno V, and 7 String Ibanez Strat. 

I am dying for a new guitar pedal that will make life much easier as well. I want a drop tune pedal! The way it stands we are playing songs in 5 different 6 string tunings as well as using a 7 string guitar too.  I even through in a 6th & 7th 6 string tuning sometimes when I’m just messing around.  This one pedal would let me use 2 guitars or even just one if I wanted to play every single one of the songs that are on 6 stringers.

Anyway here’s the practice list from today:

1. The Madness
2. Remembering
3. The Unforgiven
4. Nothing Else Matters
5. Fade To Black
6. Nemo
7. The Demon Within
8. So Cold
9. Enter Sandman
10. Master Of Puppets

Oh well that’s all for today. Gonna check out one of my favorite local guitar stores in a little bit. Even the heat can’t keep me down anymore! 

So we didn’t really get to do much yesterday due to having to do other things, but we did manage to get in a bit of practice on the song The Madness.  I just happened to feel like playing it so it’s the song we worked on.  I am going to be rewriting the solo of the song a little bit, but trying to keep the main overall structure of it.  I have tried several completely new solos in it’s place before, but I still find the elements of the original to be the best.

Later today we’ll be cranking up again, but this time we are hoping to have a little more time to play.  30 minutes yesterday just wasn’t enough.

As you should know if you’ve read anything from the last few days, I’ve been working my ass off getting things back in working order. The only problem is the heat. I think there’s a little bit of Hell protruding into the studio this time of year.  I’m sitting here now in the studio with it at least 95 degrees in here.  Thanks to a box fan and some cooler morning hours I’ve been able to get all of this work done.

I’ve cleaned up the studio computer, updated this website, and done tons of other stuff as well.  Aside from the U.P. work that I have to do tomorrow I will be spending a few hours tomorrow, Saturday, and Sunday hopefully getting in some good practice time.  I’m going to be working on The Demon Within, Nothing Else Matters, The Unforgiven, Fade To Black, So Cold, and The Madness probably. I can’t wait to get back into my practice mode, because I have so much fun. It’s like I lose myself completely when I’m just practicing my favorite solos or jamming on some heavy riffage.

Hopefully, tomorrow or Saturday I will be able to get around to modding my pedal board.  I hate not being able to press the damn pedals with ease. 

Well, it’s way too hot to be trying to sit in here much longer so I’m off of here for now.