Lately, things has been kind of hectic because of the play. It takes up the majority of my time during the week. It’s going well, but I’m kind of worried because this week, I’m supposed to have everything ready. It just takes practice is all.

Recording has been going well. I have some exciting news. I’m selling my bass amp for $350 so that I can buy a mixer. I eventually want to get some condenser microphones, also. I recorded a song of Mike’s with him last Monday. It’s all guitars. We recorded the acoustic ones by plugging in directly from his acoustic-electric and used his Ibanez for the electric guitar, slapped a ton of reverb on it, and it sounded great. Then, today I went in and edited the whole thing to put each note he played right on time. It sounds pretty nice…

Other news is that on Friday night, I did my first recording with Deej and his mixer and drum mics. I did a little bit of recording acoustic guitar with the two overhead condensers. It sounded great. In two weeks, I’m recording with his equipment. I’m going to record Mike the rest of an EP to go along with the other song. It’s going to end up being my senior project. It’s pretty exciting!

Everything else has been good. Things with Olivia are awesome. Today, we loitered at Borders and Guitar Center, then we baked cookies together.

Last night, my dad sent me a link to a video blogger named Ze Frank. He’s soo good at it. I’m going to start trying to post daily and putting his video into each post. This first one is “how to procrastinate” and the second one is his actual post from today about Valentine’s day.

What a guy!

So, both today and yesterday were snow days. Yesterday I didn’t do much. I got some recording done. I redid the instruments in “Shelby-Doo”. If you want to see why I redo them then just listen to these… you should be able to hear the difference. I brought the key up in the new one because the old one was too low for my normal singing voice… it just kind of sounds like I’m talking.

Old…

New…

The main difference is just that I’m using a preamp now instead of miking an actual amp. It allows me to get a more full tone instead of just capturing one small part of the spectrum with a microphone. Also it has things like a compressor… which makes the clean guitar in the new one less clinky and more full and broad. Yes, the preamp has done wonders. Next, I’d like to get a small mixer and a couple of condensor microphones so that I can start recording live things and using acoustic more. I’m also considering sound proofing my room soon. It would make it look funny!

Today was Valentine’s Day and it was a great one. I made an excursion through the remnants of this week’s blizzard all the way 1.66 miles away to Olivia’s house. She met me half way though. =) We just chilled out all day. We watched X-men 3 and listened to tunes, danced, talked… you know… the whole shabang. It was a good snow day.

After the Colts/Patriots game, Jared and I started writing a new funk song about the exciting news! We recorded it this week and it turned out awesome! There’s a lot of filler time in it, but whatever. It’s got Wah, Funny Vocals, Guitar solos, and the first appearance of my little sister Katie in one of my songs. It was so fun to record!

Everything is hectic and amazing at the same time! The musical is starting to take up a LOT of my time. School is going okay, right now, it’s just getting stressful. I’m staying after school nearly every day to practice for the musical, and also starting to really stress about senior project. The great thing is that I finally have my driver’s license. It’s going to make all of this a lot easier, soon enough.

Senior Project is looking very bright, but this nine weeks in English has SUCKED so far. 80% of our grade is tests, and tests are my weekness in there, because when I read, I don’t soak in small details. I find it very wasteful of my time to be trying to remember tiny details about the book. I wish we could just have open theme discussion in class, but every time that happens, I get too deep for the rest of the class. We’re reading Frankenstein, by the way. It’s really good so far, but I’m a little bit behind on the reading, so I have to catch up this weekend.

In science, I’m starting to teach myself Chemistry, and there’s a small chance that Mrs. Sugden is going to start giving me Chemistry homework, and giving me my grade based on how I do with that stuff. I took their quiz over some material that I taught myself, and I picked up very quickly on it. I just need practice. I want to learn the periodic table inside and out.

I’ve also been talking to Olivia a lot more lately, and just hanging around with her at the musical practice. I really enjoy being around her. Don’t worry… people usually tell me to be careful with school whenever I start getting interested in a girl, but in the past, I’ve actually done a LOT better whenever I’m dating someone. It seems like it adds a little bit of stability to my schedule. I sleep more often, and I think that really helps me in school.