What Am I Doing Here?

Some have heard this story before, but I suppose that I will mention it here for the many that haven't. 

The Short Term Melody started as lyrics hurriedly scratched out on a napkin at a friends party some 6 years ago. From that song came others, all attempting to build upon the lessons learned (both musically and personally) from songs previous. In many ways, The Short Term Melody has been a personal experiment.

An Experiment in Song Writing.

For most of my musical "career," I have been a sideman, normally a lead guitarist or sometimes a bassist, and not the chief songwriter in a band. Naturally, early on my song writing output was very low, somewhere in the order of one or two songs a year. Following the purchase of an acoustic guitar, a 1955 Kay Archtop (pictured above, photo courtesy of Rachel Garcia) and the dissolving of Low Gun, where I played bass, I began to write songs more frequently. Though my first songs were not complex or lush lyrically or sonically, they represented my best abilities at the time, and ever since I have strived to push myself forward; to write and play to the best of my abilities at the time and actively improve in both departments.

An Experiment in Home Recording.
From the beginning I had to overcome many shortfalls of having a lack of recording equipment. In this blog, I will aim to show the recording process, and give little tricks and tips along the way. I am lucky to live in a day and age where a fairly professional sounding recording can be produced in the home, but despite the availability of such technology, it was only until recently I have been able to harness it.

I recorded "The Short Term Melody" demo (pictured right) during December 2005 and January 2006 using a $15 Audio Technica dynamic microphone straight into the sound card of my outdated PC, using Sound Recorder, the stock audio capture software all PCs come with. Since I could not really overdub, I had to place the microphone in a way that my voice and guitar were balanced in level, all on a single mono track. I then imported the track into Nero Wave Editor to do simple EQ and reverb. Any editing I did affected both the voice and guitar equally, since they were on the same track.

Surprisingly it didn't turn out half bad given the circumstances, and I passed out this 10 song CD at the open mics that I had just begun to perform at during the winter months of 2005 and 2006. And if you were wondering, I am not going to be giving out this CD again any time soon. Each subsequent recording represented a step forward in both recording quality, production, songwriting and instrumentation. "Tomorrow Was Yerterday" (2007) was the first project that I multitracked; using a Tascam 424 tape recorder. Then I did the "Help Wanted" (2008) split EP with friend and local Long Beach musician Sheryl Librojo using an outdated Cubase SX2 DAW, which allowed for much more options in both tracking and mixing. Finally, The Short Term Melody as a band recorded out latest release "Bumble" (2009) which is a culmination of everything that I have learned of recording, mixing and mastering up to this point.

Through it all, The Short Term Melody fundamentally is like how many bands are these days; an experiment in self sufficiency. And I suppose that all I was trying to say, ever so long-windedly was...
... I would like to share with you my little experiment of this do-it-yourself musical journey, and all the things that I learn along the way.