Thought Sausage

Spent the weekend in the Quad Cities ( with Megan). My roadbike was along with me for the trip but since I A. Forgot to bring a pump device with the right size and B. It decided to rain all Sunday (today, well yesterday technically), I didn't get a ride in. Pity really.

Good times all around. I stayed with my parents. Their house is in a constant state of evolution. Since I was there last, they installed hard wood floors, painted walls and my dad's rather sizable car collection grew by one BMW that has a computer that basically makes big brother look like a red headed step cousin. Holy shit cars are smart now. Funny thing, nobody ever seems to see the house in a state of flux. My cousin noted that everytime he's there, something new will have been done, and plans are laid for the next big overhaul, yet nobody ever sees the house in-between projects. Everything is always pristine. Weird..

We took in all the usuals. One of the cool things about the Quad Cities is the Genghis Mongolian BBQ which as disgusting as it sounds, is actually my favoritist restaurant in all the land. May god have mercy on those poor cooks if Horowitz ever goes there. That $9.99 bottomless bowl will cost them an arm and a leg. AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME. Why there aren't any mongolian bbq's in Chicago within my sphere of knowledge is beyond me, as I would gladly drive to any neighborhood in the city to eat @ one (like, I'd even go to Garfield Park). Must be a suburban thing...

Am still taking baby steps back into music. Today I learned that I thoroughly hate LIne 6's version of recording software. The scenes (mixing/sequencing) don't like, sync up out-of-the-box which seems, I dunno, retarded? I'm just using the cheesy little Albeton Live Lite thingy until I get a full version of a DAW to my liking (most likely Sonar or Cubase) on here. So far, I've just been re-acquainting myself with tones and getting used to the concept of actually being able to dial in sounds that represent the noises in my head again. I've basically had all my effects and outboard shit in the closet since moving to Chicago and have been playing straight into an amp all this time. While it is certainly cathartic, the music my brain tends to crank out calls on more than that (as much as I'd like to wish otherwise).

As far as the Line 6 gear I bought, I gotta say I do dig the Gear Box interface. They have a whole line of plugins you can buy, most of which seem like a heaping stack of gay, nonetheless, I'm not having any trouble getting sounds that represent what I'm looking for (although there is no doubt that reverb and delay wannabe-analog software plugs don't do their analog counterparts justice whatsoever, but that's another conversation). But in the way of accurately representing the chain (i.e. putting modulation in front of a reverb and vice versa), I'm quite content. The amp sims are your typical "don't have the license from Mesa Boogie or Marshall" affair, so you get shit like "British Tweed' and "Modern American" amps. Insofar though, I can't bitch about the amp sounds. We simulated amps on both Inner-kube albums and while the first one was (admittedly) a lame Tech 21 attempt, we got some pretty raw gutteral sounds on Hell's Own Drag. I'm not having any trouble tapping into and beyond that. Speaking of old IK stuff, I'm toying with the idea of pulling out some old songs and tweaking/rewriting them. Or at least tearing out the cool ideas and working them into my current mindset. I'm sure somebody somewhere will have some huge problem with that, but the songs I would hack away at would be ones that I thought never got properly represented on an album, so it wouldn't be like, ones that were anybody's favorite (at least I wouldn't think so).

Having said that, I think my process for wading back into this whole crazy music thing is going to be entirely different than what I did before. Back in 'the day', I basically cranked out a song as soon as its impetus was there. That is, if I had a riff or a vibe that I wanted to convey, I would usually compose the whole song (sans lyrics/vocals) in one sitting. I can't think of a single song that didn't go that way, save for Familiar Thoughts of Id, which Schmudde hacked left 'n right and made it what it was. This time around I think I'm going to take my time. Lay out lots of riffs, reject things that suck, add in what is cool...re-arrange things over and over until I'm happy etc etc. The reason for this is because I'm not working on any self-imposed deadline. It used to be that I was always trying to keep songs coming because when we weren't playing tons of shows, I figured that was a time to crank out as many tunes as possible. This sometimes worked but mostly failed (IM oh so HO). Since I don't play shows, have a band, or have to put a record out to keep the whole thing moving along...I'm gonna take my time and create things for the sole purpose of making myself happy. From there...who the fuck knows.

That said...I DO have to buy a bass. I have like, 3 of them strewn about Iowa in various places, but rather than try to track them down (in their various states of disarray), I figure I may as well nut up and buy one that I know hasn't been beat to hell with beer in all the crevices and start from scratch. I have about 4 I'm looking at and will probably pull the trigger on that purchase tomorrow.

Fun fun fun!