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The Way it Should Have Been

I’ve been wanting to redo some of my older songs after getting the T5, because the guitars literally sound like shit when compared to the newer ones I made. I actually started on a couple of them, but I was able to finish the remake for “The Way it Should Have Been”

As stated [verbatim] in the Music Section:

Reprise of “The Way it Should Have Been” (duh!) with the following changes:

  1. A bit faster tempo, so it’s about 20 seconds shorter than the original.
  2. Re-recorded the guitar part with my Taylor T5
  3. Changed the percussion section with better sounding instruments (via Reason)
  4. Added a very subtle ambient pad (via Cakewalk Rapture)
  5. Re-done the vocal track with some lyric changes

Over-all, this is a better version, and it’s just fun to compare it because it shows clearly how much my sound has changed from the last time I recorded it.

If you feel like it, compare it to the old one below:

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Home-brewed Flash MP3 player

I’ve finally finished my own Flash-based MP3 player for my site (specifically for the music section). Let me give you a little tour…

The image you see above is an image (for now) of the new player. Pretty spiffy eh? While you can click on it to load the real player, I strongly advise against it for the time being. Take the time to read through this post first – and you’ll eventually get to play with it with a written commentary below.

I’ve included what I thought to be the more useful stuff a person would normally look for in a player. Aside from the regular stuff (title, play/pause/stop, etc.) here’s some more: Read More

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(Do Do Do)

Here’s another composition by GP called (do do do)

As stated in the music section:

[the song was] originally titled “Dominion” but GP changed it just when I was drafting up the info for the song for the music section.

GP claims to have literally dreamt it – then immediately went to the keyboard and not long after, had the full instrument arrangement, the basic melody, and some lyrics.

I came up with the rest of the lyrics and harmonies – and there we have it.

Simply put: GP wrote the chorus, bridge and the first two lines of the first verse. Whatever was left was my doing. It’s also to be mentioned that GP provided the full accompaniment – so I just laid the vocal tracks and thought up the harmonies as I went along.

A nice piece of trivia about this song was when I first heard it, it was just the chorus, and it sounded really funny – and I didn’t give it much thought after that. But one day GP had me listen to the background music in its entirety, it actually had a hook to it which is why I ended up working on it as well.

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A quick post

Been a long while since I last blogged. There are so many things that have happened that I don’t know where to begin, and even if I did, a bunch of them I’d rather not talk about.

I’ve been keeping myself busy with work and making songs. And today, after almost a year, a string on my T5 finally gave way. What a waste; none of them were rusting at all. Though I think I know why it happened.

When I first got the guitar, the first thing I did (when I got home) was to have the machine heads replaced with locking tuners. I still used the same strings that shipped with the guitar – mostly because they were Elixirs, which are probably the best/longest lasting strings money could buy.

Anyways, long story short, I was essentially re-winding an already practically “used” set of strings. And if that wasn’t enough, I started winding one of them the wrong way! I eventually corrected it, but the fact that it was steel that had already been bent both ways – then it’s not so surprising that that particular string wasn’t as strong as the rest. And today was the day it finally gave out. Still, pretty impressive for it to last almost a year.

Now I just re-strung my guitar with strings from my bulk pack, now to compare how fast these babies oxidize as compared to the Elixirs.