Complications Galore

Bleh.
So far Pit Orchestra has really gotten in the way of our progress. Each day I have to play 4 and a half hours of trumpet for the musical. Along with whatever extra curricular/doctor appointments Owen has to do, we have not gotten a ton of practice time in. Either way, the little time we have had went along way. We have the basic chords of each song written out but all of the lines need to be filled in. I need to do my job and make up horn riffs for each song as well as making up lead guitar parts. Hopefully, these problems will be solved by next week when the musical finally comes to an end. To further make our lives difficult, my guitar teacher was going to teach me how to use Reaper, a free recording software program but because of rehearsal, I have had to cancel my lesson. On the bright side, this experience is definitely teaching me a lot of music theory, fitting in guitar parts with the chords I play over them is much easier said than done.
BY THE WAY... if you are reading this before March 7th, remember to buy your tickets from me for the musical, I must sell 15!
So, since my guitar teacher has not been there to teach me how to use Reaper, I have had to use a lot of my own research to figure it out. Most of the time it was just me monkeying around on the program itself trying to get my bearings but several websites have come to be helpful.
The first major problem was non amplified instruments. Guitars are very easy to record as all you do is plug them into your recording device and then play. Horns and Drums are a lot more difficult to get a hold of. Both of them require complete and utter silence to record over so that nothing interrupts the sound. Next, the recording device must be right next to the bell of the horn or essentially where the drummer sits on a drum set. Although of course we are not near the recording stage just yet, it's something to keep in mind when we get there. (By the way, sorry for the black text on the links, I don't know why it won't change)

http://www.futureproducers.com/forums/hardware-software/software/daw-sequencers-samplers-software/how-use-reaper-332624/

http://wiki.cockos.com/wiki/index.php/Reaper_Documentation#The_Wiki

Speaking of horns, one of the mini goals of this project will be to use trombone with at least one or two tracks. One of the major songs I composed requires a lot of trombone to harmonize with my trumpet. I own a trombone but actually learning to play it is a hole new conflict. Since I already play trumpet, learning the embouchure is not a huge challenge but actually knowing slide positions and reading bass clef is a major one. To help me along my way, I have gathered up a couple resources to help me to play this new challenge. This first one is a human being, Chris Annunziato is already a trombone player and being a good friend, is willing to teach me the basics (Check out his blog http://kuroy22.blogspot.com/). The second is a blog by somebody incredibly awesome for creating this blog titled "How to Play Trombone" (Check that one out at http://play-trombone.blogspot.com/). Once the trombone playing task is done and over-with, all of the horn sections parts should sound much stronger. 

~~ Max Benowitz

Week One: First Impressions

This project that I am about to start has gotten me pretty excited. For the first time a school project seems less like another time consuming preparation for one large presentation and more like being able to elaborate on my passions I already have. Although previous to this we have been studying the brain which I find interesting, the projects we have done seems a lot more academic and filled with lots of busywork. My first impression of the project (note I was out sick when it was assigned) was a bad one, thinking that it would be similar to past projects where I would prepare and prepare and prepare for a large presentation that I would end up cramming the night before for. Before I knew exactly what was expected in the blog posts I also dreaded them, thinking it would be six formal writing entries having to do with my research and progress. This turned out not to be the case as I am actually happy to be able to blog about my progress as long as it is informal and presents what I actually am thinking as I go about my project. 

My project will be in a group with one other person, a friend of mine named Owen (check out his blog at http://peartisapunkpalmerisagod.blogspot.com/) because we are both very passionate about music. I have played trumpet since 4th grade and guitar since 7nth so music has always been something I have been interested in perusing as a major hobby. Lately, I have tried to expand my horizons by teaching myself such instruments as piano, trombone, bass, and mandolin. Together with Owen who plays piano at a much higher level than myself, drums, and a bit of guitar, we thought we could work together to accomplish something better than we would alone. Being friends for a while, we had been trying to start a band but hadn't had the inspiration or the amount of members to do it properly. When we were assigned this project, it seemed a perfect way to both force ourselves to write songs and record them and to have an excuse to record everything ourselves without the need of other band members. The two of us being both friends and enjoying the same types of music seemed the perfect combination to work together to achieve our end goal: an original album.

Over the next several weeks we have worked out a timeline for when we hope to complete everything by. The first landmark we hope to reach in the time frame of two weeks is finishing the songwriting. Both of us have had ideas for songs but never polished them or really expanded upon our ideas, we hope to make them all into fully fledged songs by the end of this time period. Next, we would like to simply practice, we are allowing ourselves another two weeks to practice our songs completely and have them ready to be recorded. This of course leads to probably the most time consuming portion: recording. Since each track will have all components on it (drums, guitar, trumpet, keys, vocals, etc) and there are two of us, there will be many times we have to record over ourselves. For just a single song there will probably be six tracks playing over each other at the same time. After the recording is finished (it will be tedious but it will be done... hopefully) most of our work will be finished. Although, to make a proper album, there must be a cover for the record itself! Once we are finished all of the rest of the album we will design an original drawing for our album cover and buy album sleeves to make it legitimate. Finally, once this is all done, we will have created our product to be presented in the end presentation: a Ted Talk.

Both musically and technologically I think this project will enrich me. Instrumentally, I have never made original music and I think writing my own songs on my own instrument will make me a better player. It will make my knowledge of music theory stronger so that I will be more versatile in all music, even besides that which I have wrought. Also, recording tracks over myself will provide a whole new challenge in the actual playing. Playing something so exact on trumpet or guitar without a single screw-up will be a large challenge but in the end will make me better at all of my instruments, especially the ones I am attempting to teach myself like Piano or Trombone. Technologically this project will also make a difference. I have always been able to monkey around with computers and be able to solve basic troubleshooting problems but to have to manage a little recording studio from my computer will get me a lot more tech savvy than ever before. For the project I will be using a program called Reaper which is free recording software for the computer. All of the tracks from our album will be recording using this software. I hope that by the end of this process I will have grown a lot as someone adept at technology, particularly in the music recording end. 

Overall, I am really excited to get started on this project. I hope our songwriting process goes smoothly and we collaborate well together. Although McDaniels and Perlman have tried to prevent us from doing Jethro Tull (my favorite band) covers we may break the law and do them anyway. Right now, we are in the process of naming our band and our album.
Thanks for reading, I will be back with a post a week and you can learn even more about our soon to be named band!

~~~~ Max