I started a tumblr blog, mainly because I realized I didn’t want to clutter this place up with dozens of random links when there’s a service specifically for that. Not that everything here has to be a lengthy involved dissertation, but I don’t want to fill my homepage full of passing fancies and other shiny objects, even my own.
Time will tell whether this becomes a regular part of my routine or just another Google+ along the way, but I waited until I thought I had a legitimate use for the account anyway, so that’s something.
The video for “Overrich Diet” is now available for viewing on Youtube. This is the fifth and probably last video from YOU HAD TO LEAVE YOUR MARK; I would generally much rather spend my creative time making music than making videos (or doing other promotional work, frankly), and it kinda seems like five videos from the same album is enough to me.
The YOU HAD TO LEAVE YOUR MARK track breakdown series will continue until I’ve covered all twelve tracks on the album, so look for the next one of those — a look behind the curtain at the making of “Overrich Diet”, naturally — to pop up later this week.
“Naivete”, the fourth music video from my new album YOU HAD TO LEAVE YOUR MARK is now available for viewing on Youtube — this one is a lot different from the first three and features Paul Szewczyk on bass and Ryan Tully-Doyle on drums, with video culled from live performances at the Skybox. Probably the closest thing we’re going to come to a ‘performance’ video for YOU HAD TO LEAVE YOUR MARK; I really pushed my iMovie skills to the limit making this one!
The third music video from my new album YOU HAD TO LEAVE YOUR MARK is now available for viewing on Youtube — watch it below, and check out the videos for “Spray Vandalism” and “An Accident Of Birth”.
The second music video from my new album YOU HAD TO LEAVE YOUR MARK is now available for viewing on Youtube — watch it below, then check out the first video (for “Spray Vandalism”) here.
The first music video from my new album YOU HAD TO LEAVE YOUR MARK is now available for viewing on Youtube — be sure to bump the quality up to 720p HD if you have the available bandwidth! (Or do what I do and use a script that does it for you.)
As someone who went to school to study audio engineering (Indiana University, under Dr. David Pickett & Wayne Jackson — didn’t finish the program) I understand that making a recording & mixing tutorial is an inherently difficult task: although we definitely received some useful instruction, 99% of the useful information I’ve gained about audio recording in my lifetime came from hands-on experience. In Secrets of the Pros – Modern Recording and Mixing, instructor Ken Walden tells us that he gained a lot of useful knowledge from his own frequently-mentioned experiences, but unfortunately he fails to convey much of it to his audience over the course of these two DVDs.
An instructive example: in his introduction to the section on “Recording Bass Guitar” Walden discusses how he’s played the bass for years and been involved in many sessions behind the mixing desk with world-class bass players. Great! So he must have many useful tips and tricks to pass on, right? That’s why we bought this thing called Secrets Of The Pros, after all!
Unfortunately, all Walden has to offer us is this: 1. usually bass guitar is recorded direct using a DI (direct input) and 2. a good instrument sounds better than a shitty one. Hey, thanks Ken! Those are not Secrets Of The Pros in any way. That’s very basic advice one would give someone who had never recorded anything in their life and was thinking about maybe someday buying a bass. Oh, and may I point out the entire section is under four minutes long?
Mostly the rest of the $40 set goes the same way: a few very basic tips that anyone who knows the difference between a condenser mic and a dynamic mic will already know, accompanied by overly-specific information about particular systems (Pro Tools, less ubiquitous every day) that may or may not apply to your setup even if it’s not already outdated. Walden may well have been involved with many professional sessions as he continually asserts, but at the conclusion of each section I keep wondering: in what capacity? He doesn’t really impress as someone who knows a lot about any of the subjects covered in this course; I’m guessing he was maybe a second engineer at best, because he keeps making reference to techniques as “this is the way this is usually done” or “I saw this setup in nearly all the sessions I was in” and not “this is why I use this mic over this one” or “when I mixed this album I did this”. Looking at his credentials I see he did a couple of years at a San Francisco studio and then basically spent seven+ years as a Pro Tools trainer, which explains his oddly detailed overemphasis of Pro Tools in certain sections and his complete lack of knowledge in others — I was floored that his advice for recording drums basically boiled down to “Record a professional drummer in a professional studio with a massive tracking room and a hugely expensive board, if you can’t afford that, um, use fewer mics I guess? Zeppelin used the three mic configuration a lot and that’s cool, so do that.”
Walden simply doesn’t seem to have much to offer project studio engineers, whom I would guess comprise 99%+ of the audience for an instructional set like this — especially when you consider that anyone who didn’t already know the stuff Walden passes along would have zero chance of ever being hired in any professional capacity. Frankly, there is nothing about Walden’s set I can recommend either to novices or to more experienced engineers that Alan Parsons’ Art & Science of Sound Recording(hardly an unflawed program in itself, mind you) doesn’t do far, far better — with one exception.
The one is a doozy, though: the last instruction section (called “The Big Secret” in a marketing hook move so transparently ridiculous it’s honestly offensive) is a 50+ minute look at home studio acoustics primarily delivered by Manny LaCarrubba. Walden does throw his two cents in here and there, but this section is really LaCarrubba’s show, in which he breaks down a ridiculously complex topic (just try and read some acoustics textbooks sometime, I dare you) in a way that’s both useful and practical for engineers on any level of ability. Using what LaCarrubba shows here, I’d be surprised if almost anyone couldn’t make improvements in their listening/recording environment with noticeably positive effects on the end result — something that can’t be said about any of the other advice on this DVD set, unfortunately.
It’s too bad the disparity between the quality of “The Big Secret” (ugh, that makes me groan every time) acoustics section and the level of the rest of Walden’s advice is so large, because I can’t in good conscience recommend a $40 product where only about a quarter of the content delivers on its promise. Fortunately, you don’t have to waste your time and money on the useless sections of this product anymore, as the sections are available as individual downloads: eight bucks for the useful part and forget the rest. It looks like someone uploaded the first nine minutes of this section to youtube; that should be enough to give you an idea of what to expect and whether “The Big Secret” is for you. As far as the rest of the program, don’t waste your time: no matter your level of skill and experience, there are far better, more comprehensive, and much more contemporary (very very important, as quickly as recording technology changes) programs available for you.
And hey, Manny! Make your own acoustics program! I’d buy it and probably recommend it too.
Of the new shows I’ve seen so far this season, Up All Night is the one I’ve enjoyed the most and the only one I’m certain I’ll watch more episodes of. I’m one of the fifty or so people who watched and enjoyed every episode of Running Wilde, Will Arnett’s last attempt at sitcom stardom; I grew up watching Christina Applegate on Married…With Children; and I saw Bridesmaids in the theater. I’m so predisposed to watch this show a picture of me appears under the heading ‘this show’s demographic’ in the affiliates’ promotional materials.
Of course, none of that matters if the show sucks, but even the slightly rickety pilot makes a strong case for Up All Night. Some seams are visible where it was retooled to expand Maya Rudolph’s role and squeeze in new cast additions (Nick Cannon, of all people? OK, we’ll see…) but even so it’s still easily the most promising new comedy I’ve seen in some time. I am a little worried the show might fall into a tedious pattern of repetitive “diapers and poop are gross, haha” jokes and that Rudoph’s character will continue to be simply a thinly-drawn Oprah sock puppet, but I’m on board for at least the next few episodes — and as long as the writing is strong I’ll likely be in for the first season.
Free Agents is the show that comes on after Up All Night and is “the comedy that comes on at the half-hour mark” in every way; it feels designed to go with Up All Night in the same way Mad About You was made to go with Seinfeld and King Of Queens with Everybody Loves Raymond — and it feels slightly second-rate in the same way those shows did. Where the late-thirty/early-fortysomethings of Up All Night are married and breeding, those on Free Agents are divorced and rebuilding — NBC’s got all the angles covered!
Based on a British show, Free Agents shows it with sharply written dialogue and frequent reliance on the comedy of awkwardness, the special talent of the English. I don’t find myself particularly vested in the characters — Azaria lacks the easy likability it’d take to sell the ‘flustered everyman’ thing he’s going for here, the kind of thing Louis CK has been doing perfectly on Louie recently — but given the strong lead-in from Up All Night I can see it outlasting the original version’s six episodes, anyway. Where it goes from there is down to the writing; if they keep hammering the “are they/aren’t they/dating/not dating” thing I can see it getting tiresome quickly, since I don’t find myself really caring whether the characters are hooking up or not.
Honestly, more than anything Free Agents makes me want to check out the original show, but having watched both the pilot and the second episode I can say it’s a minor pleasure, though I can’t say I’d mourn too deeply were it to vanish suddenly. In the meantime, I’ll have to see if I can track down that UK show…
When The Sopranos got huge on HBO, the broadcast networks immediately reacted with typical creativity and pumped a number of poor Sopranos-lite ripoffs onto the air. Of course, they all failed instantly since network TV hasn’t done a decent mob show since Wiseguy, but now that Mad Men dominates the cable drama landscape, do the networks learn? No, they do not, they react by pumping Mad Men-lite ripoffs on the air — The Playboy Club is the first of which to air.
Now, when I first heard about this show I honestly thought it was not a terrible premise: you have a worldwide-recognized brand in the title, an excuse to constantly have hot chicks in skimpy clothes, and in early-60s Chicago even a real-life period setting with plenty of story possibilities. Unfortunately, whatever potential I might have seen in theory is completely squandered in the execution: The Playboy Club is just a bog-standard soap opera in Mad Men drag. The lead actor’s Don Draper impression is so shamelessly blatant he should really be sending Jon Hamm half his paycheck for this show. Despite obvious lip service paid to period accoutrements, the writing is typical network serial drama nonsense dressed up with allusions toward the social change of the time, as if Hugh Hefner financing a mens’ club where women wore bunny outfits had anything at all to do with it.
Despite all manner of women flitting about (mostly non-60s-looking and disappointingly poor actors aside from lead Amber Heard, although all she’s asked to do is look alternately scared and mopey) I was bored stiff fifteen minutes in, only pausing to note ridiculous plot contrivances that make no sense whatsoever (there were at least three after that point) and to wonder if the premiere was a double-length episode, as it seemed to be dragging on forever. It wasn’t, fortunately, but by the end I’d heard the word “bunny” so many times it had lost all meaning. I think it lost meaning for the writers too, as they lines they give Hefner to intone pretentiously use the word as if it were somehow simultaneously synonymous with “radical feminist”, “rock star”, and “celebrity” instead of simply “busty waitress in a demeaning costume”.
Another season of new premiere television is upon us. I always take a certain pleasure in watching a fresh crop of pilots contending for attention — the experience is somehow made all the sweeter knowing that chances are better than even any given show will be gone and forgotten within six weeks.
It’s a good thing too, because most pilots suck out loud. Sure, I have fond memories of seeing the first-ever broadcasts of shows like Newsradio and — even of being a small child and my mother saying “Well, we can either try this new show Cheers or watch Mildred have her baby on Too Close For Comfort” — but those experiences are few. Even shows that go on to become favorites often misfire in pilot form (as it’s admittedly extremely tough to both create and master one’s form simultaneously and instantly) or simply aren’t represented properly, given that the broadcast episode may be a hacked up and repurposed version of the network pilot — often necessary due to recasting and late-minute creative decisions (such as raising Maya Rudolph’s profile on Up All Night). Community is one of the shows I’m most looking forward to returning; I watched the first episode when it was first on, didn’t find it all that amusing, then didn’t return to the show for a year and half at which time it became one of my favorites. Same with Arrested Development. There’s room for error and misjudgment here, is what I’m saying.
That said, I’d be pretty surprised if I was watching either 2 Broke Girls or Whitney in 2013 given that right now I’m on the fence about whether I could sit through a second episode of either. I like Kat Dennings from Party Down and some movie (oh wait, it was Thor, wasn’t it? Well, some indie movie too I think) and I’ve liked a good amount of Whitney Cummings’ stand-up work so I definitely wasn’t primed to hate these shows or anything, but yeah…they’re not good.
Whitney is the one Whitney actually stars in, of course, but both shows share a similar sensibility given her co-creator/co-writer credit on 2 Broke Girls so that’s reason enough to cover them together. Also, frankly neither merits coverage on its own — both are basically lame, forgettable shows with a couple of chuckles and few actual laughs; generic sitcoms in every way, from the fake-sounding laughter (I notice I find laugh tracks crazy annoying in unfunny shows like this but when the show’s actually funny I don’t even notice them, oddly) to the strained-yet-cliched setups to the see-them-coming-from-miles punchlines. The only notable difference between these shows is heterosexual men will find 2 Broke Girls easier on the eyes and heterosexual women will get the same faint, watered-down Sex & the City vibe from Whitney that’s been infused into every single goddamned thing marketed to them for the past decade-and-a-half. Neither effect is close to enough to overcome the basic lack of laughs, unfortunately.
Honestly, it almost kind of seems like the kind of thing they did fifteen years ago that you don’t see so much of anymore, when they’d sign up any half-decent standup comic with a hook, put them in a sitcom and throw it at the wall hoping for another Seinfeld to stick. Pretty much all those shows were terrible too; I mean, I liked The Norm Show and someone was watching King Of Queens all those years but let’s be real, Grace Under Fire eventually led to Two and a Half Men. In a way it’s kind of good to know that the standup comic development deal isn’t totally dead — it just didn’t work well here at all.
Anyway, Whitney seems like a smart chick so I’m sure she’s banking the money she’s got rolling in for as long as both shows are on the air, and that’ll give her a good position from which to launch her next project. I doubt their cancellation will hurt her too badly, although I’m sure she’d prefer the shows would be huge successes that make her a household name I don’t see that happening. (But hey, people watch Two and a Half Men, so what do I know anyway? Right? Right?)
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