See the ‘My Music’ link over there? Yeah, click that shit and listen to the tunes on there. You might actually enjoy some of them.
Nothing majorly noteworthy happening of late, unfortunately. Get paid on Thursday, though, so shouldn’t be too long before I’m back on the road.
Oh, that’s right, I got shot of my DeArmond Jetstar guitar and replaced it with a nice Ibanez Soundgear bass. Need to get it set up to remove the pretty chronic fret buzz on the lower frets, but once that’s done it’ll be pure bass sexyness.
Pics of bass and eventual new car will be forthcoming soon.
This entry was written by , posted on April 26, 2009 at 9:45 pm, filed under music, musings, recording, Site and tagged bass, car, music, thoughts. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
So I backed Mon Mome, amongst others, in the National last saturday. 93p each way – it was all I had left in my Paddy Power account after I backed all the horses whose form I liked. I picked it based on the jockey silks. Same way I picked Numbersixvalverde in ’06. And probably Silver Birch in ’07. Yeah, I’ve picked three out of the last four Grand National winners. w00t.
Not had much chance to get to grips with Logic Pro yet. Noodled around with some of the virtual instruments and installed Addictive Drums (my favourite source for multisampled drums – they sound terrific with some careful programming. Just wish there was a couple more cymbal slots, mind you), so I might have a crack at doing some proper recording in the near future.
My next door neighbour died of cancer today, and it looks like my mum’s cousin might not be long for this world either, thanks to it. Fuck cancer. Fuck cancer up its tumerous arse.
On a lighter note, my friends/bandmates Toma and Ross produced another comedy music video, based on Biffy Clyro’s song Machines. You can watch it below.
This entry was written by , posted on April 9, 2009 at 11:40 pm, filed under gambling, logic, music, musings, racing, recording, sports, tech. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The World’s Greatest Steeplechase is tomorrow, and the usual forty runners will thunder their way over four-and-a-bit miles of Aintree’s unique fences, while every man and their dog cheers on their chosen nag, myself included.
Here’s some thoughts on some of the runners.
This entry was written by , posted on April 3, 2009 at 11:00 pm, filed under gambling, musings, racing, sports and tagged racing. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
As some of you may know, I record my own music (examples of which will hopefully be on this site in the future. Although I said that on the old version of the site…). The program I use to record said music is a Digital Audio Workstation package called Sonar, by the now Roland-owned Cakewalk.
I’ve used Cakewalk stuff for seven years-plus, from Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 through multiple versions of Sonar (up to version 7, the version I use now. Haven’t tried 8 yet, but I bet it’s great), and it’s a great package. It comes with a bunch of nice effects plugins, software instruments and the like. Definitely under-rated in the Pro-Tools-dominated DAW world.
However, I now have a Macbook Pro, and I quite fancied the look of Logic Studio, having had a shot of the previous version on my friend’s machine. The latest version, Version 8 is a whole different kettle of fish to the version I’ve tried previously though – a totally revamped single-pane interface, plenty of bundled effects, instruments, samples, sounds, content, several additional programs (Soundtrack Pro, a stereo audio editor that also comes with Final Cut Pro and Mainstage, an app to help you use your virtual instruments in a live setting, are the two biggies for me) and best of all, it’s cheaper than most of the other equivalent pro-level DAW packages (Sonar Producer Edition, Cubase et al). And to top THAT, I got it for even cheaper on eBay. £175 to be exact. Just. Over. Half. Fucking. Price.
As Chris Kamara would say, “Unbelievable, Jeff!”
So, the box turned up today, and it’s a sexy beast indeed. As one might expect, the packaging is up to Apple’s usual standards. Heck, even the shipping box is up to Apple’s usual standards, with nice foam inserts to protect the box in transit, and an internal sub-box frame thingy with handles to help get the main box out of the shippong box.
That last sentence had more boxes than a lesbian orgy.
Inside, you get a stack of manuals (including two big ones for Logic itself and another big-ish one for the software instruments – I forsee stuff like the big ESX24 sampler taking up a lot of that), the seven or eight DVDs for all the software, sounds, content, et cetera, a couple of things about Applecare and the likes, and another bit of Apple Foam (you Apple fans know the stuff I’m talking about) to keep everything snug in the box and provide a little bit extra transit protection.
A very nice package so far, and I haven’t even installed it yet! I plan on using The Metal Shop Podcast to air my thoughts on Logic in audio form at some point in the future. I’ll blog here about it when that show’s done and up on the feed.
In the meantime, I’ll be taking the big fat Logic manual into work with me tomorrow. Those double shifts can tick by slowly indeed….
This entry was written by , posted on April 2, 2009 at 11:51 pm, filed under apple, logic, Mac, music, musings, recording, tech and tagged apple, daw, logic, music, recording, tech. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
If any of you are familiar with the old neilmcdougall.com, and know a thing or two about web design, you’ll know it was distincly last-decade in its execution – laid out with tables, done in a WYSIWYG HTML editor, basic graphics, no Javascript, XML or any of those fancy modern doo-hickeys.
Look-wise, it was fine – nice and clean, no flashing ‘E-Mail Me!’ animated .gifs, ‘UNDER CONSTRUCTION’ banners or scrolling/flashing text, but it was a bit of a pain in the arse to update, frankly, and I wanted to make some use of more up-to-date web stuff. Seeing as I know next to nowt about CSS, XHTML, Javascript or the like, I decided to do what countless other people have done, and whacked WordPress onto my website.
It’ll be a lot easier to update the site now, seeing as I spend far more time in a web browser than I do in Dreamweaver or the like, and I can use Firefox plugins like Scribefire to update it without having to log in to my site. I hit the wee icon in the toolbar at the bottom of Firefox, I write a post, and boom, it’s up on the site. Yaaas.
So. add this here site to yer RSS readers, ’cause you’ll be hearing more from me, on a multitude of subjects, ranging from music, to sports, to whatever other shite I feel like writing about.
This entry was written by , posted on April 1, 2009 at 4:43 pm, filed under design, musings, Site and tagged design, me, new, Site, thoughts, wordpress. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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