Category Archives: General

Caustic Reverie late September update

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Last.fm’s servers took a shit during the weekend I spent uploading my tracks and it took their customer service about a week to get through the backlog and get back to me. I’ve reuploaded the songs and I’m hoping they’ll stick this time. Watch this spot.

I’ve been toying with the idea of a CR album in surround and I did a quick 5.1 mix of Vigils as a proof of concept. I’ll share the link once I get a chance to hear the mix on a decent setup and make sure I didn’t blow the LFE channel all the way to hell.

Steven Wilson and The Incident

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I got to do a phone interview with one of my favorite musicians: Steven Wilson of Porucpine Tree, Bass Communion, Continuum, Blackfield, IEM, and a solo artist. We talked about his new album, remastering King Crimson’s classics for surround sound, and what to expect from the upcoming Orphaned Land album ORwarrior. If all goes well, the tour should take him back in this neck of the woods around the spring of 2010.

I’ve been enjoying the surround mix on the latest Porcupine Tree album The Incident, not to mention the hardcover book of photography that is a part of the deluxe edition. Very cool stuff.

Furniture fun

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Sorry that I’ve been away from this thing for a while. I’ve been spending a fair amount of time fixing up the bachelor pad, most of which seems to be from assembling furniture. I’ve put together a leather office chair and two sets of media shelving. At one point, the experience reminded me of some fond childhood memories: putting together brightly colored plastic blocks while trying to make sense of the cryptic, wordless instructions in an attempt to make the pile of parts before me look like thing on the box. I came up with this slogan shortly afterwards:

Furniture: Lego for grownups.

RIP Les Paul

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The man should be remembered for a whole lot more than the namesake guitar that the Guitar Hero game controller is modelled after. All fans of recorded music owe a debt to his ingenuity. Reading news stories on his life and accomplishments, I’ve been inspired by the lifelong genius of this wonderful musician and inventor.

Bandcamp

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I’ve set up a Bandcamp account for Caustic Reverie with three songs worth of albums. If there’s a good reaction, I’ll upload the rest of my material. Songs are available for free download in various formats, and there’s even a “buy” link if you’re feeling particularly altruistic.

http://causticreverie.bandcamp.com/

On fretless guitars

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Having messed with my fretless Intrepid for a few weeks now, I can see some of the instrument’s strengths and weaknesses. I love the feel of a neck without frets and the wiggle-room it provides if I’m not exactly playing the note that I intended. Intonation is the big tradeoff. For playing power chords and leads, this thing is awesome, but trying to get chords in tune when my fingers don’t easily fit in the same “fret” is quite the hassle.

I’m working on some new stuff with the fretless and one of the tracks is the heaviest thing I’ve ever committed to tape. Aesthetically this might be closer to Shufflebrain but the writing and production methods are pure Caustic Reverie, so I think that’s how I will release it. The working title is Interference Patterns.

Rock Band drums

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I finally got to play the drum pads with Rock Band the other night. Aside from the often illogical beat simplification on the easy difficulty (where’s the goddamn kick drum?), I found it fun overall. Since I have a set of electric drums in my room within spitting distance of my PS3, I started looking in to ways that I could play Rock Band or Guitar Hero World Tour with them on the cheap. I initially thought that I could just get a MIDI-USB converter and run it straight into the Playstation but according to some forum posts, it’s not so simple. The Guitar Hero World Tour drumset has a MIDI in, but it would be very silly to purchase a toy plastic drumset so I can use the set of drums I already have. There is a device to translate midi messages into controller messages but for a pricetag over a hundred dollars, that’s out of the picture as well. I’ve been messing around with PD and I’m wondering if I might be able to bang something out in it using MIDI note ons from the pad hits.