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  My recent song ‘Silence in Vain’ got some FM radio airplay on the weekend. Woohoo! Written and recorded down in the basement. Tribute to Irish singer songwriter Glen Hansard.

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  We had a bunch of large dead cedar trees on the ground from a few years ago, and our next door neighbour just bought a new portable sawmill. So I’m bucking them into different lengths and moving them over to the milling area with the little Kubota. Milling some of them into 4x4’s right now. Then some other dimensions.

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  Ollie cat hanging out at the water dish this afternoon. #cats #catsofmastodon

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  In the basement tonight working on a blues tune. Tracking bass on the Fender Mustang. #music #bass #blues

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  Short audio clip of the blues tune I’m currently working on. Got three acoustic guitar tracks. Two are in open G tuning (Takamine) and one is in standard tuning (Godin). One bass track using a Fender Mustang. Programmed drum track. #music #blues #recording

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  Down in the basement comping vocals on a new blues tune. Tracking harmonica tomorrow night. Getting closer to mixing. #music

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  Saturday morning coffee with Ollie cat. #cats #catsofmastodon #caturday

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  Wendy took me to the local music store and got me an early birthday present. She knew I was working on a new blues tune and that I’d kinda outgrown my old Apex harmonica mic. She got me a Shure 520DX Green Bullet harp mic, one of the classic blues harp microphones. Awesome mic. Great tone with more mids and low end, much better frequency range than the old Apex, and more predictable. Better ergonomically in the hand too! Giving it a good workout putting down some tracks. #harmonica #blues #music

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  Got my new acoustic blues tune up. Ran the two acoustic guitars through the Strymon Iridium. Played the Takamine EF407 acoustic guitar, Alvarez Artist 5014 acoustic guitar, Fender Mustang bass, and Hohner Blues Harp in key of C. Vocal mic was Apex 550 FET and harp mic was Shure Green Bullet. #music #blues #guitar #harmonica #gearsquad https://youtu.be/M0dAoqITlqU

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  Rick Beato interviews Bernie Taupin… #music https://youtu.be/8P6Z5YP9vCM?si=4cjgZYc6ZrHdva5B

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  Messing around these nights in the basement with open G tuning on the acoustics. Putting down some John Lee Hooker-ish shuffle tracks. Looks like I’m building a new song. #music #guitar #recording #songwriting

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  Finished my acoustic tribute song in honour of Glen Hansard. Recorded down in the basement. Guitars are a Takamine EF407 acoustic guitar in standard tuning (L), an Alvarez Artist 5014 acoustic guitar in Nashville high tuning (R) and a Fender Mustang Bass. Vocal mic is an Apex 550 FET. Interface was Scarlett 4i4 recorded in Tracktion Waveform DAW. 160 bpm. #music #guitar #recording #songwriting https://youtu.be/wIr2M4-g0C0

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  New string night. Putting some custom light 11-52 Elixir Nanoweb strings on the little Takamine EF-407. It’s been a while. Was sounding a bit dull. Nice and bright now. When I bought the Tak, I had Old Town Strings in Victoria shape and install a new bone saddle. Action and set up is incredible with no fret buzz. The guitar plays like an electric.

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  Went to the Victoria Highland Games today. Good fun.

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  More fun from the Victoria Highland Games today.

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  Good piece about the Fender debacle. #music #guitar #gearsquad https://yamahamusicians.com/fender-the-money-behind-the-letters/

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  Stephen Colbert unleashed. Not wasting any time! https://youtu.be/jJTXB5uT_C4?si=7XKn0SvC0QuiBaVv

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  Totally dig Jack White’s sound system setup on Stephen Colbert’s new community cable tv gig. Awesome show.

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  Picked up a Korg Volca Drum unit. Messing around in the basement on a Saturday night. #music #synth

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  Contemplating a new studio vocal recording mic exclusively for singing. I’ve got an SM58 and mostly use an old Apex 550 FET condenser mic for vocals. I’m looking at the Universal Audio SD-1 dynamic mic. Anyone tried this mic before? I’ve watched a whack of vid reviews and it sounds pretty good. My budget is around $350 CAD. #music #gearsquad

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  Harrison Ford’s incredible ASU speech from a couple days ago. Worth watching. https://youtu.be/NK5Y4YD0mOA?si=qmEQ4AM8RdgTw9Pu

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  Holy crap, they’re back like it’s the early 1970’s. Jagger’s voice is amazing. And the riffs. Wow. #music #TheRollingStones https://youtu.be/FHaEFarmZx8?si=RptX8pXuqWQ_auD9

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  Hiking today. North side of Cobble Hill Mountain.

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  I made a thing. Plywood box with laminate countertop material. Plugs a hole at the end of a small bathtub in a tiny home.

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  Coffee time and Ollie cat on my lap.

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  Just changed our water filter. Water well on our rural property and lots of iron. Every couple of months kinda thing.

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  Got musician burnout. So I’m just messing around these days. Bought a synth several years ago, so playing around with it and learning how to do really simple stuff like loading free presets and learning step sequencing. Don’t really have a clue what I’m doing. Bit of a challenge for my analogue old school brain. But having some kind of weird fun.

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  Jumpin’ jesus, synthesizers are powerful little beasts. Doing some step sequencing. Trying to figure out some weird grooves. Gotta pick up some midi cables tomorrow. So far, I’m just inputting synth audio via TRS into the interface and DAW. I checked and my interface has midi in/out on the back. Don’t have a clue what I’m doing so I’ll see what midi signals are all about. I think I better watch some vid tutorials.

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  Picked up a couple midi cables yesterday and been DAW test tracking some synth in both audio in and midi in. I can see the degree of flexibility with midi tracking, especially with quantizing. Tried that and it’s pretty darn cool. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m more of an old school analogue audio waveform kinda person, so may just stick with that for recording. I’m totally new to messing around with synthesizers, so any ideas or tips about recording synth would be greatly appreciated....

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  More firewood moving today from the downed winter windfall. Carrying fir rounds out of the bush to our little logging truck.