I FINALLY MADE MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! these are spare exclamation points in case the ones in the title are insufficient to display my excitement!

Oh man, finally! I've been trying off and on on weekends for a while, and I finally, FINALLY made something I'm proud of having produced! Man that feels good! Whoo! All right!

High fives!

Oh, you want to listen to it? I'll bet you do. So here you go, click the link and enjoy:

Noel Preecs -- The First Song I've liked

If you have flash on your computer (most modern ones do) it should start playing automatically. There's a little 'download' link under the player if you want to save it for yourself and put it on your Ipod and listen to it over and over because it is so great.

I wouldn't blame you.

Yay! I wonder if I can make another one before the long weekend is out? I plan to give it a try. Part of the reason I've had success is that I've been cut off from video games. By choice, of course. There's a game coming out on Thursday that I'm excited about, and I finished the previous one, but buying an interim game for the long weekend seemed a little unnecessary. So instead of playing games all weekend, I've been trying to write music. I got stymied early yesterday, but did, eventually, manage to put together something I actually enjoyed.

As for our fourth, we've invited some of Jessie's cousins, who also live in Austin, up to have some grill time and shoot off fireworks. Fireworks are usually not allowed in Austin, but we're *technically* not part of Austin, and so they're okay for us! It's even been raining this week, so in addition to it not being illegal, it's also not a dangerously horrible idea. I got us a bunch of different types of fireworks, and we'll lite them off later when it gets darker. Should be fun.

Yay music!

-N

My projects

It may not have involved any 2000 degree ovens, but I've had my own weekend art projects. Less flame, more electricity. Less crazy science pictures, more tech research and signal diagrams. I'm finally building my studio!



It's been a long time coming, but since I've finished the second draft of my book, I figured it would finally be okay for me to take up music production as a serious hobby. I spent a lot of time doing gear research (after all, picking the equipment is half the fun) and put in the order right before we went off to Derek's wedding. When we got back the front room was filled with boxes (brought in by the cat-sitters) and I had a lot of presents to open.

I've gotten the basics all set up: the audio interface, two microphones, and some software. I can do recording now, which was one of the goals I had for my studio. I'd like to try and put out some simple podcasts up here for fun. Just me and Jess talking about stuff. We'll see how it goes.

The other thing I'm planning to set up is the synthesis portion of the studio: that keyboard you see there and some more software. I've been experimenting and reading up on the recording software, and just finished that book, so now I can go on exploring synthesis. It's all so exciting!

Also, this week marks our one year anniversary. Even more exciting! Being married is really fantastic, it's been a pretty amazing year for us, what with the new house and new town to explore. We continue to get along great, primarily, I think because we both believe in open and honest communication and because we both like to see the other happy so much. Here's to many more great years!

-N