Tue - August 12, 2008
Stand.
They closed the mountain on me. It was my first
day snowboarding and it takes me forever to learn, so much so that I was still
slipping and sliding down when the mountain closed. They sent someone on a
snowmobile out to get me and he found me sitting down, all the strength gone
from my legs. He got off his snowmobile and got me on my feet and as I started
to slide forward I was so tired that I just sort of sagged against him and he
trotted awkwardly alongside me keeping me upright while I slid forward. After
20 feet of that he stopped and said: "I can't help you all the way down, you
have to stand up on your own."
So much of life, we lack the courage or the will or the strength to stand on our own. If only we had help. If only he had someone to follow. If only we things had been a little easier. Unfortunately, life isn't a reality TV show, no one shows up to force us to be who we're supposed to be. Help is all around us, but in the end, the will, the thing that gets us off our butts and into the studio/gym/stage/slopes comes from us or it does not come at all. No one can walk us down the slope. Dreams are made and forged not in a day, but day after day. It is our own daily battle to choose between the things that take us farther from our dreams and the things that take us closer.
Fight well.
from the song one more:
It feels like I have lost this fight
they think that I am staying down
but I'm not giving up tonight
tonight the wall is coming down
I am stronger than my fears
this is the mountain that I climb
got 100 steps to go
tonight I'll make it 99.
one more, we can go one more.
UPDATE: since you asked, here's how the story ended: I eventually made it down, completely exhausted. The place was closed and somehow I had lost my locker key. When we found someone who could open the locker it turned out to be a cute girl who was sweet about it and I would have tried to impress her except that my tired legs gave out when I tried to hand her something and I fell against some chairs knocking them over. That actually summarizes much of my dating life.
So much of life, we lack the courage or the will or the strength to stand on our own. If only we had help. If only he had someone to follow. If only we things had been a little easier. Unfortunately, life isn't a reality TV show, no one shows up to force us to be who we're supposed to be. Help is all around us, but in the end, the will, the thing that gets us off our butts and into the studio/gym/stage/slopes comes from us or it does not come at all. No one can walk us down the slope. Dreams are made and forged not in a day, but day after day. It is our own daily battle to choose between the things that take us farther from our dreams and the things that take us closer.
Fight well.
from the song one more:
It feels like I have lost this fight
they think that I am staying down
but I'm not giving up tonight
tonight the wall is coming down
I am stronger than my fears
this is the mountain that I climb
got 100 steps to go
tonight I'll make it 99.
one more, we can go one more.
UPDATE: since you asked, here's how the story ended: I eventually made it down, completely exhausted. The place was closed and somehow I had lost my locker key. When we found someone who could open the locker it turned out to be a cute girl who was sweet about it and I would have tried to impress her except that my tired legs gave out when I tried to hand her something and I fell against some chairs knocking them over. That actually summarizes much of my dating life.
Posted at 11:01 AM
Tue - August 5, 2008
Seeing RED
Isn't this a nice shot of my wife? Looks a lot like my normal photography. So why is it in final cut and not photoshop? Because I didn't shoot it with my Canon 5D. It's a single frame from a 24fps sequence from my RED camera. You should see it in motion, it looks amazing. It's like a 5D that shoots 24fps all the way up to 120fps. I've barely scratched the surface. Just wait till I really learn to use it. Of course, no one is waiting for me, I shoot my first music video in 2 weeks. Gah!
Sorry blogging has dropped off, I've been cramming 4 years of film school into 4 months worth of time.
oh.. and producing the newsboys record with my fellow monk gocher.
Posted at 01:47 AM
Fri - July 18, 2008
thought...
here's my favorite quote of the
month:
"We buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like"
- Mary Ellen Edmunds
"We buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like"
- Mary Ellen Edmunds
Posted at 11:23 PM
Wed - July 9, 2008
gone for a week
I'm going to be in mexico this week if anyone is
trying to find me. I hopefully will be able to check my email.
Posted at 12:47 AM
Tue - June 24, 2008
Release Day
:::: ROCK WHAT YOU GOT E-CARD
::::
All of my work from the last couple years comes to a focus today. The record is out. You can preview it at the link above.
All of my work from the last couple years comes to a focus today. The record is out. You can preview it at the link above.
Posted at 01:11 PM
Tue - June 17, 2008
Sara
I was finishing up some edits and came across this lovely shot. Sadly, the Sara Groves cover shoot for Radiant was shelved after Radiant was discontinued so they never did end up using these shots. Nonetheless, I did enjoy the shoot and wish I had time to shoot the cover for her Christmas record. I was right in the middle of finishing up our record when they asked so I had to pass. Here's hoping I'll get to work with them again. Sara is gorgeous and amazingly charming and it's hard to believe she had the same awkward high school stories we all did, but she does. Ugly ducklings do grow up to be swans.
lots of stuff going on over here. I'm backed up 3 records already. Crazy.
For you shooters, this is my old standbye. One flash off camera through an umbrella. Expose manually for background. Bring the flash up to taste. Shoot RAW. Edit to taste.
Posted at 01:19 AM
Mon - June 9, 2008
Heart Murmurs
"Your dog has a heart murmur" pronounced the vet. We were at the emergency clinic for a cut on Brynn's paw and after a tech had spent an inordinately long time listening to her heart, he called in a senior vet. The senior vet looked so young that I promptly christened him Doggie Howser. He told us she had a grade 2 heart murmur. We were instructed to take her to our regular vet as soon as possible for a full workup. Heart murmurs are a very common cause of death in boxers and incurable.
Before we'd been to the vet I'd been getting annoyed with my high energy dog. She's incredibly stubborn and requires ridiculous amounts of exercise or she just pesters me all day long. I'm pretty much the dog whisperer with all dogs except this one. Seriously, I calm wild animals. I'm Dr. Doolittle. Except with my dog. And I'd been starting to threaten her with Craigslist. Since she doesn't know what that is, it was largely ineffective.
After we found out she might die anytime, the annoyance pretty much faded right away. When you know your time is limited, it changes everything.
She went back to our regular vet and he spent awhile listening to her heart. After a good long exam he said "I don't know what they were listening to, but as far as I can tell, she's perfectly healthy."
So she's fine. But I find that I'm rarely annoyed with her anymore. What the vet made clear to me, was that my time with her was limited. In fact, our time with everyone is limited. We shouldn't have to wait till tragedy strikes to value our time with people. The tragedy is not when we become separated from people. The true tragedy is if we do not use the time we do have with them. I know i've sung this song a million times, but I guess I have to sing it to myself every day since I keep forgetting it.
live. love. forgive. never give up.
peace yo
max
Posted at 01:50 AM
Mon - June 2, 2008
80s flashback
Thought you guys might like a peek. We love 80s movies. Reese described this as Studio 54 meets Charlie's Angels and I thought that summed up our whole album nicely. I've done so many photo shoots that I'm tired of how similar they all look. If I see another artist in an abandoned building I'm going to scream. The illustration is from my friend Jody Nilsen. I haven't been a designer in years, so I was feeling totally rusty as I tackled the album artwork and all the marketing posters and stickers and whatnot. Fortunately Inpop's new designer Breezy has been around to bring me back up to speed. The last time I was a designer, the scene was all about typography and Raygun and Bikini ruled the day. Also we had to walk to school in 2 feet of snow. Uphill. Both ways.
The album comes out June 24th. I can't believe it's almost here. Also, in theory, my RED camera is almost here.
Posted at 02:32 PM
Tue - May 27, 2008
Haley n Wes
Had some fun this weekend with some friends of ours. This is a crop of a horizontal shot since the details got lost when shrunk down to the size I usually use on this blog. The full picture is better but I couldn't stand for you to miss the expression on his face. They've been married a couple weeks. :)
For you photo guys, if you couldn't guess, it's one umbrella off to camera right, although in addition to my normal sb800, I had a vivitar 285hv in there to give it more juice. By the time we shot this, we didn't need both flashes since the sun had gone down, but I used them both anyways. I split them with a cheap pc cord splitter. Incidentally, the 285HV seems like it was made by the people who make cereal box toys, but it puts out light just the same. If you need a flash and don't have much to spend: 285HV. I got the white of the dress and the black of the pants to co-exist by opening multiple raw versions, -1, -2 stops in this case and painting in what I liked about each exposure. RAW has more dynamic range than jpeg so I always shoot RAW. I might not if I was a wedding shooter with 2000 shots a day to wade through. I think this was my 16-35 but I'm not sure. I was shooting with my 50mm 1.2 at 1.2 originally but man I had trouble getting it to focus properly shooting into the sunlight.
Posted at 12:17 AM
Wed - May 21, 2008
lost and found.
Shara and I were exercising our dog in the big empty field behind our property. It's been slated for 52 homes but right now it just sits while they go through city planning. There's a big old horse pen at the very back and we were in there throwing the frisbee around. We need Brynn fenced otherwise she just runs away and across the busy street. It's normally just me and I normally use a cloth frisbee but on monday I was trying out the older plastic frisbee. I gave it a hard throw and the wind took it and carried it far far away deep into the tall grass where we try not to go because it's tick and snake party back there. We trekked back to get it and Shara heard something crying on the other side of the fence. It turned out to be the little dog you see above. He was shaking and crying and trapped back there. I had to clear a whole lot of thorn bushes and thickets to get to him, crawling on my hands and knees while holding out a hot dog. It wasn't fun. He had a collar and a name and a number and a family that had been missing him for 3 days. He was 13 years old and just a wee little dog. The family was overjoyed that someone had found him and the amazing thing was, they live over 1.5 miles from us with only major roads in between us. Most of those roads have no shoulder. It's a miracle he wasn't hit. We are the only people who go back in that field. I pulled 3 ticks off him and he very much enjoyed a hot dog, some water and a cup of dry dog food. He was so happy to be found that if I wasn't holding him he would cry and crawl back into my lap. After the tearful reunion in which both dog and family were crying and shaking I looked at my arms. They were covered in scratches and welts and it was a powerful reminder to me of the cuts and welts on the arms of the saviour who saved me.
Posted at 01:24 PM
Mon - May 12, 2008
It ain't over till it's over
One of the added complications of doing a record, is the convergance of everything else that needs to be turned in. Packaging, photography, radio edits, the bio and all matter of promotional whatnot clamors for attention. I remember getting an email once that said "guys at this point the packaging is MORE important than the record." It's not entirely a ridiculous statement if you understand that the people who print the booklets need them ready before the plant that presses the CDs. At the time however it was difficult to turn in all the lyrics because the lyrics hadn't been finished yet. Magazines, advertising, artwork and release schedules all get set in stone months in advance so if you push your records till the last minute like I do, you find yourself beset upon all sides by a small army of requests. As I told Breezy who's the new designer at inpop, our lives are now ruled by deadlines. You don't ask yourself whether you'd like to surf or celebrate mother's day over the weekend, you just find the thing that's most on fire and pee on it. Than you find the thing next most on fire....
Adding to the fun is that I'm handling the photography and the packaging on top of the record, so even though the record is done, I'm still up to my ears. Still I rather like this shot. :)
Ben Frank did the compositing and he's my best kept secret for making a photo pop.
Posted at 07:39 AM
Sun - May 4, 2008
Mastering
After mixing comes mastering where final eq and compression is applied to the 2mix. For this record, we did most of our mastering with Leon Zervos at Sterling and then did final assembly and some last minute tweaks with my good friend Dan Shike of Tone and Volume. In this picture he reminds me of Tank from the matrix and I can almost hear him picking up the phone with "operator". Dan has a pair of speakers that cost $18,000. His job is to listen to music through those speakers all day. Not a bad day job. Dan helped design my studio and he's an all around audio whiz. He looks tough but if you look carefully you can see a carebear somewhere in this pic. Also he has 4 cats.
Posted at 08:01 PM
Mon - April 21, 2008
It is finished (mostly)
Sorry I was gone, it was a really intense month of 18 hour days. I lost track of how many all nighters I pulled. I would not advise it. While there is no such thing as a musical emergency, it sure felt like one. I've been holed up with Reid Shippen, the best mix guy I know. In the back is Buckley, the new boy wonder.
We're done now. Mostly. ;)
blogging will resume shortly when I feel more like a human being again.
Posted at 04:04 PM
Thu - March 6, 2008
In Utero.
Most of the vocals are done and now we're trying to squeeze in all the random stuff I hear in my head; cellos, french horns, marching band, cheerleaders, kazoo... we won't get it all, but we do what we can. Here we are recording the "gang vocal" at matt's place. All of the girls could really sing and it turned out great. Tricia gave away most of my studio secrets explaining things like : "when max says it's a good start he really means that's it's bad". It's interesting to put that many girls in one room because at one point we definitely had to delay a take for a discussion that involved the word "uterus".
Dave shot this since I was busy doing the actual recording and saying of things like "it's a good start girls".
Posted at 01:45 AM
Thu - February 28, 2008
Melissa again
I'm a fan of movie posters from the 80s, which were mainly the work of Drew Struzan. He did Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Goonies to name a few of our favorites. The promotional stuff for this next record pays homage to that era. My talented friend Jody Nilsen is doing all the artwork and I just wanted to share this test sketch she did of melissa. Pretty sweet huh? The poster is going to be amazing.
On a recording update, vocals are mostly done, now we're trying to get as much on the tracks as we can before tour. We mix in a month.
Posted at 12:53 AM
Tue - February 19, 2008
Vocals
We're cutting vocals in our last crazy month of tracking. Trish is yelling so loud on these songs that she needs to rest her voice in between days, so I am alternating vocals with guitars. The girls sound the best they've ever sounded. This record will rock.
To clarify: The picture is of Melissa, not Tricia. Although today, Melissa is at home with the flu.
Posted at 02:42 AM
Wed - February 13, 2008
working through the storm
One thing that amuses me about reality TV is the
ridiculous challenges they set people:
Design a couture outfit for female astronauts that looks good on the runway and can withstand hard vacuum. You have 6 hours, some kevlar, a butter knife and ziploc baggies provided courtesy of ziploc corporation. The winning design will be featured on the first suborbital flight from Virgin Galactic and the bonus for this mission is a Toyota Prius. Go!
Then we get to watch the people get incredibly stressed out because their lives are quite literally at stake. It's the modern equivalent of the Roman coliseum. They're not in danger of being eaten by lions, but some of them look like they would very well take on a lion to get to that prize. Sometimes the challenges are really ludicrous, but they're actually good preparation for life. It very rarely lines up that you have a perfect shot at the target. We want to cry out, "but if I had more time, if I had more money, if I had more something... I could make this work". But in the end, it's only the people who make it work in the storm that make it work at all, because it's always uphill.
I'm thinking about this because I'm in that place right now with this record. I don't have enough time and people keep throwing new twists at me and demanding more things. I'm running on about 5 hours of sleep a night and it's all I can do not to snap at people when they ask for just one more thing. I have only so many precious days left till the band leaves for tour and when I forget that no one wants to work on valentines day it is a crushing blow to lose another day. The sleeplessness exaggerates the stress and I get pissy over things like the fact that the word; exaggerate has 2 gs.
But many records ago, I realized that there's only 2 choices. Pack up and go home or get it done under less than perfect conditions. I whine and complain about the storm but we do the work as best as we can. When we turn it in, it's never what I wanted, but it's the best we could do with the circumstances we were given.
So when you find yourself working in the storm or slogging through the desert, wail, cry out, beat your fists against the wall. But never quit moving forward. Because life is always less than perfect and the ones who learn to fly in the storm are the ones who learn to fly in life.
now. back to the studio for me.
I need to either clone me or invent a time machine. ack!
Design a couture outfit for female astronauts that looks good on the runway and can withstand hard vacuum. You have 6 hours, some kevlar, a butter knife and ziploc baggies provided courtesy of ziploc corporation. The winning design will be featured on the first suborbital flight from Virgin Galactic and the bonus for this mission is a Toyota Prius. Go!
Then we get to watch the people get incredibly stressed out because their lives are quite literally at stake. It's the modern equivalent of the Roman coliseum. They're not in danger of being eaten by lions, but some of them look like they would very well take on a lion to get to that prize. Sometimes the challenges are really ludicrous, but they're actually good preparation for life. It very rarely lines up that you have a perfect shot at the target. We want to cry out, "but if I had more time, if I had more money, if I had more something... I could make this work". But in the end, it's only the people who make it work in the storm that make it work at all, because it's always uphill.
I'm thinking about this because I'm in that place right now with this record. I don't have enough time and people keep throwing new twists at me and demanding more things. I'm running on about 5 hours of sleep a night and it's all I can do not to snap at people when they ask for just one more thing. I have only so many precious days left till the band leaves for tour and when I forget that no one wants to work on valentines day it is a crushing blow to lose another day. The sleeplessness exaggerates the stress and I get pissy over things like the fact that the word; exaggerate has 2 gs.
But many records ago, I realized that there's only 2 choices. Pack up and go home or get it done under less than perfect conditions. I whine and complain about the storm but we do the work as best as we can. When we turn it in, it's never what I wanted, but it's the best we could do with the circumstances we were given.
So when you find yourself working in the storm or slogging through the desert, wail, cry out, beat your fists against the wall. But never quit moving forward. Because life is always less than perfect and the ones who learn to fly in the storm are the ones who learn to fly in life.
now. back to the studio for me.
I need to either clone me or invent a time machine. ack!
Posted at 11:05 AM
Tue - February 5, 2008
to touch the sky...
Blogging may drop off a bit here as we are getting into the deep deep phase of recording. We're trying to get as much done before the band leaves for tour, so it's pretty much 11 hours a day every day for the next month and a half. yah baby. When we're done with this, we're all going to be wearing gold plated diapers. Here's a teaser shot that has something to do with the next record, but it's secret for now...
Posted at 10:08 AM
Tue - January 29, 2008
vibe
We were at vibe56 last week tracking drums for this record; now tentatively titled "Rock What You Got". Vibe is an old house that used to be known as the dugout where Brown Bannister made his home. I asked Lee to find the best room in town to track drums and he wanted to use vibe, so to vibe we went. Brandon blew through all the songs in under 2 days... the rest of the time was spent trying to fix the sound of the kick drum, which after much hoopla it was discovered that I actually wanted a felt beater instead of a wood one. my bad. It only took 2 days because we spent a week in pre production at my house and he practiced for a week, so we were ready when we got there.
Inpop has a new design intern named breezy and she shot one of the few pictures of me that you'll see on this blog. The picture is worthy because I am wearing the greatest hoodie ever. Matt got it for me, it's a marc ecko with Star Wars pictures embroidered all over it. Seriously it's amazing. It will go with my shirt that has R2D2 holding a spray paint can and a boom box. I will only wear it for special occasions.
Really, it's that cool....
Posted at 04:27 PM
Sat - January 19, 2008
Guitar hero
So we're done arranging our demos. Now we're going back and replacing everything in the demo with tighter takes and better sounds. We've started our unfulfilled quest for the holy grail of guitar sounds again. We've never quite found the grail, but we do get better tones each record we make. As you can see, we've gathered most of our amps together so we can experiment. It looks like a guitar center up here, except we can touch stuff without feeling guilty.
Posted at 03:14 AM
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Categories
Archives
XML/RSS Feed
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Published On: Aug 12, 2008 11:07 AM
Published On: Aug 12, 2008 11:07 AM