Can't sleep... boogers will eat me

I'm awake because I'm sick with a cold. I spent all day in bed trying to get better, but because of that I'm wide awake now.

In other news, as it's after midnight, apparently it is my birthday. 23 years old. Good on me.

A friend made this for me:


Pretty funny huh.

Well, another update on me:

I got those assignments all handed in ON TIME somehow. I'm pretty pleased with myself over that one. I just need to present my essay to the class and hand in my minor project work this Friday and I'm done. For good. I'll have a degree. Crazy.

It's pretty scary finishing up. It means many things. One is I'll need to get a full time job. Two is I can't hide behind the "it's okay cause I'm a student" moniker any more. Three is I won't get to be taught all this amazing stuff and it be okay for me to royally stuff up because I'm there to make mistakes and learn from them. Five is I won't be able to watch The Young Ones any more and be allowed to relate to them as I do. Six is that I have no direction because I won't have anyone to tell me what's next, I'll need to find it for myself.

Lets hope I can summon up the courage to start emailing people about proper jobs. It would be nice to have more money than enough to pay for fuel and train fares. I'm an audio engineer who can't even afford to buy CD's to listen to. It's pretty sad.
What sucks the most is that IF I get a job somewhere, the chances of it being something I really really want to do (audio recordings, studio or live) are so slim it's nuts.

Aaaanyway, enough of that nonsense.

Throwdown went really well. I was hoping for 300 people, but in the end we only got 250. Heaps of people who said they were going to come didn't come. The bands played great and everyone who came to watch had a great time. It was good to see the SS peeps again, I do enjoy their company. It would be good to hang out with them for more than a few hours though.
One person I know told me that 'considering the state of the scene, 250 people is a great number', so that cheered me up a bit.

On Monday I spent the whole day capturing video and audio off the recording devices. In the end I was only able to record Reverend X and Playjerise. What I got came out pretty good for Playjerise, so lets hope that I can mix it okay. Reverend X's set didn't come out that good, but I might be able to save it. I think I'll take it in to college before they stop me using the facilities and try mixing it there. The video isn't crash hot for either band (two handycams on tripods) but it's better than no video, that's for sure. Thanks to those people that lent me the cameras.
Oh yeah, if you're a myspace person, there are photos of all the bands playing at the show at www.myspace.com/hometownthrowdown

Apart from the Throwdown recording, I've also got a recording I did with Soul Riot to mix. I'd get into mixing it now as I'm keen to do it, but this cold is messing with my ears something horrid. Compared to normal everything sounds a bit muffled. It'll pass a day after the cold does and I can get into it.
I've also got at least two more recordings I need to do for Dr Buff and Reverend X to do, so I've got a bit of mixing and recording coming up. Depending on how the Dr Buff one comes out, I might have a paid recording lined up, so that's some good news.

I'm going to go and climb back in to bed. Hopefully I'll be a bit better in the morning and can enjoy doing nothing on my birthday and not have a headache and runny nose. You know, I should go down the road tomorrow and buy some tasty beer to have at home to celebrate. Yes, that would be good :)

It's Not Over Yet

So another blog to let you all know what is going on in my life. I know at least one person enjoys reading them (thanks mez/marlei), so here it goes.

College. That's pretty much my life right now. I have three assignments to hand in next week, so I need to get them all done. As of now, one is due in 7 days, two in 8.

The one due in 7 days is about sourcing and putting sounds to a 6 minute montage of scenes from The Animatrix. Seems simple? Well yeah, but when you actually give it a go, it's pretty hard. First things first, you need to watch the video and make a list of what sounds you want to put where. This takes an hour or three. Next part is finding those sounds. I've been spending the last week trying to find appropriate sounds and I've only got approx 1/2 of them sourced. After that, you need to place them all in the movie at the right points and line them up with the picture. This doesn't take too long, as you have the sounds and know where you want them. When I say not too long, I mean it takes a few hours to do. Hardest part is making them fit with the scene and mixing them to appropriate sound levels. This takes aaaaages. The video goes for 6 mins. I go through it 5 times and that's 30 mins. You need to go through it hundreds of times to make sure everything is perfect, especially for such a long piece. Lets assume all that is done.
Now, the next hardest part is exporting all the sound and making it into a DVD. First you need to export the audio, then render the video into the right format for a DVD, then time align them, make up DVD menu's and blah blah blah.
Whinge whinge moan moan, I have a lot of work to do.

8 days away I need to hand in an essay (which is super boring and hopefully the last one I'll ever have to do in my life) and final mixes of 6 bands that I recorded live so they can be put to video and also made into a DVD. This time I don't have to author the DVD myself, some DTV people will do that, but I will be handing in stereo mixes of each band AND 5.1 surround sound mixes. I've been progressing through these quite well. Tomorrow I have to re-record some vocals for one of the bands, but after that I should be able to get them finished pretty quickly.

Now, you might be thinking "hmn.. that sounds like a lot of fun compared to sitting in an office doing what I do". Yes, the mixing bands in stereo and 5.1 is great fun, but essays have always been my weak point for maximum damage, and I'm not terribly keen on doing sound-to-picture work unless it's mixing a band for DVD. Also, I don't have much time to get all this done.

On a brighter note, Throwdown is on in 8 days, which is excellent. I'm going to be busier than an ant when the rains are coming up until then, but so far things seem to be fitting together nicely. No bands have pulled out, we're going to have two stages, two good PA systems, advertising is being handed out (despite the photocopier breaking), we have some youth groups coming along etc etc and so forth. We're even setting up a coffee stall.
Only thing now is really for us to have the event and hope that people come. I'm assured that a few people will come, but I will be disappointed if we have less than 300 people. Always am, always will be. It seems to be my mental benchmark for how successful it has been. If you're reading this and are in the area, please come! Details are here: http://www.myspace.com/hometownthrowdown

Oh yeah, it's my birthday this month on the 18th, that same week my car rego is due and I finish college forever the week after that. Please buy me lots of presents of cash payments and cheques in my name so I can pay for my car service, pink slip and rego and still be able to enjoy my birthday somewhatish. Why it all costs as much as it does, I really don't know. Stupid ageist insurance companies/RTA.

Oh yeah, The stupid Klaxons make me want to go back to England again. All this rain and their music is making me miss the place quite a lot. It probably doesn't help that I'm wearing my Pogues shirt from when I saw them and Billy Bragg play in Manchester.

Aaaaaanyway. I should go to bed.

Night!

Goodnight Goodnight

Bored much? Yes please.

I've been pretty busy of late. It's great when I'm busy, always having something to do, but as soon as I stop doing things, like now, I get SO bored.

Right now I can't sleep, I've got the songs I've been re-recording the vocals on today playing over and over and over in my head. I'm playing other music to try and flush it out. I was planning to get up at 4am to watch the UEFA Cup final between Zenit St Petersburg and Rangers. Looks like that won't be happening as it's now midnight and I have a full day of being awake in class to do tomorrow.

I've been a very tired person lately. I think all this soccer playing/college going/being up late I do is really catching up with me. I'm constantly tired, my knees and ankles ache and it takes a second or two for me to think. My days off from college are spent lying around in bed simply so I can recover. 7 more hours till I need to be awake to catch the train to do it all over again and I can't sleep. Great.

Yesterday I went on a tour of the Rode microphone factory. Good fun that was. Getting to see the process of making the mics from design to assembly to testing to distribution. They have these sweet machines that machine the metal parts for the mics that are weapons grade. The government checks the machines every few weeks to make sure they haven't made any weapons with it. These machines cannot be sold in The Middle East, China or Korea. Pretty nutty. Also, the factory floor is full of Asian and Indian workers. It looks a bit sus.
Still, all in all a good trip. It really opened my eyes to what's inside the things and gave me a bit more of a feel for ways to use them.

Last night I was going to start overdubbing vocals, but the vocalist didn't show up. A bit annoying but it meant I got to have a play with using Auto Tune. Pretty fun. You can make everyone sound like Cher at the touch of a button (literally, it's the basic function of the plugin).

Today was spent back in the studio redoing the vocals for two bands. Ended up powering through 4 vocalists in 3 hours. A mean feat by any standards. That said, it left me with the songs stuck in my head, and me sitting here typing a meaningless blog. Sorry I don't make poems or try and make them sound mystical. That's just not me.

I finish college in a month and a bit. I'm so freaked out by that.

I'm going to climb back into bed, the songs may have stopped, lets see what happens.

High Fives and Stage Dives

A new blog entry! It's been quite a while since I did this.

This time, unlike most times when I complain about things, I'm actually very excited and have lots of news for everyone.

The latest thing to be excited about is that Throwdown is happening again and last night Luke and I conformed the lineup. Always a good thing to do, especially when we have such good bands! The next one will feature:
San Salvador - http://www.myspace.com/sansalvadormusic
Playjerise - http://www.myspace.com/playjerise
Dr Buff - http://www.myspace.com/drbuff
Red Letter Project - http://www.myspace.com/redletterproject
Reverend X - http://www.myspace.com/whoisreverendx

Luke and I have some sweet ideas about the way it's all going to work on the night, and I'm going to try and record it (mostly for my own personal recording stuff). Not just audio either, I'm going to try and video it too, so if you have a video camera and will let me use it, please let me know!

Another thing to be excited about is the recording I did this past week. For college I need to do a major project. For mine, it involved doing live recordings of the 3rd year performance students. We went down to The Metro theatre, the bands set up onstage and played, I recorded all the audio and the DTV students filmed it all to make live video clips for each band. It all went really well, but I'm going to have to re-record most of the vocals for the bands as the microphones we were given weren't very good (I was promised good vocal mics and didn't get them!).

On Wednesday I got to see Henry Rollins tell stories from on the road and rant about different things. It was brilliant. He spoke for 3 hours non stop and had some amazing stories to tell about music (such as singing for The Ruts with support from The Damned and the day he first met Iggy Pop) and also from countries that he's visited. So jealous of the woman I overhead in the lobby after the show mentioning that she was going to the next nights show as well.

Everyone seem to be having or going to have babies right now. Scotty and Corrine had their baby, James William, the other week. I finally saw the little guy on Saturday, and he's tiny, but pretty awesome.
That same day I found out that Paul and Katie Gatt are expecting, and yesterday I found out that Brian and Cathie Hall are also expecting! Who's next?! They all seem to be beach mission related people.... so married beach mission couples, watch out (or hurry up)!

This week Esther is in Melbourne having fun going to design conferences and buying sweet cameras (I want the camera!), so that's leaving me to get assignments and things done. This week I need to finalise what my setup would be for a 5.1 Surround recording of an orchestra would be, and I also need to analyse the sound of 5 mins of a movie. I'm going to head down to the video stop to hire some movies. I HAVE to hire and watch movies for college assignments, what a hard life!

I am going to miss college quite a bit once I'm finished....

I have some paid work this week for once, so that is nice. It's a gig I usually do for Greg over at Asquith doing sound for people who sing cover songs to old people. It's not the greatest gig in the world music wise, but it's easy and you get a free hot lunch (inc dessert!) to go with it, so in the end it's a pretty good deal.

Oh yeah, I had a great weekend. Shayne was back in Sydney (great to see you again!) and had a belated 21st birthday party. It was over at Chipping Norton Lakes, lots of people I haven't seen in a while were there, we played sweet games of soccer, ultimate frizbee and hackemback, ate cake and just had a good time hanging out.
The second half of the party meant going to Bar Ace in the city (schooners of Old for $3.20!) for some drinks and hanging outs with more people. After Bar Ace everyone decided they were going to this club called Bungalow 8. It's a loud dance party type place that I really don't like, but upon refusal of entry due to it's horribly tight dress code I wasn't too worried. Hugh and Brendan couldn't get in either and on the way there I spied a pub that was quiet and had Premier League Football on a big screen, so we just went there! It was awesome because I got to see Manchester United lose in the last 5 mins of their match against Chelsea and also the first half of the West Ham vs Newcastle match where West Ham got up 2-0, but just before half time Newcastle got it back to 2-2. We were kicked out of the pub as it was closing, but it was no matter as the match didn't end up having any more goals, and Shayne and the others were heading to The Rocks for 2:30am pancakes!
Ended up getting home at 5:30am. Awesome.

Well, I'd best be off down to the video store to get these movies, I'm not sure what ones to get to choose from, I'm just going to go and see what they have.
Hope you all have a great week!

This is the topic of conversation...

Here's a tip for you kids: Next time you're meant to be adding people to your 'band' myspace page, triple check that you're actually signed into the band account, NOT your personal one. Way to waste 2 hours and confuse a lot of people Owen.

Holiday is happening soon. Just over two weeks and I leave! Woo!

Last two days was JMC Showcase stuff. I was meant to be doing FOH sound, but instead I was shoved on Monitors for the night (sound on stage, the stuff that the performers hear for the uninitiated). The upside of doing Monitors is that because you're tucked away on the side of stage out of sight to the public, you can easily curl up on the floor for a sleep when you've got nothing to do. Downside is that you've got to deal with performers being whingy and doing things they shouldn't: for example, pointing the microphone directly at a speaker then wondering why it keeps feeding back.
In the end, it wasn't too bad because we had 6 practices to get everything right, but it was bad because we had 6 practices (going through everything so much is very boring for sound guys) and I'd gotten all the levels fine after the first band had done their song for the first time.
It was good to work with fellow JMC types to see what skills each group of people had, to see what skills people lacked, how I could improve my game a bit, and to see Trainers in their prime (i.e. in the bar after the show).
It was also good for me to have something 'responsible' to do. Because I was doing monitors, it was my job to direct a couple of 2nd year students in helping me out (I don't need help, so most of the time I was telling them to chill out) and to also keep the performers happy by making each one of them feel like they're the centre of the show. It was good in that it gave me something to do.

Back onto the topic of this sweet holiday I'm going on and that you're not (unless your name is Esther), flights around Europe have been booked, tickets to see The Slackers have been booked, tickets to see The Pogues & Billy Bragg have been booked, tickets to see Arsenal have been booked (!!!), tickets to go on the Eurostar have been booked (!!!), and the only things left are accomodation in continental europe and our Eurail train pass. Oh, and I need to pay for this all. I owe someone a lot of money right now. They'll get it soon.

Next week I can finally get my full licence! Yay! This means I can drive at 110km/h legally and also not be patronised by other drivers for driving better than them while carrying a 'P' plate. This week after I get that, I'm going to go and get an International Drivers Licence (only $50 from the NRMA, you can even get one on your L's), and then get an International Student Card. Pretty exciting stuff from my end, its okay to he jealous, I know you are.

Ok, now on to the annual blog entry rant:
Why are bands that I like releasing albums that I don't like?
This week I have two prime examples: The Hives and Hot Hot Heat (both of whom Esther is seeing live this week, so darn jealous).
I got The Hives album in my CD player, hit play, and this weird noise came out. It sounded like a rock band, but was it The Hives? There was a rock n roll sound, but apart from the distinctive vocals, it really didn't sound like a Hives album. After a couple of tracks, what's this? Pianos? RnB? What? Turns out Pharrell Williams (one of my most loathed musicians) co-wrote and produced two songs on the album. Really not cool guys.
And Hot Hot Heat? What happened to their fun indie rock n roll? They've turned into a Stadium Rock band. You know what I mean, minimalist guitars and drums with whiney vocals sung over the top that only sounds good mixed in a stadium. The only song I can really say I like is '5 times out of 100', which is a re-recording of an old song!

Annoyance aside, hooray for holidays and all that. Also, I just noticed I really like brackets.

- Owen

sick of it all

so i'm sick today. hooray! its one of those "i feel like i'm going to be sick everywhere but i'm not so i'll just curl up and try to sleep" type things. it's really annoying.

this past month has been mega busy with college. i've handed in all but two assessments (inc the major ones) so i'm almost finished up for the year. i've got a restoration project due on monday, where we need to restore a wax cylinder recording and try and remove as much of the crackling as possible, and my final soundscape recordings for the semester on friday. i can't wait to hand all of these in as they're weighing on my mind quite heavily.

i'll be arriving overseas in 1 months time. i'm very excited by that prospect, but 1 month is a really long time when you're excited about something. esther and i trying to work out where we will be and when, so its really fun just going through and doing that. it also looks like we'll make it to germany too.

hometown throwdown is coming back! we're going to start it off as a smaller event and try and build them up again. its on the 30th nov and features three bands: Dr Buff, Airship Colour Majestic, The Understatement. it'll be pretty cheap, i think $8 or something, so it'll be a good night. i'm going to try and record the entire thing multitrack into protools and set up some video cameras to film it. in the end we'll have a sweet dvd. i might even be able to mix it for 5.1 surround sound at college, but we'll have to see. i'm pretty excited by throwdown being back, and all the recording process that'll get done too. it won't get done until i get back from my holiday (i leave 36 hours after its on), but once its done it'll be great.

royal crown revue are touring in 3 weeks. because they're touring at the gaelic club i not only get in for free, but i might even get to do monitors for them. fingers crossed is me!

oh yeah, once i work out how to compress the doco i made for college, i'll upload it to youtube for you all to look at and tell me how good i am at things.

if you're doing things in the next month, please invite me along. the lack of not going anywhere with anyone to anything is making me feel kinda lonely to be honest.

thats enough for one day, speak to you next time.

too much paranoias

argh

right now i'm having one of them.

i don't like it, i wish they would stop.

why does it happen? i kinda know, but don't fully understand it

what can i do about it? i don't know yet

i like to call them 'brain explosions'. basically it's an anxiety attack of sorts.

for no reason whatsoever my brain will go "hey owen, BLAH" and make me think something horrible, then get me worked up about it, make me have some sort of freakish daydream about it, make me think i'm physically in the situation, then dump me back in the real world to deal with it.

right now my brain is telling me i hate someone. i don't really hate them and they haven't done anything wrong to deserve it. my brain is telling me they did something, which actually didn't happen. my brain put me in the room that this thing that didn't happen happened in for me to see and has now thrown me back in front of my computer screen again.
worst thing is, i KNOW that none of it is true, but now i'm left with this horrible feeling of pain and hate for no reason at all. hate is a strong word, but thats what it does.

sometimes things will trigger this off, sometimes nothing will trigger it off. most of the time that something will trigger this off, the situation isn't actually happening and there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything, yet i still have these problems.

sometimes when it happens and i'm sitting at my computer, it makes me want to break the computer. again, i don't know why because i like my computer a lot, but it's just what i happen to be sitting/doing at the time.

confused? don't worry, i am too. i am also trying to fix it.

EDIT: turns out what my brain was telling me was partly true. i'd say that this one was approx 75% correct. when i spoke to the person involved they said it was "freaky" how accurate i was. unfortunately this is the case whenever this happens. a gift? it can be, because when the outcome is good it's wonderful, but when the outcome is bad, it's really not fun