Iraq 08

Heya guys,

I'm in Iraq again. This laptop can't handle the latest version of GarageBand, so no musical aspirations out here this trip.

I'm in Tall'Afar / FOB Sykes and it's very quiet out here as far as the war goes. I should be back home in Washington state by mid September.

I've been saying the music has been going slowly or not at all for oh, about 5 years now. Really, since Germany, I haven't done much. I've played around, gotten some ideas... watched them crumble into crap as I tried to bring them to the surface.

I think I'm about ready to give it another serious go this time around. I've got plans for a 1 bedroom apartment which is going to be not much more than a storage facility for all my household crap and my studio.

It turns out my beloved Event 20/20bas monitors were damaged, but they're being paid for by the damager. So I thought I'd take that cash and throw a little more in and get myself an upgrade. I'm looking at both the ADAM A7s and Dynaudio BM 5As, they both have great reviews, but the pro's are leaning towards the A7s I think.

If I end up with a similar priced set of monitors I think I'll go for the Mackie MR8s.

Either or, I want to definitely surround myself with a more music friendly environment. Get my computer and surrounding studio set up as user friendly as possible. I've spent a lot of time with various things in awkward places which added to the frustration of trying to write music again.

I'll also have less distractions I think. Especially with today's gas prices, sheesh, I can't possibly afford 2 trips downtown a week. Bummer though, I really enjoy Seattle and the scene there. Though I should probably work more on being a part of it and less on being part of the crowd.

I hope all goes well. I'm assuming short of not making it out of Iraq alive, I'll be pushing for a Dec-Feb time line for the next [U-D-R] release, even if it's a single or EP or something. I'm seriously considering using State of Oppression and Forever in Time as singles and b-sides material. As I'm willing to guess they'll probably sound out of place on a "new" album as they were both written 2-3 years ago.

The slew of material that I've been sitting on is still there. So I may take a stab at finishing the "Prometheus" album before working on new material. But I might just as soon dump those unfinished tracks or merge them with new songs. I doubt the next album with be called Prometheus, but the songs that were finished for it, much like "Version 4.X" will retain the album/EP title.

That was another idea I was toying with. Some manner of udr greatest hits or picking and choosing the best songs I've already written and bringing them up to snuff. I have several songs that are dear to me, that sadly sound terrible as I wrote them between 97-99 when I had little experience in songwriting or mastering. That would probably make me personally happy.

I'm possibly after an Alesis DM Pro. One of my big hangups in recent years has been drums. When I was using a DM Pro with the "encode" side project, I never had any issues with finding and utilizing great drum sounds and beats. But it seemed for a long time that running just my Alesis QS6 and EXS24 drum samples, I felt like the backbone of the song was just weak.

Lastly, I might be going in a slightly different direction in the future. Rest assured, it's no where near the departure Apop ran off to. I am *not* emo. If anything, it'll be angry, stompy and maybe synth-poppy. Er, some combination of the three most likely.

Dragonslayer 37 Zulu, out.
(doh, not in OIF 1 anymore)

-Normal
Mayor of Udderville
Operator of Uddervogt
Designer of Uddercraft
Master of Udders
I mean [U-D-R]'ers
Or something...