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...

Moved again and still lacking new tunes.

Long story short. I was rather unamused with Ft. Drum. I reenlisted and got myself sent to Ft. Lewis. Good news, I'm close to Seattle and it's scene. Bad news, I'm deploying to Iraq until September.

Not sure if I'll be able to get anything done musically before I go downrange and I'm not sure it's worth is trying to get a new laptop just to work on music for 6 months. I mean hell. It's been 3 years since I've put anything out. What's another 6 months.

Though I suppose I'll always have garage band and I can futz a little with Logic on my current laptop.

I'll post again when I know something. I'm currently chasing around between here, my personal myspace site and my band myspace site and trying to update all three with my limited time is difficult to say the least.

Check myspace.com/djnormal for the latest info on [U-D-R] and myself.

-Normal

Getting settled...

Here I am in NY. Back to my old job. Back to writing music.

No real successes yet in getting back into the swing of things, but it's a start. I really hope to have some new music done in the near future. How many times have I said that...

Take 1 part writers block and 1 part I forgot how to do this stuff and there I sit.

All in all, things should be moving on again slowly.

-Normal

Home is a strage place

Here I am back at home. Fighting with myself not to revert to the way I was before I left. So far, I'm doing a pretty good job. But as many people know... people don't really change. They get older, wiser and in better control of themselves. But they're still them in the long run.

I've been here for 2 weeks so far. 3 to go... It's been great seeing all my old friends again. There's a lot of things I'm trying to sort out and getting myself back where I want to be is a lot of work. It is easier with friendly faces and encouragement all around me. For so long I blocked out my friends and listened to one voice that wasn't very nice.

One thing I'm very upset about is my music. I've got so much sitting on my computer almost done... and I wish I could work on it here in Tucson. Alas my computer is somewhere between Germany and NY at the moment. It's been driving me nuts.

A note on life... one does need perspective to grow and learn. You can't fix any problems if they're right in your face. It's also timing. You can't force yourself to be ready to deal with things. When the time comes though, solutions will await you.

Here's to me being a little more active on this site as well...
-Anthony

The horizon becomes clear

Well... I'm still around. The site is still up. The forums were down for a while, but I got them back up.

I finally have a new computer (woot Mac Pro) and I'm waiting on the logic update for the intel processors.

So in theory, there will be new udr music in the near future. I hope.

Sorry I've been out of touch for so long. Between the army and warcraft, my free time gets devoured quite effectively. There's a lot of friends who I've more or less lost contact with and I feel bad about that. If you're one of them. Know that I'm still around. I check my email more than anything (incl. myspace) so that's the best way to get a hold of me.

If you don't have it, there's links around here somewhere. He's the anti email harvesting bot version udr at mac dot com. Hrm... I'll bet those bots can figure that out, oh well.

Take care everyone. I'll try (again) to keep this site a little more updated. Go use the forums so they don't get deleted again. dotmac doesn't support mysql or whatever so I can't make my own phbb thingy. Not that I could even if it were available. Web designer I am not... anymore at least. All that fancy new stuff is too complicated for me these days.

Peace love and sub atomic crowd control...

Not as well as I'd hoped

Well, here we are. New(ish) site and snazzy forums and I'm still talking to myself. I guess somewhere in my long absence the world forgot about me. Not entirely surprising, but a little disappointing. I wish I had more to offer at the moment, but I don't.

I hope there's still some people out there that continue to enjoy my music. I know there used to be some freaky fans that would never leave me alone. But then again, I was working at the club they were going to at the time.

I am still working on some new material. I've been a bit back tracked and have a few gigs (for work) that are going on during the next few weeks. Woot, slider go up... slider go down. I really forget that running a sound board actually takes talent sometimes and I feel like a monkey with a button. That aside, I'm still very glad to be working in an audio department rather than digging sand out of my eyes.

Leila has been gone for a while and she's coming back soon. I've been listening to some of the collaborations we we've done and I think there's some potential for inspiration when she is here again. Here's hoping for the best.

Go check out the forums... I know they're a blank slate at the moment. But if no one posts, there will be nothing for anyone else or myself to respond to.

15 Feb 2006

It's been almost 1 year since my last update. There isn't really much to tell. There's even more songs still in progress, I've improved my mastering skills and I did a minor update to the site.

Hopefully I'll actually finish a few songs in the next few months. There are plenty that are near completion or simply missing vocal recordings.

I'm still working with the USAREUR Band and Chorus as a sound tech. It's pretty laid back work and it's something I enjoy. So it's definitely a case of two birds with one stone. It also has convinced me that I do want to pursue a career in sound engineering and or live sound. Once I get out of the army that is.

The biggest feature on the new site is an actual phpBB forum... so no more dabbling in various proprietary forum code for me anymore. It looks nice too.

Hope there's still some udr fans out there that haven't forgotten about me or assumed I was dead.