All posts by G

About G

Multiple gold record award winning producer and songwriter, mix engineer, indie label owner, web master, graphic designer, photographer, community admin, video gamer, geek.

Mind the Mix: Sway Penala, I’m A Wreck

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I completed a song mix-down a few weeks ago, and it was slightly out of the norm. For one thing, R&B Pop is not my typical genre, though the instrumentation and general formula are very similar to the Electronic Dance I’m usually generating. The real challenge here was the very quick deadline. Who can resist a good challenge? In hindsight, it was an interesting episode of setting priorities and calling on experience. Here’s how I succeeded and where I may have failed.

“I’m A Wreck” was produced by JP “The Beat Digga” Nebres (Pinay, DnH) and performer Sway Peñala (American Idol top 24, season 5) for Sway’s debut album, My Story (Amazon, iTunes), released on 18 May 2010. The instrumentation, the recording, and the musical arrangements were done. My job was to take all of those pieces and make them sound like a song.

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Review: Logitech Control Center (LCC) for Snow Leopard

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USB Overdrive has been a mainstay on my Macs for a long time, from Microsoft’s first laser mouse to my current Logitech multi-button monster. LCC was always pretty terrible, and a previous version didn’t even recognize all the buttons on my MX1000 (on their own mouse!).

But with the recent update for Snow Leopard, USB Overdrive (and Steermouse) does not support all of the buttons on several Logitech models. A fix is promised to come soon, and while I love USB Overdrive, promised features can take years to materialize, if they ever do. Some people are also saying that setup is even more convoluted than before (try adjusting tracking speed on 20 app profiles with 2 pop-up menus each). So in the mean time, I decided to give the free LCC 3.1 a try. I took some screenshots and notes of my USB Overdrive settings then used it’s own uninstaller to remove it completely.

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Depeche Mode Remix Notes

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I recently completed a retro electro-dance remix of Peace, Depeche Mode’s next single. They were running an official remix contest with Beatport.

Their new album has a very light, though nicely electronic sound to it. Apparently, Martin Gore has discovered eBay and is buying up vintage gear, which they then use for inspiration (very cool). I wanted to bring back some of the chunkier sound from the 80’s for this mix.

Some people have asked about the sound sources. It was a pretty simple mix once all parts were replayed.

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In The Dark

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I was making my way down my darkened hallway and passed by the front door. I noticed that both porch lights were off, so I flicked the switch a couple of times. Nothing. I went to switch the hall light on to see what was going on, but it stayed dark as well. Looking out the small window in the door, I could see three silhouettes setting up to play roller hockey in the tennis courts across the way, and a light was on in the the corner as they fanned out beneath it. But that light was on. I figured there hadn’t been a blackout. Either way, it was very odd for anyone to be out there in the middle of the night but I was too tired to worry about it right now.

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PayPal is great.

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I’m starting to see why some people end up hating PayPal.

Somehow on Monday the 14th, while I finished adding a new email address to our account, I got dumped onto a “complete your Business Account” page with most of the steps completed except a credit card verification. I didn’t remember seeing this before, but it must be important if PayPal is going to toss it at me while doing something else. So I went back to our account, deleted the old expired card, wondered why PayPal hadn’t asked about that before, entered fresh credit card info and filled in some other blanks like our federal EIN number. A couple of days later, a $1.95 charge appeared on that credit card with a 4-digit code which I confirmed on our PayPal account. Done deal. Same as ever. Our account has been working fine since we opened it in 2002 and has always been PayPal “verified.”

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