Scott Gentzen: June 2008 Archives

Months after acquiring the hardware to do some recording, I tried my first serious recording session tonight and I'm shocked at how disgusted I am with myself.

The first thing I worked on wasn't so bad. I have a really short voice recording to do for a little project someone else is doing that I didn't finish. I wasn't too pleased with my voice but I'll get over it. I was surprised at not being able to get through what I was trying to say when the microphone was on. I don't have any trouble talking in front of groups but I'm not standing up too against my critical listening. I'm going to give it another go tomorrow and not listen to it anymore. Maybe I'll link it when it comes out..

The second disappointing project of the day was recording some guitar. I learned that the only thing more critical of a guitar player than a Youtube commenter is the guitar player himself as he's recording something that might end up on Youtube....

I was starting simple with a direct-in recording of how one of my guitars sounds without an amp. Next step would have been a walkthrough of my amp settings, and then later a walkthrough of my distortion pedal.

This stuff was going to be a soft intro to me putting out a practice diary online to hold myself to the fire on practicing by opening it up to the net. Problem is that after giving it a hard listen, and I just can't put it out there.

Tomorrow I'll try it again through the amp. Maybe it'll sound better. Maybe I'll be less embarrassed. I'll get something out eventually....it just might take longer than I had planned.

I started the year meaning to get posting more to the blog. I had a good start going for a while.

Then I discovered Twitter a couple months ago and pretty much ground the blog to a halt. I tend to think of a blog post as a longer-form article kind of thing. Twitter's 140 character limit makes for a much lower psychological threshold to fire something out there. Also, feedback is easier and faster on twitter than a blog.

Originally this site was all about Margo and I and our wedding. When I came out as a blogger in late 2005, I wanted to turn it into more technical blog. It became a little bit of a problem for me to post useful tech info for things I do at work without talking too much about where I work and who I work for.

While the blog's still at its core about what ever I want to write about, it's been trending towards music a lot lately. I've been thinking a lot about music and independent artists lately and I want to explore that more on the blog.

Since I have a decent recording rig, one of the things I'm working on is a regular series of posts on my learning to play guitar. I'm also working on some audio walkthroughs of the gear that I have too.

I'm going to do more music related posts...some regular some not so regular... and see where it goes. I will still post on technology because it's still all about what I want to write about but I'm going to see where the music stuff take me for a while.

(yes, it's been a while. I've been Twitting. It takes a lot less work than blogging because writing is hard sometimes)

So Apple has finally released the inexpensive iPhone. Entry level is $200 which is more in line with a normal modern phone than the original iPhone was. With 3G to boot. Slick. Will be interesting to see how hard it is to get one. My phone's 3 years old and I've been month-to-month with T-Mobile for years so I'm probably going to get one once the rush is over.

So, what remains to be seen between now and July is what will T-Mobile to do try to keep me as a customer? Is my $45/month bill worth it to them to do something interesting? Will see...