Well I managed to do what I said! The music page has been finished! The about section contains an overview of my music and the history of how I got into recording, and how I've progressed. I may flesh out this section a little more. The equipment section shows a page full of pictures and descriptions of all the gear I use. The other section needs to be expanded as I gather more stuff, but that's something I can do anytime and isn't directly related to my own music.

Anyways, check it out! Look at all the crazy spending I've done in the name of music!

After hearing feedback that people liked the lyrics to my songs, I decided to update the music page with lyrics. You can now view all of the lyrics for my songs. I also have the infrastructure in place now so that it will be extremely easy for me to add the lyrics to all of the other songs in the future. For reference, I currently have lyrics to 18 completed songs that I plan on recording and posting on my site. When I say these songs are completed, I mean that I have a melody figured out, and either guitar or piano to go along with it. In terms of putting together a full arrangement, that is nowhere close to done

In the next few days, I hope to flesh out the rest of the music page with information, pictures, and links. Here's hoping I can get it done! This weekend, I will be dedicating a lot of time to music (if things go as I plan, which they rarely do), so hopefully I can put out a few more demo acoustic tracks, fix some of my existing tracks, and maybe release 1 fully arranged song. I can dream! Wish me luck!

Well, I've finally put new music up. I made a decision the other night that I think it's best for me to put up acoustic versions of all my songs first, and then put up the fully arranged versions. So I've put up a couple of demo tracks( somewhat rough, and not really finished ). In fact, the version of "Can't Be Wrong" that I've uploaded I only recorded to see how it would sound, and also to prevent myself from forgetting it. It came out good enough though that I think people might enjoy it. "Plans For Two" is a song that I originally wanted to sing with my sister, but this version will have to do for now. It's nowhere close to being done( the version I generated seems to be clipping, ugh), but at least people can get an idea of what the song will be like. "We Can Make It" is pretty much in it's final state. I have a ton of songs to record acoustic versions of, so I'm hoping to bust a couple more out this weekend. Now to get 4 and half hours of sleep before my volleyball tournament. Bah, who needs sleep

I've noticed that my mp3 player is having a problem with lining all of the song names and durations up properly( if the song names are too long), so I will have to fix it. It also doesn't change the highlight when songs change. Too much fun...

It's been a long time since I last posted. A lot of things have happened since the last post, so I'll try to summarize them:

- I've ridden several hundred miles more on my new bike. I've posted pictures of the beauty at the bottom of the post. I feel like I'm getting a lot stronger, and I'm hoping at some point that I'll be able to keep up with my dad. He is a monster though, so I really need to work hard to get as tough as him As part of the training to get stronger, I bought an axiom trainer for my bike. It's pretty incredible, as it lets you ride through courses that were filmed in other countries, and it changes the resistance based upon what is actually happening in the video. It makes riding so much more interesting.

- I competed in several indoor mens 6's tournaments and one coed double sand volleyball tournament. Of the mens 6's tournament, the only one worth mentioning is the 4th place finish out of 9 teams when we played in the Desert Thunder tournament, which was composed almost entirely of college club teams. The coed tournament was a blast, but we lost in the tournament pretty early on.

- I've upgraded my music studio with several things. The first, and most important thing to me, is a new taylor 914ce acoustic guitar. It's such a beauty, and the sound that comes out of it is incredible. I finally have an acoustic guitar that i can plug into an amp, and it sounds great. Dave Matthews owns two 914ce's, so you know its a great guitar if the big artists are using it. I also picked up a new midi keyboard to place underneath my monitors, so that I can work much faster with midi. Additionally, I upgraded my computer components. I switched from an AMD x2 3800+ with 2 gb of ddr2 400 RAM to an Intel Core 7 with 6gb of ram in Vista 64. The new setup seems to be about 10x faster( tasks that were taking 20 seconds took 2 ), and it makes working SOOO much better. I can now record at 2ms latency, making it possible to play drums with tracks using the keyboard without any lag. I can also load up projects, use tons of plugins, and perform intensive processing without ever seeing slowdown. I can't say enough about how awesome it is. To complement the computer, I also upgraded to Sonar 8 which has some awesome new features, and speed upgrades. There are pictures of the additions to my studio below.

- I competed in my first table tennis tournament( outside of the work sponsored one which doesn't count). As I was unrated when I entered the tournament, they have a policy where you aren't able to play past pool play, but they use your matches in pool play to rank you for future tournaments. I managed to win all 4 or 5 of my matches, which should give me a decent ranking to start. I'm set to get my official ranking tomorrow, so here's hoping... On a side note, I'm entering another tournament on March 27-28th. Here's hoping that I do well, as I'll be competing with much tougher competition!

- I went mountain biking riding with friends from work. I found out that there are some awesome trails up here in Goodyear. We went out to Fantasy Island North, and rode for several hours. I accidentally took my friends on the hardest difficult trail(it went up and up forever before descending on a small path down the side of the hill), which was ripe with opportunity for injury, but we all managed to make it out okay( except I think one of my friends was about to pass out due to not being conditioned for such extreme exercise ). I'm going out again on Saturday, but I think we will skip the insane trail this time!

Well that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Now it's picture time! Hopefully I will post more frequently from now.

After listening back to the song I put up, I definitely think it was too early to put it up. A case of the "Oh, this seems good enough" which easily happens after a long session. Some of the best mixers say they will only work 3 hours on a single song before switching, because it messes up your perspective. Perhaps I should learn from that... Song needs a lot of work, and I completely forgot to pan the instruments (rookie mistake). I think I might change up some of the instruments and I'm definitely going to add some more. The chorus needs a little more build up and something to fill it out more. In addition, I think the whole song could use some percussion with a beat (I'm not going for full drums though). Needless to say, if people like it at all now, hopefully it will be way better with the next iteration.

Now, it's time for some moovays.