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I bought a Zoom H4N field recorder a few months ago. I wanted to broaden the sounds I use in my recordings and do some experimental stuff. I don’t have a huge field recording passion – I’m not very interested in recording a storm or a train. But I do like recordings of people behaving naturally. It’s been fun, the quality is great and listening back to most recordings I feel like I’m in the room again. Which for a lot of situations is more interesting to me than taking a photograph as far as capturing a memory.

So here’s a montage of some of the recordings I’ve done with it since I got it:

Field Recording I [5.4 MB]

• [0:00] Justin (my drummer) has a giant, giant empty room in his basement. This is me trying out the reverb in it.
• [0:05] At a Barn practice I made some jokes about Bryan Adams and then wound up singing Summer of ’69.
• [0:25] And then “Run To You” but I couldn’t remember any of the lyrics really.
• [0:39] Then, after being exposed to a bunch of ska recently, I suggested the worst combination in the world might be a ska version of Bryan Adams’ Everything I Do, I Do It For You. [1:03] And then we improv it.
• [1:28] Total Breakdown in Brad Sucks practice. Next time I’m gonna feed the computer output (vocals and synth) into the H4N. I think that’ll sound better.
• [1:55] Rehearsal of I Think You’re Alright for a performance a few weeks ago.
• [2:31] As a favor I did sound for a bluegrass show by Yonder Hill. They needed eight microphones but they were very good. This is them doing “Beefsteaks When I’m Hungry, Whiskey When I’m Dry”. There is a banjo solo.
• [2:54] My guitarist Ben and his wife performed an intimate Valentine’s dinner-music show. This is them covering Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles. On this one I fed the monitor output into one of the H4N inputs so the vocals sound a lot clearer.
• [3:28] At Brad Sucks practice: Ben randomly plays an Irish jig riff, Justin says “dance, leprechaun, dance”, and I yell “WHERE’S ME GOLD” in my evil leprechaun voice and then the delay from the microphone makes us all giggle.

It’s a sweet little device. Main complaint is I wish it powered up quicker.

I’ve been asked where my Rock Band tracks are. Why are they not in the store since independent tracks just went live and they looked pretty good in my preview back in November?

I asked and basically: the play-testing process is super slow. We’re hoping this’ll speed up as interest in the Rock Band Network increases but unfortunately have no idea when they’ll be up. Baaaah.

My synth programming knowledge is spotty at best. I usually roll through presets and tweak the knobs a bit and call it a day. So I’m really enjoying this Synthesis Made Simple series over at Waveformless. I couldn’t find a post on there with a chronological list of the articles, so I’ve made one here:

• Welcome to Synthesis Made Simple
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 1 – Overview
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 2 – Oscillators – Meet the Waveforms
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 3 – Oscillators – Combination Style
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 4 – Bring the Noise – Noise Generators
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 5: Intro to Filters
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 6 – Types of Filter
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 7: An Introduction to Modulation
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 8: The Envelope, Please
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 9 – Your Friend the LFO
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 10: Using Modulation Practically
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 11: Putting it All Together
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 12: Where Do You Go From Here?