Somehow Monster Trucks managed to be really lame. What is up with that? Besides being kind of funny in its lameness at a couple of points and adhering to various Monster Truck cliches that I've seen on TV, it really had nothing going on despite its best efforts. I also felt bad for the announcer fellow who was trying his very best to rally the crowd into going absolutely nuts for nothing interesting. "Some pretty average looking vehicles are going to drive around the track! WE WANNA HEAR YOUR CHEERS!" Dude, like, no.

I am going to see monster trucks tonight for some reason.

Against all odds, there are now Brad Sucks forums. If you've got questions about audio hardware choices or music production, please post them there and I'll do my best to answer them as time permits. Even though I'm hilariously underqualified, I get a lot of email about that stuff and I have a hard time separating it from the rest of the cesspool that is my mailbox.

The horrible restrictions of physical reality are all that stand between myself and my impulse purchase of an Echo Mia card. I called my local music retailer yesterday and they said they're out of stock and won't get any for two weeks. I looked around for other stores and there seem to be none that stock queer pro audio cards. If I wanted a grand piano I could have it by now.

I looked on the net to see where I could mail order one from. Musician's Friend and Zzounds only ship to the United States, leaving my Canadian ass out in the cold.

I wish all this awful globalism stuff would speed up so I could buy shiny things faster.

After struggling with installing the new drivers for my Echo Darla24, I find myself once again revisiting my desire for a better semi-pro audio card. The money I got for my sampler is burning a hole in my pocket and if I'm not careful it could get spent on something stupid like bills or clothes or food or weapons of mass destruction. My options for a no-extra inputs or outputs card right now seem to be the M-Audio Audiophile 2496 and the Echo Mia.

The one thing that I've wanted for a while besides lower latency in Cubase and overall better performance is the ability to record from one software program to another. So I could load up Reason, hit record in Cubase and go to town. You can hook those two applications up with Rewire, but I find that a bit of an annoying hassle when I'm just messing around with stuff.

The two cards seem to be about the same price, but the Echo Mia offers "eight virtual outputs" which according to reviews I've read will let me record one audio application with another.

The down side is that Echo scares me. The Darla24, while a great sounding card, has had a tendency to be extremely moody depending on the latest drivers and my system configuration at any given time. I would probably pay more money to not have to deal with that crap.

The Audiophile however has similar complaints against it and then there's that whole Devil you know argument and so on.

I'm not sure which decision I'll make, but I'm pretty sure it will be impulsive.

The book is in the hiz-ouse. Looking very forward to reading it and harnessing the power of Cubase to promote further rocking.

In case any of you nice people out there are cataloging my retarded injuries, here's a much needed update: I had a swollen, painful toe. I thought it was an ingrown toenail. Everyone told me to go to a doctor so he could butcher it and fix it. I went to the doctor this morning. It's not an ingrown toenail, it's frostbite! How dumb is that? That'll have to go in my Behind the Music episode. "In 2003 Brad was sidelined while struggling with mild tendinitis of the right arm, frostbite of the big toe and his braces kind of hurt his mouth a little bit too, like he got all these little annoying cuts from the brackets and damn it sucked. But things were about to take a turn for the worse..."

Over the weekend I picked up a couple of things. One was this super wicked awesome bright yellow Mahalo soprana ukulele:

Which kicks ass and was only $26. Then I got a carpal tunnel wrist brace to maybe help ease some of the constant throbbing arm pain I've been experiencing lately:

It was $34. More expensive than the ukulele and way less fun so far. It's also a gross beige colour. I could definitely go for a way more awesome looking one that possibly shoots lasers or something out of it to smite the people who will inevitably call me a wuss for wearing it.

I got an email yesterday asking me if I wanted to participate in a compilation called "Il Programma Di Religione" at boyarm.com. The compilation is 265 songs about Popes that are less than or equal to (<=) 15 seconds in length. It seemed like an interesting challenge; I've never tried to write a 15 second song before. I asked if I was going to be assigned a Pope or if I choose a Pope or what the deal was with the Pope selection. I was told that I just submit some music and they name it after a Pope and that most of the songs don't have lyrics.

Because I am a total jerk to myself, I immediately decided I wanted to make something with lyrics, that would apply to almost any Pope and, as another added challenge: be kind of sad and reflective.

You can check out my 15 second Pope Song right here baby. I recommend looping it until it gets on your nerves. It goes by pretty quick.

It was really difficult trying to cram everything I wanted in to 15 seconds and I wound up chopping the original ending off and cranking the speed up by about 30bpm in the end. But oh well. I'm not sure when the compilation will come out, but dammit there'll be some Brad Sucks on it when it does.

Pope Song This is the Brad Sucks submission to the Il Programma Di Religione compilation at boyarm.com. The submissions had to be about a pope or popes in general and be no greater than 15 seconds in length.

So yesterday kicked ass. I'm like totally going to get a huge rock star ego now and OD or at least auto-erotically asphyxiate myself. You know... eventually. Down the line, I mean. Thanks to everyone who signed up for the notification list. You won't get a confirmation email back because I don't even have mailing list software installed or anything, so just assume everything worked fine.

More news in a moment.

Hello kabillions of visitors from Penny Arcade! Welcome to my humble little music site. The songs are on the right sidebar and if you want to be notified when I get off my lazy ass and make more, you can sign up for that notification list over there. You won't get any spam or anything retarded like that, just a simple email when there's a new song online. Thanks to everyone who has sent me kind feedback so far. You rule ass!

My sampler auction closed last night at $275 US, which works out to about $422 Canadian. That's pretty awesome. There was an all-out bidding war and everything, it was great. I'm trying to think of other things I could auction off just because it was so much fun. Anyhow, now I must ship this thing and then think about what gear I'm going to blow all that sweet, sweet money on.

I just ordered the book Cubase SX Power! from Amazon because I am a book ordering chump. I was trying to back up some of my Cubase SX projects and wound up stumbling around retardedly in VSTi windows and other dumbness and got to thinking about what a goddamn ignant monkey I am. So a book has been bought. It will take a week to ship, which sucks. I like immediacy.

I totally went to my second singing lesson on Saturday. I stood in the middle of a room while a sassy woman sat behind a piano and yelled at me to open my mouth wider. If that sounds exciting, you are mistaken. I am now armed with scales that I'm supposed to practice for half an hour a day. I'm a bit worried about this because historically I absolutely suck at practicing anything that isn't fun.

My classical guitar lessons when I was a kid consisted of me constantly having to lie that I had practiced during the week. I pretty much have to be tricked into practicing by it being a lot of fun, which is how I got to be a decent typist and not too bad at Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4.

We will see.

Lately the thought of making albums has been on my mind. Not the actual physical pressing of them, because I don't think I could sell any. But the idea of putting together 10-12 songs with one theme in mind kind of appeals to me. ie. This is my sad acoustic record, this is my dancey party record, this is my experimental noise record, this is my eclectic "look how all over the place I am! Imagine what my personal life is like!" record. I tend to like to screw around with a lot of different styles and also take really long breaks in between recording songs and I'm wondering if this would focus things a bit and provide some direction and clear goals when I'm writing and recording a new track. And it seems like it might be fun.

Never Get OutGenre: Pop/Dance Time: 1:54 Date: 01/09/2003 Album: Brad Sucks: I Don't Know What I'm Doing

I have this thing I do where I work really, really hard on a song for weeks and weeks, slowly re-recording parts of it, changing lyrics, adding and removing parts and overall torturing myself about it. Then at the last moment I throw it out and write something silly in half an hour that makes me laugh. This is one of those.

Hey Brad,I've spent some time on your site and had a good read. Im looking at setting up a similar sort of studio but am unsure of thec omponants that i will need to get my up and running. I also have come to the conclussion that the event 20/20bas are the way to go and i am tossing up between them and the behringer truth b2031 monitors. Any advise?

if you could help me at all with info on your setup etc i would appreciate it. adam

Hi adam,

The main components of my setup are my Echo Darla24 sound card, my Mackie 1202-VLZ mixing board and my Event 20/20bas monitors. Everything else I have -- guitars and microphones and so on -- plug in to the Mackie and get recorded by the Darla24 and played back through the mixing board and on the monitors. It's pretty simple and straightforward, but it took a while to figure out.

I'm unfortunately not much help on deciding between monitors as the Events are the first pair I've ever had a chance to use extensively. When I was shopping for monitors I did look into the Behringers a bit, but the hype was better on the Events. I'm very, very happy with them and would haphazardly recommend them to anyone with a similar low rent home studio type set up.

Hope this helps.

I finally got off my lazy ass and posted my EMU ESI-2000 Sampler on eBay. Hooray! I hope it sells for a million kajillion dollars so I can retire and get all freaky eccentric!

They sawed off the edges of my teeth today! With a diamond-edged saw apparently!