Archive for the ‘music’ Category

1100 hours

Tuesday, February 27th, 2024

hour meter showing 1100.1 hours

So, I’ve made it to 1100. Still getting better, although there are interesting phenomenons where some aspects get worse and then better as parts of my neural network rebalance. Anyway, looking forward to seeing what I’m like at 2000.

Nov1 – another mellow movie soundtrack track

Wednesday, November 1st, 2023

For anyone who has been missing my mellow movie-soundtrack style tracks, here is one:

Nov1-Bunne

I am trying to get back into writing some more

1000 hours

Wednesday, October 11th, 2023

So, sometime early in COVID I installed a hour meter.. I’m not sure exactly when, but it hit 200 hours in Oct of 2020. Anyway, I always said I’d do a twitch show when it hit 1000 hours, and so here it is

1000_hours_Sheer_twitch_show.mp4

Sheer feat Tamarisk – Time After Time

Wednesday, May 24th, 2023

So, I recorded this cover with the quite talented Tamarisk, a friend of mine from childhood. My hope is eventually to record a entire album with her, but time will tell. Anyway, here is

Sheer Featuring Tamarisk – Time After Time

I rather liked it.

Being edited out

Wednesday, April 12th, 2023

So, I know that it’s fairly common for people to not be able to decode and enjoy the level of music that I can. I can handle many more layers than most people can, and I want my music to *have* many more layers than most people want.

I also know that on Bruce’s album, I’m essentially a studio musician albeit a unpaid one and thusly I shouldn’t complain when I get edited out.

However, it was quite a jolt to have *my favorite part* of the whole album removed. Along with all my keyboards on two different tracks, and about 50% of them overall.

(Anyone who is curious, in Falling Down Hard, during the bridge, there was this lovely descending series of arpeggios that come in with the second of four passes that never failed to delight me)

I know part of the issue here is just that I like things too complex.. apparently too complex for Joe, and definitely too complex for Bruce. I did get permission from Bruce to release the track uncut after the album has come out. My guess is most people will prefer Joe’s mix to mine, but I want to be able to share what I think is one of my most brilliant moments with my friends.

There’s a bunch of things I’d do differently.. maybe I’ll see if I can just release the entire album mixed to my tastes. Probably only ten people will ever listen to it, but I know which version I’d rather hear.

900 Hours

Monday, April 3rd, 2023

So, since I added a hour meter – I don’t actually remember what date that happened but it was somewhat after I started practicing a hour or more a day during COVID – I have done 900 hours.

I’m trying to figure out how to celebrate when I get to 1000.

hour meter showing 900 hours

Silent Night 2022

Saturday, December 24th, 2022

So, this could hypothetically be part of a whole jam-blues-style christmas album, if people like it enough, or it might just be a standalone thing.

Anyway, here is Silent Night 2022.

Peace on earth and goodwill amongst sentients and such.

800 hours

Monday, December 5th, 2022

hour meter showing 800 hours

Sheer Covers Bob Dylan – Tangled Up In Blue

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022

I have mixed feelings about this but I don’t think it’s going to get any better absent significant work that I don’t currently have time to put into it.

At the moment most of my studio time is being spent either working on Bruce’s album or songwriting for the followup album to BIS – but I do from time to time track a cover just to keep my recording skills fresh. This is the latest. This is definitely in my “Jam band” style.

http://sheer.us/stuff/2022/SheerCoversBobDylan-TangledUpInBlue.mp3

The challenges of ego in tracking

Sunday, September 11th, 2022

So, I’m in the studio this weekend tracking parts for a friend’s concept album – except I’m actually not. What I’m actually doing is providing scratch tracks to allow him to get the timing right, over which we will track better parts later. Which is fine with me. I was running into a weird ego thing where the AE is keeping my parts faded way down – which makes perfect sense, after all mistakes in them don’t even matter – but there was part of me that kept trying to convince me it was because of how much my vocals suck, which may also be a true criticism but I’m pretty sure is not why he’s doing it.

I think I’m on record before as saying that to be a really great musician you have to be able to not let your ego get in the way of the music. THis is definitely one of those moments – I mean, it’s a honor to be considered as a session musician and this is where I want to go and it has been a lot of fun. I’ll go back and track “real” parts with the guitars – for the drums and vocals we’re tracking at Orbit Audio because they have better mics and a better sounding room than I even want to try to have, then for all the line-in type stuff we’re tracking at Sheer Sound (my basement setup, which is still more advanced than most high end studios were in the 90s)

Anyway, I really hope we can get this album shipped without the band falling apart or the originator losing interest. It’s very prog rock and a nice change from my ordinary fare.