Farewell BB King

BB King passed away today, very sad. I'd post a link to an epic, seminal performance by him, but that was pretty much all of them so choose any you like. Heart and soul were expressed through his music, but you could also see it in him as a person too - something about him just seemed so bright, warm and light.

Too Many Verses - plus noise reduction talk

Finished up "Too Many Verses" in rough n ready form, have a listen and download if you like: http://www.tommygrimesiii.com/music/TooManyVerses.mp3

A bit of irony when you listen to the lyrics, as it has been waiting about 7 weeks to finish, but I've had too much work! As ever, it's not really meant for me to sing, but for someone else who likes the song (let me know if that's you!) Personally I think a bit of The Dogs D'Amour crept into the sound of this one!

The other part of this blog is about a new addition to the stable of stuff, in this case new noise reduction tools.

Sure, the songs are meant to be drafts, but that's no reason to have lots of hums, buzzes, clicks and more hiding on there to distract someone from the song itself.

The bass is the worst for this, it likes to pick up a lot of buzz from the monitors and PC, though the electric guitar can get the same way and fed through the amp simulators with distortion, they can be noisy in the silences.


The vocals are a problem as well, the PC is a bit of a beast (it does video editing and 3D work too) and so has a fair collection of fans, so it is far from silent, and I don't have a vocal booth of any form.

I have been using ReaFir for that, which was free and pretty good but had one problem - as soon as I added it to any track in Cubase, I got latency - hit a note on the guitar and it was heard a teeny fraction of a second late, but that is enough to throw off the playing!

And sometimes that noise is a pain while playing, distracting, so that was a problem - and although I could get good results from ReaFir, I sometimes got artifacts - enter Acon Digital!

Having looked around at the big expensive noise reduction plugins, I just couldn't justify that kind of price. The Acon Digital Restoration suite was only $99 though, and a test of the demo showed it did not have the latency problems (and if there was some, simply disabling the plugin but leaving it in the chain would resolve it) and it didn't create the same issues with artifacts.

"Too Many Verses" was one of the noisiest tracks I've created, with two electric solo sounds, the electric rhythm, the vocals, and the bass all having their addition to it, so that prompted me to take the plunge. Very glad I did, very impressed with it - easy to use, and good results, and I have many uses for it in some of the video editing work I do too!

Go try it for yourself here!

3 million fakes

Ah the craving for popularity! The marketing tool of showing how many people LOVE you - 3 million love me, you should too! It's ok to love my work, take comfort, millions of others do!

The obsession with social numbers is amazing, and scary. It was with amusement I read about Instagram taking care of fake accounts, and that this meant some celebrities lost not hundreds, not thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but millions of "followers"

Somebody, somewhere, knew that these were fake - perhaps not the celebrity (though perhaps), but someone in marketing somewhere, someone in promotions, must have known. Justin Bieber lost 3 and a half million. More tellingly, an online marketing specialist Wellington Campos lost 3.2 million. Uh huh, online marketing specialist.... perhaps an insight into just what they were selling?

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30548463

It just amazes me that people care that much about how many followers they have. The bottom line is of course, the bottom line - money. So I guess some things never change.

Give me 1 person who actually cares, over 3 million who don't exist, any day.

Rough n Ready

I have about 80 songs in various states of beginning or completion.

Now, for me writing always involves some arranging, I can't help it - the song has a version in my head that includes the whole feel to it, the way the guitars should sound, the bass, how acoustic and electric should work together, little notes and phrases that would be multitracked.

But what I am working on is doing that, but still treating it as writing - not as making a song ready for a CD. After all, I want to be a writer, not a performer. My hope is someone else will love a song of mine enough to go ahead and record it!

So no more agonizing over every detail. And heck, I'll sing the songs myself too. Because I need to get those songs finished, and let the world hear them, even in "advanced demo" form. Wish me luck!


Different This Time

It always appalls me that people think getting free of an abusive relationship is easy - oh, you just walk out! Actually, for hundreds of reasons, it can be very very hard indeed, and takes guts and bravery to break out of a cycle.

I dislike the scorn that people pour on others who are trapped, or who were trapped for years; I dislike the "blaming" that goes on, with they made themselves the victim. And so I wrote this song.

It should of course be sung by a woman, but in the new spirit of rough n ready as noted above, it's just me delivering it - use your imagination! At least, until someone picks up the song to do their version.

Meantime for those trapped in abusive situations - may you find the support and help you need to be freed from that situation, and yes, it is not as easy as people make out.

Arranging Addict!

A current in-development song in Cubase

I just can't seem to write without arranging!

It's not enough for me to lay down the chords and sing over them, because I always have more in mind than that.

I have an impression of what the drums ought to do, what the bass should sound like, what kind of solo or instrumental there might be, for how an electric can sit on top of the acoustic, and so on.

So I find that whenever I write a song, I can't stop at just laying down the bare bones - though maybe I ought to learn to do that.

Thing is, I am a writer, not a performer, but the downside to having so much in my head for how the song should sound is that it takes time to do all that extra stuff.

That slows me down in terms of getting my songs down in a listenable form rather than just in my head. But, as a writer, I really ought to show that I have a lot of songs.

So I am thinking it's time to take a different approach, and "scribble down" the songs. After all, it's not my plan to release them, really I want someone else to take them and run with them! All I really need is something that sounds good enough to get the point of the song across, to let listening ears hear the possibilities in them!

We'll see how that goes, when I refuse to give satisfaction to the arranging part of me, or to the perfectionist part of me that wants to tweak and twiddle with the effects and settings and more - wish me luck!

Camp Copperhead was awesome!

Steve Earle closing one of the open mic sessions

It was very inspirational! Not so much about how to choose a chord to come next, but about songwriting as art, its place in history, its roots, and thoughts on useful mechanics (e.g. use computers rather than pen and paper for writing your songs.)

I think the biggest thing I took out of it was, work on your music. Take it seriously. The second and third verses (that you write) are bastards, but work on them so that they meet or exceed the bar you set in that first verse you scribbled down that came out "just so" and don't coast on that one great verse and leave the rest average.

Meantime, the "day job" sucked up time, but now wrapping up the mix for "Pedal To The Metal" and then will be bundling the songs together and getting them out as an EP on iTunes.

Travelling soon

Must...keep.... awake!

Only a few more hours before I try to go to sleep through the evening, til about midnight, so I can head out here on the way to Camp Copperhead, should be leaving here about 1am ish, to get there about 3pm ish their time tomorrow.

Stayed up late last night, but got up early this morning. Hoping that gives me enough fatigue to sleep through the evening which is normally prime awake time for me! Once I get the drive to Dallas done I'll be good as can sleep on the plane before Albany to the resort.

Poor body is confused right now though as I mess with its sleep schedule. Sorry biology, you have to take a back seat just for a day.