Drews Sound

oooo! I actually haven’t captured this in the moment before. Sounds quite interesting. #OwMyGString.

and why, is this demo one of two?

You’ll have to listen to find out. Audio below.

Writing music is such an interesting thing for me. To have what I had heard in my head, to become real, something tanjible. I think what makes it so exciting is the waiting game. I don’t record it, if it doesn’t stick with me for at least a week. After a week, I just want to hear it. I track some of the instruments in Logic. It will be a good day when I have all of my real instruments back. I am very thankful for Logic, but, it’s a long grewling process. I think I can honestly say after recording Area Code, that I am not against working with a producer one day. I try not to leave any excuses for the industry. I think it’s so easy to overlook something,and I try not to. You’ve got to quantize, so I quantize. Your vocals have to be autotuned, so I autotune. We are used to music being absolutely perfection today. It is a bit crazy. But it’s not as easy as it might sound for a totally blind producer, who may not know all the inns and outs of software such as logic. You can go to Youtube, and watch a tutorial. If you can see it, you can understand what they mean, when they say, click this, and then click that. If you can’t see the video, it a lot of times doesn’t translate, and you are left figuring it all out, without a mouse, and using the keyboard, and frankly, theirs a lot I don’t know.

Quantization is allowing the software to put all the notes perfectly in time on the grid. The problem comes when the sofftware gets it wrong, and then, it’s wrong. when you don’t know how to move the note, you can’t edit. Logic, Midi, is a lot different then working with digital audio. So, what to do? My solution, is to record every part separate. Everything on it’s own track, so when Quantization gets it wrong, I can take all the tracks over to Windows, into the Reaper sofftware, and manually move the digital audio. This means playing the kick, snare, hats, crashes, ride, toms, all at different times, so that I can correct things. Sound crazy? It is. It was really trippy my first couple songs that I recorded like that, and then as odd as it is, my brain started to figure it out and compensate.

I recorded the Hip-hop 808 style drums, acoustic drums, and bass guitar in logic. One really cool secret is making a copy of the bass guitar track, and having that copy be sign wave, so it just pounds the fuck out of subs, along with sounding good without subs. I do love that peace of Logic and midi. After I get everything in time and have things setup in Reaper, I play the guitars. I used the pickup on my Taylor for acoustics. I ran my electric into my new Fendar Mustang Micro, ran out the headphones jack into my audio interface. The best sounding electric guitar tones, I’ve ever recorded. Vocals, I used my Blue Microphones Bluebird. I actually ran 2 autotune plugins, to get things a bit smoother.

To make a some what long story shorter, basically, it takes me about 10-14 hours to build out a flawless track. I honestly believe from what I’ve seen on youtube, and heard in conversation, that the sighted producer community can build out a track within 30 minutes. After all, it’s just a grid, and notes, more than it is playing through the entire song in real time x amount of times.

So as you can guess, by that point, when it is all said and done, it is such a high for me, to take off the producer hat, and just crank the helll out of a song I have written. Just to have it done. to have it real!

For me, every song I write and produce is a lotto ticket. What, if this song, is the song, that someone hears, and it puts me on the map. I say it with every song, and believe it more with every song, and yes with Area Code, I think it could be the one.

The interesting paradigm as someone who has been in radio, and also a songwriter, is I do know what Radio is looking for, or at least believe I am in a different way in tune with that, so after writing a song like Area Code, I do believe it could become a hit.

Area code is a new take on the concept of the small town you grew up in, and haven’t been back to in a while. You can’t believe how much it’s grown, and it tares at your Heartstrings when you drive down what used to be it’s back roads. I was sitting at lunch at work, when the chorus played in my head. I had to grab my phone and write down lyrics. It was a pretty powerful moment for me.

Listen to Area Code below!

We mentioned this in one of our last posts about the Micro, but, hadn’t actually tried it yet. It’s the deffinition of Bad ass!! Listen below to the Mustang wired into the aux port of a few speakers and how they sound as Amps.

Fender Mustang Micro through the:

Marshal Acton 3:

JBL Charge 4:

and, the Ion Blockrocker Plus!

yes, for 250 bucks, you can purchase the Mustang Micro, and Blockrocker, and have a totally dope Battery Powered setup you can take to the streets!

Jesus, to be in high school or college these days. one speaker can litterally do it all! That’s! Sick!

so we already know it sounds amazing with an electric guitar plugged in, but may I suggest that it sounds just as amazing with an acoustic. Recorded directly into the iPhone 15, volume normalized in TwistedWave. This is so dope that it is so easy to record guitar into a phone! I absolutely love this thing, more and more each day.

listen below, and find more at

http://www.guitarflatter.com

We’re living in the future I tell you. Guitar players! Have you seen the Fender Mustang Micro? Thinking back to my first effects processer, the Digitech RP10, it was almost as long as my guitar case. It was just as heavy as my guitar. and It for sure didn’t sound as good as the Mustang Micro.

What do you get? A device that fits in the palm of your hand, sporting a quarter inch plug that fits into your electric guitar. On the front of the device is a large volume knob. On the sides of the device are buttons. Amp select plus minus, EQ plus minus, effects plus minus. Effects parameter plus minus. On the other side is the on/off switch, which also slides to put the device in Bluetooth paring mode. Yes, that’s right, you can BT into the device, and play along with backing tracks, and that’s not all. On the end of the device, you have an eighth inch headphone jack, and, USB C for charging and record out. Yep, you can plug it into your IPhone 15, and record straight into any app or Stream over the Social Media universe. A hidden secret, is that if you are streaming into from one IPhone, and recording into another, the recording will also include the Bluetooth audio.

Audio quality? Pretty dang good. You can’t tweek the presets to much but they all sound good, no filler. Recordings come out very cleanas well, just what you hear through headphones.

Use cases. I can think of a lot. If you’ve got an Ion Block rocker and want to do a small show, you can run this guy into the line in eighth inch, and have guitar and backing track. Then plug your mic into the other jack. Playing through headphones is an obvious. Recording quick ideas on the fly couldn’t be easier. We can think of more things too I’m sure.

Click below for audio.

Scrolling through tones.

Bluetooth audio and guitar. Backing track.

Audio Demo

Daily planner Scripts V1.0
Written by Drew Weber
January 2024.

These scripts focus on creating notes for a day in question, vs, focusing on a time and appointment as a calendar provides.
None of you’re planner information is stored in these scripts but rather in settings files that are not included as they will be created/managed when scripts are used.
The settings files will be stored in the Personalized settings folder, and named as, for example,
DailyPlannerJanuary.JSI
Note. You may not use the Grave accent key within your notes. This is the key directly below the escape key as it is being used as a delimiter within programming.

Usage:
keystrokes.
Toggle on/off with control+alt+p.
When active, you will hear a chime every 2 minutes to remind you that Daily planner is active.
Control+alt+left: move back day
Control+alt+right: move forward day
Control+alt+up: move back month.
Control+alt+down: move forward month
Control+alt+rightShift: create new note.
Edit mode:
Control+Alt+shift+right move forward, select, and read individual note on a day.
Control+Alt+shift+Left: move backward, Select, and read individual note on a day.
Control+Alt+E: Edit currently selected note. Pops up in the same style dialogue that you originally composed the note in.
Control+Alt+D: Delete currently selected note.
Control+alt+end, above arrow keys: review notes for day.
Note review pops up in virtual viewer so may select/copy.
Control+alt+M: review entire month in viewer.
You first musth select a month.
Month review pops up in virtual viewer so may select/copy.
To export a month to clipboard: First select a month, and then press Control+Shift+Alt+M.
Launch Notepad and paste. Notes are organized in order month/day.

Installation

Coppy the ToggleDailyPlanner script from the DefaultDotJSS file to the end of your Default script file. Opening the Script manager with Insert+0, then control+shift+D to navigate to your Default file. If you are in the Shared default, you will need to press Control+end and then, Control+e to create a new script. You may call it test, and type comments in the comments fields, then press ok. Press control+end again. You may then paste the script from the DefaultDotJSS.txt text file. If you are in the User Default file, press control+end, paste the script. In either case, press control+s to save. You should hear, compile complete. open the default.jkm key map file in the Script manager, and in the common keys section, paste the key mapping from the DefaultDotJKM.TXT file. Press control+s to save.
Next copy the
DailyPlanner.JKM
DailyPlanner.jsb
files from the zip file into your JAWS Settings folder. To get there:
Navigate to the JAWS main window.
Press alt+u to launch the utilities menu.
Press x, to launch the Utilities folder.
Press E until you reach, Explore My settings. Press enter.
Now, using Insert+t, JAWS should announce, ENU. If so, you are in the correct folder.
Paste the above files here. Restart JAWS. You may now use your new scripts! Download is below.