by Dan | Feb 19, 2009 | Ninja Stuff
Jude sent some basic tracks this weekend for me to start playing with. I busted out the Variax and started the very arduous task of recording the guitar on this one. Truth: I’m not a good enough guitar player to play this, but I am going to play it anyway with some digital assistance. I will come clean when the song is out, which will hopefully be by the middle of next month.
People always ask “What’s the next one?” and I never want to say. I mean, come on — that’s part of the fun. If you can guess the punchlines before we even tell the joke, it’s not very funny — and what if your ideas are funnier than ours? It sets everybody up for disappointment. But I will offer another clue: Stratocaster, neck pickup. Good luck with that.
Jude and I are now both working in GarageBand, though we were only in the same version of GarageBand for about two days before I upgraded to ’09. I am used to programs like SoundForge and, to a lesser extent, Pro Tools, but I ditched both so I could go with something friendlier. It makes some of the stuff easier and some of it harder, but again, it’s all friendlier. I can figure it out with a web search or two, if not simply mucking about with the menus. I think I’d eventually like to get Logic Express, since it’s the big brother of GarageBand and can import all the projects natively. Yes, please.
by Dan | Feb 16, 2009 | Ninja Stuff
I was on TalkRadar this past week (episode 38), blatantly disobeying my own simple “never appear on TalkRadar again” rule. Last time, I threw a mini-hissyfit, since the recording took something like two and a half hours and seemed to move at the speed of sludge. This time, however, I was prepared; I had a free evening, my wife was away, nobody was missing me at home except the cats — and some listeners said “Why hasn’t Dan been on in a while?” Combine free time with and ego stroke and I’m an easy target.
Of course, this one took three and a half hours to record. More or less.
While there, I once again got “hey, you should do this song” suggestions, including Brett’s Naughty By Nature parody of “OPP” for Little Big Planet as “LBP.” That’s a good one, but I don’t play LBP. I think the worst joke is the joke you force; as someone who doesn’t own the game and doesn’t even like the look of the Sackboys, I think I’m the wrong guy to sit down and pen a high-larious jokey-joke about it. When it comes to parody, you have to go with what you know.
It’s also nice to simply stand behind your own work. Funny or not, the songs we’ve done are creations of Jude and Dan. There are others like them but these are ours, you know? That’s kind of a key part of this project.
I think we have proven that anybody can make a parody song, so if you are one of those people who keeps thinking “You know what would be funny?” then I urge you to go give it a try. Save your ideas, make them your own.
