UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Geez, writing headlines like that I could get a job at Entertainment Weekly.

Anyway… although I would not consider myself a fan of Fall Out Boy (in fact, I’ve never even knowingly heard any of their music other than that snippet of the song that plays on the annoying workout guy’s cell phone in the commercial that seemed to be all over TV at one point last year), I can definitely get behind their lead singer Patrick Stump’s embrace of GarageBand. I’m not a pro musician, but I do have a B.A. in music, so I know a thing or two about it. I spent several years doing home recordings with Pro Tools LE (which, as far as I know, is limited from the full version only in the models of Digidesign hardware it accepts as dongles), and I hated how it broke with every OS update (because it was “breaking the rules” of how software should interact with hardware) and how ridiculously convoluted it was to do things as simple as set up a click track!

GarageBand has revolutionized my music making (including my latest project which I just finished as part of the 2008 RPM Challenge, and as Apple’s profile of Patrick Stump shows, it’s had a similar impact on how Fall Out Boy records.

I’ve finished my submission for the RPM Challenge, a 9-track, 36 1/2-minute album entitled Unnatural Disasters.

Read all about it and listen to the tracks here!

Even though I love all things Google (and, more and more, Google is all things), I have always hated their logo. Ugly font, garish colors, outdated-five-years-ago Photoshop 101 effects (Bevel & Emboss… Drop Shadow… how original!).

I’ve always just assumed that it was a hastily-concocted logo done by someone with little or no design experience in the company’s startup days, but that regrettably endured as the company ballooned into the Microsoft of the online age. But apparently the logo went through several iterations — none of which are great, but some of which are much more aesthetically pleasing to me than what they finally settled on.

At least it would have been a lot easier to move back to campus each September if I had this. Of course, none of the stuff is included here. But it’s still a cool idea. Spotted on Gizmodo.

We’re approaching the halfway point in this year’s RPM Challenge, to record an album during the month of February, and things are progressing pretty well for me. The challenge is to record at least 10 songs or 35 minutes of material in 29 days. So far I’m up to 35:30 on 8 of my 9 intended tracks. That time will probably get reduced a bit as I master the tracks and remove some of the dead space at the ends of them, but I should still be well above 35 minutes, probably around 40.

As I’ve mentioned previously, my album is entitled Unnatural Disasters, and you can read more about it (and even hear the full in-progress tracks in streaming audio) on my album page. You can also find out more about my project on the RPM site.