Cheshire Adams - It's Psych

One of my first songs here. It's a somewhat outdated ode to one of my favorite hang-out spots in cyberspace:

It's PSYCH



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If you feel you're in a wasteland of trash and ennui,
Let me open your eyes to the fact that this need not be...
Just shed all your thoughts.....hop on your White Bike,
And fly into the ports of It's PSYCH!

The spectral spade digs deep through the annals of time....
Each artifact conquers your senses and channels your mind....
Then sets it aflame.....like a match that you strike,
Sending colors.....through the animate skies of It's PSYCH!

Every tiny aspect of life reverberates so loud....
A tangerine sun shines down through babelfish clouds....
A scenic and breathtaking view....we see on this hike
Look! In the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane!

It's PSYCH!

Cheshire Adams - Cat on a WIndowsill

Note: A few people have accused me of ripping off the M*A*S*H theme song with this one. I swear on the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide that I had never heard the M*A*S*H theme song before I first posted this thing.

Anyway, this is slightly acidic folk. (In other words, one voice and one guitar.) The recording equipment I have is somewhat primitive, but, as at least one person on iP has commented, it's just like listening to a transistor radio in the old days!




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Born into darkness
Raised in the darkness too
Exposed to nothing
The darkness was all I knew
I know there's light out there
If I could just break through

There's more to life than this
I know

There must be more to life than this
I know

They say if I find that light
It'll burn me to the core
Well I know I'll freeze to death
If I stick around here much more
It's a chance I'll have to take
This I know for sure

There's more to life than this
I know

There must be more to life than this
I know...............

Baby Bears Endangered

I'll try not to bore you with too much sports talk, and try to restrict myself to just this one entry for now.

The Cubs are down one game to none and down by seven in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 2 with one out as I type this. I have to admit: I never really saw the Cubs going far in the postseason. Granted, they still have a chance to win three straight, but, frankly, it doesn't look good. In the last bit of the regular season, I saw a club with a weak bullpen and a greatly slowed-down offense. If you're not scoring runs and doing a poor job of limiting the opposition's scoring, you're not going to win many ballgames. I certainly don't enjoy seeing this happening (or hearing it; I prefer to listen to Pat & Ron on the radio), and I can't help but wonder what's going to happen to the team that so exceeded expectations during the season when they're done for the year.

I may spend a bit of time at the High-Flying Bird later. (This is an inside reference to people who might know who they are.)

Okay, I'm done talking Cubs for now. I think.

On the fora now

I've decided to mainly feature singles on this blog, as far as music goes, and leave the albums to the fora (or "forums"). My most recent uploads:

Tucky Buzzard - Time Will Be Your Doctor

Joni MItchell - Ladies of the Canyon (recommended!)

Paul Kantner ("Jefferson Starship") - Blows Against the Empire

At It's PSYCH, the Gathering, and Groovy Fab.

The purchase of albums you dig is highly recommended (assuming they're available). If you do not wish a specific album to be posted, just let me know, and I'll remove it.

Now posted on the forums (or is it "fora"?)

Cromagnon - Orgasm (a full album of freak-out-ery)

and

Ananda Shankar - Ananda Shankar (Indian classical meets the (then) modern West. Highly recommended!)

at

It's PSYCH

or

The Gathering of the Tribe (check out Garden of Delights for details)

Edit, four days later: and now also at Groovy Fab.

Happy Easter! (The holiday where we celebrate a bunch of guys getting stoned and thinking they see a dead man rise. I can't think of a better explanation. :-)

Gaah...

I announce well beforehand that I want to get together with people this week, and what do you think happens? "Nothing," you say? You're right.

I don't know if either of my Chicago-native cyberfriends read this blog, but I'll next be able to roll into town somewhere beyond May 12, I think. I hope you're still here by then, Norm!

How I recorded my "It's PSYCH" song

Someone asked for this to be posted here, so here it is, copied and pasted from its original location on It's PSYCH (with a few minor edits):

Whew! Here we go......

First step: Jam a bit on the guitar. Eventually, I hear something that sounds like a song.



It often helps a bit if I play with the settings on this crazy little device:



It's capable of creating a great many different sounds. The "Vox Phaser" setting shown in the photograph is the one I used for the main backbone of this song.

The RP300 also has a few different drum beats built in. I use one of those in the recording. The "percussion" is the first thing I lay down in the song. It usually requires a lot of tedious editing. Yecch. It also sounds a tad 80s-ish, but it was nicely muted in the final song, I think. I'm not that big on mainstream 80s percussion. I'd get a drum kit, but (a) I don't know if I could hook one up to the computer...I doubt it, and (b) the people with whom I live would have none of it.

Next stop: the amplifier. Sometimes, I will hook up the guitar directly to the amp and bypass the RP300. That's how I got the slightly fuzzy "lead" guitar sound.



I hook the amp up to the computer via a standard-to-mini adapter from the amp's "headphone" output to the computer's Line-in jack.

For the love of whomever you revere, make sure the volume on the amp isn't too high; this is a powerful amp I have; you don't want to blow out the speakers on the computer! I put the volume level on the amp at just over one (max is ten).

Separately, I also have a depressingly cheap microphone plugged into the "mic in" jack on the computer. My voice isn't very strong; I'd like a higher quality mike, but, you know, Bush economy, man; you do what you can.



Lucy, I'm trying to talk to people here. I'll give you fresh water in a bit.


From this point, the magic basically takes place in Audacity, a completely free, cross-platform audio editor available at audacity.sourceforge.net .





Here is where I record everything (separately, of course) to the computer. It's also where I can change things from stereo to mono or vice-versa. I went with mono on this one. I also increase the bass, add echo effects to my voice (they seemed to fit the song), adjust volume levels as necessary, do various bits of cutting and pasting, and, of course, do insane amounts of overdubbing.


There are a great number of tricks you can pull off with this piece of software. I thought about putting in a backwards guitar somewhere, but I decided it didn't really sound right with the song. The straight fuzztone lead was enough. I did a few takes on the guitar solo before finally leaving it as it is. I'm not exactly Leo Kottke or Jimmy Page........


How I come up with the lyrics....well....I wish I knew. There are some things I just know I want to include in the lyrics, like the "White Bike" reference in the first verse, and the "Babelfish clouds" in the third verse. Outside of that...I just work at it until it sounds right. I will admit that writing lyrics helps me explore the language a little bit. The Reverse Dictionary sounds like a great idea...I frequently have a concept in mind and would like to know a word that fits it...but I've used it a few times, and I don't think it works very well. It is a "beta version," though...at least according to the front page.


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That's all I got for now. Questions? Comments? Random ramblings? Coherent conversation? Something in between? Etc.

Peace............


All right, Lucy, I'm coming.