Hi folks, even though I’ve been around for a few years I’m going to re-post my intro from RR/BTR, from back in July 2013, with a few editorial updates (highlighted in boldface) to reflect my progress since then. I figure with a new site and a new year, with an influx of new folks, that it would be worthwhile to capture this here, given how creaky the RR site is getting by the day. As you can see, my intro is LONG, and I didn’t want all that writing to go down with the ship. 
Hello everyone, here’s my intro. I stumbled upon this site [Recording Review] while Googling something (can’t even remember what now) and it looks like what I need to try to take my home recording to the next level. I’m very much an amateur, level 1 or 2 at best. 
I’m in my early 50s [will be 57 in Feb], mostly acoustic guitarist since 1971, and have taken up mandolin and bass guitar more recently for use in home recording work. I’m a planetary scientist, and work at NASA Johnson Space Center in far south Houston. Married, two stepkids (oldest of which is due to have her first baby, a son, in just a couple weeks - she now has two small kids), and we have a beloved labrador retriever named Luna.
I made my first forays into home recording in late 2010. I’ve learned a lot but still have a LONG way to go. I have a very limited setup (details below) and work entirely “in the box”, owning no outboard gear. I have some decent instruments, a lot of enthusiasm, and get a lot of pleasure out of being able to do this sort of thing. I’d always wanted to, but until the advent of modern computing power, easy-to-use DAWs, highly capable interfaces, inexpensive components, etc. it just wasn’t feasible for me til recently. So it’s very fun and exciting for me to do this.
My musical interests and influences are somewhat eclectic I guess; a common thread is acoustic guitar, not surprisingly. I love intelligent singer-songwriters like John Hiatt, Steve Earle, James McMurtry, Lucinda Williams, Bruce Cockburn, Peter Case, Shawn Colvin, Lyle Lovett, John Doe, Shawn Mullins, Patty Larkin, and many more. Also bands like Los Lobos, Camper van Beethoven, Uncle Tupelo/Wilco/Son Volt, Counting Crows, but also ranging to Led Zeppelin, Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Talking Heads, U2. So pretty much all over the map.
The kinds of stuff I play and record are acoustic-rock, sometimes with rootsy inflections, but also some harder-edged stuff, but nothing approaching hard rock or metal. I have zero ability as a lyricist, so with one exception, all my originals are instrumentals. I do mostly covers; ratio is probably five or six covers for every original. I don’t have a great voice, so I don’t try to do too much vocally, and record things I love mostly for myself. I have very few family and friends to share this stuff with. [I’ve gained much more confidence and ability in writing my own stuff now. About 1/3 of my posted tunes are originals.]
The whole Bash This Recording idea is very interesting but terrifying to me at the same time. I’ve worked hard to get things to where I think they sound respectable, and I am pretty nervous about getting my first critiques! But I really want to get better at this, it is really therapeutic in diverting my attention from stress at work. Looking forward to sharing and learning with and from you folks. [My initial postings were nothing short of horrendous! I thought they sounded respectable but I was DEAD WRONG.]
Will close with the hardware lineup. Instruments: Martin DCPA-1 steel 6-string, Martin GPC12PA4 steel 12-string, Pimentel custom steel 6-string and custom nylon classical, The Loar LM-220-VS mandolin, Michael Kelly Firefly acoustic bass guitar [now replaced with a Fender P-bass], Line 6/James Tyler Variax modeling electric guitar. Peavey Vypyr 30W modeling amp, Shure SM57 and Audio-Technica ST90 mics. [Have since added Heritage 535 semihollow electric, Les Paul '60s Tribute w/P90s, AT4040 & ADK Vienna mics.]
Computer side: homebuilt Core i3/2.93 GHz [now Core i5 3.4 GHz] with 8 GB RAM, Win7 Home Premium [now Win10/64 bit], 3 TB of storage, all components selected for max quietness. Interface: Creative E-MU 1616m PCI card w/breakout box. All the instruments except the Pimentel classical and the Loar mandolin have onboard electronics, so I mic those with the SM57 (along with the Variax coming out of the Vypyr amp). I use the ST90 to record vocals. [All of this is updated with newer mics] I use Mixcraft 6.0 Pro Studio, having been with them since 5.0 (and having tried them as far back as v3 [Now up to V7 Pro]). I’d also tried the versions of Pro Tools and Acid that shipped with some earlier, cheaper components, but I am a firm fan of Mixcraft.
Sorry for all the writing, but I see terse intro posts getting prodded with questions for this kind of info, so I thought I’d just put it up there…
After a few “welcome” replies, I added this:
Thanks for the kind welcome folks! Much appreciated. I’m looking forward to learning how to hear and listen better as well as how to make my own mixes better; of course, the two are intimately intertwined. A good way to summarize my level of development thus far is that I know, for example, that I need to use various things like compression, and I have the most basic idea why that is, but don’t yet grasp the nuances of exactly which type of compression should be used in which situations, if you get me. Another way to put it is that I use lots of presets that come with these types of plugins but have only begun to branch out into tweaking the settings directly. [I had no idea how ignorant I was!]
One important issue for me is that my hearing is clearly starting to deteriorate as I get older. I am paying the price for all the great many VERY loud concerts I went to when I was young. I grew up in the greater Los Angeles area during the late 60s and 70s, and because of my extreme dorkiness, I spent pretty much all my spare time and money going to hundreds of concerts, and I got to see many, many great artists from those years. But in my youthful exuberance, I made no effort to mitigate the ear-splitting effects, so I need to get to an audiologist soon and probably start the hearing-aid process. [I still have not done this, I am embarrassed to admit.] As a consequence, I really need to learn how to listen as well as I can, to understand where my weaknesses now are and how to compensate in my recordings.
I do, however, know this much:
That’s me on the right, with my beloved brother-in-law Bob, a pro musician and producer. We have been playing together for over thirty [now 40+] years, and now his three kids, in their early 30s, have become the “next generation” – we have some epic family musica-thons. I’ve learned a lot about recording from Bob, and made him and me these t-shirts as a birthday gift for him last year [2012].
Couple other tidbits I’ll add (left out originally because it was already long enough): My recorded guitar work is very rarely aimed at playing fast or “shreddingly”; not my area of interest. I’m a sucker for pretty melodies and those kinds of pieces are what tend to attract me. Other random item: my screen name is a tip o’ the cap to my very favorite writer, who penned speculative fiction during the “new wave” of the 1960s under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith. (His real name was Paul Linebarger, and he was a fascinating guy.) I’ve used some variant of “Cordwainer” as a screen name in many forum groups I’ve been on over the years, so of course for here, the punny spelling was an obvious choice.
Finally, a bit about the planetary science gig. I lead the Astromaterials Research Office at NASA JSC, where we do cutting-edge work on the analysis of “astromaterials” (materials from elsewhere than Earth), such as Apollo moon rocks, meteorites from Mars and the asteroids, cosmic and interplanetary dust particles (both those that drift into Earth’s atmosphere on a continuous basis and those collected by NASA’s Stardust sample-return mission, which brought back pieces of a comet’s tail), as well as laboratory simulations of the conditions at which we infer these things to have formed. We also have heavy involvement in the Mars robotic mission program, with about ten currently involved in the Mars Science Laboratory mission (“Curiosity” rover), but with senior-level involvement going back to the Pathfinder mission in the mid-90s. Our Curation office is the home to all NASA’s extraterrestrial collections; the Apollo sample lab and vault are in our building. I am extraordinarily proud of the accomplishments of my folks, and extremely lucky to be in the position I am.
OK, enough blather, time to learn the ropes in the BTR section…! Thanks again for the friendly welcome.
