Old Doogie and his Mac invented blogs I think.  His computer was pretty cool with the instant boot and he kept his diary on it, typing something profound at the end of every show.  I bet if you looked at what he typed on it’s own, it just looks like a bunch of stupid one liners.  Not much different than this and most blogs I guess!

I was just wondering if Doogie, the 17 year old doctor, ever worried about getting laid off?  Probably not, he was a doctor who lived with his parents, who had a nice house and somehow afforded to send him to medical school.  I get so many calls these days from friends and folks I have worked with, looking for work.  There’s a lot of layoffs going around, and no telling when things will get better.

I was watching some movie the other night on TV, about a boxer in the 30’s who lost all his money in the stock market.  It was snowing and they shut off the power to his apartment.  The wife sent their kids off to live with relatives.  Now that was a bad time!  None of my friends are without food, power or shelter…things suck but can be a lot worse.

Life is never without risk.  Risk and reward does not mean you risk more and you get rewarded more.  Damn sure though if you risk nothing, you get nothing.  I’ve lived the last 8 years putting things off because I was worried that I was gonna get laid off.  My last boss said he wanted someone who would do what was right, or get fired for trying…I did.  I have a different perspective now, it’s not the end of the world…in fact it can be a great opportunity if you look at it that way.  It’s a clean sheet to what you want the next phase of your life to be, all you have to do is figure out how to get it and bust your butt to get there.  Or get fired for trying.

So, despite 2009’s impending doom I’m charging head first into the year to focus on songwriting and commercial placement.  I achieved year one’s goals and now it’s a 4 year plan with higher stakes.  I keep reminding myself if I didn’t put this off for 2 years I’d either be done or successfully going into the 4th year now. 

If they get me again at work, I’ll focus hard on it like I did early this year, for as long as I’m out…if they don’t, I’ll commit whatever time I can to achieving this year’s goals.  It ought to be pretty clear whether year 3 is worth chasing, or if I can finally hang up the dream.  We’ll see what happens in this quest to answer a question from long ago.  There’s a boat, a drink and a sunset waiting for me in either case!  I just don’t want too many unanswered questions when I get there.

Welcome to the official Gator-Studios.com Riffworks 32-bit blog!

Okay here’s the breakdown on the new release!  2 big big improvements to Riffworks with this one:

- 32 bit option for both recording and exporting

- a way better master limiter compressor

32 bit on input - I explained a lot of of this on the GatorForum here, but a quick summary is in order.  Capturing your input up to 32 bit (most interfaces will do 24) will capture your input audio more faithfully to the analog source.  On it’s own, it’s a subtle difference, though many people can tell.  When it’s all added up in a mix, that extra resolution keeps things clean instead of things starting to get muddy.

32 bit on export - Riffworks has always used a 32 bit mix engine, but previously exported at 16 bit only for wav files.  That’s great if you go straight to a CD with the WAV, but most folks want to master it first.  Ever notice that things sounded better in RiffWorks than with the exported WAV?  That was the difference between 16 and 32 bit.  You want all that resolution until you’re forced to drop it to 16 bit, after mastering.  That gives the best result, and is how everybody else does it.   FYI 32 bit export won’t make any difference on mix-to-ogg or uploading to RiffWorld, but recording in 32 bit should give a little improvement to the overall mixdown.  If your computer can swing it, do it!

Guess what…those old songs you did back when we only had 16 bit on input?  They’ll sound better with 32 bit export too, and are worth remastering.  Again I explained this in the GatorForum post above, it’s all about the math.  A bunch of 16 bit files sound better when there’s 32 bits of math in which to mix them together, the errors are less and the sound is better.  And for you mathematically challenged, it’s not double the resolution, it’s the difference between 65K and 4.2B slots for the sound to be represented.  HUGE!

Exporting at 16 bit before mastering took a little off of things, though I would say we’ve gotten great quality results even with that limitation.  Check out the studio MySpace page, see what you think…it’s not the medium so much as the dude working the medium!  Think back to stuff you hear from the 60’s…the recording medium was a definite limitation on the sound, but the performances, signal chain etc. were carefully done.  Those people would have gone nuts for 24 tracks of 16 bit digital.  I say it too many times, but will keep saying it…it’s what goes in that counts the most!  For all the tutorials, overviews and guidance on engineering, I think pounding this point has been my biggest contribution to the RiffWorks community

New master limiter / compressor - Most of you guys will go bonkers over this one…Dug and crew have finally re-coded the master limiter / compressor so your tracks can top out at +0db (or real close) just like “real” music!  They also did a great job changing the algorithm, knocking out most of the pumping and breathing, especially compared to how it was in the Golden Age of Riffworks.  Soon over pumping songs will become a RiffWorld memory (we’ll associate it with RiffCaster…do they still use that term?).  The compressor algorithm has also been redone on the effect Compressor - hopefully people will learn to use the compressor as a compressor, instead of because when you turn it on it raised the volume!

I’ve played with this in beta and it does a far better job than the old one.  You can crank it full to the end for ultimate RiffWorks loudness, and I know some of you will do just that!  Do me a favor…don’t do that.  I would recommend being reasonable with it.  Having it bounce in and out of the red usually gives a decent sound.  Having it pegged in the red just sounds like louder crap.  This is a great addition for posting direct to RiffWorld, though I haven’t tried it to see if the new tracks are louder than the old or if they do something to limit it on the server.

One big note:  You folks with older computers, 32-bit is going to chew up more processor, memory and hard drive.  Try it, but if you start having pops and crackles (okay for breakfast, not so good for mixing), you’ll have to hang with the 16 bit option.

 All these enhancements are great, but won’t change your ability to get a good mix or master though.  The toolbox got better but it won’t make you hear things more accurately or apply the effects at the right time.  For people that know what they are doing and equipped to do it, the results will be that much better.  For those that don’t, the results will hopefully be less painful.  There’s something for everyone this holiday season!

These new goodies really help bring RiffWorks along as a songwriting and recording tool.  I used to export tracks individually out of RiffWorks to take advantage of a higher bit-depth mix engine, and now that’s taken care of inside.  I finally took to doing all my recording in a DAW to take advantage of the higher bit-depth, because at the end of the mix that extra headroom really adds up and keeps the air in things and the mud out.  I will have to relook at my workflow to see if it makes more sense now to do some of the recording inside RiffWorks again, now that there’s no penalty.  It’s still the best songwriting software out there for me!

Well, I guess that puts me out of business, eh?  Sure.  For casual tracks, knock yourself out!  This is a great improvement that will make a lot of folks happy.  If you are mastering yourself, still run your 32 bit exported copy without hitting the red light at all, keep the limiter out of the equation until mastering.  You have lots of headroom now, take advantage of it!  FWIW I did take 5 minutes to run a couple exports out of RiffWorks, one without hitting the red light, and one cranked full.  Then I took a quick shot at mastering the low one, and it was pretty easy to make it both louder and better sounding by properly mastering it without much effort.  This new capability does not replace mastering, it gets you more of what you expect out of RiffWorks. 

So…for messing around, posting songs, getting feedback and having fun recording, this is all you need.  For those serious projects, “best song in the world” songs, “that CD I always wanted to record”, and those you plan to sell at your gigs and on iTunes/Amazon/(or even Gator’s General Store ) get it mixed and mastered properly…if not here than somewhere.  You owe it to yourself to have the proper expertise, environment, “fresh ears” and impartial perspective to add the needed touch in the engineering phase.  Look at what you’ve already spent to this point on guitars, interfaces, computers, software…and the time you’ve put into carefully writing and recording.  Consider the time you spent on your last track trying to get the mix right…you probably could have recorded another song or two with that time.  Is it really that much to get the final steps done properly?

We’ve worked hard over the last 3 years to banish the phrase “sounds pretty good considering it was done in RiffWorks” from the world.  It used to be a common theme, but I think we got past that some time ago.  We’ve been helping folks understand how to take great care on their end with recording, and showing that RiffWorks is plenty capable of producing great results.  For all the CD’s that have been printed and sold around the world, tunes on iTunes, songs that been forwarded at places like Taxi for commercial placement…they’ve all held their own with the “big” boys.  Heck, even the projects we’ve engineered that required major surgery came out sounding okay.

Some people think we’re crazy to primarily focus on RiffWorks users, but it’s a great ecosystem we are proud to be a part of.  It’s not just about crunching tracks and spitting out a mix, it’s about helping you get the best result you’re looking for and showing you how to do it.  It’s why we do all the mixing inside of RiffWorks and give the RWS file back, so you can see how it was done.  It’s why we take the time to try different things in the mix, to let you see if you might like something better you hadn’t thought of.  It’s why in the end you get back what you want to hear, not what some engineer tells you that you want to hear. 

It’s a lot harder to do things this way, but we’re on a bigger mission than just being another studio on the ‘net.  RiffWorks is a creative outlet for so many (including me!), and lets just about anyone write and record to their heart’s content.  That simplicity will enable the next generation of great music, which might otherwise never have happened.  To the world, it will come out of nowhere, just another “instant” success but we’ll all know better.  It doesn’t take a Todd Rundgren to validate what you are doing with RiffWorks, it takes you!  Will you write the next “best song in the world” with RiffWorks?  We’ll be looking forward to it.

It’s probably been the most “interesting” year of my life (though there have been a few interesting ones before!), and starting a new job in a new company after pretty much working at one place in my “modern” era has been a real treat.  The world changed right about the time I did…but if there’s one thing I’ve been pretty good at over the years it’s knowing how to survive.  It may be my only skill as far as I can tell, I’m not much of a “right place at the right time” kind of guy but once I’m in place I seem to find a way to make it hard to get rid of me.  We shall see, as the bigger world continues to be an interesting place, and I expect it will continue to get more difficult for a while.

I’ve been all consumed the last 7 weeks with getting up to speed quickly in my new day job.  After a couple weeks I thought I had it figured out, but everything changed.  A couple more weeks I though I had a handle on it again, and things changed again.  I’ve been putting more hours in than I ever intended but I think I’m only as confused as everybody else now. 

This weekend I actually made some time to work through a backing track I’ve been promising to the world for the last couple months, and even started to write a new song.  I also gave some thought to the future of Gator-Studios.com.  I started this business somewhat accidentally and it takes a lot of my time, but I have enjoyed the work, the results and the impact we’ve had across the globe over the last 3 years.  So what’s the plan going forward?

There actually is a master plan.  The fundamentals of it is to improve - improve the environment and improve the capabilities so both we and the RiffWorks community benefit.  I have some plans for next year that line up nicely with what the RiffWorks folks are working on (I won’t tell you my plans or their plans, but they both will make for better end results!).  Beyond that at some point a big new mixing room is also in the plan.  We’ve been operating a couple notches above the typical RiffWorks user in converters, monitors, mix environment (not to mention engineering experience), and will continue to move up the chain into the high end.  Our work here has yielded some pretty bitchin’ results on CD’s, tracks, and potential film / TV placements.  The quality gains are small from where we are today, but do RiffWorks users deserve anything less?  I think not!

Have no doubt, we’re here because of you, and for you.  We’re intertwined…and we intend to continue to pay it forward…we’ve been operating in a “pay it forward” model for the last 3 years.  There always is that next purchase on the list that will help the next guy, whether it be mastering software, monitors, acoustic treatment etc.  Each new gig pays for the next enhancement on the list…so why not give the benefit to the artist that’s bringing us to the next level and pay it forward first?  You’re not only getting your project done, you’re helping yourself and the next guy.  And if history is any indication, you’ll be back for your next project and reap even more benefits.  Since our first job we’ve taken care of that “next” thing on the list before the gig instead of after…paying it forward. The hope is one day we’ll run out of things on the list and things will keep going!

Hey all!  It’s been a while (and a hell of a day job ride lol) since I last blogged about anything useful to the home recorders out there, so while I’m awaiting feedback on a mix ‘n master job I’m doing (some rockin’ stuff by the way!), I thought I’d talk about MP3 quality.  And point 1 is…MP3 QUALITY SUCKS!!!!

Most people fairly new to recording know this to be a fact.  Why?  Because they record away, mix away till happy, then mix a tune down to an 192K MP3 and things become lifeless.  It sounded a lot better when they mixed it, they assure me…and they are correct!  I preach great acoustics and monitoring, the best tone you can get going in, and attention to detail.  And I get “why?  everything is gonna get mixed down to an MP3 anway” back all the time.

Pull up an MP3 of a commercial song in iTunes.  Sounds pretty good…one might say commercial even!  Maybe you excuse that good sound because of the professionals who worked on it, with great precision, equipment and knowledge.  You’d be right.  You might think though, you sounded close to as good when you were mixing your last tune though.  So why do our tunes come out like pancakes in an MP3?

Some data points: 

- MP3’s don’t sound as good as an uncompressed WAV

-The lower the bit rate the crappier the sound

- Despite that there are some damn nice sounding MP3’s, even at 128K sometimes

The answer is simple.  That great sounding MP3, imagine how good it sounded before it became an MP3.  Picture sitting behind the mastering engineer as he printed the final copy.  It must have sounded absolutely amazing.  Then somebody compressed the heck out of it into an MP3 and it went from “amazing” to “great sounding”.  Just like your “pretty good” went to “flat Stanley” in the same conversion.

MP3’s take lots of shortcuts to get smaller, and the lower the bitrate the more shortcuts.  If you want your songs to sound better, convert them to 320K MP3’s instead of 192K.  That’s the max you’ll get out of an MP3 (I’m not gonna mess with explaining CBR vs. VBR for simplicity’s sake).  But really, really really, really really really, the best way to get there is to start with a great sounding track instead of a pretty good one.  That’s where the difference is.  All that attention to detail and experience is even more important for an MP3 world!

After 17 years and some-odd months, my career at Nortel is over.  Okay, it was probably over several years ago but I kept trying to find that “spot” where I fit and could make a difference and get rewarded for it.  It hasn’t been the place to have that happen for me, too many criteria I don’t fit in and the place has been going downhill for a long long time.

I finally figured out that honesty and integrity were not traits that were good for the company, they were traits that compelled me to leave.  By leaving I can’t be messed with, overworked, underpaid, or generally screwed any more, at least by them.  They can help others where they refused to help me (only because I’ve been totally honest), but that’s not hurtful to me anymore…it’s irrelevant.  It hurts my family but we know how to survive and we’ll be better for it.  I do keep a list in the back of my head though, and karma is a bitch…but today is officially “moving on” day so let’s have a beer and be happy!

All this crap, added with the current economy and market situation have really been eating at my creative brainpower.  Today was like an unleashing of creativity around songwriting and I’m hopeful the new gig will give me some time and energy to work at it.  One of the things I’m really excited about, I had a friend come over and lay drums for me on a song with his MIDI kit.  I’ve been trying to make this happen for about 3 years now and we finally got something done…I think it adds a great dimension to what I’ve been doing and hopefully he’s got some good ideas in him that will help me get further down the path.  Heck I might just take him with me!

Hey!  Since few read this blog it gives me more freedom to write what I want!  I started a new category called “Personal” which is intended for non-music or studio related stuff.  Amazingly, every now and then that side is interesting enough to write about.

To those who know me personally, I’ve been working for the last 17 years at a company named Nortel Networks based out of Canada.  It’s been an interesting ride to be sure, and overall I’d call it a successful Career 1.0 journey.  Most of the bad stuff is my fault in the end simply because I always had the option to leave, but let loyalty and friendship get the best of me.  Until they laid me off in January 2008, and well, those things didn’t matter so much any more!

I managed to squeak back in before my “notice” was over, so technically I was never gone.  From that point on it was a job, not a career, and I treated it as such.  I had no problem with the fact my next job may be inside, or it may be outside.  I was tired of looking, so I more or less laid low on the job hunt through the summer.  My once-beloved company continued to churn out stories that didn’t sound believable to me, and the market analysts seemed to finally be catching on to the lack of reality.  After 2Q earnings, I knew this dog wouldn’t hunt so I decided it was time to start looking again.  And before I could really start the hunt, a friend found me…and 2 weeks later I had an offer that looked great.  I start Sept 29! 

Here I am into my 2 weeks notice (which feel like the longest two weeks of my life…I’m ready to go!).  I’m decompressing, getting my paperwork in order, and dumping all my Nortel work.  I went through this in January and it’s even more fun this time to step off the carousel and watch the company spin without me.  I have to do something with the stock I bought a long time ago (i.e. sell it), but it’s not a ton of money (I put in $25K, as of Tuesday I could get $1K out). So I sat on it, hoping maybe it would go up a buck before 3Q earnings announcements in November.  After all, even though I don’t believe them, Nortel’s execs have been confirming their guidance very recently.

And just when I thought they couldn’t screw with me any more (I volunteered for layoff but was turned down, and thought that was the last thing!)…they sort of come clean with the market and the stock drops by 50%!  I say sort of because I still think they’re holding back on the reality of the situation.  But it’s not really my problem anymore to care about and I don’t!  I did feel pretty bad for my friends at work, watching them go from shock, to denial, to anger, but mostly because they believe that staying is still their best option in life, or convincing themselves they have no choice.

Watching all this go down today, I decided to buy a Ukulele from Hawaii.  Why?  It has to do with closure in another personal Nortel episode.  And if I’m lucky, there’ll be just enough stock money left to pay for it!

Blogs are about what you are doing, thinking, feeling right now.  I can’t let this one out to the public, but it’s a point in time I want to capture regardless.  If you are seeing this it’s because you are logged in and thus get special access that others won’t see.

It’s Friday night, 5 Sep 08.  There are 2 sides to every story.  I’m still sought out by people who lived these events with me and reminded about them.  References provided upon request!

Nine months ago I got laid off.  It was okay, I had asked to do something different anyway. 

After taking a job 1100 miles away, inside the company, and having to spend my own money to get there, the last thing I wanted to do was go back where I just had come from.  It was a very enjoyable job new I had, and it lasted all of 6 months before my group disappeared and I was put back in the group I had just left.  I made a good go of it for 3 more years but the company, customer and situation had degraded to the point I was extra done with it this time.  I asked to do something different (this is called “Career Development”), and the help I got in that area was a layoff notice.

Let’s go back to the beginning…a kid just out of college, eager to conquer the world with my brand new Finance degree.  Only the world was at war, banks and real estate had collapsed, and I was in Florida.  With no real prospects I loaded up my girlfriend and all I could fit in the hatchback (a computer, printer, ironing board and a week’s clothes each) and headed north.

First stop was Raleigh.  We decided we’d start there looking for something, and keep moving north if nothing panned out.  We both did temp jobs to pay the rent, and for a few months slept on the floor and did without things like milk and soda to save money.  Things were not great but I ended up doing an assignment in a big company in RTP and was recommended on and on in this company’s assignments until I found someone who wanted to hire me full time after 6 months.  The only problem seemed to be nobody wanted to stick their head up and try to hire someone externally, so I sat in my role waiting, racking up some good debt.  A couple chances came by…but I was the wrong race, sex, went to the wrong school, too long out of school, not enough experience.  I heard it all from HR. 

A year passed and HR had to let me go or pay me benefits by law, so they decided to let me go.  My boss, frustrated with the whole thing convinced someone to  let me be an independent contractor, getting past all the law and benefit stuff (and getting me some more money in the process by cutting out the middle man).  They had to find a category to sneak me into because I was going to mess up something again by not being a minority-owned business.  I worked this way for 2 years, all the while trying to get full time to get benefits for my new bride and me, but again nobody wanted to stick their head up and take it forward. 

As an “independent businessman” I started to do other work as well to get ahead of the finance curve.  Multimedia programming, graphic design, computer consulting, whatever I could get.  The group I was programming for offered me a job, and I gave the company a last chance…and they hired me within the day.  It seems the smoke had cleared long ago but nobody wanted to go try.

This position started a fast rise into a successful Sales career.  Starting with program management to product marketing, then network sales, then sales engineering all in the space of 4 years.  I knocked each step out of the park and in 1999 I got promoted and moved (with full package) to lead the sales effort to a very large customer in a high-flying company.  I had arrived and was living large!  What I didn’t realize was I was living large for me, but the others around me were living far larger. “Rules” I was told, can’t give more than a certain percentage per year, etc. etc.  Later I found some of my cohorts were “fired” and “rehired” with much bigger salaries…I was happy for them.

When things started going downhill with the company I really stepped up.  Working 16 hour days, 6 days a week, taking customers to sports on Sundays, dinners during the week (then back to work).  I learned a lot about stars, since I saw them every morning at 4am and every night at 11pm going to and from work.  More people disappeared and I assumed their roles to keep things afloat.  People gave up on our big opportunity and I assumed their roles to keep things afloat.  Things got to critical stage…our product we were selling got cancelled and saved several times in smaller form.  I positioned around it again and again.  Trust, credibility and hard work won the deal, a team effort to be sure.  I had taken my family and health to the brink of extinction but had a big one in the bag!

When the bonus came around, they didn’t want to include me.  When the Sales Hero award came around, they snubbed me in favor of those I was covering for.  The company decided it would pay me on the revenue, but deferred it all to later years.  And here I was, heavily leveraged, big quota, and target at the bottom of the band.  The industry crashed and I had nowhere to go, and the only way I could get paid was to make the project successful so I could finally collect on the revenue down the road.  So I stepped up and stepped in again, batting down issues, leading design teams to success, teaching installers how to install, project managers how to manage customers, and we got the project rolling eventually.  When the revenue started coming in, they switched us to orders.  We had a lot less of those because we were preoccupied with getting to revenue.

I did notice that most of my friends were not bouncing debt from credit card to credit card, scrimping, cancelling vacations.  Nah, they were living in 2 or 3 times the house I was, driving really nice cars, taking awesome vacations, buying second houses at the lake.  Most of them got their quotas moved to business objectives, leverages shrunk…while I and my team were hung out to dry doubly.  I was laughed out of a company financial seminar by volunteering that I had received the child tax credit check from the IRS…there was no way somebody there would make little enough to qualify they told me.  So given the chance to leave I took it.

I was promised help with relo, after all it is corporate policy.  My boss stopped me from selling my options to raise money for my move, said it was taken care of.  And then the big financial scandal hit, options were frozen, and my relo went away.  My buddy Rick, also taking a same level job back east, got the full ride, and left the same week I did.  I was happy for him and his big COLA raise too.  Four months later he took a job with a competitor in his new city.  I was happy for him again.

So now we’ve come around to the end of the beginning.  When faced with going back to my group I refused to go back west unless they paid for my move east first.  I agreed to take one of 4 regional jobs…they gave me 2 of them.  My peers still had one each.  I was happy for them.  After a very successful year in the field, in a move of desperation my boss put me back on the corporate team to squelch unrest with the customer.  It seems the 3 guys that were trying to do what I used to weren’t doing very well, so they moved them to other things.  I was happy for them.  So I got my old role back…and didn’t get to shed my current 2 roles.  I talked to a company we were partnering with about a job.  A friend had just left my company for theirs and was treated well.  I was happy for him.  My executive threatened them over trying to hire me. 

I finally shed one of my jobs after 6 months, leaving me with 4 jobs I suppose.  My friends out there continued to build or buy bigger houses, get bigger cars, take awesome vacations.  I was happy for them.  I was still in the bottom of the band…somebody had to even out their over-the-average salaries.

I did a great job calming things down and getting them back on track at the headquarters, despite having no product to deliver.  My executives were happy to come to meetings and be thanked for the good work on bringing me back.  They took that and ran to new promotions before things fell apart again.  I was happy for them.  When you run out of ways to skirt around having no product delivery for 2 years, the game is over.  So I asked my new boss for help moving on to another position, something where I actually lived, and he ignored me.  I was asked a few times through other people if I would consider moving back.  I could “run” things in title but not money or position.  Run what?  There was nothing left.  I guess in his own way he helped…he sent me a blank calendar invite, and laid me off.  And I was happy for me.

Things looked okay still in the job market in January.  I went to outplacement, worked hard to get my interviewing ducks in a row, and got ready to hit the world in early March.  All of the sudden things quieted down.  We were at war, banks and real estate were collapsing…it was déjà vu all over again except I was older and had better credit this time around.  I got a call on a position in my old company, in a group I had narrowly missed getting the director’s job in the year before.  It was put on hold for 6 months and someone else looking for a change was given it without it being re-opened.  I was happy for him.  The job was a downgrade, but for all the history of my company they always kept people’s salary the same in those situations.  Apparently I was the first to be held over the barrel and forced to take a cut…a big cut…from my low-in-the-band target.  It was too quiet out in the market and not knowing if it would last months or years, I swallowed my pride and took it.

I accepted that for a few reasons.  First, to make a point.  I should have had a chance for that job, and I wanted to make that clear through my work.  Second, it was a role I could “spin” into a lot of other opportunities by virtue of what I was doing in it and what I was working on.  Third, I didn’t have to travel for the first time in a very long time, and this gave me time to work on my music.  My music?

Everybody has something for a “dream job” they’d be doing if they could.  Mine is songwriting.  I put it off early to focus on my career, and never got back to it.  In 2002 when I was snubbed at one major event, I had so much emotion in me I couldn’t figure out what to do with it.  When I got back home I went in the basement to think…and picked up my guitar and wrote a song about it.  I had put off my health issues for so long one of which being carpal tunnel syndrome, my hand felt like it was in a light socket when trying to play.  But I had to get it out of my soul.  At that moment I realized while the path I took was not necessarily wrong, it was time for a different one.  Time goes by, but eventually I got some help and got the nerve parts taken care of, and bought an acoustic guitar to help work on hand strength.  More time went by, I moved, rekindled the writing bug a little bit and found I was decent at it still.  So I decided that had to fit in somewhere.

So, new job in hand, no travel.  Time at home for the family, and songwriting.  I joined a service to help me with opportunities and to help get me shaped up for commercial placement.  Working away for a couple months making good progress, one of the guys above me in the group left for another job.  I was happy for him.  I got his role on top of mine.  I asked about promotion but nobody wanted to stick their head up for me.  I did his job for the last 3 months, in addition to my own, leaving little time for music, family, etc…but I was close and refused to stop the music.  So I beat the crap out of myself, just like I used to, in a situation I wasn’t too happy with, for way less pay than I should have gotten, to keep going forward.

When I came back I told my boss I would work hard for him, but at some point in the future I’d be off on a new adventure with the way things were structured.  I also told him I could give the company one more chance, but 2Q earnings in August would be my checkpoint of whether anything was left to grow into there.  2Q earnings came in horrible.  A lot of my friends got laid off on my birthday, some happy, some not.  Other friends started bailing.  I decided I’d wait until September and start looking for something new…but before I could start something found me.

I believe in being upfront with people and keeping my word.  I don’t like hiding or lying, though I’ve had to do a lot of both to survive with this company.  When we take ethics training, I feel like some of it is from my own Truman Show that they put me in.  So I gave the man a heads up I was getting close on something and planning to take it.  He asked me to think about what it would take to keep me…and I gave him my word I would think hard about it.

I opened my mind.  Is there any chance of career growth here? No.  Would I be on the line in 3 months?  Probably.  Was there an amount of money or level that would make me happy? Not at this point.  Certainly nothing anyone would stick their head up to help me for.

But my mind stayed open.  Probably for too long.  Were my peers really worth a million bucks more each over the last 10 years?  Would they have covered for me if I was going through a crisis, like I did for each of them?  How much would I have made if we stayed on orders when we closed that $1B deal?  What investments would I have like my friends, instead of the debts I have now had I been treated equally?  Did I only prove a point to myself by coming back and showing them how to keep the lights on in this group?  Three minutes of thinking and it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to find a reason to stay.  All I found was too many reasons to leave, too many missed chances to make things right.  Belief, hope, loyalty and patience…all 4 had been taken advantage of time and again.  I was done. 

The only thing I really wanted was a severance package like those being offered all around.  My pay cut has shrunk it’s size, but it would about equal what they took away this year.  But my boss doesn’t want to stick his head up and ask.  And I consider him the most compassionate and integritous guy left in the company.  Three months from now he’ll call me looking for a job.  And I’ll be happy for him.

I went home, and opened my email.  There was no offer letter, but there was a letter from the songwriting service.  And it was good!  I got over the hump on one.  I had made a real point to myself with that.  If there were second thoughts about moving on, they were forever squashed in that email.  They were even more squashed 2 days later when the offer letter came from my new company.  It said exactly what they had agreed to, and it showed up exactly when it was supposed to.  They had to jump through hoops to get it done, but they did for me.  That means more than money and level…it means respect and integrity.

Things can always go sour, or other opportunities may approach (I hope so!).  But like the song says, this is not the end of the beginning…it’s the beginning of the end.  What song?  Why that’s my song of course!  Welcome to J.J. 2.0.

http://gator-studios.com/gatormusic/Gator/TEOTB.mp3

I joined Taxi in early January 2008.  I was pretty sure I wasn’t ready, but at some point you have to go with what you have and get to the show!  There’s a lot of piece parts that go into all this, from production to songwriting to the various performances, to matching the song to the listing.  Everything has to be just right.  I started out by trying some of the songs that already existed, basically to see where I was at and how far I had to go.  The critiques came back (along with the songs!) and showed I had a lot of work to do…but also seemed to indicate I could get there.  They gave me things to target, and though a bit cryptic at first (just like the listings) I learned to dissect and read them and get some pretty good insight on what to work on.  And oddly they seemed to think my vocals and musicianship were good.

One song in particular, “Tried So Hard” seemed to be pretty close and lined up well with some of the Modern Rock/Alternative listings.  I took the clues from the critiques and embarked on my first ever rewrite, which seemed really strange.  I didn’t disagree with what they said, but had no clue how to go about it.  So I took my best shot at it, and son-of-a-gun, it made it through!

There’s always more I can do (and I might tweak a couple things here and there) but it’s time to put this one on the shelf and keep submitting until it finds a home.  It’s also time to move on and write some new songs to pitch!  I’ve learned so much in the last 8 months, and things seem to be starting to come together.  At some point I hope I can consistently crank out songs with all the pieces…production, arrangement, performance, etc. the first time, instead of the second or third.  But if it takes a rewrite to make it through, well then that’s what I’ll do!

Hey maybe this is the peak, don’t know.  I need to go chase the next forward to find out!

We’ve been doing Backing Tracks for about a year now, and it’s been a great experience in understanding exactly what is going on in today’s hits.  It’s also allowed us to meet a lot of new people around the globe and be a part of their talent shows, club shows, personal recordings, and fun times with their friends.

Our catalog is not large, but continues to grow.  Rather than turn into just another “karaoke factory” on the internet, we decided to focus on putting together the best quality tracks you can find.  When you use our Backing Tracks, you sound like you are ”in the band” instead of singing or playing over it. 

There’s 2 things we do to separate from the crowd.  First, we build each track from the ground up right here at Gator-Studios.com.  Second, we don’t hide behind our website, we use it to reach out! 

The first point is important - we build each track from the ground up right here at Gator-Studios.com, to sound just like the real thing, minus the instrument they are targeted to (usually vocals or guitar).  They are mixed so that your part fits in well and sounds great.  And because we have control over them, we can easily tailor these tracks in most any way you might want!  We can change the arrangement, pull out different instruments you might want to play yourself, or change vocal Backing Tracks into guitar Backing Tracks. 

Want one of our Hannah Montana backing tracks tailored for a drummer?  Or Bass player?  No problem.  No extra charge either!  We’ll change the track and put the new item up in the store, usually within a day.  Just ask!  (Check out this item as an example of what I mean…and yes, this was by customer request!)

The second point is at least as important - most people that come to us have been ’round and ’round the internet looking for someone to help, and get nowhere.  I wonder how many people get here and don’t even bother to ask, expecting the same lack of response?  That’s too bad, because we have lots of ways we can help.  If its not on our list we can custom build or convert a MIDI track.  Or you can record your vocals on your PC, send them back and we’ll mix and master a finished track for just another $10.  We answer every request, and if we can’t help we’ll try and help find someone who can.

To all of you who have supported us in the last year, thanks so much!  Much of our success has been because you asked for something you couldn’t find anywhere else…and that’s exactly why we’re here!