Part of my planned work time today ended up getting used fixing my Movable Type database. I was still on Berkeley DB and managed to get my comments table corrupted something awful. I had to dump the table, do some serious triage, run some perl one-liners on it, verify that it was okay and load it back into the database. After that I figured I'd already wasted so much time that it didn't matter if I went ahead and converted the bitch over to MySQL to avoid having to do all that shit again, so I did. Now my rebuilds and management tools are running a lot faster, but at the expense of losing a few valuable hours of NaSoAlMo work time. Oh well.

So, I still did write one song today. I also programmed almost all of the parts of it, and there is very little that will need to be recorded to complete it. I will have to take the programmed bits and arrange them though. It's a little different than the other songs I've written up to this point in that it doesn't really have a standard song structure, and the "lyrics" are just interestingly placed samples (which I've got to create). The description should explain a little better what I'm talking about, but at any rate I've planned it all out enough to consider it "written" even if that doesn't mean exactly the same thing as it has for the last eight songs.

• Nebraska: "Evil Reaches Nebraska" is a recording of the soundtrack to the trailer for the film of the same name. It is an instrumental soundbed littered with audio taken from the film. Basically listening to it is exactly what you'd experience if you were watching the film trailer with your eyes closed. (Note: The film does not actually exist.)

I will be making use of at least a couple really cool virtual instruments I've purchased over the years on this one. Namely, G-Media's M-Tron virtual Mellotron and the orchestral sample set I mentioned in an earlier update, which is the EastWest/Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Silver Edition. Yes, that product name is far too long. That's why I didn't bother to mention it before.

In fact, with the exception of the "samples" from the film, I may not even need to record anything at all for it. I am debating whether or not to add some rhythmic metal riffs to parts of it, but even if I decide to do that, I will probably just use the Roland VG-8ex instead of micing up an amp. The VG-8ex does some pretty convincing over-produced metal, and I also don't care about that tone purist bullshit for a song like this one. I don't actually care about it that much in general, but especially not in this case.

Day four is going to be the first NaSoAlMo weekend day. We'll see if that has any effect on my work. I suspect it will even though I don't have a job at the moment. I don't know whether the effect will be positive or negative though.

what's on:
"Screaming at a Wall" (Minor Threat - Minor Threat)