Victory! To the large Himalayan dwelling mammals!

November 14th & 15th were marked as two of the best days ever in the history of The Yaks.  It was the week of the bi-annual (i think) Battle of the Bands at Muse Music/Cafe in Provo, Utah.  We played Friday night, won, and got to move on to the final round on Saturday.  And on Saturday we completely kicked some serious butt and went on to win 1st place, which was a prize of $150 and 10 hours of recording studio time (which we are going to find out if we can sell, because we do our own recording stuff...).  But don't get me wrong, the other bands were excellent.  I, personally, was a big fan of the Mckay Stevens Project.  Anyway, here are some photos of the band:

This is our first CD's front cover picture.

These were all from Saturday night, but i'll get some from friday because we had some crazy costumes :)

This is Tagg.  This is also my favorite face on Tagg.

mmmm, Sky bringin up the low end.

Here are the Brown Brothers. Joey and Tagg.

And here is the whole gang chillin out in the hall before the show.  And you can definitely see our southern rose, Hillary Gallup, whom is one of our best fans ever, dressed in the crazy green suit thingy. Awesome!

A Monkey Grinder Halloween

So, Halloween rolls around this year, and the question is again raised; What to do. Trick-or-treating as a 19 year old is a frowned upon nowadays. And my friends thought that sitting around watching movies was cool somehow. But I needed something to stir the thick dark, smokey night that is the real Halloween.  So I decided to go to the one and only Monkey Grinder show that's held every year on Halloween night at Velour in Provo. Monkey Grinder

is a wicked awesome circus band. This concert made for an extremely entertaining and creepy night.

This was the opening act. Puppet Grinder they call themselves. That big rack thing in this picture is one giant noise maker. Pretty awesome. 

This is Monkey Grinder. I took guitar lessons from Collin Botts who is there with the guitar. They have an accordionist, some vibrophones (sp?) which are in the very back. And they even have a real one-legged pirate who hits things, off to the left.  

Collin and the clarinetist.

There's the pirate hosting the costume contest at half-time. It was against 'Frank' the creepy bunny from Donny Darko, and a homemade robot costume. 

And Collin again with my favorite guitar, his old Gibson. He also plays a baritone acoustic and a Yamaha SG nock-off. He broke 3 guitar strings within two songs (which sparked the halftime contest) : two on his acoustic and one on this one. 

Pumpkin Heads

Around mid-October I visited my friend's family's cabin, along with my friend's whole family. It was quite the enjoyable trip. And there we carved up some seriously big orange fruits. Or rather large berries. Or Cucurbitaceae. Take a look:

Here we all are ^

This is Carly's boyfriend's pumpkin ^

This is Carly's Pumpkin ^  (yeah, she did that face for a reason, wink* wink*)

This is Isac's pumpkin ^ (i think, could be josh's)

This beauty would be mine ^

And the winner: Pat's Pumpkin ^  This is actually a special tribute to our now new president, Barack Obama. This is a very detailed piece which even includes a gaping hole in the side of his head from which gushes very few innards. 

Streching your imagination

Another Studio update. 

Just about a week ago i received a phone call from my good friend Kami, who is currently attending BYU. She was wondering if i had time to record a friend of her's band in the next little while. I said i'd be glad to and asked what kind of stuff they wanted to record. She replied that it was just acoustic stuff. And considering the ease of just recording a couple guys singing and playing acoustic guitars, i said i could probably do it all in a day. 

10:45PM rolls around and the band walks in the back door. Yes, all of their instruments have to do with acoustics, but they were not quite what i would label 'acoustic'. Turns out, they were a full band. Guitars, bass, drums, piano, and my favorite part, violin. My palms began to sweat and my stomach began to ache with hunger, for the 5 song load of this band could only mean one thing: one heck of an all-nighter. With a Beto's burrito in one hand, and a 2-liter of Vault by my side..... i set off into the audio. 

They are: Imagine Dragons, and you can see their webpages HERE(site) or HERE(mypsace) - Turns out, that this is probably the most talented group of kids i've seen around in awhile. I wish i could have had more time recording and mixing them because the work we did in about 14-15 hours on 5 whole songs doesn't quite do them justice, in my opinion. Or else i hope that the demo they recorded with me can get them into a real recording studio or something. Anyway, definitely check out their 5 newly recorded songs on their myspace (the ones with DEMO on them are those 5). 

And thats the latest on the studio. Stay tuned for more information on a possible upcoming collaborative project involving the Yaks and a distant friend Willy Yummy. 

DIY Acoustic Panel Build!!!

Here is the biggest studio update. I'm beginning to hear that the room we record in is really starting to stand out in our recordings and im not a fan of it. But the room is too large to treat acoustically with the amount of money we have/would want to sanely spend. Not to mention its oddly shaped. We would try to solve this problem by hanging large blankets on mike stands and other such things to create a booth-like recording space for vocals, guitars, and the biggest one, drums. It helped a bit, but it was extremely time consuming, very unstable, and i'm sure the blankets did not have a very good absorption coefficient. 

So I went on a deep internet search for some answers. I found a ton of material. But most of it was on treating an entire room, which i would like to do, but couldn't for several reasons. Anyway, I discovered a very helpful site; Ethan's information was plenty and good. 

I decided that i would take a little different approach to the fiberglass insulation panels. I wanted to combine these panels with the mechanical setup and size of drum shields/baffles. I wanted them mobile, so i could move them around the room, i wanted them to be free standing, and i wanted them to be able encircle an area big enough for the drumset.

This is what i came up with (the project is not complete yet, still have a few more to go before it is) :

4'x8' Sound board from Home Depot: $10. Rigid, yet soft enough for some high and low absorption. We cut it down to a 4'x6 because 8' is pretty dang big. And we also have an extra 2'x4', which i plan on make a couple diffusors/bass traps with.

3 yards of some nice polka dot fabric from Walmart: about $10. We folded it in half, cut it and sowed the side so it made one big piece that would fit over the board.

1 roll of thick fiberglass insulation from Lowes: $10. This is probably not as absorptive as the Owens Corning 703 but this was our Mark I so we'll see how things pan out. Not to mention 703 is very difficult to get a hold of (ive checked a ton of places) and its much more expensive than this stuff, especially if you gotta ship it.

Then we pulled the fabric over the insulation and stapled it onto the back of the board.

And there you have it. Now i haven't done the last steps, but they are pretty much to build two more of these. and attach them to each other with hinges, making them able to stand up on there own, be folded up and put away, and (with another set) can encircle the drums. I'll get some photos of when we are finished with them. 

Money Spent: about $30-35 for one big panel +extra materials

...more

Random other things of my life:

This is the park in West Jordan that I used to work at once a week at Farmer's Markets. But it has since ended as it is much to cold.

This handsome young bloke is Ted. Hailing from the far land of Pittsburgh, he is a very old friend of Patricks. And a new friend of mine.

These two beautiful girls are my good friends Tina and Christine. They hadn't seen each other in like 7 months or something. It was a hello/goodbye though because they were both leaving for college again. 

This was quite the night. Two miles or so from our original parking place we come upon this Express Auto sign. Why? Well, two or so miles away Pat's truck got towed. He didn't have any $$$ so i ended up paying for it temporarily.

It's been awhile

So I have not posted in quite some time and so i decided that this lazy monday morning was a good opportunity to catch all you followers... (2) up on what wicked waves creed's been riding lately. I'll actually probably make a few different posts considering the number of things goin on. 

Recent thingy #1)

 

Me and couple of my good friends (Mr. Joey Brown, and Mr. Taggart Coppins) took a tasty trip to the provo scene's finest dining: Sammy's.

Joey got a bit of action while we were there. Turns out she's been in a few movies.

I too got a bit. Then i realized he was a guy.

A Yaks Show!

It's not often that I know about one of our shows this far ahead of time. So I'm celebrating by putting in my blog. 

The Yaks (of which I hold membership in) are playing a concert on Sept. 13, 2008 at the Solid Ground Cafe. But for some reason we are not listed on the site for that day..... strange. 

It will be much fun, and we just got new drum heads so they sound great now. 

ohhh my gosh.....

I don't think there are many words that can describe these videos. Please just watch them. Although I would ask the weak stomached and younger audiences to leave the room:

Well, about two and a half hours ago it was my birthday, which was quite exciting, I guess. Frankly, I think they happen a bit too often. And I highly doubt that I am actually a 19 year old. I'm more like a 13 year old. Anyway, enough on that. On to more pressing matters. 

The other day, my buddy was taking pictures for his photography portfolio, and we got to use an amazing garage for the shoot. This garage is owned by the guy who's father created the little comics called The Peanuts. Turns out it became kinda popular and made them a bit of money. While my good friend was taking pictures of the girl, I was taking pictures of what was behind her; beautiful cars. 

Pardon the lack of artistic quality in them, I was just rushing to get them before I had to go. These are just a few:

Shelby Cobra GT500

This bad boy was signed by Carroll Shelby himself

BOSS 302 Mustang

I'm actually going to a car show up in Park City tomorrow afternoon (later today). My dad is coming up from Arizona, with his Mustang (sooo cool, i'll post some pics of that later). But turns out, the guy that owns these cars is gonna be there too. So I will definitely get some good pictures of that on here later. Peace. 

Everyone needs one of these:

Just a quick post before I hit the sack. I found these while looking into the image hosting site Photobucket. They made me laugh quite a bit. Anyway, here are a few of them: 

ohhh boy. 

Through the eyes of my Phone

Sprint (phone company) is pretty dumb. They make it so you have to pay for every little tiny thing you want to do with your phone; ring tones, games, picture messages, and much more. Then they expire after so long unless you keep up a payment.... = LAME. 

Well I've had my Sanyo Katana phone for quite a while now and I've always wanted to get the pictures onto my computer. But because it costs so much to send them to a PC via picture-mail, I've just had to enjoy them on the butt-tiny screen. Not to mention after awhile I have to delete some photos to make room for new ones :-(  Not Cool.

Fortunately, (though a smidge too late for some) I discovered a USB cable while cleaning my living quarters in the heat of boredom. Unfortunately, it didn't really do anything. Fortunately, Sprint has a program for this. Un-freakin-fortunately, it costs a pretty penny. 

Then I found THIS. And it gave me a driver I could work with. Then I downloaded THIS. And now I have THESE:

This is real. And it wasn't painted over or anything. 

These are also real. Again, not painted over.

My good friend Kyle Hatch does not care if there are Skittles on his BBQ pizza.

And of course; the famous homemade double ultimate monster burger-dinger. (with Stephanie George in the photo for a size comparison) 

So now I have about a hundred new photos that you will probably see periodically pop up in my ever growing Blog-amabob. Tune in next time when I go over some motivation posters. 

Wisdom Troopers

So a few days ago I got my wisdom teeth pulled/ground/knocked out. Which is kinda actually what led me to start a blog; sheer boredom. Well, I wasn't super mobile. So I decided to rent a movie to pass along the hours. Thats right. Me and my buddies rented us some good ole' Starship Troopers (1997). It was on our list of pretty-crappy-but-totally-awesome-movies to see.

It definitely delivered with its bad acting and extreme gore and quotes like, "They sucked his brains out." Creed gives this movie a 4.5 out of 5 for a wisdom tooth/guy night movie. 

p.s. - I'm working right now on posting embedded audio clips to show off some more of our studio work. I'll have craigslist adds out on monday. 

Record time...

So my friend, Patrick, and I have started a small recording studio business recording bands and whatnot. Its actually working out pretty well. We are both pretty well versed in the ways of Pro Tools now. Of course, Pro Tools is something you can almost never 'master'. But I'd say we could test out a good year's worth of college classes for it. 

Anyway, we just finished a band's album about a week ago. You can see stuff about them at  http://www.myspace.com/crossingcolumbia. And I think one of the recordings we did is on there. 

We operate out of two studios (highly annoying with mac/pc cross platform filesharing). One doubles as a really cool free concert venue, while the other is more acoustically treated and outfitted with a more powerful computer that utilizes more advanced plug-ins and whatnot. 

Here are some pictures of recording things for The Yaks' new stuff:  

Bass Cabinet Micing:

  

Drums Micing:

Some Pro Tools 7.4 Action:

Joey Brown layin' it down:

The recordings on the Yaks site were done in the venue/studio a while back (we've come a ways since that album was released BTW) 

So if you wanna get your band some recordings, whether they be quickly done demos or a fully mastered CD, definitely contact me. We can negotiate prices for different situations but for the most part its gonna be $15/hr. Which is pretty ridiculously low for the quality we can churn out. 

Well, there's a sales pitch blog if I ever did see one, hehe. Peace and Love. 

My first day as a blogger...

I am completely new to this whole blog thing. But they are pretty dang cool, I gotta say. I'll have to search around some other blogs to see how things are done. Looks like an extremely customizable myspace/facebook thats not centered around how many friends you have and the annoying band bulletins.

 

This is me.