The Official CIR Site.

I’ve uploaded the Lamb remix I did for their competition. Unfortunately I missed the deadline for it but I’m putting it online regardless. It’s on the music page and on soundcloud.  Enjoy and share!

It’s been  a while since I’ve posted something…. I’ve been really sick, a lot, these last 2 months. I’ve been trying to master everything out and add some extra production tweeks to add some interesting additions from the original tracks as I wrote them. I put that on hold for a while and have been working on a remix for Lamb, an excellent triphop band. They are running a competition that I’m submitting for. I’m close to being finished.

I’ve finally finished Veelas remix. After a few months of just waiting then slowly finishing the mixing, it is finally ready. I’ve put it up on the music page.

I also finished a new track yesterday called Line Them Up. It is also available online for downloading.

I’ve changed the way tracks are downloaded from this site. Now you don’t have to click through each track to get to the actual song link. All the direct file links are on the music page itself. It takes away a few clicks and makes the music that much easier to get.

As for a complete disc..I have to check to see what the time count is at with this track finished to see where I stand on a complete disc. If I have to finish off something else that is in the works or if it’s all good right now with all that I have complete. I should have enough new music to replace some of the older weaker tracks. I’ll have a look at the situation this week and will see where I stand.

What a slump I’ve been in. I’m just getting back to “normal” pain levels after the spring move and fall and I’d have to say that it’s depressing to realize that it’s not all that much better then 3 months ago. My hands swell just as bad and my feet are pushing at least 2 times a week now. It’s just a big rut that I’ve been stuck in after trying to push myself to work on music this year and try and actually finish off my disc. I’ve been figuring out a lot of personal stuff lately, new medication, added diagnosis of psoriasis on top of rhuematoid arthritis and the need to do a drastic move to medication that costs a small fortune to have has actually pushed me to make some choices that I’ve been dancing around the edges of for a few months already. It’s time to take a step forward in the direction I actually want to go, rather then being pushed by external forces.
This week, somehow with how I’ve been feeling, I managed to finish off the Veela remix that I’ve been wanting to since I submitted it. I just have to check the last render on 1 more set of speakers and I think this will be the finished version. If not, it won’t take more then a handful of renders with minor volume shifts to get it right. Aside from that, I have……. 6 tracks that I’ve been picking away at for around 2 months, with one of them being something started this week. I have to “replace” 2 older tracks with something new to have a decent disc length and I hope it will be soon. After that, I might go back and remix some of the older tracks I’m going to be “keeping”. Jairus did a great job but there are some subtle things that I want to add to them but that won’t take long at all. I just need a week of feeling semi decent to get all of those done.
I’m not sure how long this is all going to take to finish up. I’ve already past my “done date” a few times. Hell, I wanted to put something out to labels 3 years ago. I’m glad I didn’t. This year I hope I’ll have everything ready. It’s hard to set a time and have health issues come up and fuck up all my working time or leave me too depressed to do anything.

Anyway, I should have the remix updated tonight and I might put up a clip of something I’m working on as a early Halloween treat. I’m really hoping I can put something new online for it as well. Leslie is putting on a Dark Carnival and I’d like to actually do some promotion.

On to something completely different. I’m going to be starting an industrial radio show! Saturday nights from 11pm to 1am I’ll be playing in the valley. If I’m not live, I’ll pre-record a show for them to play that week. It will depend on how I feel if I’ll make it out or not. I’ve worked out the details regarding this arrangement and it’s alright. All I have to do is hand in my paper work and pay my membership fee and I’ll be back on the air. I’ll post a link to online streaming of the show for anyone interested.

I was setting up a sound cloud account earlier today and I noticed when I was downloading a few tracks to upload to it that the Ke$ha remix was cut short. It was missing almost 2 minutes! I’ve uploaded it and replaced the one that was online with the full version. I don’t know how long it’s been like that or if it’s been like that from the start but it is now resolved. It should be 5.30 long and 7.57/7.58mb. If there is still a problem, which there shouldn’t be, (I’ve tested it on 2 different computers) but if there is, message me on the forum or on facebook and let me know.

What a day yesterday was. I installed a plugin for SEO optimization and it infected the site instead of doing anything useful! It took hours to figure out where the problem was and get rid of it. Then wait for googles fetch results and removal from being flagged to come back. It kept me up until 7.
Anyway, Hardwired is back up and done. It’s on the music page so go get it! I’ve also decided to put up my Veela submission. It’s still not finished but it’s what I submitted. No love for industrial. All the top entries are either house or trance. Figures. I’m planning on finishing it but if you want to listen to the submitted track, it’ll be there until the completed one replaces it. It’s your choice! If you enjoy anything, feel free to pass out the tracks and my links.

I’ve entered my first remix competition for actual prizes. It was by Image-Line of the Veela track Night Vision. The song has a strange flow to it. There were just over 500 entries to the contest. I listened to around 300 of them and read the titles for the rest. There were only 6 industrial entries! Mine being one of them. I didn’t have a lot of time to complete my remix. I didn’t start it right away because I was working on other tracks I wanted to finish first. By the time I downloaded the package and started chopping up the vocals, there was only 16 days left and I was out of town for 4 of them. Plus I worked on 3 of them making me too sore to work that evening on anything really productive. However, I like the remix that I submitted. I would have liked to do my post composing production and add a few things to it on top of that but there wasn’t enough time. I submitted what I did with less them 20 minutes to the deadline.
So, I’m going to actually finish the remix properly before I put it online. I still might put up what I actually submitted in the members section when I’m finished so that the members of the forum can listen to both and see the progression from one to the other. When I write, I just concentrate on the music. I do all production, final mixing/mastering, automations and such in a new project file of rendered out stems. If I need to write a new synth part or change something, I go back to the writing project, add/change what I need to and render out new stems. Sure it takes more time to do it this way but for me, it works. The idea behind it is that when writing, that’s all I’m thinking about. I’m not thinking about filter sweeps, fx toggles or anything like that. It’s all about the harmony and melody.
If you’d like to hear both and get access to early releases and other bonuses, sign up for an account on the forum.

The CIR Facepalm remix of Uffie’s ADD SUV is now online! I’ve also uploaded the new versions of Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl and Katy Perry’s California Gurls. They are all on the music page. The older tracks are the same file name as they were, so just save them in the same location or overwrite them.

As for the new track, it is progressing very well. It shouldn’t be long until it is complete. I’ve ripped a few new movie samples for it that I’m going to insert today. All that will be left is to master it the best I can. Speaking of which, I haven’t done the taste of your lips yet and probably should.

I’ve been working on redoing my facepalm remixes for a while now and good progress has been made. I’ve got the Katy Perry – California Gurls track finished now and the Gwen Stefani – Hollaback Girl and Uffie – ADD SUV tracks almost done. I just need to do one more car speaker test on those 2 and I’ll have all 3 online. The 2 older remixes will just overwrite the ones that are already online. I’ll tag them as new for anyone that’s already downloaded them. For those of you that already have them, they will have the same file name, so just overwrite the ones on your computer with the new ones and that will take care of it. Uffie’s ADD SUV is new, so everyone can enjoy it. I redid a lot of it since I started it since I didn’t like where it was going. Even after taking a, probably month’s time from listening to it, I didn’t like it any better. The original is so TERRIBLE! Now, it’s much better! There’s only 1 more for me to update, after tomorrow that is. On to new stuff.

I’ve been working for the past couple weeks on a new track. Today, in between renders of the 3 remixes, I spent time working on it. Progress is coming along on it very nice. I’m hoping to have it done by the end of the month. After it’s finished, I’ll look at all the tracks that I have finished and will decide what I want to cut and what I want to keep, in regards to a complete disc that is. Once I have that all worked out, I’ll know how many more tracks I’ll need to make up a disc. I’ve realized that since it’s taken me such a long time to complete, some of the older tracks aren’t as good as what I’m writing now and will need to be left off of it. I’m really hoping to send something out this year and I’m going to work to make sure that it happens! All the cut tracks I’ll make available online for anyone to download and listen to. I’ll have them up in the members section on the forum first, so if you want to listen to them early, sign up for an account. I’m also going to be putting the new track up on the forum first for members. It’ll be there a lot shorter then the cut material but if you don’t want to wait the week or so, sign up! It’s free, takes little time and allows you access to some goodies that non-members don’t get.

On a different note, facebook is closing down its group feature. Well, maybe not closing it but changing it to something not worth keeping, so I’m trying to migrate everyone away from it and onto the page. If you’re not a fan of CIR’s facebook page, here’s the link for secure browsing - https://www.facebook.com/pages/CIR/125450047476745 and for those that just normal brows – http://www.facebook.com/pages/CIR/125450047476745 . If you haven’t changed your security settings on facebook to make your session secure, you’ll want to use the second link. Please join!
Not too bad considering how bad I currently feel. Arthritis is a bitch!

Today being my birthday and my cats ( Mr. Pants or Mecha or Mecha Pants) I’ve decided to post up some pics.  They are just here in the post and will be only here. CIR News will be below them. That’s also my bad for anyone that’s been using IE to view the CIR site and had issues with its display. It should be fixed now! Sorry again!

Mr. Pants or Mecha or Mecha Pants followed by Yours Turely.

CIR NEWS TIME!!

I’ve finally listened to the Uffie mix that I made the first mix of a few weeks back and there are some small changes I need to make to it. I had to wait a while before I listened to it again because I find the original song so annoying that even my remix of it bugs me a lot. Especially after having to listen to it and my mix well over 100 times, there needed to be some space until I heard it again. My mix should be finished and online shortly. In the time between when I last worked on it and did the first mix down, I spent some time reworking the Katy Perry remix. I got a good jump on changing it up. It’s getting close to its first mix down. It didn’t take as long as I thought it was going to take. Cutting the vocals up for the remix really takes a long time. Not only do you need to cut them into manageable chunks but you need to make sure they are on time, your additions fit into your mix and the changes you make also fit into the mix. Usually it takes me a few times cutting and moving things around to make sure they fit. The initial chopping, then again once some of the music is done and maybe again after some editing. Writing the music can go pretty quickly if I’m in the right mood. Sometimes things just click.

Once these 2 are done and online for everyone, I’m going to work on an original track to try and get close to having a disc done. I’m going to be cutting a few tracks from my original track listing to update the material to newer and better songs. So I have to fill that time up again. I probably won’t quite have a full discs worth of music completed before I send out my demo, but I want to be close so it wouldn’t take much time to finish if someone bites.

I’ve also been toying with the idea of changing the forum over from SMF to PHPBB. I’m getting sick of having to filter through all the new users that register to try and weed out the bots. Every time that someone signs up, I get an email and check out the account. If it looks good, I let it go, if not, I remove it. I takes a bit of time, especially if I don’t check my email for a few days. So, I’ve got an offline install of PHPBB and am looking it over to see if I want to move back to it. I was having this issue which is why I moved to SMF in the first place, it actually had a captcha. Unfortunately SMF hasn’t had a major update in a while and the bot registrations are getting worse. I have a poll up in the forum to try and collect some feedback on this. I’d try an import the database, so you wouldn’t need to re register and all the boards will still be there. I don’t know yet. I’ll have to read more on PHPBB, especially on the security end of it. I’ll make a few more posts about this topic before I actually decide what I want to do.

Easter is coming up if you celebrate. I probably won’t be posting before then unless I finish off a remix, so if I don’t I hope everyone that celebrates has a good holiday. If you don’t, I hope you enjoy your extra time off from work, or enjoy the extra pay that you get from it being a holiday. Please don’t drink and drive. Arrange for a DD, take a bus, a taxi or walk if you’re going out.

cheers