Ryan Houlette, Singer/Songwriter, Original Folk-Rock

Dauntless!

2008-07-02T13:56:00.002-04:00

Yes, another song is in the can, more or less. The nice thing about picking up the pace of recording is that when I hit the inevitable "I have no idea where to go with this song" roadblock, the fact that I hit the same roadblock on the previous song is still fresh in my mind. Knowing that I've successfully overcome it in the past makes it easier to just bulldoze through that roadblock.

All of these tracks will still need another remix. It's amazing how something that sounds great on my mp3 player and on my studio reference speakers sounds muddy and gross on my home stereo system. I haven't figured out how those real mixing engineers pull off the trick of sounding good everywhere.

I was listening to a K.T. Tunstall track the other day, and I was struck by what a difference great mixing and mastering makes. It just... popped. It made me want to listen to the track right from the outset. That's a pretty neat trick. Not an easy one, either, unfortunately.

Picking up the pace

2008-06-17T12:43:00.004-04:00

I finished a very rough mix of another track - "This Life" - on Sunday. I'm rather pleased with it. I tried out a few new tricks that I think worked out well (thanks, Gomez). It's good to feel like you're actually getting better at something with practice.

And it's only been a few weeks since the last track. Maybe this CD is finally gathering some momentum....

And another one falls into place

2008-05-22T10:23:00.005-04:00

I finished a rough mix of "Small Screen" the other day. I'm now officially at the halfway mark for this CD, and it's only taken three and a half years to get here. Wow.

The other interesting thing about this track is that it's one of the oldest songs on the album. I wrote it back in 1995, so it's taken 13 years for me to record it. Nobody ever said I was fast.

Scratch Trax

2008-03-03T08:12:00.003-05:00

I bit the bullet yesterday and laid down scratch tracks for all of the remaining songs on CD IV. Here's the tentative track list (unordered):

Lullaby
Grinding the Mill
Four Colors
Pieces
Dauntless
2000 Gods
More Than Meets the Eye
Alice
This Life
Small Screen

Jumping on the blogwagon

2008-03-02T08:59:00.002-05:00

For centuries I've dreamed of putting up a real blog on this site. Now my dream has finally come true. Look what a nice organized place this has become -- links over there on the side, a site feed, and you can even leave comments. Woohoo!

Elsewhere on the Interwebs

2008-02-08T21:38:00.000-05:00

I've now got a presence on iLike, last.fm, and Facebook, along with some streaming music.

More Than Meets the Eye

2007-03-23T21:24:00.000-04:00

I just finished recording the third track on my next CD. I wrote this years before Michael Bay even thought of doing a Transformers movie, I swear. (You can hear the streaming version on my MySpace page.)