News

Well, it's three days before Christmas, but I'm already flooded in the presents.

First off, major props to my TBA buddies. We were really stagnant during the school year (perhaps we were actually doing school work? Nah!) but now that it's winter break we're pumping out the creativity. Way to go guys, this is good news for both our band and our fans.

Second, I am most grateful to Native Instruments for not being tight-fisted, money-grubbing, corporate salesmen: and releasing a free Christmas soundpack! Since I bought Kore 2, I've been most pleased with the fonts I've used thus far (and I've only tried about a fourth of them) and now I get even more to look forward to. Additionally, they sent me a $25 gift coupon to buy more of their 1's and 0's. (The more I spend, the more I save! Still not sure how that one works out yet...) So I'm drowning in Urban Arsenal 2 goodness, and the creativity is flowing like a white boy who can actually rap.

Finally, what could bring all this greatness to an even better conclusion? New headphones. That's right, no more dinky 2000 ticket (arcade) headphones--we're moving onto the professionals. Say hello to my Sennheisers. "Hello Tyler's Sennheisers." Thank you, SuperJoe. This is the perfect Christmas present. Ah, it's so nice to hear more than treble. Don't get me wrong, treble, I love you--but, well frankly, you're incomplete unless you and bass are getting along.

We'll be rolling out a bunch more songs soon since our album release date is nearing, so if you're reading this--stay tuned!

New song released! Check it out on our music page. Props to Tyler for coming up with a better name than "Direct Wave Fun." We are on schedule for releasing a full-length album on Pi Day, 2010. Stay tuned!

Hooray! We finally released our first song. 14 official versions since it's been in the project manager, and now we feel like it's ready to be released. We'll try to get a few more songs out soon. We're still working towards our goal of releasing a full-length album on March 14th, 2010. Go listen on the music page!

So it's been two months and you haven't heard from us. You guys must be getting anxious for some released music! All zero of you.

Well I have good news and bad news. Which one do you want first? The bad news? OK, that's what I thought.

The bad news is, we still don't have any songs ready for release. I know, I know. We're terrible. I'm being way too anal about having songs be perfect and complete before we release them. We really need to focus on finishing some of our projects instead of starting new ones.

But hey, the good news is, we've got about 20 in-progress songs in our project manager and juicy summer vacation ahead of us.

If you're following us, please hang in there; you will get your sweet tunes one of these days!

Casey Kuball, also known as Darthfett, has been into music and video games since he was a small child. Having taken 2 years of piano classes in school, Casey actually knows a bit of formal music theory, which is invaluable groundwork for The Burning Awesome.

Since joining the team, Casey has already contributed to two burning awesome songs and shared several of his own. I look forward to what the three of us can do!

In other news, we've started an unofficial fund. As a band, we need some musical equipment. Here's what we need:

• An electric guitar / amp / recording equipment ~ $300 - I want to learn guitar and utilize some authentic electric guitar riffs in our songs.
• AutoTune EVO - $400 - If any of us have any hope of singing, we're going to need to process our vocals to help us stay in key, as well as doing weird and fun effects with vocals.
• FL Studio XXL - $300 - This is the studio we all use. However, Casey can only legally use the demo.

So far, we have $0 saved up. Hey, I'll throw in $10. We now have $10 saved up. Perhaps if each of us budget some money aside each week we can get this equipment and rock like we've never rocked before.

When working with digital music, we always have problems with working on the same project at the same time. Much like programming projects, version control software becomes necessary.

So I spent a few days working some Django magic and came up with a project management system for the band. A web interface for adding projects to our working base, and a checkout system. The idea is that you have to check out a project to work on it. When a project is checked out, no one else can work on it. Then you can check in the project once you have added stuff to it, along with comments telling what you did. If someone else has a project checked out, you can poke them to notify them that you want to work on it.

Tyler seems to have really taken to the system. Right now he's got 3 projects checked out, and I see 2 other projects have new versions uploaded. The system really helps to avoid file conflicts and surprisingly it even motivates me to get stuff done.

Last night I was trying to sleep, but feeling restless. I checked my email, and saw that I got "poked" because Tyler wanted me to finish up my changes to our latest so he could work on it. Instead of sleeping, I spent all night working on the song!

In conclusion, Django is an awesome web framework, and version control systems rock.

Tyler and I have formed a two-man techno band. Together we will attempt to master and perfect the art of creating electrified songs that ROCK.

P.S. HAPPY PI DAY!