i don’t know if you know this or not, but if you don’t want your songs stolen you have to copyright them. basically you fill out this form from the copyright office and submit your work to them and they copyright it, with protection beginning the day they receive it in the mail. you can copyright in chunks or “collections” of songs so i’ve been waiting to do this first chunk all together. also i figure that song theft, like many kinds of theft, actually requires a good bit of planning and effort; more than i imagine most would take to steal my songs. so i haven’t felt rushed about it. but since i have received threats that people would mobilize their regional piracy networks against me* i decided to go ahead with it.

so with that said i have to submit lyric sheets to them and also a recording of some kind. but they are not picky so i can just send them rough acoustic versions of everything, which i am recording now. i hope to get that mailed off here before the end of the year.

the recordings are, indeed, rough; i wanted to do them simply and do guitar and vocal at the same time instead of one track at a time like i will do later on. i am using a little usb audio device called called an Mbox which has 2 inputs. i have a good large diaphragm condenser mic which works good on the vocals and pretty good on the acoustic; but obviously i can only use it for one or the other. so i picked vocals because when i use the regular sm58 mic for vocals they sound like i’m singing in a can. a can full of poop. so i was left with just plugging the acoustic into the box directly. i pretty much hate the sound it makes….very fake, very tinny guitar sound like you can tell it’s coming through electronics instead of natural. i never have been able to figure that out — since this guitar sounds so good through sound systems why it sounds so bad through the mbox is beyond me. but anyway i just keep having to tell myself it doesn’t matter for this purpose if the guitar does not sound ideal. i am getting more comfy with pro tools as well, mainly just getting around the interface.

this is the mbox. there is a better one out but i don’t want to pay more
money for it and i have no idea what’s better about it anyway.

it is good though to be able to have something to listen to…when you hear yourself it always sounds different and you can figure out little things you want to change that you may never notice without hearing a recording. so i plan to listen to all this stuff on the way up to south carolina for christmas and learn from where i’m at. i recorded a few yesterday and got through all but the last 4 today so i am making some serious progress.

on the writing end: there has been some difficulty finishing #17…dont’ quite have it where i like it yet and it needs some more work. also some other words and phrases have come that i haven’t had a chance to expand upon yet. i’m sure i’ll continue writing when inspiration strikes into next year. never know when that inspiration will strike.

*the truth is there was only one threat. and it wasn’t a real threat because a) he doesn’t have a piracy network and b) he was just making a point.