Jody Whitesides

Author: Jody Whitesides

  • Billie Eilish Didn’t Know Who Van Halen Is

    Billie Eilish Didn’t Know Who Van Halen Is

    The big music story this week was Billie Eilish being interviewed on the Jimmy Kimmel show. During said show she was asked about Van Halen. To which she responded with knowing who they are. For some reason this set some people off who got really upset about it. It’s as if she’s a Bad “Girl” (yes, a pun on the title of her most popular hit).

    Billie Eilish

    I’m kinda confused as to why a 17 year old girl would be required to know who the fuck Van Halen is. One reason I don’t understand why people are upset has to do with the fact that Van Halen hasn’t been relevant for at least 15 years. Thus what 2 year old would have any clue what was popular in music at that point in life.

    I would put it out there that there are a lot of people who are huge Van Halen fans that don’t know who the fuck Billie Eilish is, or even who maybe the New York Dolls. Just because she’s a famous musician now, doesn’t mean she has to know who every single artist is that came before her. That’s an unreasonable request.

    The great thing is Wolfgang came to her defense. Which is ironic since he’s Eddie’s kid and often times now plays bass for the band. Yes, Van Halen had a big career for a good long time – but that time has pretty much past. Music has changed, some people move with it, some don’t.

    Billie is definitely doing things a bit different and that’s what’s likely driving her popularity. She and her bother have hit the zeitgeist and that’s something many musicians attempt to have happen in their career and it’s rare at best. I certainly hope she is able to stay relevant for at least 4 album releases or more. The hard part about that is that the industry is bigger and there’s more artists doing so many things now that it may not be likely.

    I think it would be really interesting to hear her now tackle a cover of a Van Halen song. I doubt she’d do it though. Stranger things have happened.

    As you might be able to tell, I don’t care if she doesn’t know who Van Halen is. Though, I’m a little bummed she has no idea who I am 😎.

  • Little Step Back Big Leap Forward

    Little Step Back Big Leap Forward

    It’s been a bizarre Thanksgiving holiday. Bizarre may be too strong a word. Reality is it was mellow.

    What made it weird is that I ran into an issue in the studio on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That translated into a technical issue regarding file backups. As a musician who takes work a tad to serious some times, I have a tendency of making a lot of backups of files. This started after I had a hard drive meltdown a bunch of years ago while I was attempting to make backups of 20 songs worth of material. I lost it all. No means of recovery. There was something that shattered the head of the hard drive and it destroyed the platters.

    That changed my life from a computing and studio standpoint. I started making backups of projects to a 2nd hard drive after every recording session. Then once a project was finished, I would also make two optical backups to CDs at first, then to DVDs. Now I’m doing all backups to Blu Rays. The main reason why is because Blu Rays hold 50gb of data. Though I’m thinking my next batch I’ll grab 100gb Blu Rays.

    Getting back to what happened right before Thanksgiving 2019… I had a need to get out a project. For all of this I’m running an optical data library that keeps track of all the files I have and on which disc. This allows me to call up a disc, check it out of the unit, put it into the computer, transfer files, then put the disc back. Its really handy. However, the unit is getting old and I’m thinking the power supply is going bad so sometimes one or more of the units don’t respond well (whole other tech story going on there).

    Thus, I made a decision that its time to upgrade a bunch of old DVDs/CDs from those formats to sit on Blu Ray. This takes time. Lots of time. So for several days I’ve been pulling data of old backups, reorganizing the data and burning it back onto Blu Ray. As I’m writing this, I’m about 90% done. Organization of files is key. Especially if I have a client that wants something changed, I have to be able to recall old sessions. Or maybe I want a remix of one of my tracks or maybe I need to chart a part from one of my songs. The process of doing such things becomes real easy if I have a simple method of recall for the data. Which I do, and now I’m improving it.

    Whenever I burn an optical disc I always burn a 2nd one. Why have one when you have a 2nd? That’s my motto. Mainly for the reason that if one gets scratched, I have a backup of that. I also attempt to make a hard drive backup as well, but with this much data it gets to be a bit much.

    If you’re not one to backup data, and I’ve met many who don’t – I find I have no sympathy when people lose data. I realize it isn’t fun to lose data, but if you don’t take time to actually back it up, you have no one to blame but yourself.

    Anyway, until a better means of backup comes along from Blu Rays, I’m now at least up with the times of getting my data on to a new format for the time being. Mind you, I am seriously considering microSD as some companies are now selling 512gb microSD for $6. The issue becomes, how do I keep track of it what’s on said microSD when there’s no clear method to making it easy. But the format is getting cheap. If you have a great easy way to keep track of what’s on a microSD hit me up as I’d like to know how to keep track of them as an additional means of backup.

    I should be done with this mess tonight. Which means getting back to making more lyric videos and finishing more singles in the near future.

  • Try It One More Time

    Try It One More Time

    Today I got around to working on a lyric video where a few days ago I decided I would try it one more time. The main reason why had more to do with not being entirely happy with the first attempt.

    The last several weeks have been highly productive with a lot of output. Not only for music, but for videos related to my music as well. I’ve been working diligently on making lyric videos for a whole lot of my songs. Generally it’s been taking about 3 to 4 hours for very song to get 2 lyric videos per. One song in particular is called Supernova (expect it’s release sometime in 2020, that’s the current plan). I had done a lyric video for it, but the video I had in the background was poorly shot – me handheld of footage from a 4th of July fireworks show.

    In looking back at it, I felt it just seemed to lo-fi. Didn’t fit the title well enough and in a sense, lazy. I thought fireworks would work, but the quality of the video in low light from a phone, meh.

    Now that I’m starting to dig further into the capabilities of Motion, I’m figuring out ways to really make things pop, or sometimes taking an easier route. Today however was a day of really making something pop. I managed to create a really cool outer space animation that looks super stellar (pun intended). This took a good deal of time, but the end result is something that is constantly evolving over the course of the song and it’s interesting to look at.

    I still have to get the words in, but I’ve found a cooler font, a nicer look, and animation that makes more sense. Thus all the way around, I’m happier with the result so far. I believe I will get the lyrics in and done tomorrow.

    Musically, I’ve got another song that I’ve been working on with Chris Hellstrom. It’s turning out really great too. Fun lyrics. Fun concept. Tongue in cheeky type of song. One that has more than one hook and one hook in particular that I imagine might become a catch phrase. Two reasons on that, one, the melody is easy to remember. Two, the words will catch people by surprise and they’re words that a vast majority of people say – but may not have said them in this order or sung this way. But once heard, you can’t forget it.

    I did get the mix and master of another single done a couple of days ago. It’s on the list of videos that needs to now get done.

    Additionally I’ve been asking fans of sports teams like the Washington Nationals (congrats to them for winning the World Series this year) if they would send me video footage they’ve shot for lyric videos. HINT HINT. If you’re reading this and your a fan of a sports team – I ask you to reach out with video footage you have rights to, if you would.

    This same thought about lyric videos for teams has led to another idea for me. But I’ll keep that under wraps for the time being. Though you’ll likely see the reason pop up on my website in the not too distant future.

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