by Ethan Johnson
October 23, 2007

And now, the flip side, for those of you who remember vinyl records or cassettes. Yesterday was all about the crap, now for some songs that I like to like, and I don't care who has contrary opinions about them. In no particular order:

by Ethan Johnson
October 22, 2007

Will Truman recently weighed in with his opinion about the latest catalog of worst songs ever. As I opined in his comments section, there are far more bad songs than are dreamt of in this list. Rather than refute/support the list line by line, I'd rather give this my own spin (ha ha) and talk about some other worthy nominees, and why.

by Ethan Johnson
August 31, 2007

There are moments when I have to stop what I'm doing, and marvel at this wonderful internet. Seriously. Sure, it gets hyped into oblivion, and it's not always all that it is cracked up to be, but just as physical reality ("meatspace") has its shortcomings and marvels, so too does the internet. This is one of those moments.

by Ethan Johnson
June 1, 2007

Several years ago, I was doing the "temp" thing in the Chicago metro area. My plan was to work 2-3 days a week, then interview for "real" jobs on my free days. Getting a full-time "temp" job ran counter to the plan. But one day, I was assigned to work for the Sears service center in Harvey, IL. My role was to help the technicians lift the air conditioning units so they could clean the unit, etc. When I wasn't out on calls, I was working in the warehouse area packing orders, and restocking shelves.

by Ethan Johnson
May 30, 2007

It is unwise to take the majority of my song lyrics seriously, which is to say, as fact. More often than not, I would get inspired to write something that ends up as the chorus, and then I worked backwards from there to flesh out the story I wanted to tell or the feeling I wanted to convey. I could say that I am first and foremost a liar of a songwriter, but I like to think it's an outlet to explore empathy.

by Ethan Johnson
February 23, 2007

I've been fairly mum about my exercise routine, partly because the floor exercise that I found was really tearing up my knees, and partly because some things are better done than said. I quietly switched from the questionable floor exercise to using the treadmill. Today I finally hit the 30-minute mark for a single session, up from 15.

by Ethan Johnson
February 12, 2007

If anyone has the cure for insomnia, I could use it pronto. Here are some random thoughts as I toss and turn waiting for the darkness:

by Ethan Johnson
July 17, 2006

Back in the days when I had a personal recording rig (including 24-channel mixer - for little old me), I was having problems mixing down a finished song. I kept sliding the faders (pictured above) upward and turning the dials clockwise to compensate for either whatever was lacking, or was overpowering the mix. Hmm, vocal track is getting buried. (Slide up.) Hmm, now the guitar is getting lost. (Slide up.) And so on. Eventually, after hearing fatigue settled in, I did what I should have done long before: I reset everything and started over. I discovered that the drums didn't need to be so loud, the mid-range on track 4 was just fine as is, and only minor tweaking was needed on the vocal track. How did the mix turn into such a train wreck, anyway?