Category Archives: Blog

Blog

Lovespirals' new album is mastered!

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Anji and I spent this past weekend mastering our upcoming album, Long Way From Home, with Robert Rich in his studio in Mountain View, California. In addition to all the great locally grown food and wine we were treated to and the fun time we had hanging with Robert, the mastering came out really well. I mean really well. I can’t believe how nice it all sounds. This is quite exciting as mastering for me in the past has been primarily about trying to deal with audio deficiencies that were in my original mixes. I guess I’ve gotten better over the years, as there were very few such issues. Instead, Robert was able to focus on perfecting the sound, which he did an amazing job of. Thank you Robert (if you happen to read this)!

Ryan Lum & Robert Rich Anji Bee & Robert Rich

Blog

Apple iDay

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Even here, in the somewhat technologically backward Long Beach California, there was a queue of about 20 people at our main AT&T store. I should point out that even though this is the 5’th largest city in California, there are no Apple stores within 20 miles. That alone should prove my point of us being a little behind here. So that’s why people were forced to line up in front of the AT&T store. Since the line wasn’t too bad, I was extremely tempted to take a spot in line. However, while shopping in the Rite-aid just minutes before, I heard an old James Taylor song, reminding me that I need a Martin dx1 acoustic guitar much more than I need an iPhone.

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Hot Hot Hot

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Man today was a scorcher! Here in Long Beach, less than a mile from the ocean, it was well over 90. I read that even San Francsico was in the 90’s. I’m a little scared that this may be an indicator of what this summer may bring. Last summer, particularly July, was the worst. Around 3 in the afternoon, my shade protected house would get way too hot to bear then. I’d take refuge in a movie theater or bookstore. It was next to impossible to get any music done. Music gear gets too hot and can overheat, unless you have air conditioning which most buildings here do not have since the weather here has been mild for most of its history. Climate change is real. Today when it became too hot, Anji and I had some pie and ice cream at a local pie centric restaurant, all of which had a positive chilling effect. The weather should get back to closer to normal over the next few days; more reason to get our album completed, which it pretty much is.

Blog, News

Big changes at lovespirals.com

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Lots of updates are being made to the band site this month, the biggest of which is integrating WordPress into it so we can connect with the blogosphere at large. Now the front page of the site has a continuous feed of our news, podcast, and blog entries — all mixed up together, but tagged with categories. You can still view just news or blog entries on separate pages if you like, as well. We’re still ironing out all the kinks and figuring out what works best, but it looks pretty good and it’s functioning, so feel free to poke around and make some comments!

Blog

Apple iPhone

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i watched the macworld keynote on my computer and saw the new iPhone demonstration by steve jobs. a video ipod, cell phone, and portable computer all in one; what a damn cool idea. i’m not sure if i’ll be an early adopter and get one when they’re released later this year. however, if this is the way things are headed, then i’m excited. having google and google maps at my fingertips is something that i’ve wanted for years. ever been out somewhere and had to call a friend to do a google search to find some info for you? maybe i’m just weird, but i have. plus for doing shows, i often bring a laptop with me for additional music support; backing tracks and such. the iPhone will be be able to handle that with ease. i’ll be keeping my eye on this and see how it plays out over the next months and years.

Blog, News

Anji's Top 20 of 2006!

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I thought I’d put together a Top 20 list of my favorite podsafe songs of 2006, then I realized I should present it as a podcast. Duh! It was fun to put together, but boy were the shownotes a pain in the ass… Anyway, I did all the hard work so you can just enjoy the tunes and direct links to the band’s mp3s and websites. Lucky you! Check it out.

Blog, News

Anji's Top 10 Holiday Songs

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Matt Rowe tapped me for a list of my Top 10 holiday tracks for musictap.net this week! You might be surprised by a few of my choices… I actually looked at my hit count in iTunes to verify what seems to be my biggest holiday themed songs. I decided not to include any Lovespirals or Love Spirals Downwards related tracks, even though I do enjoy listening to them… Anyway, here’s my list:

  1. “Last Christmas” by Wham!
  2. “Feliz Navidad” by Jose Feliciano
  3. “Winter Wonderland” by Cocteau Twins
  4. “Little Drummer Boy” David Bowie & Bing Crosby
  5. “Aspenglow” by John Denver
  6. “Candle Song” by Mojave 3
  7. “25th December” Everything But The Girl
  8. “St. Patrick’s Day” by John Mayer
  9. “So This Is Christmas” John Lennon
  10. “Mr. Hanky the Christmas Poo” South Park
Blog, News

Dominating PodShow’s Downtempo Chart

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Checking out the new relaunch of the PodShow+ site which now includes the Podsafe Music Network, I noticed Lovespirals, is dominating the Podsafe Music Network Downtempo Top 10 chart. We currently hold the number 1, 2, and 9 spots. Not only that, but we hold the number 2 and 5 spots for Most Played This Month, and number 1 and 6 spots for Most Played This Week. (One of my Bitstream Dream collabs holds the number 2 spot for this week, as well…) So, I guess you could say we’re “Podsafe Downtempo Darlings”. I always did like that term, “darlings.”

Blog

new computer blues over, i hope

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i’ve had my mac mini back for close to a week now and so far so good. the apple store repair person said bad ram and possibly a bad logic board, which they replaced, were responsible for the troubles. i thought the hard disk was messed up since the i was unable to boot up from the drive and data was missing. i did a little goolgling on the matter and learned that bad ram can lead to drive problems, so i hope they were right. i must say that apple handled this wonderfully the whole way through and got the repair done fairly quickly, even though i took it on a friday night and thanksgiving/black friday was on the following thursday/friday.

so other than that, the mac mini has been a kick ass computer. small as a portable drive, powerful as huge desktop computer. space is limited in my studio, where the mini lives, so i fully appreciate it’s size to power ratio. this makes me think; whenever i may upgrade our main studio computer, a g4 tower running protools 24, i may get a mac mini. suppose i do this in two years; the minis by then will be perhaps twice as powerful as my current mini. if and when that happens, i’ll get a few more cubic feet of space back in here.

Blog

Bad band blogger, Anji!

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I seem to have abandoned the Lovespirals site since creating my own Anji Bee site. Bad, bad, bandmember, me! It was a ton of hard work to get my new blog up and running, and I have to thank Ryan for helping me out with some style coding, and Julien Smith for a little pointed advice.

The bulk of the work, really, is just simple data input. I wasn’t able to get the data from my previous WordPress blog before it bit the dust, so I’ve been forced to recreate all my shownote entries using the sometimes wonky code from the PodShow site. Plus I’ve been adding in podcast artwork, missing band links, purchase links, etc etc, so needless to say, it has taken up quite a bit of time. But just because I haven’t been blogging over here, it doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten you all! Just waiting for the inspiration to strike, or something worth reporting, I guess.

Which reminds me, last night Ryan and I started writing song number 7! Here we are, in the midst of recording song number 6 (aka “Sundrenched Tears”), when the old muse tapped us both on the shoulders with another lovely idea. Thus far, we have a Rhodes piano melody and vocals, in the roughest demo form, but as soon as we’re done with our current tune, we’ll surely launch into the next one right away!