Slice STW Project Update

Slice recording Acoustic Guitar

This past weekend we finished recording all acoustic guitars for the STW Slice “The Wall” project, things are coming together very fast on the musical end and we have just over a dozen tracks to record before we finish the recording stage of the project. hopefully in two or three weekends more we will have everything laid down. So far we have 90% of electric guitars, there is 1 guitar track for “Run Like Hell” that still needs to be recorded, it is some loose lick’s and accents, All but one of the bass guitar tracks are done, all acoustics are finished. What is still pending is Pianos for some of the songs, classic guitars, and an harmonic that will be used on the “Outside The Wall” song that closes the album. Next weekend we should be able to finish the classic guitar, the remaining bass and electrical guitar and one or two pianos. leaving the core of pianos and the harmonic to the weekend after next.

Recording Agenda

That is how we are on the recording side, on the post edition we have 15 songs edited and mixed 11 to go but for most the basics are already covered. So we should be ready for mastering by mid May. As for outputs, we will be making stems of all individual instrument tracks and a general stem of Slice’s mix on his own and a few final mix downs with the original song from the album as a backing track, with different levels between Slice and the original.

On the Video side of the project we are starting the planning phase, we intend to shoot all the video footage in the last week of June and beginning of July, and start editing in August, with some luck we should have the finals by October or at least before mid November. Just in time to get them all published on You Tube.     

Keep tuned for more updates.

Follow Slice at http://youtube.com/user/inside71slice

Thanks for reading.

Ian Burt © 2012

Business in Music part 2 of 2

Sorry for the delay in publishing this second part, everyone is entitled to a bad week Continuing where I left it in my previous post… read hear if you missed
http://jambooat.blogspot.com.es/2012/03/business-in-music-part-1-of-2.html

The main issue is that the musicians and the end users are who actually make the link, they are the real and only proposers and consumers. The array of in-betweens is mainly adding cost to the chain, rather than value. I know it is not fair to say it in such a bold way, there are many players that are there to build on the product, but in essence for the most cases they are no more than business operators. I feel I have to clarify a little my previous statement, a piece of music is composed, played, recorded, mixed, mastered and produced all of these stages are part of the creative process that renders the final song or piece of music, from here on, it is more a business creative process, where the commercial, marketing, promotion processes take over the lead (these steps are necessary but may be done in alternative ways) it is true that in today’s musical world you can have a great song and a bad commercial backing and go no were or in the contrary have a terrible song and with the right marketing sell millions. But that doesn't mean that the old way is right for the new musical scenario they are in. Labels and record companies known as publishers, need to look around and evolve to meet the new requirement’s the market is demanding. It is very possible to compose, play, record, mix, master and produce a great record from a bedroom studio, the digital world and in the box mixing and editing are a common thing, most of the musicians that I know have some degree of digital studio, quality in these studios has gone up over the last years and I have seen great works produced that cost a 100 fold less than a regular custom studio budgets. This new scenario, would mean that the publisher would have less control over the production process and would have a full roll on the publishing part of the chain, not a bad thing if you ask me. 

The problem becomes evident when the various stake holders start to perceive a drop in income generated. In the contrary in other cases the benefit perception shifts, taking with it the interest, not only economically. What I mean is that end users doesn't want a physical CD any more, less so a booklet and DVD, they only add to the problems in logistics, storage, conservation, availability. The end user wants simplicity, instant access to his music anywhere at any time and from any device, not the physical limitations of the XX century. ¿How many young teenagers listen to radio? Not many is my answer ¿why listen to a radio that plays music in a playlist random sequence over witch he has no control? Plus having to put up with commercials and whatever the DJ wants to say. Anyone under 25 doesn't own a radio unless they own a car. They all however own a selection of computers, mp3 players, smart phones and tables of some kind, this is where music needs to be delivered to, they demand that they can pick up any of the above and have their music at a click or a touch of the screen away at the most. This is a clear indicator that models based on distribution of physical supports are obsolete and are of no interest to the main stream of consumers.

Digital solutions like iTunes or spottily are neither convincing solutions. The down side  of such is  that they are mainly platform specific or even anti-cross-platform. Meaning that they are not designed to share content across platforms in a simple way or in any way, even access sometimes depends on availability of a network connection (however this is less a limitation day by day). In my opinion we are heading to a cloud solution where any device can access the content, where you keep a cache of what you want on every device by only making it sticky where your content is controlled by credential where you can shop online from any source and where you interact with music and musician or the creative part of music in a much more direct way, where you can become a publisher and publish your own music, where you can recommend and loan (limited share) a song to your social network, where you can promote a song or an artist in your social media and get rewarded by doing so. It will be a bigger market of little fees and not a small market of expensive CD's and millions of copies. If for every illegal copy the publisher, the artist and the store received 0.1c of a dollar would it not be worth it? There could be many different ways of buying your music, a trial and then purchase (¿why not?) volume licensing, special commercial licenses for clubs etc.. The system could include a measuring means to determine what is being played and where or when, this would help publishers to focus on markets and artist.

Consider this, internet has universalized knowledge and ignorance in similar magnitude, content multiplies daily, you can fight the file sharing sites but you will never win the battle of content distribution, close one down and three will surface, just like the hydra from the Hercules myth, people will find a way to share unless you provide an alternative that adds value to your proposal at a reasonable cost. What need does anyone have to buy a CD RROM for 20$ if all he wants are 2 songs, how does he listen to these 2 songs on his smart phone? Yes downloads are illegal but what are the alternative? Am I the stupid one that pays for things that are way overpriced. Looking back at other markets the music industry should have learnt from the telecommunications business, they had a challenge similar to the musical one and yet 20 years ago you paid a fortune for a simple town to town land call, now a day’s they are free, why because internet calls challenged their business model, how did they react, providing a wider offer of services (internet + content) they have actually grown, many customer many small hits instead of a few customers scarce large hits.

The Issue with profit shares is a long known story that the creative part of a musical production has always been the part that has received the smaller slice of the profits. I am convinced that most downloaders feel that they are stealing form the publisher, the distributors and the selling points that in a sense this is some kind moral justice. Any new method that ensures buyers, that what they are paying is being fairly shared with the artist they would feel more motivated to cover reasonable fees.

This is not a warship of illegal downloads I myself don’t download music illegally, it is more a personal meditation about the problems surrounding the musical industry, if we can’t make this industry rethink itself it may collapse, if downloads grow and sales drop, publishers will not invest in projects with no economical margin or maybe even unrecoverable costs, music will find its way out by other means and musicians will continue to make music, but the industry most surely won’t.

Please leave your comments I am very interested in other input.

Follow slice http://youtube.com/user/inside71slice

Slice “The Wall”

The STW project I have been talking about for the last months get’s its name from “The Wall”, an all time master piece album by the Pink Floyd. STW are the initials to Slice “The Wall”: Slice came up with the idea and is the only performing artist. We have been holding back disclosing this for a number of months, waiting to get some go-ahead's, we have decided to come out into the light, Why? well, why not?

The best way to answer is to explain what the project is about. Rock history knows that Pink Floyd released the album “THE WALL” one 30th of November of 1979, the album released as a concept album, where the motive and story behind main theme is well known. There is plenty of information on the internet and dozens of books, so going into it would be presumptuous on my part, others better versed than I have already provided extended and deeper knowledge, so how could I dare. Also common public awareness is the fact that “The wall” over the years has been represented through different platforms, as a live show, as a movie, etc. This brings us to Slice, During the “Roger Waters The Wall” tour through Europe, Slice and I had a chance to see the live performance in Madrid, both Slice and myself are great fans of Pink Floyd, in such a way that Slice has done a few covers for his YouTube channel in the past, of some of the most memorable songs of the band. After the show Slice came up with the idea of doing a cover of the entire album, all 26 songs. I thought that was a great challenge for him he was only 15 at the time, but at the same time the idea was new and surely rewarding if it was done right.

It took us 2 months to decide how we wanted accomplish the different tasks, the schedule, the method, as many bits and pieces as we could. We ended up with a huge list of thing, not big enough to put us off on our desire to embrace this project with all our strength.            

A year before STW concept

Before I go into any more detail there are a few things that I need to clarify to avoid misunderstandings:

1. The entire project is a non-profit quest, all Slice and I get out of this, is the cover and recreation of a master piece we both worship and admire, with the personal satisfaction that this brings with it.
2. We will not publish this work to the public without the approval of the legitimate owners of the Copy Rights. (Roger Waters, David Gilmour and EMI Group Limited)
3. The Cover will be published when permissions granted on YouTube on Slice’s Channel and will not be under the name STW or Slice The Wall these are code names during the project development stage, are not registered and hold no commercial value.

Having that out of the way, for what I am happy. Contact has been established with David Gilmour’s managers office in London and they have no objection to the project as long as the IP is not damaged or mistreated. We have sent the same request to Roger Waters office but haven’t received reply yet (witch is understandable being that he is in middle of a tour right now). We have been unable to contact EMI, there seems to be a logical barrier that we have not been able to overcome yet. We have left a few attempts via their web site but we have no idea if they have gone through.   

Getting on with the project, Slice is going to record all guitars (Electric, Acoustic, Classic & Slide), Bass for all tracks and Piano on all tracks that have piano (not keyboards). in the 26 songs there are over 90 different parts, and some are going to be dubbed. that means nearly 150 tracks to be recorded. we started in August and have recorded 21 session with 87 tracks finished in total, where in most sessions Slice records between 6 and 8 parts, we have had to repeat some early recordings due to sound issues. Our target is to finish all the recording by April and have the mixing finished by July. There is still a fair way to go but we are more confident after every session.

Rough mix not the final thing.

 Slice Cover ABTW2 by Ian Burt

After July and once the audio is all finished, mixed and mastered We will start editing recording and editing the core live performance video, All the video will be treated using the Chroma Key technique. There will be tons of footage we are using up to 6 cameras on every instrument part that sums up to 80x6 in the range of 500 video clips, that need to be selected arranged and edited. One of the things we decided early on, was that expecting to engage our potential viewers for an hour and a half on just a performance of slice would not cut it, we wanted to do something more without making a plagiarism of the film or show. keeping the viewers attention has been and still is a challenge that we haven’t quite solved. One thing that we are going to do is record a side story with Slice as the main character, where he tries to go through the different songs with a personal view, this has not yet taken since we are still working on the script and footage that needs to be decided. A great amount of this resource footage that will be recorded outside the studio, there for we are waiting for better weather.

There is also the Graphics, all Chroma video will be scored upon a virtual background that is being designed for all different scenes. 

Please review earlier posts to get further details on the STW project.

I will continue to post on the progress of the project as we move down the schedule.

any enquiry or support please contact me at iaburt@hotmail.com

Support Slice by visiting his You Tube Channel at  http://youtube.com/user/inside71slice

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed.

Ian Burt © 2012

Slice STW, Production Management

In the past weeks, Slice has done great progress with the recording, he has laid down most  the electric guitars and bass tracks for the STW project. The process has not been an easy walk through the woods, we have had to go over and over again with some tracks to get them nailed or as close to perfect as possible, well lets say the best possible performance that we could reach.

In the mean time I have not been idle, my attention has been on mixing all week long, there is a ton of material to put together.

The way we are doing this, is certainly not the standard procedure, for obvious reason it is not the most efficient way to get it done. In our discharge I must say that we do have some very highly imposed constraints, that force us into this manner of proceeding. Usually in the music business the recording of tracks for a record or a song will be done at the beginning before  mixing, and in a short time frame, well at least the main tracks, usually when this is completed everything is ready and the mixing can start. This is the ideal scenario with no doubt, but we are far from this possibility in the STW Project. Slice is only available to record on weekend mornings (due to school, and other youth duties), so only so much can get done with this time limitation. He does have the entire week ahead for him to get all rehearsing of what he is going to record in the weekend, this normally makes recording very smooth, even so, while getting the perfect take and sound are everyday challenges that consume time, time that can not be spared. This leaves us with between 4 and 8 tracks per day and not much more that 10 per weekend on a good one. Just as a reminder the STW is a project where Slice will be doing over 140 separate tracks. 

All the track’s are parts of individual instrumental pieces from different songs, we don’t record one song top to bottom in a consecutive session, on one week he will lay down the rhythmic guitar to a given song and the solo will be laid down two or three weeks later, the bass maybe another three or four weeks further back, it can take even longer to add piano or acoustic guitar. We have songs that have may have as few as two tracks or as many as five or eight to be recorded, meaning that wont have them complete for another two months yet. Among the different reasons for doing it like this are, first we need to rearrange the room when we change between instruments, the limited room acoustics need to be setup, and that has to be done with some time and planning, Secondly Slice is borrowing some of the instruments form some friends, This means that he need to schedule all parts with that instrument into a fixed agenda, so he plans the rehearsing and recording with this in mind. The consequence being that the tracks I can start working with are a mixture and only a partial part of the material I need to get a finished result.

Given this situation, ¿how do I work on it? ¿What can I do to to move ahead with the mixing? Well there is one advantage to working on Cover songs with the original recording as a backing track. You can fit in, one part at a time and work on the individual contexts of each instrument and how it merges with the original song. This provides a benefit giving me a chance to, massage each instrument individually and make sure it sits in at the best place with the original while giving it’s best as a cover part. It is like mixing that instrument as the last one, I will eventually pull all the cover tracks up and listen to the full mix, but to start I work on the individual instruments, making space and accommodating them in the picture. When everything is there I star with the full mix I usually do the initial accommodation with all the tracks and the original keeping a fair amount of volume on the original to maintain it’ as a reference for the mix, then when I feel that everything is square, I bring the original volume down to see if the covered instruments sit in well in unison. I trim volumes and all the automations here so that I feel I have as close enough a cover as possible to the original. I usually solo Slice’s tracks to make sure there is no hidden bugs or stuff. If the mix of the covered instruments sounds good It will merge well with the original. and that is my final stage. I pull the original back up and write the automation for the original track I usually bring the original down 3 to 4db while there is a cover part playing but bring it back up to unity if there is no content recorded by Slice, I try to give the mix a uniform volume as much as possible with the limitation that Slice’s covered parts do stick out over the original so that they can be heard and distinguished on the videos.

As a final thought, we are working from the inside out, putting the main parts that Slice will be covering in first. The first to go in is obviously always the original song,  on top of this we start building our music, using the foundation of the master piece as a guide. It does help but it also means that you have to be extra careful, any mistake or difference gets magnified you are put up against the master and there is little room for fiasco, you need to focus and find the details and breath on them, find the energy and transmit it on the cover, feel the music and reflect it as your own as much as possible without damaging the original.

Slice makes covers of music he like, musicians he admires and artists he respects.

keep up to date with Slice @ http://youtube.com/user/inside71slice

Thanks for reading I hope you enjoyed.

Ian A. Burt ©     

A Slice of a dream.

Little Wing Intro

I a 47 year old dad of a kid of 16 (Slice), am as good or bad as any other dad, my imperfection as notorious or rare as any other human. But when it comes to my son there is a passion that burns me from the inside and I can’t help myself. This is my statement. 

What am I trying to say? Well, I honestly believe in Slice and his tremendous talent, of course I am his father, but more than just that, I see his ability with music, it flows naturally and it seems to be effortless for him. He still has a limited technique, something he will have to obtain with hard work, time and perseverance. His talent however resides in the ease with witch he gets the music flowing, it seems to pour out of his hands naturally as if it where always there, he reads a song or a melody with only a few bars. He has a special ear for details and can print the feel and the soul of a song, a solo or a lick up to the most unappreciable detail, squeezing the soul out of every note  he plays or silence he creates. 

“I have a dream”

I know it’s a sentence that has been used before, but I do, I have a dream, and is to see Slice get the chance. Yes a chance only that, I am 1000% committed to helping him get the chance he need, he will have to do the trick and convert it into anything else. but my priority is to work him up to the point where he can get the opportunity.

I believe in luck, luck as Julius Caesar said is where opportunity and preparation meet, Slice is working on the preparation part and I am focused on the opportunity bit. I am running  al kind of social networking on his behalf, investing every penny I can get my hand on, working my personal relationships to the limit. I am learning any craft that can provide the door to opportunity, building every possible bridge, road, anything that can help me get Slice the one chance.

I have invested money in gear, instruments and training. I have invested time in many other ways. I am perfectly aware how hard the music business is, and the kind of life it is just to survive in this world. But I also know that there is no greater satisfaction than making music and sharing it with the rest of humanity, a concert is an electrifying experience in witch a musician reaches a binding with his audience that exceeds any other experience and makes it all worth while.   

What father wouldn’t do the same? I want the best for him,  I am also very strict on his studies, he is in Collage now and doing very well, he is already looking ahead to determine what University he will be attending in two years time. He understands that he can not place all the egg’s in one basket. Having options is not an option it is a must. 

I can understand this is to no interest to anyone, but this is my blog and I felt like writing this.

ANY HELP WILL BE APRECIATED..

Really, if you have anything, idea, or any resource that can help this dad make his own dream come true. I will be so very thankful.  contact me at mailto:iaburt@hotmail.com I will answer to every email.

Thanks for your time once again.

follow slice at http://www.youtube.com/user/inside71slice

Ian Burt © 2012

Slice, writing music.

A great cover version.

 

I have just finished seeing a video, that has marked me profoundly. It has been a real eye opener for me. The information has been there all along, but it has all come into context watching this video. The video is in Spanish, thou the main stream of the video is Eduardo Punset (Spanish Presenter) interviewing Ken Robinson. The interview has been dubbed to Spanish but you can make out the interview in the back ground. http://blip.tv/redes/redes-89-los-secretos-de-la-creatividad-4944707. If you can spare the time I recommend you pay a visit and view the video, I also recommend you get Ken’s book:

"The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything"
Ken Robinson; Mass Market Paperback; $10.20
In Stock
Sold by: Amazon.com LLC

Creativity, ¡wow!, what a word. I have always been a creative person, creativity is in most everything I do in my personal and professional life, But so are you in more than you may realise, I try to be as creative as possible in anything I undertake, posting an article every week or twice a week, requires a fair amount of creativity. But so does everything else we do on our every day lives, when we dress in the morning we use creativity to choose what to wear (some with more taste than others). Creativity is about the science of looking ahead into the future and taking decisions that affect the outcome of it. When you send an SMS, an e-Mail or comment on a social network there is some degree of creativity. From the video, I specially liked Ken’s comment explaining, that creativity is not something we have or we don’t have, like given thing, everyone in their own ways are creative. Creativity is like reading or writing, in the sense that are one is not incapable of writing or reading all they need is to learn how to. Creativity needs to be exercised and learnt but we all have it in us in a different ways. We all have a different approach and different ways of being creative but it is one of the fundamental differentiators of the human race for good and for bad. Bad because creativity is the basic ingredient in a lie, a lie is a product of someone’s imagination created for a purpose. But let me get back to my post.       

For Slice, creativity is a territory still to be explored, a virgin land where he needs to take his first steps. Sorry, let me take that back. For Slice, creativity is something he is submerged in, however it is musical creativity he needs to focus on and explore. You can use a process or your knowledge and technical skills to create, anything that works for you is good. The thing is I don’t think this on its own would produce music as an art form, it may produce music but if it is limited it will be missing the soul. Slice has the technical skills and the knowhow. He is young so he still need to make the trip down into his inner self, into his own soul and find for himself what he wants to express and how as an artist (only then will we know how good he can get to be).

There is a moment in all musician’s life (Maybe all artists life but I cant tell for the rest) when they hit the source of inspiration. It is something they will never forget, it all becomes clear as water for him. It is a life changing moment, light is all of a sudden illuminating everything that was already there but not discovered. it all falls in place, he has done the journey and found the source of inspiration, the vehicle to express his personal self. There needs to be a communion between this new discovered world and the skills, where skills are put to the service of this realisation. From that moment on, it is all about working on both in parallel. Work is surely not the right word for it, it is more a vital passion that drives the process and when you give way to passion time seems to bend. Creativity in music is normally a combustive event a spark that captures an idea one instant that ignites a more complex process. The spark comes from inside and the moulding of this spark into a complete finished result is a process. during the process one take the spark or idea and dives into it, exploring it, breathing it, dissecting it, building on it.

There is not much that can be done to reach the point of inspirational and find this muse or spark. I don't have the silver bullet and can’t tell anyone how to get there, but I am convinced that dedicating time to experimenting with music and lyrics will smoothen the path. discipline is an effort that always pays back.

Slice has a long way to go and I am betting on him. There is nothing anyone can do to make him find the way, he has to find out by him self, the awareness of needing to find this inner fountain of ideas, won’t bring it up on its own, there needs to be a sincere process of personal meditation and interiorizing.

He is on his own and I hope he succeeds on this life trip.

Keep track of slice at his channel at http://youtube.com/user/inside71slice 

Ian Burt © 2012

Help for Slice & STW

Hi everyone, for those followers and for those newcomers this blog is dedicated basically to Slice and the STW project. today instead of a post talking about stuff, I am writing to deliver a request for support (not money so please read on).

This is a home DIY project and I am trying to cover all needs on a 0$ budget. So far we are very much on our way as you can read bellow. But there are some areas where I could do with a little cooperation from anyone willing to give a hand. This is a formal request for help to anyone in the photography, video or film worlds (amateur or professional). I will explain in more depth what it is we have not fully covered on private correspondence via email.

All the final material will include credits to all collaborations.

Pleas reach me at iaburt@hotmail.com         

Last upload by Slice.

 

Coming together.

Thing seem to be falling into place, in a slow but constant rhythm. to explain why this is true I need to give the background first. We started the STW project beginning of August last year 2011. At that time we only had a rough idea of that we wanted to achieve. One of the first things we did was buy a large size note pad so we could get everything registered and down on paper.

So we had an idea and a pen and paper, and off we went into moulding the idea into the shape of a project. Slice who is the original generator of the idea, needed to mature it a bit before getting down to detail. Slice is a musician so he gave it the all musical approach. I was left to take care over all rest of  tasks, of managing and producing the project.

follow the link Initial Blog posting for STW..

So here we where with a master piece of rock and roll, we had a pile of songs that said a story and Slice was going to cover them. We would put them up on YouTube as a  collection and as a single track. But what where our goals.

1. Engage you tube visitors, with appealing music, covered by a 16 year old.
2. Try to be true to the original story, music and authors.
3. Attract people to share this work and expand the music & videos as much as possible.

We could approach al these as Slice had approached his earlier videos, live recorded in his room with the original in the background and him playing over it, where sound was all ambient. This would be a problem, since recording different dubs and instruments in this way makes it very hard to get a good audio quality. On top of that we had the issue with the video. Video presented a few problems the light, the takes where going to be very uneven different light and day times, making later editing a headache. The screen real-estate was an other issue, since we had as many as 6 videos of different takes on screen at the same time in some places. with raw video this would be unmanageable, meaning that we would have to use some of the editing techniques of the many available in this field. Finally a 100 minute video needs to provide more video dynamics than just a group of musicians (all the same person) on still camera. The video needed to engage and maintain the viewers interest for a long period (we still need to see if we can achieve this).

 

Ok, Goals set! Now we needed to set the requirements. What do we need to get to these goals. Slice was in charge of learning all the songs and their parts and nailing down his performance. So I was left with all the logistics, the audio recording, the copyrights, the video recording, the audio and video editing and the video script.

   

The first thing I needed was to have a clear idea of how I was going to do all of this (audio and video) For audio it was clear from square one. I would record all the track’s one at a time and mix them in the box against the original. For this I had all I needed except for some cables and minor details. For the video part of it, it was a complete different story. My choice was to do video in Chroma Key and then add a background this would help me use up my screen real-estate better and have more flexibility. I also decided to take several shots at different angles simultaneously so I could play with the different perspectives. Finally I decided to have a parallel video that was telling the story and use it as a resource to maintain the viewers attention high throughout the full movie.

follow the link DYI Chroma.

So! what has worked so far. It is always good to be ahead of schedule. Specially when schedules are based on estimates and estimates are good will judgment.  Well we have a the recording rig working and already have around 30% of the tracks recorded and some 3 or 4 Songs completed including the mixing and mastering.  On the video side we have done some trials with a DYI home studio and the results where more than acceptable (see video) but this week we got lucky and we have been offered a pro Chroma Studio fully lighted and 5 m. Chroma wall. We have 3 cameras, only one is ours but some friends are helping out. Slice has managed to get some of his friends to provide with some instruments we still require for some tracks. We have some of the Copy Right and are waiting on the rest, we hope they will be OK.

Thanks for reading and I really hope you enjoyed.

Please visit Slice’s channel @ http://www.youtube.com/user/inside71slice

© Ian Burt    

New year, Old goals

Hi everyone, and welcome to 2012, happy new year to all of you. I don’t know about you but I have no new resolutions, only a continuation of the ones I couldn’t complete last year. 2011 was a grate year in many way’s for me and I have a lot of hope placed on 2012. I have big plans for Slice and some very interesting professional projects I am hoping to get into. It will be a year of changes in many things and I am really looking forward to the challenge that change brings. When I say there is no new year resolutions what I mean is that I prefer to think on planning and moving along as things come and go. New year is a milestone between two calendar years, but that is not necessary related to how planning and goals are established. if December 31st is the only day we can plan ahead we have put a great limit to our own capability to achieve.

Many of you may not know that I as a professional I earn my money as a Software designer and project manager. for the last 18 years I have Designed, Developed, Managed several large software projects. I have dedicated 11 of the 12 years of this century to Fleet & Asset Management and Stolen Vehicle Recovery Systems. with the new year my current contract with a large multinational has come to an end we delivered the Version 1.0 of their new AVL or Fleet Management System (codenamed IKHNAIE) over the next 6 to 12 months they are going to launch the product throughout there international branches and start with the ROI of this 3 year project. I am sure it will go just fine I will be actively involved in supporting them in this trial to come. This however has left me jobless, not that I am worried I will find a new project in the new year and get back to work. But it gives me an opportunity to open other markets and kind of projects. So all I can say is that I am very excited on the prospect of moving on and doing new things with new people.

On my personal plans, there is one main thing I have been working on in the last year or so. It is actually a goal I set out last year as my 2011 new year resolution and is to loose weight. Not because of esthetical reason, I am not that kind I enjoy being myself in every way even when it gets in other peoples nerves. It is for health sake I have come up with a little diabetes (not much) but it is due to my overweight and can be solved by loosing weight. So that concern is still in my to do list, or must I say my to finish list.   

An other project is the STW Project with Slice that I have mentioned a few times in other posts. This is far from finished and we are doing good progress, but it has proven to become a colossal task and very time and energy consuming, more than what we had bargained for in the first place. This is actually more of a motivation than a setback as Slice and I see it the more we put in the grater value it will have. We don’t expect STW to be more than what it is per definition, A Cover of a Musical Master Piece.  As such it will be a pulley amateur job, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t put in the same effort and illusion as if it where a professional or commercial product. The idea is to put it up in You Tube for anyone that want’s to see it. no commercial interests involved. At this part of the project and after 5 months of work we have completed over one third of the recording and should finish recording by March. We have done the mixing and fixing of some of the main songs but still have to record the base guitars for most songs, and all pianos. On the video editing I have been trying to get the right help and resources to finish the task and this will be monumental since we have a minimum of 4 takes of all parts of every song and up to 12 takes in some of the more busy parts. Almost al in Chroma Key, except for some resource footage that will be used to add the dramatic content to the video. 

Here is a callout for help, If anyone has time and will to help out on this please contact me at mailto:iaburt@hotmail.com every piece of help is appreciated. It will have to be in remote since I live in Madrid and this is a call to the entire international community that may follow this Blog.

One final Project is we are refinishing and moding Slice’s main red guitar. we are asking everyone to send us name proposals for the renewed axe.

Please follow Slice at http://www.youtube.com/user/inside71slice

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed.

!!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR ¡¡¡¡¡

IAN