Into The Studio
March 29, 2012
It is amazing how exciting it feels to finally start working on a project after thinking about it for a long, long time. Back in 2001, I had the thought that it might be amusing, in the middle of a technical presentation, to pull out a guitar and sing a little song about the topic at hand.
That idea led to over a decade of original songs on topics ranging from design patterns to data modeling and beyond. The songs have gotten a great response from audiences, and I’ve wanted to record them for some time now.
There are eleven songs in total and the plan is to record and release them all. A decade is a long time in the tech world however, and it’s been interesting to look back and see how well the songs have weathered the years. For instance, the Objective-C memory management ditty “Hold Me, Use Me, Release Me” from 2002 picked up a garbage collection verse in 2007. Now with the advent of Automatic Reference Counting, another lyrical tuneup may be in order (unless I can just convince LLVM to sing it for me).
There are many aspects of this project that I’m excited about in addition to the material itself—the musicians, the studio, the recording engineer and producer. And those are all combined with the rush of trying something new, far outside the realm of sitting in front of a monitor, writing code.
I’m also glad that I’m not going it alone. I will be joined in the studio by the Breakpoints.
The Breakpoints are a fabled group of talented engineers-by-day and musicians-by-night who have helped me bring my tech-inspired songs to life. Although the lineup has changed over the years, all of the original Breakpoints are back for the recordings. Each song will be recorded with its original musicians (and possibly some surprise musical guests in the mix).
Since this is a whole new adventure for me, I’m going to blog all about it (like some guy on .Mac did). Look forward to photos and details from the recording sessions in upcoming posts. I think we are going into the perfect studio to record these particular songs. I’ll have more to say about the studio in my next post.
Category: Music