what is going on in your musical life

also someone left a really fancy tuner at my house and never claimed it so i have a very fancy new tuner

After a foolish way too long hiatus of touching music at all (which I kick myself about now - why did I not keep up my keyboard playing argh) I have just recently found the confidence and creative drive to actually start writing and recording my own stuff.

Whats helped has been collaborating with a few amazing friends who have variously contributed guitar/recording lessons, advice, or written tracks for me to sing on, and now I'm feeling ok with doing my own stuff. I've started work on 4 or 5 pieces either entirely alone or collabing with my mate Ben in the past 2-3 weeks which is slightly manic, but incredibly rewarding. He's an amazing synth/industrial musician and I'm really loving working with him, our styles mesh nicely.

I've also been working on a bunch of Nancy Sinatra covers with my dear friend J who is a great indiepop/60s style guitarist. "Bang Bang" is a really fuckin challenging song to sing with a live guitar! There's no freaking beat to the song.

I really need to up my game on the recording/mixing front. I need more gear, I'm just using Reaper and an external soundcard/input device which works nicely but feels vaguely amatueur.

god, i bet that would be a tough song to sing. never thought about it before. i'd like to hear y'all's version.

i am as i type this doing tracking for a super angry black metal band, it sounds cold as fuuuck. i think i posted this before. anyway this is day 2

I went and saw a show in a small kitchen where a guy sat at a table w/ a bowl on it and he put his head in the bowl for five minutes, and, a few secs before I fell asleep for a min in my chair, my friend turned to me and was like "you should try and play here"

I was like "I'm not cool enough musically yet"

god, i bet that would be a tough song to sing.

It really is! I was quite caught off guard tbh. Its simplicity is deceptive.

i've been thinking of doing covers of my favorite country songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REohDrkt5I4

my band is opening for thrones on 4/20

― 1 P.3. Eternal (roxymuzak), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 6:22 PM (3 hours ago

my band is opening for thrones on ... the less haw-worthy 6/29

I need a new band, I think my old one is dead.

We got our CD for sale now in Sweden, which is pretty cool.

http://oziumrecords.com/shop/details/822

I have a bunch of songs done

I am new to making music but it's strange, I've found that no matter how much I like a song I've made or w/e, when I make something after it I suddenly don't really care about it very much in the sense of listening to it, this is probably normal though

can't wait to get to the stage of not liking any songs I've put together

i have an ableton lesson tonight

also i am mixing 2 records

ableton 9?

just over two weeks until my spiritual ensemble performs Sweenee Hunt's "Witness Cantata" and excerpts from Weill's "Lost In The Stars" with the Boston Landmark Orchestra

I think my wife and I are the only ones who have any idea of how it goes

Haha, like at all?

lol ppl kind of know how it goes, but in rehearsals we're still in the "can you play my part on the piano?" phase and my wife and I, as ppl who sightread every Sunday for 9 months out of the year, it's irritating as shit

also I am finally listening to a recording and I think some of the tempos of some of the movements will be rude awakenings to ppl

I sent a demo off to Spacebomb Records, but now I'm in severe doubt that the mixes I've spent a good while agonising over aren't good enough. Or indeed, that the songs are lightweight fuckery. Dammit. I need a band.

been trying to write some songs or even parts ahead of trying to maybe work on music with other people but i feel like i've totally forgotten how to write stuff. prob just putting too much pressure on myself and need to shake up the process but it's really frustrating to always want to work on music and then finally sit down to do it and nothing decent come out.

Just keep at it, it will come eventually - probably when you least expect it.

Know how that feels. When I'm stuck like that I just pick a song to blatantly rip off, which usually leads to something new appearing effortlessly.

Have had a few jams with my friends Ben and Ivan who have recorded and worked together a lot before, so they have a real organic, natural easiness to jams that results in instantly good stuff. They asked me along to see what I could add to the mix, and we found my singing worked reaally well. I'm worried we are going to turn into Porcupine Tree Cocteau Twins, but it'll remain to be seen I suppose.

Really enjoying writing my own music too. I'm still an amateur, no doubt ,but I seem to have a bit of a knack for knocking out melodies and stuff fairly quickly. I'm enjoying it!

nowadays my songwriting process is i record myself humming or singing melodies on my phone that i come up with while walking around or doing whatever, then listen to them later when i'm at home & try to flesh it out. i usually think they're totally genius at first, but by the time & listen to them they're just ok. still beats writing on the spot though, i always get tripped up with dumb shit like "eh, that melody's alright but it doesn't have enough notes in it" when i'm in direct contact with a guitar

Yeah my current bugbear is endless verses and no choruses/bridges/breaks.

I put our first single up on soundcloud (link on the what do you sound like thread). It's the first two songs we wrote together. Nobody was 100% satisfied with the results but, hey, they work for now and they're fun.

I haven't been able to find anyone to play music with yet.

after nine years of not playing music at all, i've been playing in a band for the past three months or so, and it's been SO GREAT. i forgot how much i love it.

TWO WEEKS OF BEING TOO BUSY TO DICK AROUND WITH ABLETON ARGHHH

Had a mostly successful concert yesterday with the New England Spiritual Ensemble and the Boston Landmarks Orchestra; the big takeaway was that mfers need to learn how to count (myself included) but 98% of the concert was awesome.

NESE did arrangements of three spirituals (Nobody's Fault But Mine, In Bright Mansions, My Soul's Been Anchored in the Lord), then performed excerpts from Weill's "Lost in the Stars" with the Landmarks Orchestra, then were joined by additional singers and soloists for The Witness Cantata by Swanee Hunt: http://www.swaneehunt.com/art/listen.htm (not our performance)

It was a lot of fun!

I haven't been able to find anyone to play music with yet.

craigslist!

i love "lost in the stars"

We're doing all of the music on Aug 28, as well as some arrangements of spirituals by Tippet

(btw congrats!)

(thank you!!)

?

Not my musical life, but the lives of several of my friends (most prominently bald dude on end of the group in the first choir shot and the pregnant blonde woman in the second choir shot)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKu-qRYeWrQ

I haven't been able to find anyone to play music with yet.

craigslist!

― Poliopolice, Tuesday, June 11, 2013 4:10 PM (3 days ago)

True! Just would feel better knowing the people a little beforehand, but yeah why not.

I sent around an email to the other members of my spiritual ensemble to nail down the date for a concert this fall at King's Chapel; everyone responded and, based on the conversation, we picked one of three dates offered to us.

After the conversation ended, one member who had not been involved announced that he was available for all three potential dates. I responded that we were down on the schedule for a specific date already; he responded saying that that date would be best for him but he could still make any of the three candidates.

I guess my question is "How do you summon the patience to deal with senile people who aren't related to you?", if I have one.

playing double drums for a friend's project -- the other drummer is one of the founding members of Digit@l Underground.

Jordan wins

I'll trade you my dude for your drummer

I'll trade the singer and the drummer for the radiator that decided to spontaneously drain itself through a ceiling the very next day after I thought all this plumbing work was complete and I'd be able to get all my gear out of the storage boxes they've been in for the past four months.

(I mean, at least the singer and the drummer can help me move boxes and furniture around the place)

my dude is a retiree with a dubious back, dunno how helpful he'll be moving stuff

i keep wanting to buy a cassette four-track, convincing myself that's all i need to do to motivate myself to make music more often. but that's the same argument i made to myself for buying new music software a few months ago.

sorry i always complain about wanting to make music but never actually making music. i just realized it's kind of like when people retire but then they get antsy and crazy because they're used to working all day and don't know what to do now that they're not working. just a constant feeling like i should be writing songs but no real energy/motivation/time to do so, and then guilt for not doing anything creative anymore.

that's a good way of putting it, don't know what to tell you. :/

sometimes i sort of fantasize about a creative retirement when i will stop pushing myself to write or produce stuff, stop dealing with booking shows and bullshit, and just play drums in someone else's band or something. maybe hold down a bi-weekly jazz gig where we only play slow and medium tempos.

trying to get into a habit of doing one small thing on recordings every night, hoping to get to a point where it feels odd not to have done something musical of an evening. finished off two projects over the weekend already so feeling good about this

Yeah I need to get back on that wagon. I've been sick on and off a couple weeks running and have NOT been in the mood to sing or write a damn thing and it has killed all my foward momentum. I'm hoping this NIN track will at least be a kick up the arse. Also listening to recordings of the last 2 band jams I did, and for someone who cant play bass to save her life, I'm at least passable sounding when I do, haha.

I dunno if I'm getting anywhere with my "musical project" but I think I've made a couple of breakthroughs. In that I'm finding that what I'm doing doesn't always sound horribly awful.

Tried singing with a cold tonight, thought red wine would "help".

Ow my fucking throat, ow.