what is going on in your musical life

this can be a rolling thread, maybe. forgive me if one already exists, i didn't see it.

i started taking guitar lessons again! that is exciting

my long term black/doom metal band (argentinum astrum) recorded an album last fall and we're waiting on a label dude to get another label to go in on releasing it? i have no idea how or what that is about. i want it to come out soon because we haven't put anything out in a couple years and i want to tour and am antsy about it.

im learning ableton in order to start doing electronic stuff by myself. that's kind of on the backburner atm tho

one of my fave local bands atm asked me to replace their bassist/harmony singer and i am probably gonna do it. it is kind of superchunk-esque?

i started a band with 2 of my girlfriends and we just had our first practice. guitar, bass and drums. playing kind of 60s-esque poppy tunes so far, but i have no idea where we will end up. i think we are gonna be called "high school"?? please tell me if that is a ridiculous name.

i recorded this local band called Killer Whale who play very crazy surf-influenced punk/metal, i love them and i am excited to record bands and put out records and things tho god it is so expensive to do this

i've been playing in this band with a weirdo that plays only covers of local, small time musicians. i just joined it, but it's kind of a local institution, been around a while with a rotating cast of ppl around this one guy. i don't know. it's fun to play with him , and very fun to choose and learn the songs, but he has a weird value system w/r/t music, ie he doesn't want me to sing harmonies cause i sing "like an angel", which isn't really true. he also has no ambitions (how can you be ambitious with a covers band really tho) and is really skeptical of people who have them. its fun tho.

i dont really have time to do any of this stuff

this band with a weirdo that plays only covers of local, small time musicians

haha i love this

haha its exactly what it sounds like

the first person I contacted about guitar lessons is too busy to take me on as a student but promised to give me contact info for other ppl, which basically means I am back at square one re: finding a guitar teacher

I am currently in the process of tracking down sheet music for a recital of solo and ensemble spiritual arrangements I'm doing as part of a quartet made up of ppl from my church choir (inc. my wife as the soprano) for the Tuesday before Easter; we're also going to take parts of that recital to do as music for the Good Friday service later that week.

I'm also looking over the Dvorak Mass in D major, which I'm doing at an evening Good Friday service in Dorchester; my primary responsibility AFAIK is augmenting the bass section but I believe I'm also going to be doing the tiny solo parts as well. (The other ppl from that include my wife again plus other folks from the spiritual ensemble we sing in.)

Also have a concert with the church choir coming up where we're doing Stainer's Crucifixion; I am not the bass soloist for it (thank God).

i didnt realize you were a bass! it occurs to me that i have never actually heard you sing. i imagined you having a very high tenor voice. haw.

i started a band with 2 of my girlfriends

Me too! We are called Ta1nted Pussy and have played 2 shows so far. We were supposed to have a show next Saturday opening for this weird Dutch guy, but he got detained by the Dutch government and told he can't leave the country without a work permit, so that show was cancelled. I play bass. I have not played bass since I was a teenager. So now I get to have fun learning/re-learning an instrument, plus I get to have fun with pedals. We are all noise/new music ladies, thus lots of fun with pedals. I got a Dr. Sample 202 for christmas! More fun! I kept one of the built-in samples, which is a lady saying "Stand By" for when we have technical difficulties during our sets.

We are planning to tour at some point later this year. L.A., maybe the South?

next month we have a gig opening for Cock E.S.P.

Our singer said, "Why do we always end up on shows with other bands with dirty names?"

having trouble finding time/motivation/energy to do anything too focused or serious over the past couple of years. i was playing with my friend who's a full-time musician but he decided to just play shows solo instead of with a band because the economics/logistics are easier that way. i've been doing some sample-based stuff on reason recently, i like it because it takes me back to when i was learning guitar and didn't know what i was doing and would come up with cool stuff by accident. also occasionally jamming/recording with the drummer from my old band, doing shitty lofi four-track stuff.

i would really like to have a more regular band where someone else bore the heavy lifting of the songwriting and i could just come in and play guitar and play shows a few times a year. but i'm not really connected to any kind of music scene anymore so i don't know how to find that kind of situation.

Band practice tonight. Eagerly anticipating our two track demo bak from being mixed/mastered although worried it might sound bad as we only spent two days on it.
Working on writing and practising our next batch of songs after an initial 6. It's now a concern that we have a 'sound' and aesthetic developing, meaning that we have songs we wrote and quite like that for one reason or another don't work very well alongside the others. Anyone had this problem? It didn't really matter before because we were still forming an identity which eventually formed into 6 upbeat slightly unhinged post punk numbers, but now this next one is a big dramatic sweeping thing with a more serious tone and we're not sure what to do with it.
Also written a reggae song, which I'm please with but need a way to subvert because right now it's verging a little too close to sixth form peace and love bob Marley cliches and I want to put a twist on all that really.
Wrote a sort of fast kinda sung-rap song but my girlfriend said it sounded like flight of the conchords. Not that that's an insult, but I wanted it to aoud more like Haim or something.

i didnt realize you were a bass! it occurs to me that i have never actually heard you sing. i imagined you having a very high tenor voice. haw.

haha that would make my dad very, very happy (he's a failed tenor in a previous life, sang lead in a doo-wop group in college)

I am technically a "bass-baritone" which really means that because most of my singing experience comes from being in ensembles rather than private, focused vocal study, I have no idea how to use my head voice and sing practically everything in chest; I have a sneaking suspicion I would end up being a true baritone or even a low tenor after several years of focused, serious voice training based on how my low range actually sounds, but the flip side is that I can actually croak out low notes even if they're inaudible unless I've been binge-drinking the night before so I dunno. But yeah, I've always sung low.

(which is actually why, in my teens, I realized I was never going to be a pop or rock singer, and why I was so taken by the grunge explosion)

putting the last touches on my new record (doesn't feel new, been working on it for about 15 months now) to send to mastering next week, figuring out how to put it out.

then i want to take some time to switch up my process, shake things up a little. work on some new synth sounds without any goals, try to finally learn ableton, record a bunch of new percussion samples. i want to take some piano lessons too, since i do everything with midi + mouse. i can figure stuff out on piano very sloooowly, so i thought it would be fun to play through some tunes in real time and get some chords under my fingers.

honestly though i probably won't do most of these things and i'll go back to what feels easy & comfortable. :/

I just got our first track back from the studio. I love it and I also cringe a bit because I can hear bits where my voice goes a bit wrong or a beat doesn't quite land how it's meant, and I'm trying to work out if anyone in their right mind would really notice or care.

roxy high school is an amazing band name

this is a neat thread idea.

i've been playing with a couple guys for the last month or so but it's just working out that well. they seem like they really want to sound like real estate or something, which isn't terrible, but a bad real estate impersonation comes out sounding reaaaaally bad, and it's not much fun to play drums to, either!

i've been writing and recording some new tunes, which doesn't sound like much but it's actually been a big breakthrough for me after about a 10 year songwriting/music coma that i didn't realize was a coma.

i'm moving back to chicago in a few months and i'm determined to join up with a good band. i used to be good friends with the cave/bitchin bajas scene so i'm hoping i can be looped back into all that stuff and that someone needs a good drummer

and yeah, high school is good, although i have to say i liked it even more when i thought the name was high school??

haha

whoa z s do you want to be in a band with me?

this is going to be really awkward when you reject me

well, that was easy. sure, let's play!

it's gonna be more like september or so

i think we are gonna be called "high school"??
a
I started a band in college called junior high university. I recorded one song for it and we had two practices and then everyone split up in different directions. that was the last band I was ever in.

have not touched my recording computer since my son was born. I long for a classical acoustic guitar so i can play around the house but I have no money for that now. debating selling an amp or two. I think my creative well has run dry for the foreseeable future.

i'm really burnt out on school this semester & have been slacking off to spend more time doing music stuff. all three bands i'm in are pretty active rn which can be overwhelming at times but is really fun. most notably i went on tour in january and started a new band called l0ud s3x which i am just so, so stoked on. the other songwriter in the band is really prolific and i really want to keep our ratio of songs 1:1. it's been a really fun challenge trying to keep up, he also writes amazing songs so i've had to be really strict about scrapping my tunes if they're not up to par. we're playing our first show at the end of the month & i'm pretty nervous because not everyone shows up for practice consistently and i want it to be spectacular

sp3ctacular l0ud s3x

I am not going to go into any more detail than this but the biggest audition opportunity of my lap literally just fell into my lap; I fully expect it to go nowhere but still, you never know...

would watch n/a z s band

DJP on x factor, it's America has been waiting for
xp

l0ud high school s3x

the biggest audition opportunity of my lap

lol dan

oh no, I've said too much

I am in month 15 of releasing a home-made recording every month. A lot of times I put it off until the month is almost over and then go into crunch mode. But at this point, even though I approach each song as its own thing and wasn't trying to make an album or anything, I can listen to all the tracks straight through and it sounds really cohesive to me, which I think is really cool. I also feel like I get a little better/more efficient at production each time.

I haven't performed onstage in like a year though, which was a conscious decision and I don't miss all of the bullshit that made me sick of doing it, but I do miss being onstage. But I maybe just joined a band that I actually think is really good and is kind of successful locally, which is cool because I don't feel that way about hardly any local bands and also I've never really been in someone else's band. They have kind of a Modern Lovers/Beat Happening/Magnetic Fields/Morrissey vibe. It'll also be neat because I'll be playing synth and I'm not actually a keyboard player at all, I'm a guitarist and songwriter, but that's also why I'll be a good fit for this.

kicking off recording of a new album. finally a chance to properly use all this new synth gear

Hey all - could I get a little bit of constructive feedback on this please? We've had an initial "how's this?" from the studio engineer on one of our tracks. Overall, I think it's okay but it's very difficult to distance myself and listen to it with uninvolved ears.

I'd really like to hear your thoughts, particularly on the mixing/production (we can't really go back into the studio to do any overdubs or retakes so we're working with the raw material we have, for better or worse). Are there any glaring errors on this track or things I should mention before I get back to him? One thing I noticed is that he's been a bit heavy handed witht he gating and compression, particularly some of the vocal parts where the sibilants and plosives are almost non-existent.

I'm only gonna keep this track online for a short while, but if someone could give it a listen and let me know their thoughts, i'd be very much obliged: https://soundcloud.com/doglatin/honolulu-demo-050313

god this sounds like a super harsh thing but i dont mean it that way - do you want/intend the beginning to sound like a 80's nylons style acapella group thing? like exactly like one? because thats what i hear. also some pitchy weirdness in the "so afraid" "yesterday" multivoice responses. again, if these are intentional things, no prob.

Lol, I haven't hear the nylons but it is supposed to be a bit of a tongue in cheek doowop thing and if it comes across that way I guess that's intentional. The song is very much a comment on retro culture and so it's littered with 60s and 80s references. Cheers for checking it out jjjusten, I'll look into the autotune thing. Think the sound guy's gone a bit overboard with vocal manipulation, but then we're not at all trained singers so there's undoubtably gonna be a push/pull thing going on.

song sounds good to me, esp. for a demo. i like it.

Xpost If you're talkin about Housemartins/Flying Pickets, I def see what you mean and kind of don't mind. I (was made to) grow up with that shit, haha.

Cheers n/a

I am making a lil album of songs that are about a min long each, I have about 10 so far where the music is done but I have finished singing over one of them, I've come up w/ vocal melodies for about 3

I am seriously using the dumbest most unwieldy out of date programs to put the songs together because for whatever reason I like how it all sounds more than if I do it in ableton?

what are you using?

I (lol) am using cues in virtual dj to play my laptop like an mpc or w/e (I could slice to a drumkit in ableton and do the same thing I guess, but idk, when I use ableton I spend 3 extra hours on shit) and then editing shit further and recording vocals in audacity, its a forehead in my hands deal, but still

i love stuff like that.

well I hope it lives up to its rudimentary description, I'm starting to embrace it, at least this way I don't end up fucking around with corpus for a week with no results

Good sounding demo, dog latin. I'd get some friends in a room for the backing vocals. And as for your solo performance it's a little too measured, just make sure you're saying "gate" instead of "gay" and make it fast and effortless

I was just in Prague recording with a budget-priced orchestra, stuff for five different clients and some stuff for my own use. There were 30 "pieces" ranging from 45-second long bits of orchestral incidental music to 20-minute marathon workouts. A total of 2.5 hours of music and 24 hours to record the whole thing. I def. got paranoid and overworked but I didn't break. I drove that bus.

It went very well but I instinctively prioritized the work of my clients, taking the time to really get something beautiful out of that shaky orchestra. I left not enough time for my own material. Now I'm futzing.

cheers FGTI - I did the lead vox, the others did backing. I think the engineer's but too strong a release on my vox because yeah, "gaze" sounds like "gay" etc...

i'm listening to spotify

gotta get these tapes out soon (for this band i recorded) but have no idea what im doing! i need to buy a tape duplicator! i need to buy...tapes! i need to figure out how to get this shit onto a master tape! what am i doing with my life! HELP!

i told my mom i was in a new band called high school and she recommended that we call it COOL GIRLS instead. additionally, "i like just a girl's name, like maureen, or mabel, for a girl band"

lmao at cool girls altho tbh i would like it as a name for a coed or all dude band

I was briefly in a(n all-male) duo called "Sarah"!

haw

possibly touring in the summer with the black/doom band, havent been out in a long time bc our guitarist lives a couple hours away, so we havent been as "active" in general. mostly an east coast thing, possibly all the way to canada, where i have never been

come to Atlanta!

I have been recording bits and pieces for an eventual cassette release. I've also been asked to do a split release with a local drone act. AND my band is recording stuff. So hopefully soon I'll have lots of physical stuff to give out at shows!

I've heard good things about getting cassettes made through National Audio?

Yeah National Audio is great, I've done a couple things through them.

guitarist in one band left us cuz he moved out of london :( which is a shame. was looking forward to recording those songs. we'd played 5 shows or so. it was going well. oh well. i have a decent recording of the last practice, guess i'll stick that on soundcloud if i can be bothered to mix it.

started a new thing with the same guys, got a new guitarist, and he rules! he's a bit older than us, used to run a drone and kosmiche club. had a practice on sunday and ended up with 16 little things to work on, 3 or 4 fully formed songs just happened, so looking forward to this band. krauty space rock with big OTT vocals and thinking i'm gonna bring an edp wasp and delay pedal into the equation. will prob play a show in the next month or two. my drumming is really rusty tho, need to get back on the practice pad before they kick me out!

tracks sitting in the computer way into the 100s by now, mostly experiments with the ridiculous synth collection that lives in the studio where i live. none of the synths are mine, but i'm free to use what i want and i've set up a synthesizer room and got everything patched up. pretty sweet. currently obsessed with the doepfer modular and making new presets for the matrix 1000- that's a seriously powerful bit of kit but the presets that come with it are crap.

playing classical guitar again, got my nails all purty, think i'm going to try and start performing too. maybe get some restaurants gigs.

have also been digging my uni pieces, trying to put together some sort of composer portfolio. surprised myself by how good some of those pieces are. the goldberg ensemble performed some of my string pices, which was very cool, had to ressurect an old hard drive, thought i'd lost those recordings for good!

Why is having good nails important for playing guitar? I don't play with my nails. I guess if I had long nails it would be difficult but...

if you play fingerstyle you get more control over your sound, you can also play louder and as everybody knows louder = better

It's a really fundamental part of classical guitar technique. Your nails are the tools you use to create and shape your sound.

Do restaurants in the UK hire classical guitarists??

What are you putting a composition portfolio together for, CB? Graduate schools? Grants/gigs?

*Show us your scoressss*

making new presets for the matrix 1000- that's a seriously powerful bit of kit but the presets that come with it are crap.

surprised to read this, mine is coming back from service today but from the little i got to play with it before it went in i thought some (though yes far from all, or even most) of the presets were absolutely lovely. insta-BoC!

i believe they ran a competition so the 1000 presets are all from users of the matrix 6 (which has identical innards) those patches are just a bit uninspired imo! but yeah totally get the BoC thing- if that's what you're after, they're perfect!

x-post, i'll up some stuff on my soundcloud and mayyybe post some stuff up here when i've got it all sorted, but i'm a bit shy about my own music, esp the stuff i've spent a lot of time on.

and just doing a portfolio for.. err.. i don't know really. i've seen a few bits of paid work recently, such as composing some piano pieces for an audio walk in london. i'd have probably had a chance of getting that if i had some music organised and online. unfortunately the only stuff i've written that's even half listenable i did at uni ages ago, since then i've just been obsessed with synths, microtonality, learning to play drum kit and never finishing things.

Do restaurants in the UK hire classical guitarists??

yeah, you can make pretty good money (read: actually make *some* money) doing functions/events/restaurants/weddings etc. i'm thinking some satie, beatles arr. for classical guitar, cheesy spanish stuff, play through a little amp. will be good practice anyway.

I played two harsh noise sets this week and someone who saw both of them posted that this city is "a patriarchal cesspool" on FB immediately after leaving the show tonight & now I'm irrationally worried that she's talking about me

don't worry about it

- offered up my sound work exp to a newly forming fairly hip arts council for my neighborhood in an advisory capacity. wondering how quickly that will turn into "hey i know it's 4 pm on sunday but the slam poetry competition needs you to come down and turn on their wireless mic."
- related to my endless pedal thread, but the fact that i am getting deluged with new pedal line offers is some strange mixture of feeling like the prettiest girl at the prom and huge stress wrt money allocation and decision making.

thanks to Rocksmith I can fake my way through the following songs on the guitar:

"Boys Don't Cry" - The Cure
"Islands" - The xx
"Go With The Flow" - QOTSA
"Black" - Pearl Jam
"Where Is My Mind?" - Pixies
"Angela" - Jarvis Cocker

I can't play triplets fast enough to really play the RHCP version of "Higher Ground" tho

also I have to learn some spirituals before a week from Tuesday, well really by Sunday because I think I'm supposed to rehearse them that afternoon oops

also singing Stainer's "Crucifixion" a week from Sunday; I don't have the big baritone solo but I do get one of the mini interjections in the bass section (it's not as big a deal as that may sound as the entire bass section is 4 ppl; one is doing the big solo and the three interjections are split up across the rest of us) this does mean though that this season I will have had a little solo interjection thing in every concert with our church choir, which yay

I played two harsh noise sets this week and someone who saw both of them posted that this city is "a patriarchal cesspool" on FB immediately after leaving the show tonight & now I'm irrationally worried that she's talking about me

― C: (crüt), Thursday, March 14, 2013 2:29 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i apologize crut but this is making me lol. you need to write a piece called partiarchal cesspool

that was a typo but tbh it works

cesspool party!

I am making a lil album of songs that are about a min long each, I have about 10 so far where the music is done but I have finished singing over one of them, I've come up w/ vocal melodies for about 3

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 6 March 2013 17:47 (1 week ago) Permalink

someone help me, every song I make is extremely disorienting for other people

I had my first jam with some really nice neighbors I met -- they are both classical musicians (a Juliard-trained composer and a violinist) who have other careers now but the guy is learning banjo. I played through some basic folk tunes with them (with my sub-sub-sub-Doc Watson-style flatpicking) and it was really nice and unaffected and it felt good to just be playing some pretty songs without trying to have an edge or angle of any kind. First time in a couple years I've played with other people.

Also have been doing kids songs for my one-year-old, and played at her birthday party, which was the first time I've performed in at least a couple years.

hope you got free drinks at least

three cake tickets

My performance was very moving, a couple of audience members even cried.

haha

playing in Europe thruout beginning next week thru end of April. Very excited. First time (solo).

fantasy send links
I was just told my voice had a newfound maturity and it was a bittersweet thing to hear

would ilxmail work 4 u? I need to rerecord some vocals today but I'll send em

yes

webmail'd u sorry 4 my voice

played a couple of "finished" lil songs for a friend and got a p bleak reception, I hate being in the room w/ people hearing my shit 4 the first time, turns me into such a demanding-yet-craven little thing (tho I'm probably just more aware of how demanding-yet-craven I actually am)

Sang in a recital of spirituals yesterday. It went well and my wife and I each made $50.

I sang:

I Want Jesus To Walk With Me
Don't You Weep When I Am Gone

My wife sang:

There Is A Balm In Gilead
Were You There

we also sang as part of a quartet:

Soon-A Will Be Done
Crucifixion (He Never Said A Mumblin' Word)
Since You Went Away
Steal Away

We're repurposing a lot of this for an afternoon Good Friday service; later that evening we'll be singing Dvorak's Mass in D major, with the Sanctus and Benedictus being done with us as part of an octet (really a septet; there's only one alto soloist). Bummed we don't get to do the solos in the Agnus Dei.

also I still don't know if I'm singing the opening solo for Easter Vigil or not; I've done it the past... two? three? years so it's no big deal but I keep thinking I should ask

I hate being in the room w/ people hearing my shit 4 the first time

i've learned that this is just not a good idea

i once accompanied hymns for a unitarian congregation. they replaced every instance of the word "god" with "all."

hey so, i have a question about getting asked by promoters to open for touring acts. if it's a popular act that's going to fill the room anyway then great, the promoter is basically doing you a favor. but when the idea is that the local act will provide a crowd for the not-super-well-known touring act, it gets a little weird, right?

the main problem seems to be, why would your friends/fans come and pay a higher cover to see you open for someone that they don't know (or don't like) when they know they can see you a few weeks later for less? i feel like i have a hard time getting people to these shows, and then worry that the promoter is going to blame me for a small crowd/losing money. i guess the only reason to do these gigs at all is to eventually get on some of the bigger shows?

You got it.
If you're worried abt giving your regular fans value for their money, maybe you think the headlining band isn't worth their time? and thus not worth yours?
Typically though it's always good to play direct support for anyone everywhere (and never play 1st of 3 unless you're less than a year old)

Puff puff I owe you an email but basically I just wanted to know your inspirations and intentions, also don't be discouraged

i feel like i have a hard time getting people to these shows, and then worry that the promoter is going to blame me for a small crowd/losing money. i guess the only reason to do these gigs at all is to eventually get on some of the bigger shows?

― shit tie (Jordan), Wednesday, March 27, 2013 5:27 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I doubt anyone is going to put you on the bigger shows if you don't bring a crowd anyway. IME getting a better show without bringing a crowd only came when we were new to a venue and the booker/owner/whoever REALLY liked our set.

Plus I hated subjecting people who liked us to bands I didn't like, although more often than not we didn't have a choice

Puff puff I owe you an email but basically I just wanted to know your inspirations and intentions, also don't be discouraged

― a source of "vegelate" (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 21:38 (21 minutes ago) Permalink

thanks for the help, ur 2 kind, there's absolutely no rush

idk I think discouragement is kinda alright, it's just that there a part of me that doesn't really know if, right now, my stuff is lol bad or if my friend (and his gf silently shuffling around the back of the room) just didn't get it or if it really matters either way. I'm just happy making stuff. idk this thread is really cool tho because ppl like you and dan and jordan and every1 else are all in some diff part of their musical lives

hey, i wouldn't let the reaction of other people in the room impact you too much either way.

(warning: totally subjective and neurotic perspective (or total hangup) that is probably shared by <2% of the population coming up)

personally speaking, i HATE being forced to listen to someone else's music in the same room with them. if you're in a band with someone, or they're really familiar with your music, then cool, whatever. but if you're just a friend or, even worse, an acquaintance, then it's a really uncomfortable experience as a listener. because i'm not the kind of person who will come flat out and say "hey, i didn't like that song", or "i don't like your music". it's just too awkward of a thing for me to say in person. the worst i'll say is "yeah it's pretty good!" or something. so that means that having to listen to someone's music in the same room with them, and being expected to give some sort of reaction at the end, basically turns into a high-pressure acting experience. this, combined with the fact that people are understandably really touchy when others are listening to their music (god, a few months ago someone said "stop singing" and i thought they were referring to a song i had posted where i sang, i immediately deleted everything with vocals off of my soundcloud and just got WASTED by myself, so i understand!)...it just makes things way too artificial and awkward and uncomfortable!

I doubt anyone is going to put you on the bigger shows if you don't bring a crowd anyway. IME getting a better show without bringing a crowd only came when we were new to a venue and the booker/owner/whoever REALLY liked our set.

Plus I hated subjecting people who liked us to bands I didn't like, although more often than not we didn't have a choice

yeah this is exactly why i maybe shouldn't have agreed to this gig. :) it wouldn't be a big deal except i have another show a few weeks later that i'm much more invested in, and that's the one i'm really trying to get people to (without looking like i'm totally half-assing the promo on this one, which i am). oh well. hopefully it's not a disaster.

come 2 la u can play my friend's room

yeah this is exactly why i maybe shouldn't have agreed to this gig. :) it wouldn't be a big deal except i have another show a few weeks later that i'm much more invested in, and that's the one i'm really trying to get people to (without looking like i'm totally half-assing the promo on this one, which i am). oh well. hopefully it's not a disaster.

― shit tie (Jordan), Wednesday, March 27, 2013 7:28 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean, I'm assuming you don't think much of the touring band, or otherwise you wouldn't be agreeing with me. Whatever you do though, don't apologize to your fans for promoting it to them, cause that's just not what cool guys do man!

"when the idea is that the local act will provide a crowd for the not-super-well-known touring act, it gets a little weird, right?

"...and then worry that the promoter is going to blame me for a small crowd/losing money. i guess the only reason to do these gigs at all is to eventually get on some of the bigger shows?"

That's kind of a weird one I would think trying to get a higher cover with a touring band then expecting the local act to bring the draw.

I was out of a gigging band for years and even with the whole 'internet makes things easy', getting shows is I think a bit weirder now in some aspects. The thing I see now trying to book out of town (which is really nearly all of our gigs) is that many clubs don't even really book the shows and they say "contact some of the bands in (our town)" they setup the lineups.

I haven't really done that, as to me I know I would feel weirded out perhaps by someone I haven't played with emailing and saying "HEY DUDE GIMME A SHOW". Especially considering where I live is pretty freaking backwards and even the gigs I might have to trade, they are not really worth trading for some of the time.

I've got a show now where I got a gig where I am setting up the lineup in their club that night, even though we are like four hours away.

i just recorded a 2 piece black metal band, the shit sounds raaaaawwww

ysi

soon, soon

Whatever you do though, don't apologize to your fans for promoting it to them, cause that's just not what cool guys do man!

nah of course i wouldn't do that.

First gig with new band on Wednesday. Been loving the rehearsals, but I'm getting nervous. What if nobody likes us? Arrrrgh.

come 2 la u can play my friend's room

ok! trying to be in the pacific nw later this year, would love to get to L.A. if possible.

I want to see emil.y's band

Generally speaking I love sitting and listening to works-in-progress, with or without the creators in the room. What I've learned from personal experience, and as is demonstrated in that tnahcraM assiraM thread, is that the opinion one has of one's own work is defined by the unprecedented. Telling people they're good or bad has no effect on their own opinions or actions. It's always gonna be these weird slanted moments that cause people to change their tack. So in general I just try to be honest and empathetic with music friends and know that I can't control what their takeaway will be. I had a friend ditch a song on their record because it was the song that happened to be playing when I stood up to refill my water glass.

I do the listening thing all the time with people in the room given my day job, and really as long as you jump the hurdle of being nice its not so bad. Critique (esp negative critique) is helpful! I always open with the idea that im going to be honest, not kind, and i havent ever had to savage somebody or anything.

also, being able to find (and i know this is like comp class critique 101, but it feels different w/music, more personal etc) something positive to mention is almost always possible. and ive heard some pretty shitty stuff, but even if its a nice transition or an interesting phrasing or just something technically adept, theres usually something there that can mitigate "you need to sing in tune".

Anyone have any tips on the simplest way to get decent sound with an isight or iphone video recording? I've been thinking about doing a youtube covers project, just guitar and vocals.

ha here comes the dreaded question - do you have an iphone 5 or a prior model?

prior. May get a 5 soon though.

(4S)

if youre seriously thinking about making the transition soon, just make sure that you dont buy anything that uses the current dock connector

ill poke around a bit and see what interface info i can dig up.

I agree with ZS above re: listening to other people's stuff/other people listening to yours - personally speaking, i HATE being forced to listen to someone else's music in the same room with them. if you're in a band with someone, or they're really familiar with your music, then cool, whatever.

For me, it's much better to get a copy and listen on my own, and replay it a few times if you're after more analysis than "it's cool that you did that". I have a small group of people who I'd trust to let me bring over a demo or pre-release copy of something, and sit around listening with beers or whatever, but they're fairly carefully cultivated - not necessarily with the exact same taste as me, but people whose reasoning I understand, or who are particularly articulate when it comes to critiquing (and are also good at being tactful so as not to bruise my fragile ego).

all this critique talk is making me want to look for a voice teacher, or at least formalize a regular agreement with the last guy I studied with (who was a colleague at the time and a couple of years younger than me, so it was a little weird, but now he sings elsewhere so it's not as strange; also he lives up the street from me)

the only time i regularly do the 'listening together' thing is when evaluating a master, playing it for friends who might have sharper ears for frequencies etc

Ha, I'm always pulling out my phone and playing mixes off the internal speakers for people during smoke breaks at dinner parties and asking them "do you like it? do you like it?". But generally I think it's good to listen to mixes in a variety of different environments, with different people and at different times of day before settling on things.

so the big thing that was going on that I hinted at upthread was that I was preparing to audition for The Platters but it didn't happen due to a series of personal issues :-(

I could have been on a cruise ship

whooooa! I'm sorry you didn't get to audition. That's an honor that you were considered for it, though.

yeah that would be cool as fuck. Are the other Platters all old dudes?

what if they were like menudo and forced out members when they turned 75 and replaced them with hot young 40-year-olds

a good friend of mine got it, and tbh he was more vocally-suited for it anyway as he has fewer responsibilities and wouldn't be giving up a career 18 years in the making to tour for less money

still, I could have been like "sorry guys, can't ILX anymore because I've got a gig in Myrtle Beach this week"

all the originals are now dead and I think the age range of the current group is like 25-45?

(in fact there are something like 8 different competing groups calling themselves The Platters, it's sort of hilarious)

"competing" so it's not like one organization farming them out? No one owns the name?

someone should do a documentary on the 8 competing groups calling themselves the The Platters. seriously.

one group does own the name, but I can't tell which one it is (I think it's the one I was planning to audition for)

it is super ripe for a documentary

a veritable buffet of platters

brb pitching reality TV show idea called 'The Platters That Matter'...

your choice of platters?

i was bragging today that someone i "know" was almost a platter

it nearly got me out of a traffic ticket

my band is opening for jason lescaleet in 10 days!

played the most out of tune set of my life sunday nite. lead guitarist broke his top e string during the first song and was like "let's switch!" but then of course the whole thing went out of tune and it sounded a million times worse with the rhythm/riffs off. luckily it's a no wave-ey band so no one noticed *phew*

my band is opening for thrones on 4/20

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.

fwiw, n/a, I don't know any active musicians over the age of 25 who don't have to mentally force themselves into a state of production.

Started playing in a kinda lame band again to get my chops back, now have my chops back but am playing in a kinda lame band. Hey, it's better than not playing.

1. Recorded a backing track around the singers vocal and managed to do the whole thing in the wrong key.
2. Played a show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DTjX23NWNA

finally mixed the hateful black metal project that i recorded. let the dudes hear it tonight and they were psyched. gonna release that v soon.

tonight i must make 200 tapes that are way overdue for a surf/metal band that i recorded like 100 years ago (feb 2012!!!).

bought a tape duplicator and 500 tapes for chump change and i'm very stoked for what this is going to bring to my life.

practiced for the first time in a long time with the band that i'm a hired gun bassist for. it was nice. being out of town for so long made me really miss practicing and such.

also renting out practice space in our show space. duh. why did this never occur to us

oh yeah and my main band's record is being mastered and im excited about that.

more excited about it finally coming out but this is obv a positive step

Just had my first solo with the spiritual ensemble. It went really, really well; the only bad thing is that a dude who's been in the group longer normally sings it so I likely won't get to do it again unless he can't make a concert.

thought of a song while out and had to call myself to record it on my voicemail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_h7Lm7C9Nk

I've been asked to do vocals for a doom metal band based on a rather shitty one take freestyle I recorded over a track I was sent. Trying to weigh up whether I ought to do it or if I've already got enough on.

I bought a new guitar! An Ibanez Artcore AS73. It's nice. Though I don't have an amp yet and oddly going direct input into my laptop doesn't work particularly well.

I'm working on completely re-wiring my home studio and getting ready to do some recording to put out. I got a new rack and a couple of patch bays to make it easier to track through my stuff. In addtion, I have also worked on the recording setup in my bands practice studio getting ready to setup to record. I'm going to set it up for much "lower volume" basic tracks and with some things. We record new stuff in the works at practice, but we also play about 1/2 stage volume, so it's pretty loud.

My ex is offering to do a swap with me, he wants my shitty shit, beaten up old japanese Westone bass and he's offering me a telecaster copy in exchange. I hope the Westone isnt worth money or anything nuts (its certainly not in good nick - goes out of tune a lot). I dont even play much guitar. Itd be nice to own one.

Finishing up the new pedal board(s) (going with two small ones rather than one giant one). Still need to order new cables...

Any shoegaze/drone bands out there need a guitarist for a tour? REALLY want to get in the van and hit the road for several weeks.

Me and my buddy did one of those live film soundtracks at Latitude Festival on the Saturday Night just gone, it was very strange, in the middle of the woods facing a big screen showing Metropolis.

There was no room to set up anywhere so we played in the tiny sound booth which was a big set of illuminated comedy chattering teeth. It was super dusty and 2/3rds of the way through Kraftwerk came on stage, luckily they were miles away but every so often we could hear little me-lo-dees wafting over.

I bought a stupid douchey guitar made out of an oil can that looks super cool and sounds great except that it's the most out of tune piece of shit ever. I tried adjusting the bridge and ended up just breaking a string. now I have to replace a string which I hate doing because I can never do it right. :(

ive been making beats. they are p stupid. also kind of half-assedly working on a solo drone/doom project thing.

I just finished work on a film score, now I'm woodshedding a ballet that is a month late. I tried to sleep just now but I dreamt about e-mails from the choreographer "I am very disappointed in myself for ever having faith in you" :( back to work.

Either of those in 24tet?

Just received and was pleased with a recording of a piano piece I wrote in the fall. Still plugging away at the recording of the loop-based processed guitar thing I've been working on all year (which might mean that it fails by your "economy" criteria, fgti:P). I hope to have it done by tomorrow though. Preparing for a voice exam (!): thought I should make myself do this in case I ever need to teach solfège.

what does the exam require? just curious

It's Royal Conservatory Gr 5, i.e. not terribly advanced by the standards of anyone who can sing at all but enough that I won't feel completely ridiculous if I have to get up and demonstrate things with my voice in front of a room of people. Requirements are: singing four songs (marked on vocal production, diction, and presentation), a vocalise, technical exercises that should be sung on each of six vowels (melodic minor scale ascending and descending in a particular rhythm, ascending major triad arpeggio + descending scale starting on re, minor triad arpeggio + descending harmonic minor scale starting on re, major triad arpeggio in 6/8 legato and staccato, ascending and descending chromatic scale from do to le), ear tests (melody singback, singing intervals above or below a given note, identifying chords by ear), sight singing.

(Some of those things are much easier than others obv.)

loop-based processed guitar thing I've been working on all year (which might mean that it fails by your "economy" criteria, fgti

ha not at all, ascetic devotion is the best. I mean economy in the part of the players, like, rehearsal time.
Unfortch neither is 24tet this time. Ballet orchestra is good but they need to prioritize rhythmic performance over the tuning of chords :)

cleaned up and adjusted my guitar
clearing the clutter out of my tiny office/music room to make it easier to do stuff in there. trying to figure out what to do with broken gear; pay to get it fixed, try to sell as-is, or just trash it

-working at a synth shop on denmark st (london's tin pan alley), learning lots and using the downtime in the shop to teach myself piano. it's been damn cool working there actually. in the 6 weeks i've been there i've met m@tt bl@ack of ninja/coldcut fame, the cinematic orchestra guys, the dudes from UFO who still do UFO, err ricky gervais, tom waits, tom jones, ha, it's quite a lot of fun
-restrung my classical guitar hoping to do some violin and guitar duets with a guy from the LSO who popped into the shop to buy a mic
-haven't made any music at home for a few months, which is great, it's always good to have a break
-playing a techno night on the 23rd in dalston, did one before doing improv electronics and it went really well, looking forward to knocking something completely different up for this one
-am coming more and more to terms with the fact that i'm just an enthusiast and i'll never really have anything to say/offer that's of much worth. lol

ah if that's the life of the casual enthusiast then being a casual enthusiast sounds very fun. what's the night in dalston?

on thursday i'm gonna have a day long ~jam~ with some friends in an odd 2x guitar 2x laptop setup, i will be sure to upload all the many hours of it for everybody's listening pleasure.

playing first show with this band on friday! www.maura.com/288/listen-to-distant-correspondents-merge
kind of scared, it's pretty loosey goosey at the moment, but hopefully the next few practices will get us ready. haven't played bass in forever, but i'm enjoying it!

the life of a casual enthusiast sounds amazing

like, that job, omg

Third that, I'd love to work in a synth shop! I spent half my teens in the local Brash's fiddling with all the DX7s and wishing I could afford one.

working in a synth shop sounds fun! Fourthing!

Rehearsal tonight for an ensemble gig with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. Doing Weill's "Lost in the Stars" (again)

Recording an EP in a fairly expensive studio. Expensive for us anyway. Realising the drummer cant play to a click requiring spending more money on studio time. This has probably happened to other people?

The drummer from my old band spent a lot of time playing to Orbital CDs precisely so he could improve his inner metronome

when I used to drum a little I would try to copy the beats on underworld CDs, mostly a fail

drummers: born sloppy

This has exactly happened to me and we (unfortunately) scrapped everything and (fortunately) re-recorded everything to "no click" and when click was necessary we made one to his limping and amazing drum parts

Had band practice last night and B3n has introduced an old bandmate of his in to do live drums. I dont know if the guy was just out of practice, not used to our already-structured songs or struggling using an electric kit (tbf those things are kind of shite) but I found his input a little overbearing. He kept speeding up, adding masses of fills, and basically rocking out like a mad bastard which given up til now we'd been doing sparse electronic/proggy/pretty stuff was doing my head in a bit. Not sure what to make of it.

LIke imagine if you took a minimal styles massive attack song and added bombastic rock drums all over it ugtggh dshfgsrwfhf

Nip it in the bud say "not like that" and give him listening homework

Yeah we played him some loops and said "this is what we're doing" and he was ok with it but just couldnt keep time with the loops and kvetched about it. Surely a good drummer is ok with playing to clicktracks? I dont buy the "you move in and out of time a bit" when it is bleeding obvious. It was a first, rough jam with him tho so benefit of the doubt and all that.

my ~jam sesh~ was fun, didn't quite know what I was doing for most of it cuz it ended up with three ppl using Max/MSP etc and me trying to work out how to fit guitar into that when I can't really play guitar, but if someone's willing to do a Teo Macero on our five hours or so they may have a nice couple of hours between them, 15 minutes of that with my valuable input.

Jams are fun! I have no idea what Im doing other tbqfh, I'm sometimes playing bass and I seriously am shit at it. But if I keep a simple riff going Im ok. Next challenge: do that and sing at the same time, lol.

Trayce I'll be honest with you I have not seen a single drummer play kit convincingly enough along to a click track to make me think "I am so glad this band has a both click track and a live drummer" so I'd probably cut him some slack

not implying you weren't cutting him slack already :)
just saying it's a mountain I have not yet seen scaled except for that one video of "guy performing the drum parts to journey to reedham"

i recently had a drummer in to effectively replay a drum machine beat with the hope of giving it a more natural feel. fantastic drummer, great sounding kit, pretty much perfectly in time, but the end result sounded dismal in comparison to the DM.

a lesson was learned that day

goontie: yeah thats fair and I agree! I think I'm more thinking what Jim just said: I think I just prefer the sound of drum machines :/ I'm such a fucking 80s kid.

My prob with this guy anyway was less his keeping in time and more his MAD FILLS EVERY TEN SECONDS rock styles. No subtlety whatsoever.

But i've now told the other 2 lads this, so its up to them as well, democracy n all that. If we're gonna end up with a wall of noise we could at least get some Guthrie guitar happening.

ha not at all, ascetic devotion is the best. I mean economy in the part of the players, like, rehearsal time.

Well, that's the thing. After I figured out the setup and designed the Max patches, writing the material was by far the easiest part. Preparing it for performance and recording has by far been the hardest. (This is largely partly a reflection of my own playing chops: I'm sure Metheny could knock it out in a weekend.) Relating to the current discussion, this is largely because it requires a f high (for me anyway) level of rhythmic precision. It's probably the sort of thing where you could say "well, you could also just sequence all those loops and play over them" which is probably true but the challenge is part of the point imo. An actual really good guitarist has asked for a demo, though, so maybe there's a possibility there?

In any event, everything that's hard to do is recorded now, as tight as it will be with me playing. (I've decided not to quantize.)

I made a beat and then realized that I just completely recreated some random minor madlib beat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dG6bK5wxmE

(Btw, roxy, the songs I'll be singing for the exam are lol "When Love Is Kind", "Jardin d'Amour", "Moon, sing" by Jon Washburn, and "Let There Be Peace on Earth" so yeah, probably not the most advanced repertoire but enough to keep me busy. I figured out tonight that the trick is, counterintuitively, to think about chest resonance when singing higher notes and to think about head resonance when singing lower notes.)

Sat down to edit a note that was off by the duration of a 64th note, decided in the end that I liked the original imprecise take. This feels like some kind of triumph. This recording is done.

i spent three hours painstakingly transcribing a rough hand-played take to midi, then copypasted the best third over the other two thirds of it

My musical life as you guys are discussing it is still in its infancy. I'll probably spend --I have spent -- a long time gathering steam before ever considering myself capable of even doing this at all. But I have ideas! And I think they're not terrible! I'm writing them down. I'm probably going to have to meet some more people, that's not the easiest thing to do, but it's not going to keep me from moving forward.
This is easily one of the most earnest and embarrassing posts I have ever composed. Still, that's what's going on in my new musical life. It kind of feels like getting an extra life, tbh!

drummers are the worst huh

lol
yes

i started using in-ear monitors for my solo electronics + drums show, and it's made things way more fun. i'm good at playing to a click but it's only fun if i can comfortably hear the tracks, and this way i never have to worry about shitty monitors again.

had a crazy weekend of brass band gig > electronic gig > up at 5 am to drive to a festival to play another brass band gig. festival culture is weird.

What sorts of things are you doing with drums and electronics?

nothing especially cutting edge, i play tracks that i've produced at home using an SP404 and kaoss pad quad (adding effects and triggering samples), and add live drums to sections on a small acoustic kit.

welp, one of the pieces I thought was cut from our concert in two weeks is back on, and we just got the music for it so we can memorize it

oh well

It's OK LL, I still feel like a bit of a faker at this myself! Like "oh hey I can make music sound ok with presets lolol *sing sing*". Still, it goes over ok...

I bought a £3.50 shakuhachi. Look out world, my hit machine is just warming up.

I don't even know what a shakuhachi is beyond a General MIDI patch
Send photos

Best emulator sample of all time iirc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g93mz_eZ5N4

Ugh, after mastering, not happy enough with my timing. Might have to finish this after moving, aargh.

FML

Sat down to edit a note that was off by the duration of a 64th note

Reminds me of the time I re-rendered a track just to reduce the volume of one instrument by half a decibel.

do it right, guys :)

OTM, sadly.:(

Reminds me of the time I re-rendered a track just to reduce the volume of one instrument by half a decibel.

oh i do this all the time

That actually sounds like standard mixing procedure to me tbh.:P

1: reduce volume of closed hi hats
2: render track
3: listen to track and realise that closed hi hats are still too loud
4: repeat from step 1 about a hundred and trillion times
5: say "fudge it" and leave the track as it is
6: every time this track is played think "damn this sounds terrible"
7: remix entire album
8: repeat from step 1

closed hi-hats can be crazy, like looking at the meters they'll be the quietest thing in the track BY FAR, but they just cut through at any volume. like they can be almost subliminal and still do their job. loud hi-hats are cool too though.

Ah. Yeah, I get you. I spent a good amount of time this year remixing a piece from 2 years ago. Then uploaded it to Soundcloud where 128kbps streaming killed it anyway, ultimately taking it down anyway.

I just got back from a studio where I made an appointment to go over a mix with pro dudes. They basically thought it was fine and didn't need any real changes. I am feeling audio autodidact pride.

xpost

I used to be really anal about my mixes, these days I’m all about capturing raw energy, and the take is the take - live mix down, riding the faders, no going back afterwards.

Well, you guys can judge yourselves now.:P
https://soundcloud.com/sund4r-subramanian/locks-and-ripples-solo

I may revisit this but now it's time to move on with life.

you have to correct the 4 to an a but I got it, sounds good. What is doing the processing?

sounds dope! really nice man. sounds like future fripp at times.

i wouldn't worry about the timing at all, there's nothing with really hard transients keeping you honest so it's super forgiving, you know? any rubato-ness (of which there is very little) just sounds intentional.

and now i've stumbled into a world of academic guitar shredder soundclouds

Thanks, guys (and thanks for pointing out that correction, fgti)! Yeah, solo classical guitar performance (where all my guitar training has been since I was 14) tends to be pretty rubato-happy so it can actually sometimes be a challenge to play really straight and evenly when I do something more pop/rock-influenced. I figure if a jazz drummer tells me not to worry about the timing, I'm doing OK.

Fgti: I'll give an answer to that question when I have a little more time to write something more detailed.

cool music sund4r

Thanks, n/a!

What is doing the processing?

Wasn't sure how much detail you were looking for but:

It's a six-track Max for Live set. I control everything with a MIDI foot controller.

There's a Looper on every track, set to reverse on three tracks. One important effect was a 'Randomized Stutter' which plays back randomized grains of the input at randomized speeds, allowing the user to select maximum and minimum grain size and playback rate and whose output amplitude is scaled to the input amplitude. I can also control dry/wet levels with an expression pedal. On the first loop that you hear, it's set so that the playback rate 'glisses' between random values, using the "line" object in Max. On other tracks, this is turned off so that you have a choppier effect.

The main effect on the second loop you hear is an FFT-based convolution effect that's probably too complicated to explain right now tbh, again with levels controlled by an expression pedal. (The input is an E-bowed low D.)

The third loop is one chord split between two tracks and looped backwards, with just the stutter on one track and also with a couple of FFT-based effects on the other that are based on compressing and expanding the relative amplitudes of the different frequency bins, either with an expression pedal or according to a preset algorithm.

On top of that, there are, of course, Ableton Live EQs, choruses, reverbs, delays, stereo panning, etc.

very dope, i was wondering how much randomization there was, especially for the rhythmic (stutter & delay) effects.

compressing and expanding the relative amplitudes of the different frequency bins

i'm not sure i know what this means but it sounds cool.

Any sound wave can be broken down as the sum of a series of sine waves which all have different amplitudes, frequencies, and phase shifts, right? It is this particular frequency spectrum that defines the sound's timbre. The FFT actually breaks the sound down into these component frequencies. Some of them obviously have much greater amplitudes than others. Basically, you could think of this as like a really fine graphic EQ. What the effect does is it compresses and expands the differences in amplitudes between the component frequencies (makes the levels on the EQ more flatlined or more peaky). I've got two effects on there, one that does this according to how I rock an expression pedal, another that does this automatically that is controlled by a wave that is generated by FM synthesis according to various inputs.

I have been buying gear. gear gear gear.

me toooooo what did you buy

I'm doing a split cassette w/a false doom metal/drone band so I ordered a proco turborat and mxr blue box. and I decided I'm gonna buy an ebow too. I don't know how useful all of this will end up being but we'll see.

I bought a dual expression pedal which I'm hooking up to two pitchshifters. Single pitch -> microtonal clouds -> single pitch

Wow, that sounds v cool. You're using that to process your violin?

When we were first learning MaxMSP, with much frustration and without much sense of where it could ultimately lead, my friend and I had a running joke along the lines of "well, we spent two weeks programming ... in order to make a pitchshifter we could have bought from Guitar Center".

xp Yes. If the cloud is narrow and there's a plate on the treatment it is "instant orchestra" and if the cloud is wide and there is no plate it is "instant Hiroshima"

not actual explosions but Penderecki *cough*

"Plate" as in plate reverb?

i am going to a jam session organized by a 'middle aged hack' in my neighborhood. craigslist ad. the guy likes classic rock, funny writer, seemed to have a good attitude. other dudes showing up to this thing have suggested some pearl jam and 'sweet home chicago'. should be fun!

spent all day at work with headphones in listening to "Lost in the Stars" so I can have a hope of being half-memorized by Thursday; will repeat the process tomorrow

impulse bought an SG :X

!

also a RAT. i just went in for strap locks :/

many emotions :/ :X :G :D

rad!

i just thought, how am i tryin to be 33 and not owning the guitar i've wanted my entire life

nice. i used to have one, then one day (artists rendition of what happened)

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTZ7wmptPwCNwEr67oqOmJKfuigsTeASEsZuJCsNoEZerOVGlI6sg

that makes sense sund4r, thanks for breaking that down.

i'm not complaining, but i had a review of a new track yesterday that said something about the rhythmic shifts being "unintentionally disorienting" -- oh i sure you, it was intentional. :)

xp

snap. i really need to knuckle down and learn more about instrument repair. which reminds me, i need to fix a crack in the body of my t-bird. it's such a weird shape, it will be hard to clamp.

i just thought, how am i tryin to be 33 and not owning the guitar i've wanted my entire life

OTM. I bought an ES-335 when I turned 34.

Congrats btw! That's great.

Exam in less than 2h.

<3 thx. and good luck!

Thanks! A couple of flubs but I think it went OK.

"Plate" as in plate reverb?

Yes.

Trial and error (and necessity) finally yielded an effective method of creating a "home orchestra" sound for the many clients who wanted, say, "the Dillard & Clark sound" or w/e but no budget for players. It involves five tracks of violin per part using two different mics.

The big problem with multi-tracking violins for "strings" is the phase issues that are created, as well as problem frequencies (for most violins, that annoying 2K). I found that if you do two takes with the Coles ribbon mic for the "tone" and two with a 414 for the "presence" (hi-pass all the way up to 2.5 or even 3K), hard pan each, then run the result through a plate, you get a perfect wet sound. Overdub a single, centred, dry violin take with both mics at once for definition and voila you've got "Why Not Your Baby".

Anyway, the pedalboard version of this setup, which I'm getting together for a client with money to burn, I just got going today and it is ridiculously expensive to look at (two Pitchfactors, two Strymon Blueskys, one Pigtronix dual expression pedal) but it sounds, well, it sounds like a million bucks.

I felt kind of excited reading that.

:) I'll make a little recording with it this week if I get a chance. It really does sound remarkable. Violinists are so fucked when it comes to live sound with our shitty piezo pickups and hideous looking electrics, it gives me great pleasure to fix a player up with a live sound

That rig sounds amazing! Otm re: shitty piezo electric violin, that is the worst fucking sound.

Got to do a jam with my band last night for the first time in too many weeks, and it was probably one of the best ones we've done. I'd had massive reservations about the drummer we've brought into the fold (we'd been using drum machines up til recently) but with him settled in and not bashing away at 23123mph anymore, and me now on keys so the guys can concentrate on the guitars, the whole thing has just levelled up, and we came up with like 3 or 4 completely new potential songs last night. So freaking stoked!

Now I need to think about maybe a few singing lessons, as I'm finding I need to revisit my ability to control my breathing and phrasing. Im sure smoking isnt helping.

just got off stage about an hour ago from singing excerpts from "Lost in the Stars" narrated by Governor Deval Patrick with a small solo by my wife

it was pretty fucking boss

Congrats

Nice!

https://soundcloud.com/user2224356/craigslists-lament

i am going to a jam session organized by a 'middle aged hack' in my neighborhood. craigslist ad. the guy likes classic rock, funny writer, seemed to have a good attitude. other dudes showing up to this thing have suggested some pearl jam and 'sweet home chicago'. should be fun!

― R'LIAH (goole), Tuesday, August 20, 2013 4:20 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this turned out to be both really awkward and a lot of fun

I just got a refret and set up done on my main electric, and have been DYING to play out, but have no time!

I also have a mandolin that I need to intonate, but no good tuner! Argh!

Goole - pls elaborate. I love unfamiliar jam sessions!

I've been working nights and weekends this summer on a ballet which I am on track to finish TODAY (or TOMORROW)

wow, way to go!

OTM

sweet

finally ordered the elusive, discontinued memory card for my sampler from ebay to use with new musical project/band

which sampler?

Dr. Sample 202

The Sp-202 is a fun gadget. I did these entirely on an Sp-202. And many more, currently lost to time.

I did this this summer. It has words, too. I'm rather proud of it.

I thought I was done but I forgot about the harp pedalling *barrrf*

i love all SPs and use my 404-SX all the time. i'd love to mess around with some of the older ones (mostly for the effects), if it wasn't such a pain to load samples on (i.e. ebaying old memory cards).

i don't ever want to delete the preset with the lady saying "stand by"

Best song I have to learn at least part of for a cabaret performance

Played a really fun little local street/pub festival at the weekend and we're slowly getting a bit of a reputation. Can't believe how different it feels performing in front of a group of people compared to practicing at home. Something about having to actually 'perform' in front of people other than my bandmates makes me completely forget what I'm supposed to be doing. I'll also never get the hang of sound checks/being able to get an idea of what we sound like when we play live. My memory of it was pure chaos with just, like, a wailing voice over a thundering buzzing sound, but people said we sounded great, so...

I may explode in a fit of rage at our next spiritual ensemble rehearsal if people don't learn their music

The almost-a-band I'm in put some music online:
http://www.reverbnation.com/virtualtrio/album/43256-march-2013-jam

i want to sing in a choir again.

when it isn't the worst thing in the world, it's really fun!

i tried to record a kind of singer-songwritery song last night and got too embarrassed and had to stop

i just thought, how am i tryin to be 33 and not owning the guitar i've wanted my entire life

1 P.3. Eternal (roxymuzak) wrote this at 2013-08-21 16:50:59.000

Yes! Had a realization this summer that I had got into playing music when I was 10 because I wanted to play bass, but my parents made me take guitar lessons because they owned a guard and that just spiraled into me being a guitar player. So broke down and bought a bass last month at age 34. Fuck. I feel so much better about my musical life at the moment. Have to learn how to play bass now, as I've already gone through all the basslines I'd learned to play on guitar, but I'm very stoked about it.

"Owned a guitar"

Well my band for the first time in probably 13 months doesn't have any upcoming gigs booked, as the club we were going to play in a couple weeks has closed. So far we got to do 12 shows this year. It's not a huge number but the crazy thing is we mostly play shows like 2 hours away more, as there are just no local gigs doing what we do.

Eh...I'm ready to do some recording and writing some new tunes anyway.

playing this show on monday but more importantly look at this flyer

https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1236404_10151858324614269_2059788852_n.jpg

That is a great flyer.

Everything about that flyer makes me want to go and see that show.

Who drew it? It rules.

the promoter made it, I've actually never met her? hoping she'll have extra copies at the show....

jon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Theodor_Heine

ooh thanks! Never heard of him before. I wonder if he counted the bilious Heinrich Heine among his ancestors.

Feeling good about my latest 'choons to the point where I'm starting to think about seeking out live performances. And then I realize: that's me playing all the parts on my demos and I haven't played my songs for anyone else.

So much for that idea.

Here's my most recent thing. It's very stock jangle pop sounding. But that's what we like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArzwVqXK6po

As menshed elsewhere last night was pretty much my first proper time performing live, even if it were just vox/harmonies. It was super fun though, helped by the fact my bandmates are amazing,talented men who write music I actively really enjoy. So proud of us.

playing tonight at the larimer lounge in Denver! if you're in denver, come say hi! http://www.larimerlounge.com/event_details.cfm?blogid=1199

- I've been writing a lot of chamber music this year. Most exciting is a ballet, the National Ballet of Canada are performing it in November. Orchestra + solo soprano + harpsichord. Anybody who'd like to hear MIDI and see PDF can PM me about it.

- It seems I am writing a vocal piece for Hilliard Ensemble with another ILXor on the words and I bet you can guess who

- Diam4nda Gal4s played a festival that I curated in Lausanne. Unfortunately I could not attend because I am busy in Montreal. But: I got word from my friend doing her makeup that aside from being a lovely person to work with, she is a fan of Mariah. "I love her," she said, when looking at some Mariah brand nail polish. How about that? It's like *sigh of relief*

Man, that is a post I cannot top.

I was going to add that I'm also appearing on SNL this weekend but I figured I'd break it into two posts.

That actually takes a lot if pressure off of my little cabaret night, thanks ftgi

i bought an overdrive pedal yeaaaaaaah now who wins eh.

! xxp

I have about 30 mins of music done, if I clean it up I guess I have an album

also apparently I made a song last night that for some reason I titled Boricua Owl

- sat up way late last night trying out the studio mic ive had set up in my room forever and not used (issues with room reverb i had to fix). Dear god, it shits all over my beaten up old SM57. I dont have to STRAIN when I sing.

Hell yeah, Merdeyeux! What did you get?

Picked up my tele this morning for the first time since buying the bass about a month ago. It felt like a mandolin. The bass is so much more comfortable for me.

After our rehearsal last night, I think the spiritual ensemble concert on Sunday will be okay. As of Monday, I thought it was going to be a massive trainwreck, so that's a good thing.

convinced highly skeptical bandmate that bass through the slowgear clone pedal -> heavy metal 2 pedal would sound awesome.

how cool did it sound

is it good for basslines or is it more suitable for abstract/extended technique playing

it sounds as close to a distorted amplified cello as I think I can get with a bass and no computer/midi. It only works well when played slow or at moderate tempo, but it is almost exactly what I wanted it to sound like.

n.b. i have only been playing bass for about a year, after having played for about a year as a teenager, so it might work differently for a better bass player

cabaret was doooooooooope

my girlfriends and i started practicing to be the GoGos at the local halloween thing

its my electric (non-bass) guitar debut tbh

it is VERY fun

i am jane weidlin

she lives in my town, plays some bands i think but i haven't seen any of them. i only know her from Clue.

Been trying out a new bass playing technique by holding the neck higher and holding my fingers so they point down rather than across the neck, playing the strings with the sides of my fingers a bit like a double bass. I'm self taught but this seemed to help my playing somewhat (less encouraged to play with my thumb), whereas I'd almost always approached the bass like a finger style guitar with a finger on each string. Am I doing the right thing here?

finished a recording project i've been working on for a year
bought a new guitar
trying to write songs again

wait, dl, do you mean with your fingers pointing straight up? and do you mean your fretting or picking hand?

picking hand. before, i was holding my hand into a sort of claw with a thumb/finger for each string. I knew i was doing it wrong, but it's what came natural. I'm trying to use the resting thumb/two finger technique now, but I'm playing it a bit more like an upright bass (although maybe not that extreme).

i started playing bass this year and my hand cramps out very hard and embarassingly fast, but it's more my fretting hand. could be wrong but there's no right or wrong way unless you really wanna shred, it's more about experimenting with what feels comfortable. i'm at the extreme of unambitiousness technique-wise, though

oh ok yeah. youre now playing the way i play.

im really worried that my (pending) rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis (waiting for test results) is going to F with my playing. so far whatever it is isn't in my wrists or hands, but from what i hear that prob won't last

Got the EP mastered today. Pretty happy with it.

I spent yesterday evening in a super-souped up studio, an "ideal listening environment", to listen to and make notes on some mixes I've been working on for a client. Things were going great until my friend who works there cruelly put on some Real Music, who's mixes shat all over mine. A single Broadcast song made me want to change occupations, bleah.

I've been stewing about this for years: if the listening public/music writing body understood how their musical experiences are so definitively created by not the songwriter, or the producer, or the performer, but by the mixer and the mixing process, 90% of all fun rhetoric would dissolve. You can't really sling mud as effectively when your opinions are defined exclusively by who's behind the desk. Agree? disagree? Anyway, making records sucks.

disagree; you just get to have nerdier, more esoteric mudslinging arguments

Anyway, making records sucks.

Bleurgh, tell me about it...
I've got 95% of an album recorded, but nothing mixed yet. And this is always the point at which my ears fill with cotton wool and the songs that I thought were awesome end up sounding like a guy shouting from behind a sofa.

disagree; you just get to have nerdier, more esoteric mudslinging arguments

True. The language of mixing engineers is kind of the worst. I started to type some anecdotes but it just turned into venting so I deleted it.

dude who mixed my band's never-released album had managed to get his hands on copies of the Sergeant Pepper's masters and was going to remix the album to include some of the string parts that had been left out

that basically told me everything I feel I need to know about dudes who are professional mixers

some otherwise good records can be ruined or made less enjoyable by bad recording/mixing/mastering, and other records can sound terrible and still be great. it all depends, y'know? some kinds of music are way more dependent on sonics than others.

if the listening public/music writing body understood how their musical experiences are so definitively created by not the songwriter, or the producer, or the performer, but by the mixer and the mixing process, 90% of all fun rhetoric would dissolve. You can't really sling mud as effectively when your opinions are defined exclusively by who's behind the desk

Oh god yes. Final mixing on good speakers is like getting your teeth pulled through your brain, you doubt your aesthetics and your sanity. It's like a process of systematically removing everything you found intrinsically interesting during composition. But things like low end are important.

More Sunday broadcasts followed, but Stokowski was unhappy with them. He disliked the sound of the radio signal, which was compressed (tamped in at its low and high ends) so as to travel through the air without grave loss of fidelity. He loathed the surrender of aural control that the process called for. Before conducting the musicians, he conducted the technicians -- supervising the placement of the microphones, scrutinizing the recording equipment, and quarreling with his new rival behind a mixing console. "He was at the conductor's stand, and off to the side in the wings there was a man sitting at a sort of keyboard with dials," Evangeline Johnson recalled. "He was called the mixer. Stokowski stopped the orchestra and asked what the man was doing." When the need to compress the sound for broadcast was explained, he retorted: "Then you're paying the wrong man. He's the conductor and I'm not. I don't want this to be broadcast under my name if I'm not controlling the pianissimo, the mezzo forte, and the fortissimo."

As the story goes, for the next broadcast Stokowski made the technicians place a portable mixing board near the conductor's podium; as the story goes, the technicians disconnected the wires at their end, placating the maestro with the illusion of control.

pg 138, Reinventing Bach, Paul Elle

(eventual story is that Stokowski settled on sitting the mixer within the orchestra, where he could be conducted.)

there's no Stokowski thread on ILM. what are we, amateurs?

xp I think that is a rose-coloured view that I wish were the case but ime is not the case, especially in the current climate, where quantitative number crunching has mostly usurped verbal criticism as being the primary method in which records are talked about.

thanks for that, Milton

I am in the middle of recording an LP, I start tracking vocals tomorrow, tracking and mixing is supposed to be wrapped up in the next 3 weeks, I feel pretty much 24/7 anxiety about it these days

Reading these last few posts isn't helping :(

my record is finally coming out next month. feels like i finished it forever ago but it was a long process of finding a label, getting together artwork, video, an EP w/remixes leading up to it, etc etc etc.

meanwhile i've been messing around doing production for a few different rappers and singers. who knows when any of that stuff will come out but it's nice not having to worry about the mastering, promo, etc for it.

also the record went through a last-minute round of remastering after a lot of agonizing about it, so yeah.

recently had a record come out that went through 3 rounds of mastering

it can drive you just a little bit crazy, especially if you're already halfway there (e.g. I'll listen to various masterings of albums to figure out which I like best)

I think some of the inherent disconnect between mastering engineers and musicians is that the former are trying to obtain something that will sound the same across a wide variety of playback situations, and that may involve squelching frequencies that the latter are quite fond of

not to mention the inherent differences in LP/CD and digital audio

don't get me started on 24bit->16bit dithering

the former are trying to obtain something that will sound the same across a wide variety of playback situations, and that may involve squelching frequencies that the latter are quite fond of

well put. saving you the heartbreak of how all the parts you're currently the fondest of are going to sound on other systems.

I am tagging along for this: http://vague-terrain.com/2013/exploring-the-nebulous-cloud-like-three-dimensional-sound-space-at-the-center-of-four-speakers-does-this-space-evoke-comedy-cavernous-terror-reassuring-pastoral-birdsong-inhuman-wire-mother-blee/

i thought i was happy with how my new EP sounded but then i heard it on Spotify via my girlfriend's laptop's speakers and i wanted to die.

what is going on in your musical life, Milton? You are going on tour soon, yes?

i thought i was happy with how my new EP sounded but then i heard it on Spotify via my girlfriend's laptop's speakers and i wanted to die.

I like to mix the vocals on laptop speakers for this reason

me too

that's a good idea, this was more no bass (duh) and some slightly harsh mids from a bell tone, which sounded like it had a lot more sustain on the laptop speakers vs any decent stereo where those frequencies blend in more.

a lot of great music doesn't sound like anything on laptop speakers

I pushed for using a different master for the vinyl vs digital release

this was not a popular decision among all involved in the process but I think it was the right one

does anything sound good on laptop speakers?

that shit ruins whitehouse

I am tagging along for this: http://vague-terrain.com/2013/exploring-the-nebulous-cloud-like-three-dimensional-sound-space-at-the-center-of-four-speakers-does-this-space-evoke-comedy-cavernous-terror-reassuring-pastoral-birdsong-inhuman-wire-mother-blee/

― Milton Parker, Tuesday, October 8, 2013 5:26 PM (57 minutes ago)

awesome, see you next week brah

got the video back last night from my community theater version of Jesus Christ Superstar (Pilate) yesterday. really amateur quality video (small black boxy theater):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84ewZfdKrjk

a lot of great music doesn't sound like anything on laptop speakers

true i'm not too worried about it but mostly got anxious because she was like "is that what it sounds like? i liked it better at the show." and i mean yeah, i hope it sounds better over giant speakers & subs compared to tinny laptop ones.

That was great, Neanderthal! I grew up listening to JCS. I performed Pilate's Dream at my induction to the thespian society in high school at age 16 or so, probably looked like a total goofball, but I always wanted to play Pilate.

if the listening public/music writing body understood how their musical experiences are so definitively created by not the songwriter, or the producer, or the performer, but by the mixer and the mixing process, 90% of all fun rhetoric would dissolve

Definitely.

A flimsy song with fantastic production is much more likely to do well than a fantastic song with lousy production.

Depends what you mean by "do well."

not sound like shit

Neanderthal, that is GREAT

I don't know, it seems like having shitty songs is a good way to sound like shit. Anyways I just feel like saying it's ok to have boring songs if your production is good is a glib statement and I doubt you really believe that.

I've always known I don't have "good ears" but more and more I realize that I just have no idea what sounds good or bad to other people. I hear some stuff and I know it's well-produced or well-mixed but I rarely hear something that is ruined for me solely by having bad production or a bad mix. Which is not to say that those things aren't important but just to say that I am totally unable to gauge them.

I can't listen to the first Smiths album despite loving pretty much every song on it because of the way it sounds

@ NA, when I say "do well" I typically mean "will find resonance in 2013 with the music writing community and the consumer-listener base".

And I'm not trying to say that "a shitty song" can be made to sound good. I just don't think there are that many shitty songs. Can you form a complete sentence? You can write a song. Beyond that it's performance (almost arbitrary in 2013), production and mix

I was responding to this:

A flimsy song with fantastic production is much more likely to do well than a fantastic song with lousy production.

― Pingu Unchained (dog latin), Wednesday, October 9, 2013 5:57 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm a massive fan of lo-fi stuff but I kind of agree about production/mixing? Though I wouldn't go so far as to say 'a shit song can sound great with good mixing', I do think the line between a good and bad song is often small, and a lot of it is to do with arrangement, production, mix. And the caveat that I love lo-fi is kind of irrelevant, because the bands I love that sound for are bands that suit no production/rough production/anti-production or whatever. The form suits the content, man.

What I was trying to express is that there's external success (how much other people like a song) and internal success (how happy you are with a song you write) and they are both valid measures of success. I have trouble with defining the success of a song solely by how much other people like it because there are lots of other factors with this that aren't related to the song itself (i.e. even getting your song to the ears of the music writing community and consumers) and because lots of people like shitty songs. I also don't really understand saying that performance is almost arbitrary - not in a "I disagree with this" way but in a "this is just a confusing statement" way.

There are also things like cultural moments/trends and the connotations of certain sounds that put you off songs, of course. Things like, when Nouvelle Vague first came out, I thought the arrangement was kind of charming, but now if I hear people doing covers like that I want to murder them horribly.

xpost to myself, there.

Oh and production/mixing can definitely push a song from good to great. I'm not even arguing with anyone. I just feel like when I was starting to write songs and play music, there was an attitude of "I write these songs for myself and I don't care what other people think about them as long as I'm happy with them." I realize there's a percentage of bullshit in that statement but it still makes me a little sad when people only think they're doing well if they're reaching a significant commercial audience and getting good reviews. If that's your measure, then there are plenty of artists who are now canonical who never "did well" in their lifetime.

I guess 'performance is arbitrary' is a reflection on the number of things one can do to 'fix' performance flaws in the modern age? I was a little confused by that at first, too.

I do not believe "how happy you are with a song you write" is a valid measure of success

I mean, I write lots of songs for myself and I sell records to myself and I go to all my own shows and license these songs to commercials selling myself to myself

Really? I mean, fair enough, it's not a good measure of success if your aim is to make a living writing music, but it's perfectly valid if your aim is just to write good songs. 'Success' is not a monolithic thing.

The production conversation is interesting because I tend to have this feeling like a lack of production sheen has maybe held my material back in the past from reaching more people, but at the same time I know there are albums that I love and that also have tons of fans that don't sound objectively outstanding either. It's like I can think lo-fi is a cool aesthetic except when it applies to my material, when it doesn't sound like an aesthetic choice as much as just mediocrity. Although I guess there's still good and bad aesthetics as far as production goes even among lo-fi stuff, or "less than super hi-fi" stuff.

But with vocals too I often find myself being able to accept and even enjoy a lot of roughness from other singers, but when it's my own performance it makes me cringe if it's not right on because I feel like it just doesn't work. Maybe it's psychological, or maybe it's just a stylistic mismatch or something.

If that's your measure, then there are plenty of artists who are now canonical who never "did well" in their lifetime.

I have a whole song about this idea on the album I'm recording now, it's called "Vincent van Gogh." Titular lyric: "It worked for Nick Drake and for Edgar A. Poe / Franz Schubert, John Toole, and Vincent van Gogh." Of course I'm not really convinced yet and haven't figured out how to not be miserable about not being more successful.

fgti is operating in a different musical world from most of the rest of us here

The form suits the content, man.

^^^this. i think i get away with a lot of things in my own recordings (noise, hiss, etc) because it's part of the aesthetic that would never fly if it was supposed to be a polished pop or rock record. it's also a lot easier to make a good sounding record when you're working with a lot of samples vs a lot of live instruments, imo.

Damn xposts, I was going to make a hilarious aside about 'Edgar Allan Poff'.

ha crut well on one hand I feel like "why don't more people aim high and write songs with listeners in mind instead of seeing songwriting as a kind of therapy?" and on the other hand I'm like "remember I approached music-making with enthusiasm and joy? oh yeah that was when it was a hobby"

*"remember when I approached..."

Steve otm about vocal takes. It's super important that singers work with somebody to help them through their own psychodrama.

Why don't we take this onto a production-specific thread instead of unfairly obscuring Neanderthal's awesome turn as Pilate

not all listeners want the same thing tho! I make music with the listener in mind but in my case "the listener" is a relatively small group of people who probably have different standards of form & fidelity than you & your audience. I would like to make a more "accessible" record though. I just have a lot of aesthetic hangups that I have to figure out my way through before I can get there.

Steve otm about vocal takes. It's super important that singers work with somebody to help them through their own psychodrama.

oh man, OTM; one reason why I don't sing that much on ILX pre-cover submissions is because I usually don't want to go through the ten day death spiral of "oh that sounds all right/JESUS CHRIST I AM TERRIBLE/well it's not that big a deal/I SHOULD NEVER SING SOLO EVER AGAIN/I need a voice teacher/I FUCKING NEED A VOICE TEACHER"

Yeah and I mean I am totally into a lot of music with rough singing, but in my mind that stuff registers as cool or non-chalant or rock and roll or something, but when I hear myself sounding rough it just comes across as awful.

But I think there might be something to the type of melody and musical context that affects how this works as well, and like the type of stuff I write just wants to sound pretty. I dunno but I have to go record vocals in a few hours and I'm nervous.

xp lol your singing is awesome btw

oh man, OTM; one reason why I don't sing that much on ILX pre-cover submissions is because I usually don't want to go through the ten day death spiral of "oh that sounds all right/JESUS CHRIST I AM TERRIBLE/well it's not that big a deal/I SHOULD NEVER SING SOLO EVER AGAIN/I need a voice teacher/I FUCKING NEED A VOICE TEACHER"

― Bitch Fantastic (DJP), Wednesday, October 9, 2013 11:13 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

co-signed - I HATE recording. my pitch is solid when I sing live because it's a fluid, connected performance, and even if a bad note slips, oh well, it'll slip into the night and be forgotten.

Recording actually rewires my technique - I've watched video of me singing during a recording and I have these tics that negatively impact that sound that I don't do when I sing live, and it's because I'm too overanxious, too overthinking each individual note. I also feel caged being forced to sing in a tiny room into a mounted microphone; too restricting! So I tend to make more mistakes, sing flat on recordings where I normally wouldn't. I've scrapped projects I worked on for hours in anger and told myself I should never sing again many many times.

and one time I was depressed for a week because my last two recordings had come out whiny, nasal, and tinny, and I was convinced I'd lost all of my talent, only to record myself with the shitty computer built-in mic on the same song and hear an entirely different sound. The stupid cheapo mic had scooped out all of the great frequencies and had made me sound like I was lead singer for Sunny Day Real Estate.

IMO the only way I'll ever record vocals well is if someone tapes me without me knowing.

btw thank you for your comments DJP and Go1db3rg :)

I kind of have a dumb joke, whenever anybody asks me to listen to their unfinished record for comments, I always tell them without even listening to re-sing the entire thing. 'Cause why not? You can re-sing an album in a day. And it's not like you're losing your old takes.

not all listeners want the same thing tho! I make music with the listener in mind but in my case "the listener" is a relatively small group of people who probably have different standards of form & fidelity than you & your audience.

You are already distinguishing between "songs for self" and "songs for an audience" so we are in agreement, regardless of the difference between your audience (your friends) and my audience (my in-laws)

I kind of have a dumb joke, whenever anybody asks me to listen to their unfinished record for comments, I always tell them without even listening to re-sing the entire thing. 'Cause why not? You can re-sing an album in a day. And it's not like you're losing your old takes.

― you and me against the board (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, October 9, 2013 11:40 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. can never have enough vocal takes. eventually after singing too much you get to the point of diminishing returns, but if they've been away from it for a while, you can get a fresh new take that improves a few areas.

^^^^ 100% agreed

i've always enjoyed this anecdote about "Together in Electric Dreams":

When Oakey recorded the song it was over very quickly, after the first full recording Moroder told Oakey that the first take was "good enough, as first time is always best". Oakey who thought he was just rehearsing insisted on doing another take. Moroder let him but to this day Oakey is convinced that Moroder still used the first take on the final production.

but obv not all of us are Phil Oakey

The thing about doing a ton of vocal takes is that then you have to go back and listen to them critically and decide which bits of which ones are keepers and that is the most agonizing part of the whole ordeal. But then maybe that's what I'm paying the producer to do and I should just ask him to just do it after I leave but that takes trust and I am kind of a control freak.

The thing about doing a ton of vocal takes is that then you have to go back and listen to them critically and decide which bits of which ones are keepers and that is the most agonizing part of the whole ordeal. But then maybe that's what I'm paying the producer to do and I should just ask him to just do it after I leave but that takes trust and I am kind of a control freak.

― St3ve Go1db3rg, Wednesday, October 9, 2013 12:13 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it is a little bit like "Lens #1, or Lens #2" at the eye doctor's office. I think it is often best left to the producer, because what a singer considers the best take and what a listener considers the best may not be the same thing.

ha yeah, it's "oh man, I was really hooked in on take #3 and phonating like a beast" vs "take #4 sounds like you understand what the words you're singing mean"

haha yes. that's another reason I hate recording - first few takes and I'm all like Rocky while Gonna Fly Now is playing, feeling hte music, fourth and ongoing it's like "Christ, AGAIN?", and you can start hearing the difference.

and no matter who makes hte final decision or how much I liked the finished product prior to completing it, the moment I listen for the first time after it's done I hate it anyway.

it's weird, after the long process of writing, recording, mixing, and mastering has been done and i listen back to it, sometimes i feel like i can only hear it on a level of "these sounds are nice, it's nice to listen to nice sounds." it's a weird detachment that's so far removed from the anxiety involved when you still have to make decisions.

It's more or less impossible for me to hear one of my completed projects as a piece of music. It always sounds like a pile of components for a long long time. After maybe a couple of years there's enough distance for me to start hearing an album as actual music again.

Wow, so glad everyone has exactly the same experiences and hang ups as I do wrt singing on tracks. Flipping nightmare !

Wow, so glad everyone has exactly the same experiences and hang ups as I do wrt singing on tracks. Flipping nightmare ! Like, why can't I sing as well in front of a studio mic as when I'm cycling or doing the dishes?

Sorry about x2 posts

you'll get it on take #3

Best/worst part, when mixing, is when the engineer solos your vocal track to the amusement of all.

that was usually my favorite part because the engineer would then use any oddities/fluctuations in my take to point out to the guitarist where he'd played something wrong </insufferablevocalist>

xp bring it on, I don't care </shitvocalist>

lol xp

In the studio about to do vocal takes, pls keep me in your prayers

Four fun vocal tricks for DAWs that I learned via trial-and-error and use regularly:

- when comping together your vocal take, create a separate track with a pitch corrector on it and keep it muted. Select notes here and there that need correction, snip the regions, mute the original, unmute the corrected. I only ever use this a max of three times on any mix tho bc perfectly tuned vocals sound like balls

- record your vocals Elliott Smith/Eno style, double them up hard-panned left-and-right, then when you've got that perfect dual vocal sound, slap them into mono and leave 'em there

- I almost always pitch-shift all lead vocal takes up 5-10 cents because vocals sound good when they're sharp. If Alicia Keys ever tried this she'd be clean off the B-list and on to the A, imho.

- Never do one-can-on, one-can-off when you are doing takes. You will sing flat. Turn your monitored vocal level up until it's as loud as your head-reverberation.

I almost always pitch-shift all lead vocal takes up 5-10 cents because vocals sound good when they're sharp.

This is the second-most valuable thing I ever learned about singing in college (the most valuable being sightreading).

Having a director be all "sharp all day if you want to, but if you go flat I WILL CUT YOU" really, really helped my pitch

Yeah man it's the cyanide in the Celine Dion cocktail. Sing sharp and they'll wet their pants

accidentally made trip hop just now

accidental trip hop

stumbled hop

btw I'm really happy w/ all yr guys' singing advice ty

- I almost always pitch-shift all lead vocal takes up 5-10 cents because vocals sound good when they're sharp

whoa, definitely gonna try this.

i'm pretty wary of pitch-shifting tbh. digital artifacts tend to sound brash to me. i think i'd rather try to get a good take.

Yeah. At first it's like "bbbbut what about this Neumann I rented and the API preamp I borrowed, what about my precious, precious fidelity" but it sounds so good, I can't stop using it. The Logic Pitch Corrector with all the notes turned off set to +5 cents is a magic trick. No artifacts. I even cheat and use it when doing tape mixes it sounds so good to my ears

it's pretty easy to pitch-correct a bad note ever so slightly to where it's not noticeable. I prefer to just get good takes myself where I can, but if it's literally one or two notes where I shit the bed and the rest of the track is usable, I'd rather just tweak it slightly then bother with the effort of re-singing that two seconds, which out of context, often is annoying.

thta's also because I live in a house with two 30-something alpha males who are likely to knock on my door and go "WHY DO YOU KEEP SINGING 'I BLESS THE RAINS' OVER AND OVER AGAIN IS YOUR BRAIN STUCK ON LOOP?"

I'll resing an entire phrase/verse to give the duff notes a context point

ugh, then all I think is "great now will I fuck up the notes I did right the last time", but then again you can always delete those so I answered my own question well it wasn't really a question but ehh comment redacted

it would be much easier if I had a private studio, cuz the one time I recorded "Wouldn't It Be Loverly", nobody bothered me when I did all four of the quartets parts, but when I started singing Eliza's part concerned roommates asked me if I'd adopted a cat in heat.

vocals are the absolute worst but after 25 years of recording em I've got some general principles

1) spend some time to find the right mic that enhances or matches yr vocal style and timbre. human voices have a wide and highly idiosyncratic frequency range, and microphones have a big impact on how your voice sounds (unless you're awesome, but face it, most of us aren't). have the engineer set up as many mics as they've got, try em all. this can lead to:

2) defend your right to get a good vocal sound. don't let engineers or bandmates discount, belittle, or try to rush the vocal process. this can be hard when you already feel shitty and self-conscious, but don't be bullied into using the first SM58 stuck in yr face. kind of blows my mind when musicians sink serious dollars, time, and energy into honing a unique sound, and then view vocalists who own their own microphones like divas. I'm guessing this attitude is prolly more prevalent in the (punk) rock world?

3) if you're home recording, get a mic preamp. it's amazing how one small piece of equipment can make such a difference, but it does, and it is highly likely the channel preamps suck on whatever mixer you're using.

4) get hammered. unless you're doing opera or something, in which case you don't need my advice, you could stand to loosen up a little.

5) avoid marathon vocal sessions to "get them all done". better to break the vocals into 2 or more smaller sessions. invoke rule #2 if necessary.

6) find the right lubricant. water, tea, milk, booze, they all have diff effects on yr voice. find the one that feels right. folks doing a lot of screaming will find milk thickens the roar.

7) when mixing, if you can hear an effect on your voice, it's prolly too much. dial it back a little. unless you're going for a v specific sound like a rockabilly well of reverb. what sounds really awesome the first time can start to sound like unnecessary window dressing after the hundredth listen, or 10 years later, whichever comes first.

6) find the right lubricant. water, tea, milk, booze, they all have diff effects on yr voice. find the one that feels right. folks doing a lot of screaming will find milk thickens the roar.

pineapple juice has been p nice at times

oh yeah, a couple more:

8) PERFORM. it's hard when you're alone in a room singing into a sprig of pantyhose, but if you're not making any expressions or emoting (and you're not doing a cover of "warm leatherette") that kind of blah is going to be audible. you don't have to go ethel merman on the mic, but don't be sterile. I've seen crazy ass human dynamo vocalists suddenly stand with their arms at their sides because they were "recording a take". fuck that!

9) get comfortable. if you wanna hold the mic, hold the mic. lay down. turn off the lights, get under a blanket, whatever gets yr head in the right place.

Reading all of this between takes y'all

You are already distinguishing between "songs for self" and "songs for an audience" so we are in agreement, regardless of the difference between your audience (your friends) and my audience (my in-laws)

― you and me against the board (flamboyant goon tie included),

Nah, it isn't just crut's friends, there are subcultural aesthetic differences dude that aren't just "personal." I agree with what emil.y was saying about form and content in terms of production, and there is plenty of music that I probably would like better if it didn't come across as too smooth or slick-sounding

The post was made with a wink, I count myself among crut's fans.

aw <3

And yeah, slick and smooth are the worst. I do not know what you mean when you tell me there are subcultural aesthetic differences dude that aren't just "personal." I am not talking about my personal tastes when I say "a mix makes a record". I'm talking about making music for public consumption, public processing.

I'm talking about making music for public consumption, public processing.

that is what I am saying -- you are making generalizations, and consitituting the public as an undifferentiated mass, which it isn't. Certain production (or lack thereof) will be judged by a different aesthetic in certain subcultures. Making music for the noise underground or for black/doom metal audiences -- which is a "public" -- the expected sounds, the production aesthetic is gonna be different than something aspiring to Pitchfork praise

And you are assuming that I am not including noise and metal in my generalizations.

considering that your advice is about "pro-sounding" production techniques and an emphasis on mixing -- it seems like you are privileging music where the focus is on the production and mixing, like when you claim that there aren't shitty songs, which is pretty ridiculous. Granted, we can't all agree on what they are, but so much music, even on ilx, where there is a great interest in production technique, is discounted with "this is a bad song"

One of my main problems with the band Baroness is that I think their production on albums like Blue is totally shitty and doesn't do them any justice

Good production doesn't have to mean great mixing - it's whatever suits the song. Darkthrone would have sounded shit if they'd been produced in an expensive studio, but even the grittiest of black metal has had thought put into the production whether it was produced on an old C90 cassette or on pro studio equipment.

When I work with any client I am primarily interested in "what they want out of this recording" and often that is "top sales" and/or "good reviews", regardless of genre. That goes for noise records; Christ, ignoring my own bucolic records, I've acted as mixer on more noise recordings than any other genre. No metal records, tho :(

it seems like you are privileging music where the focus is on the production and mixing

This is exactly what I am doing-- except I am suggesting that this is what the public does, whether they know it or not. Great songs are hard to sink and rotten songs are hard to get flying. But plenty of neutral-bad songs find fame and fortune because they are well-mixed (Rhye and Ratatat immediately spring to mind) and plenty of neutral-good songs don't receive the mix they deserve and blow away upon release.

wrt my "advice about "pro-sounding" production" like my list of Fun With DAWs that was specifically for the other people posting in this thread about how hard it is to record vocals.

so you are basically modifying your stance that there aren't any shitty songs

less fighting, more tips for recording pls

I dunno sarahell this is not the first time that I feel you've read my posts through, well, whatever the opposite of rose-coloured glasses are. Death glasses.

i think you are projecting. i have criticized your posts on a grand total of 2 threads, dude. Considering how frequently you post, it is really a miniscule number.

"dude"

"grand total of 2 threads" = not the first time, i.e. Anyway, have a good evening

would you prefer to be called "dawg" like when drew d. is schooling ppl?

I have criticized whiney and lj on far more occasions and lj knows i have mad <3 for him, and whiney didn't show signs of any sort of weird persecution complex when i called him on his generalizations

I would love to engage with you!!! but I actually have to go meet my sisters I'm late. Fightcha later

Death glasses.

their first album was great in spite of the shitty mix and poorly recorded vocals

so what are the barest of minimum things required to record something in the comfort of your own home?

I currently have two probably crappy microphones that came with my friend's PA and are in my basement and a two year old macbook pro, and that's it.

if you're looking for a cheap entry level digital interface you can get something like this

http://www.amazon.com/M-Audio-M-Track-2-Channel-Portable-Interface/dp/B00BQ6KSN6

it comes with recording software but if it won't work on the macbook you can always use audacity or garage band

So I got through lead vocals plus double tracks for 3 songs last night in about 5 hours. There were some hair-pulling segments but so far it sounds pretty awesome and nothing had to be pitch corrected or really chopped up and the producer told me I'm a good singer. Feels good man. Each song after the first took successively less time and difficulty to get through so hopefully that trend continues and by song 11 I will nail the whole thing in the first take.

If you can afford it, I suggest Reason 7 - it comes with a full DAW and audio interface and it's under £300 if you shop around.

SG - you are a really good singer IIRC.

the time of day can really affect how i sound. baritones = morning, falsettos = evening. That's what I've found. I'm not sure where I sit on the vocal scale, think i might have a fairly wide range but it would be interesting to speak to someone who knows their shit and tell me what range i'm best at.

Anyway, back to this possibly-tedious side-track w sarahell--

I'm going to ignore the personal comments and stuff like "weird persecution complex" because it suggests there are hurt feelings involved? which there aren't, glad to be here etc.--

And wrt "there are no shitty songs" that is an inaccurate paraphrase of what I was saying above, but for clarity: I am saying that it is rare in my experience that an album can be sunk by shitty songs alone, mix has to be bad too--

but in response to the perceived specificity of my argument to the Pitchfork set-- not an unfair assumption I guess but still an assumption-- tbh the two records I was thinking about most when it came to "mix makes the record" were Godspeed's latest (two-inch-tape, Neotek board, best sounding room in the country) and the Goslings record that won the Archive Records poll which was according to the press release: "lovingly recorded to two-inch tape" also the disparity in quality between the good C Spencer Yeh records and less good ones, all mix issues to my ears as his writing is consistently good, and loads of classical recordings where the performance is secondary to the recording quality. Also when I say "it's a good mix" or "well-mixed" that doesn't necessarily mean "hi-fi" at all, it means that the sonics of the recording are great, the terms of which vary from genre to genre

xpost

Haha, thanks dude! I was functionally tone deaf as a high school theater kid to the point where I could only get non-singing roles in musicals (so I never got to realize my dream of playing Pontius Pilate) and I still think of myself that way sometimes but I've come a long way and I'm feeling pumped about this new album.

Also definitely agreed re time of day, early morning is Stephin Merritt/Tom Waits/Leonard Cohen time.

xp - thanks for the thorough explanation!

catching up w/ this thread

i really like recording vocals. they are my favorite thing to record! a lot of the feelings expressed itt about recording vox apply more to recording guitar for me.

the one advantage to recording vocals over recording guitar is that when I botch a vocal line, I don't have the ability to fling my vocal cords across the room in anger.

(this is one reason I quit playing guitar).

something about recording makes me sings better than normal. something about the pressure and the concentration and the otherwise silent room

my musical life is ruling atm

- old band that was in what looked like a terminal rut now blazing hot productive and making our best music ever after some instrumentation changes (went from 2 guitars, drums to guitar, bass, drums) and spending our writing block learning covers & getting high and just generally bonding as bros (if not as musicians). playing a sweet bill next weekend and i think we're gonna kill it

- putting on a show this weekend as a fundraiser to meet my radio show's goal in the station's upcoming funding drive. i had been really lazy and shitty about it and thought it was not going to happen until i got my shit together and everything fell into place so beautifully at the last minute

ps just wanted to say i love reading this thread/board so much because of the variety of backgrounds of everyone posting in it. even if i don't always understand some of the technical stuff the real heads are talking about it's just so rad that artists coming from such difft places can support each other & give tips, advice etc. \m/ <3

I might have found my Twitter niche; a capella champion. Just had two separate a capella groups follow me, including a group who made the finals of The Sing Off the year Pentatonix won.

I don't know precisely how I feel about this but I think it might rule?