what is going on in your musical life

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.

the new Cassini video is up on Psychedelic Baby, we filmed this a couple years ago on ~~scary~~ golf course in the winter, kind of a black metal look, this is the most noisy/darkest track we it's edited/fucked with practice space jams

https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2024/07/vote-for-miles-by-cassini-new-album-the-cassini-promise.html

I am getting very strong FACS vibes from this, which is a very good thing IMO

I've also put out a new ep.

https://chrisirregardless.bandcamp.com/album/no-hope-of-a-new-world

I'm playing my first music show since moving to Portland, put together three other acts to play short sets, but am still fearing that only 10 people will show up at a venue that holds 80. It's that math of knowing 50 people total who might come, then figure 25 might think about going, and 10 ultimately end up doing so.

we just played our record release show, the bands we booked to play with us were so fucking good and so stoked to be there even though we were playing in a hot pit/back room of a bar on a muggy 90 degree day in new york, and we played SO WELL i mean we rehearsed a lot but it was really amazing to notice how much we were clicking, and also someone ive had a crush on for forever was there and we made out after the set :) best night of my life, play music with your friends

hell yeah

xpost thank you so much djp, love facs

that's awesome ivy!!!

I'm collaborating with a vocalist that I have massive respect for and it's going well I think, just trying to generate lots of material and then pan for gold. Definitely have to quiet a little bit of imposter syndrome but all I can do is keep making things. Thinking about how I wouldn't have been ready for this until now, I learned my lesson years ago when I felt too precious about 'wasting' 'good' ideas/time and was super stressed about the end result. Now I feel much better about throwing as much at the wall as possible, and if *any* of it ends up coming out as a record I will be stoked.

that's the attitude to have
who is the singer?

xpost Christine I got (I think your first?) synth EP on Bandcamp and have really enjoyed it

i am performing solo at camp for an audience of my peers and a big bunch of 8-16 year olds in a school gym. tough room! i am prepared though and i dress-rehearsed my set last night. exactly 30 min!

tomorrow

nice, my daughter will be there, as you know

eazy i was listening to your old album a few weeks ago after accidentally figuring out one of your songs, it holds up

i'm in a bit of a creative malaise as we're waiting on external factors that will impact scheduling of our album release and trying to figure out how much promotion to bother doing. thinking about spending a lot of money on new gear to spark creativity

I saw her yesterday but didn’t embarrass her by saying hi. She was busy w friends tootling down the hallway.

good luck ll!!! sounds like a fun gig

by mostly happy accident we had like three photographers at the album release show, so now i suddenly have more pictures of myself drumming than i ever have before

https://i.imgur.com/EPMY5gH.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/vPBkV0a.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/vm0JtEZ.jpeg

Great pics! I didn't know ddrum made acoustic kits (yours?).

ums, I don't really want to say publicly (mostly for jinxing reasons) but can email you if you're curious.

not my drums, the venue's backline!

god bless you for using the venue's kit

love,
band members the world over

God bless that venue for having a backline kit

it seems like that would have to be just about mandatory in NYC, though i don't really understand how bands work in NYC (in terms of having practice space, getting gear to shows, etc.)

i have played venues without a backline kit, it always sucks ass. i am still very lucky in that one member of the band owns a car

my neighborhood has a devoted music practice space, ton of rooms full of gear, also feel very lucky that that exists even though it can't possibly make money and must be a front for something

It does suck ass! I’ll do it but you have to be some kind of nuts to want to tote your own kit somewhere you do not need to tote it.

The drummer's dilemma, haul your own kit (sucks and increases changeover time, but you're comfortable) vs use the backline kit (which usually has beat up heads, stripped stands and throne that you can barely adjust, feels weird).

Backline is extremely rare here, reserved for festivals (to get that trademark Festival Tom Sound (TM)) and a couple jazz clubs. I think for rock shows there's that weird negotiation where one of the drummers need to volunteer to let everyone else use their kit.

best are the bands that show up without a kit or bass amp and just assume they can use yours

Heh.

One time I went to Dizzy’s at Lincoln Center and overhead the drummer for the late show being asked why he didn’t bring his drums and saying “well, I can just use the other guy’s.” Except the other guy from the first set didn’t let him so they had to go and find some old beater set for him to play.

my band has a new album coming out next month, there are three preview tracks up now on our bandcamp: https://shreddedsun.bandcamp.com/album/wilding
i'm really happy with how it turned out, we made some investments in some really basic gear (like some better mics and those mic stands that clip onto the drums themselves) that i think helped with a more consistent drum sound, and we stretched out our songwriting beyond our standard 3-minute bangers on some of the songs

Did you end up mixing this in the box?

yup
something you said about mixing on ilx actually stuck in my head, about how a lot of times a good mix involves having an element of the song being mixed "too" loud. it was helpful, i definitely think i used to focus more on everything being equally audible, now i'm more comfortable pushing elements that i want to emphasize way up to the front. the opposite sometimes too, mixing some parts "too" quiet leads to more dynamics. lol this all sounds so basic when i type it out

i guess i never really thought about it much in the past because i've traditionally gone for more of a "live" sound where things are more stripped down and the levels stay pretty consistent, but with this recording project i can be a little more creative in arrangements and mixing

I agree with all of that. Tracks sound great NA

yeah this sounds really good!!!

Love to hear that, yeah it sounds great.

My musical life feels like it's exploding lately - working on two records (trying to get up a an hour or two early to get some music time in before work, since I don't have much other time during the week), getting some video and live show prep together for an all-drums album that's coming out in a couple months, practicing.

Played a last minute sub gig yesterday with a New Orleans r&b guy who was in town, felt pretty good and it was fun to bring out all this Zigaboo/Clyde/Earl Palmer type of playing that I love but don't get to do very often.

With mixing I also stopped trying to aim for everything being the same volume. Now I go for audibility. Like that synth in the background is there and as long as the listener concentrates on it a little, they can hear it. Partly I did this out of practicality - ear fatigue while mixing makes trying to get everything the same volume a tedious chore. But also I love records where some instrument is a little bit hidden in the mix and I don't notice it's there until I've heard the song a few times already.

I need to get better at this, and to take my own advice more often. Sometimes when I keep turning something down in the mix, I take that as a cue to mean that it may as well not be there, and I do like mixes with only a few elements where everything gets room to breathe frequency-wise. But I think I also need to do more of what you're describing, tucking little subliminal things in the mix that you feel more than hear, sometimes that can really add depth and keep the ear engaged.

With mixing I also stopped trying to aim for everything being the same volume. Now I go for audibility. Like that synth in the background is there and as long as the listener concentrates on it a little, they can hear it. Partly I did this out of practicality - ear fatigue while mixing makes trying to get everything the same volume a tedious chore. But also I love records where some instrument is a little bit hidden in the mix and I don't notice it's there until I've heard the song a few times already.

― you gotta roll with the pączki to get to what's real (snoball), Monday, August 5, 2024 11:43 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

an engineer i've worked with a lot also taught me a nice trick -- say it's a little keyboard or guitar overdub that's going to play during the verse, if you raise it up in the mix a bit before the vocal comes in, you can pull it down while the vocal is there and psychologically you've already established it for the listener so they will continue to notice it even at a lower volume (it's very possible this is common knowledge too, i just didn't know it)

also the Cassini record is out! I played my very own record on my very own turntable :)

https://echodelickrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-cassini-promise

PSA: Sweetwater, Adorama and Alto have the Klark Teknik 76-KT on sale for $150 (not an affiliate link or anything like that):

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/1176KT--klark-teknik-1176-kt-classic-fet-style-compressor?mrkgadid=&mrkgcl=28&mrkgen=gpla&mrkgbflag=1&mrkgcat=proaudio&acctid=21700000001645388&dskeywordid=&lid=58700008696010903&dsproductgroupid=&product_id=1176KT&prodctry=US&prodlang=en&channel=online&storeid=&device=c&network=x&matchtype=&adpos=largenumber&locationid=9030985&creative=&targetid=&campaignid=21160912466&awsearchcpc=&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzva1BhD3ARIsADQuPnVo7j_U7OFHR5E6Uor5e4rtpJ0RrxS9_-Sbw9_v0M46R6MXuMTS_JMaAuKiEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

This is down from $349. A real Universal Audio 1176 reissue is $2999.99 new.

I took a chance the last time I couldn't resist a Klark sale (KT is Behringer, if you don't know) on their Roland Dimension knock off (a stereo BBD chorus). I think it was $79.99, and well worth it, though its a subtle effect and probably isn't the most phase-legal outboard you could find. I've never used this KT-76, but have used the real 1176s and probably would never buy a real one just due to cost. Thats a good price though if it's any good whatsoever. We will see!

oh I should add that it's backordered but they're still accepting orders that wont ship for several months.... but honoring the sale price.

That is tempting, I've never used a hardware compressor and I'd love to know if it would add something that I'm not getting from plugins. But I fear I would be too lazy to set up the routing every time and just use one of my many great vst compressors.

I recorded a bunch of hi-hat tracks the other day (incl. different stacks of crash cymbals on the hi hat stand), and remembered why I record everything but hi-hats at home. I think that there's nothing to expose a not-so-great sounding room more than hi-hats -- short, sharp, and metallic. I get surprisingly decent results with everything else in an untreated basement (drums, percussion, ride cymbals) but hi-hat sounds just drive me insane. May have to either use samples or re-record in a makeshift blanket fort.

Pls post pics if you go the blanket fort!

My band is finally going into the studio to shed the songs we’ve been slowly working up since 2018. Covid put a 2-year damper on stuff and we’re generally all busy adults etc etc

but i don’t 100% know how I feel about laying down songs that were written in the throes of a love affair that ended over 5 years ago, political stuff inspired by spring 2020, & all that. I should move faster but my bones are creaky. Probably nobody will notice the political stuff much, and tunes about a doomed affair have no expiry date, but it all just seems so … old.

Very typical, as soon as I have 10-12 unrecorded songs I get total writers block until they’re recorded at which point the floodgates open again. Maybe I should look at it less as an album and more as a creative enema.

I have yet another collection of bangs, drones, and hums available for your listening displeasure.

https://chrisirregardless.bandcamp.com/album/practicing-magic

my band's new album is out today: https://shreddedsun.bandcamp.com/album/wilding
i'm happy with all the songs. i don't know how cohesive it is as an album but i just think of it as the white album of diy indie rock

(mostly in terms of the diversity of song styles represented across the album but also in terms of it being a generation-defining classic)