what is going on in your musical life

ok lol

i was talking with my drum teacher last night and i told him about my CANNES ad and he was like hahaha no one who wants to be in a can cover band is looking at craigslist ads and i was like i know but now it's out there in the world. i think i convinced him to try to talk to people for me. he said he would at least. i'll have to follow up and i have a good excuse anyway so i guess this is working better for me than anything else so far.
this, i think, is how it works?

gotta be better human options than those, KM

that's good news, fgti!

xxp yeah definitely a good dodge. I'm v curious how they telegraphed/you became aware of their wealthy backgrounds tho

i asked what they did, and one said he was a model and the other said he worked as an insurance broker in the financial district. one of them grew up in hong kong and attended an international school while his father worked in finance there, and the other made a remark out of nowhere about how $100 is totally worth it for good lobster or crabs or something like that. also at one point during dinner a homeless man walked up and asked for money and they both looked not just scared, but repulsed.

i'm not completely opposed to hanging out with the wealthsters but unfortunately they paired it up with the expected derogatory comments about everyone that had a different background

they sound awful

I stopped making music in 2010. Before that, I had been doing music almost all of my life. Many of my friends are/were musicians and they said I was nuts and that I would eventually go back to music. Long story short, I told them no, and they said I should at least stick to doing a little bit of it, instead of selling my entire home studio. Anyway, I sold it all back then, and now I can't help but think about making music these days.

It's nice because I thought I had no more energy for music and had run out of musical ideas, but suddenly everything is coming back to me?

Now I'm torn between purchasing a classical guitar or a digital piano.

Karl I live near the lorimer stop of the L and maybe I'd play music w u? I play electric guitar in an unlettered squirrelly way but I've been playing a long time and I like making stuff up on the spot. However, I don't have a practice space (or even a decent amp currently!) and I don't rock very hard at my age (44). Or rather I like to play intensely but not that loudly.

yeah, it's the practice space thing that's difficult, because i have drums at my apt but there's no way to play them here. also no car to move drums anywhere. all i want is chris farley to show up and move my shit for me

The performance of my piece and a couple of others, incl. Scelsi, are streaming here:
http://www.onmc.info/listen/

There was one slightly awkward page turn but otherwise, the pianist did a very good job. The programme was generally great. They anticipate that more pieces will be streaming soon.

sund4r that's really nice

Thanks!

i kept waiting for the guitar to come in! but yeah, very nice.

On NYE we're going to be opening the night with a completely improvised show at our local venue with a bunch of other local musicians. Most of us won't have played together before. It felt like a really good idea when we first came up with it a few weeks ago and now the reality of just what this is going to end up like (i.e. a mess) is really starting to set in.

Anyone ever done anything like this? Any tips? If we're lucky then everyone involved will find a day or time to meet up and come up with a gameplan and hopefully a run-through.

i used to play in a sort of improv collective thing (10 people or so) when i lived in chicago. we had a fundamental disagreement (barely spoken of) about whether or not we would ever attempt to repeat certain parts or song structures that worked. some people would trot out an old riff that worked well in a previous jam, while others would play something new, every single time.

i bring that up because while it's a great idea to try to get together at least once before NYE to get a feel for how you might sound as a collective, it might be important to establish early on whether you're going to go totally improv or if you're going to set up a few loose structural parameters

make sure you have a good drummer who can provide a reliable foundation but still be responsive to whatever new elements emerge

Listen to Karyobin by the Spontaneous Music Ensemble and reproduce it note-for-note

Whenever I've played improvised gigs (nb this has only happened twice so far), we will agree on what key we're going to play in, but other than that we've just gone in completely blind and it seems to turn out OK.

I've played a lot of improv gigs with people who have played even more improv gigs. There are lots of rules of thumb and tips/tricks available online.

Having a rehearsal helps, even if you end up doing something completely different. It at least gives you a sense of what the other musicians play like, as well as logistical things like how loud you need to be, or how much you or others need to turn down.

Basic things:
Being able to hear one another (and yourself) is probably the most important thing (unless you are breaking up into smaller groups/units, with each smaller group having a leader).
You probably should play less than you instinctively want to
Unison and repetition sounds good
Being able to see each other is also very useful -- you can make good use of visual cues, even if you don't have a "conductor" -- improv people (e.g. Zorn) have systems of visual cues and hand signals that you can use that cover things beyond the obvious: stop, louder, faster stuff (e.g. do what this person is doing, play against that person, play a solo, etc.)

What is the instrumentation? Is it "rock" or "jazz" or ???

xp Karl -- I'd argue that the linchpin in these groups isn't the drummer but the bass player. Let the drummer go off and do interesting things, otherwise it gets boring.

amen!

(i know nothing about improvising in a group but i am always happy to watch people who let the drummer do interesting things)

otherwise you end up sounding like the dread band of jamming uncles

I was looking to get back into improv myself!

Did you ever play or study jazz, Sund4r?

Just listened to the piece you linked. Wow, very nice. Is the bass trombone player related to who I think he is related to?

Thanks, Jordan and JR&tB. That's me in 'theory teacher' mode, I guess? If you're thinking of David del Tredici, I don't think the trombonist (Montreal resident, currently studying in Basel, Switzerland) is related to him but it could be possible.

Unfortunately, I've never played jazz in any remotely serious way but I used to do a fair bit of free and structured improv. There's a substantial, quite active community here for that stuff; I think I'd enjoy getting back into it.

I've done a few improv gigs. My only advice is to be willing to fail in front of people.

Went to the Brooklyn Synth Expo last weekend, got to play with lots of neat gear, e.g. an Arp 2600. I also messed with a Bass Station II, which I'd read a lot about but never felt very interested in, but it immediately grabbed me. All the time I've spent VCR-programming my Matrix-6 made the Bass Station a joy to play with. As soon as I got home I found one on eBay for $360 and so far I'm loving it. It's looking like I've got a synth collection at this point. I definitely feel like all the bases are covered for now though.

A friend made a documentary about my band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PIiitFglMA

Currently remixing an album I recorded six years ago. It's weird to work with old material. The tracks sound complicated, but when the multitracks are open in the DAW there are four or five instruments at most, and the songs are arranged so they don't all play at the same time. Also smdh at my younger selfs bizarre EQing decisions, especially on kick drums and bass.

I do miss the feeling of 'I don't know what I'm doing, so I'll just have to do anything' that my guitar playing had back then. Now I know too much or perhaps not enough.

Ha yeah I chalk up the slowing creative output that aging brings on to "wisdom". Wisdom sucks

^^^

Luckily I am still super unwise wrt music making, it's the making of stories where I have succumbed to wisdomitis

If the same piece of yours gets accepted to every festival, that makes you some kind of compositional one-hit wonder, right?

"every festival you apply and get accepted to"

Congratulations!!

Now can you write three more pieces that are the exact same pls

it's the single, embrace it.

submitted my album for mastering today, and it's by far the best i've felt about mixes going in at this point in the process. i mean, you always do your best, but usually i'm hoping for some kind of magical improvement. this time i just want a solid mastering job.

I am having lunch with Barbara Hannigan
We are collaborating on a long-form vocal work next year
Text was selected by aero

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJnoU8oR76g#t=70

Oh man cooool

That is v cool. While it's not on the same scale, I'll have a short vocal piece performed next month at this: http://www.onmc.info/events/2014/8/10/double-feature-iii-sarah-albu-jen-mclachlen. First thing I've ever really written for voice (not counting aleatoric pieces that used vocals).

I'm in the final stages of mixing hell with another electric guitar/live electronics thing.

I can't compare with Hannigan video. That is a wild and dense piece of music.

My band is writing new material and this raw and crunchy demo from a couple weeks ago I thought turned out pretty cool.

https://soundcloud.com/earlnash/beggars-and-thieves

went in to lay down some tracks on Sunday. drummer was hungover and had had about 4 hours sleep so pretty much only got the drum tracks and a bass track down before the day's end which was expensive and frustrating.

Finally finished this (new proggy guitartronic thing): https://soundcloud.com/sund4r-subramanian/broken-refraction

(Change "4" to "a").

(Streaming sound quality isn't ideal, obv, but the WAV can be downloaded for a while if you're a nerd like me.)

I have been asked to play a "songwriter showcase" in about a month. The emphasis is on songwriters playing really stripped-down versions of their songs and talking about their "process" etc. I need advice on whether I should play by myself with acoustic guitar, which is the spirit of the thing but I am kind of uncomfortable with because it's going to be VERY white guy acoustic guitar singer-songwriter, or if I should cheat by having backing tracks of some kind to play over, which may be cheezy in its own way. I kind of want to have a big cassette boom box with my backing tracks on cassette, kind of like "Psycho Killer" at the beginning of "Stop Making Sense," but maybe this is equally pretentious and annoying? And I'd have to buy a boom box. I'm a little nervous about the whole thing bc I've never really played a set by myself, but also it's fun bc I haven't played live at all in a long time and it's nice to have something to work towards.