what is going on in your musical life

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.

my inclination is to say "give 'em what they want" unless you are 150% behind the boom box idea, which does sound pretty fun

My wife and I are singing Bach's St Mark Passion on Sunday. Neither of us have any solos. It's mostly going to be a gigantic cakewalk, I think.

I've discovered that my 4 month old baby seems captivated and enthralled when I play the acoustic guitar which has dramatically increased the amount of time I spend playing the guitar.

xpost now I'm imagining the St Mark Passion performed as a cakewalk (in the musical sense of cakewalk)

Ha, I imagined the same thing when I read DJP's post.

So I started trying to play the mandolin a while ago. Fun. Knowing how to play the guitar turns out to be surprisingly unhelpful for mandolin, as the different string-to-string intervals make any memorized scale forms or chord forms useless.

The instrument's constraints have sent my head to some interesting places. First, the limited fretboard real estate means that comparatively few chords are comfortable and full-sounding; the effect is to limit the keys that are readily playable. Going much higher than the first seven or eight frets quickly gets plinky and constricted. So it doesn't lend itself well to guitar-friendly keys like E and A and B. I generally end up transposing everything into G or C (or sometimes D).

Second, the number of strings makes it harder to play any but major and minor chords, so it tends to discourage the jazzy/bluesy coloring that one takes for granted on the guitar. Without the temptation to extend chords or add frilly fingerstyle ornament, it's easier to see how simple most pop music is at its core. This is pleasing in a way.

Some people treat it like a violin with frets - precise single-note stuff, using insanely fast tremolo for long notes. That's not really something I can do, nor do I feel a need to do. There are so many people who are so very very good at doing that that it feels drearily uphill to even try. I guess I use it more like a small guitar, or like people use ukuleles lately. It's very portable for travel, and very easy to pick it up and play simple three- or four-chord songs on while sitting on the couch.

Because I'm not particularly into bluegrass, I feel no urgency about being able to play "Devil's Dream" or "Wildwood Flower" or "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" or whatever. I'm more likely to use it for highly personal noodling, or things one wouldn't ordinarily associate with a mandolin. "Boys Don't Cry," "Save the Last Dance for Me," "Psycho Killer," "Here Comes Your Man," "Satellite of Love."

My sincerest joy will always be playing drums live, with a chugging sloppy loud rock band in front of me. Since having small children, though, I don't really have the time and energy to lug drums and amps to some U Street bar in order to play for 20 minutes to a dozen people. There may be a time when I can do that again; right now the handiest substitute is a twangily rambling version of "All Apologies" on the porch, with an audience of stars and rabbits.

Here's the poster for our concert on Sunday:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CBCDHyRVIAEH6vS.jpg

(DJP pictured second from left)

lol

concert went well btw even if I started blatantly misreading the German towards the end due to fatigue

I am back to my normal home activity of vomiting violin overdubs and ARP sprooiees and clunks onto people's albums for cash.

Had a moment of clarity last month and I’m gonna play my last solo gig this year, touring is stupid

would love for you to elaborate on this.

i was recently talking to my gf about how i want to use a short sabbatical from work for a tour, and she was like "but i thought you don't love traveling, and don't care that much about playing live?" and those are very valid points.

i spent most of my 20s only going places if it was for a gig, so i got used to musical tourism. just taking a vacation without playing a show seems kind of anticlimactic, but i'm beginning to see the appeal.