what is going on in your musical life

also Puffin otm about age -- using it as an excuse for not playing just means you don't get to have fun/express yourself via music because you're limiting your options

i finally found a reliable practice space - it's a reservable uchicago room with a set of drums, so i don't have to move anything around. wish i could muffle the drums and toms because they're boooooomy as fuck and rapidly played notes on them get lost in the wash, but i can't complain too much.

my band forces at work has been together for like 4 years and we're finally putting out a 4-song EP, haha. sometime very soon! i think it turned out ok. as usual, kind of hard to tell when something is "finished."

I played with Damo last night!!! And it seemed to go down quite well, I think, though you rarely get people who hated your set come up and tell you so the people who do come up after the gig are a self-selecting sample of positive view-havers.

MORE INFO PLEASE!!

what kind of stuff did you play, what did he do, who else was playing? did you rehearse? was he friendly? i have a lot of questions

Yay Emily! LL otm! Did you chat with him?

whooaaaaa nice!

Most of the people who were playing were from Brighton/London and knew each other, but we also had Eda from Boredoms/Drum Eyes. The backing line-up was made up of violin - cello - guitar - synths - drums - toy instruments - percussion. He was really friendly but I was v starstruck and sick with nerves so kind of couldn't talk that much. We did have a few proper chats over cigarette breaks. Four of us had rehearsed together to get a feel for how we played but all eight of us only did maybe a ten-minute soundcheck? Damo gave a reasonable amount of input into what feel he was going for that night and gave us all a pre-game pep talk, and we had a kind of "pull the name out of the hat" thing to choose the order we'd all come onstage, which was pretty funny.

Yeah for me the age difference is weird; I'm a professor at a different university and even my juniors and seniors seem like little kids to me now. Plus, you know, crippling self-doubt, fear of the unknown, low self opinion, etc.

have been feeling pretty uninspired lately and it's putting me in one of those moods where i want to sell all my guitar gear and buy some obscure synthesizer or ancient instrument and focus on mastering something that no one else plays. it would be really nice to play something very compact and self-contained instead of having to deal with amps and cables and whatnot.

^I love the idea of selecting a really limited set of tools and making a group of tracks. Like one Casio keyboard and a couple of pedals, or one folder of samples and a couple specific plugins.

^^^ That's what's really generating a lot of work from me right now. I am limiting myself only to what I can do in the Nanostudio DAW app (which does not do straightforward audio tracks; any audio from a mic or from other apps has to be chopped into modest size chunks for use on the pads in its drum sampler, everything else has to come from the onboard synth). Have just about amassed enough stuff in this mode for a short album which hopefully will have some sort of a unified feel due to the limitations of means.

(LL one of the tracks has a stompin' 2-bar loop of your drumming from one of our collabos!)

ha, what? that's awesome! i wanna hear it!!

Yeah for me the age difference is weird; I'm a professor at a different university and even my juniors and seniors seem like little kids to me now. Plus, you know, crippling self-doubt, fear of the unknown, low self opinion, etc.
I'm a professor too! They do seem like kids. I don't necessarily want to play with kids either. The rest of that self-image stuff is within your control though, and speaking for myself, there's not enough time left in my life to give over one more second to any of those three things, or the etc. I'm in a phase of radical self-worth i guess.

there's not enough time left in my life to give over one more second to any of those three things

otm, even less left in mine!

I've been in a duo for 3+ years with a bandmate that's 14 years younger than me. I've played with people that much older than me too. Age is less "important" than complementary aesthetics, approaches to playing, and expectations. Enjoying their company is also important if you want a regular thing.

My best ever co-guitarist was when I was 22 and he was pushing 40, I had never been in a band and he had been in all kinds of them (I saw him for the first time in 20 yrs this spring and felt all mushy when he told me he also considered me his best foil ever)

So yeah age ain't nothing (at least sometimes)

Tfw you had something v short and straightforward but nice enough basically completed in July, spent 2.5 months, when you had unprecedented precious time on your hands, making it more and more complex but never quite getting it right, and then realise that you probably had it right in July.

Goddamn thing is finally done (string quartet movement that took WAY too long).

String quartets are for nerds with special interest for classical music...

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Monday, 11 October 2010 16:44 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Should have listened to the guy.

Yeh the age thing, I always think of Gary in pavement. He brought so much.

Good post earlnash. Gonna be sending stuff off for mastering soon and I'll keep that in mind

We had our first rehearsal for our fall concert yesterday; here is one of the pieces we are going to sing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rInPdARnYw

finally got our new album mastered, here's a track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2WsUWf0sXQ&feature=youtu.be

Doesn't play for me.

huh wtf

how about this
https://youtu.be/Q2WsUWf0sXQ

That works.

I finally worked up the guts to contact a local musician I'm a big fan of to offer my services in support. I uploaded some old bullshit on soundcloud for her to check out, but haven't heard back from her, which is kind of a blow to the ego, but hey so what

another one:
https://t.co/kyeaKAG4oA

Not my musical life, but my brother's; his band's song was played on this episode of the Tony Kornheiser Show (31:25)

https://art19.com/shows/the-tony-kornheiser-show/episodes/76aba484-c675-448b-b17b-1f210df0a7e0

I'm going to perform Blonde on Blonde, in full on Thursday.

won best performance at this event:
http://finishing-school-art.net/Executive-Order-Karaoke-The-Obama-Years-2016

One of the groups I sing in has been dormant for a while. Recently, we got the call that we needed to put together a donated performance in about a week for a private house party. We were never a large group anyway; at our largest during my tenure, we had 10 members (SSAAATTBBB) and in the intervening years, half have moved away and others have become too busy to sing in the group, so we needed to rally to pull together this performance. The woman organizing everything found an accompanist, recruited a former member and found a new tenor, and pulled together a group of kids from a feeder chorus directed by one of the group's alums so we'd have a decent representation to do about an hour's worth of music. This was the state of things at the end of last week.

Over the course of this week:

- My wife dropped out for health reasons
- The returning member dropped out for health reasons
- The tenor dropped out to celebrate his birthday
- The accompanist dropped out because it is an unpaid gig

So, this Saturday I will be singing a gig a capella with one other adult ad 5 kids I've never heard before for a dude's party, which will have a bunch of donors in attendance and where we need to be on our A-game.

SHOULD BE FUN

(I'm considering a pseudonym)

set list?

All spirituals:

Here's what I was thinking as far as rep:
Ain't a that good news
Ain't got time to die
Done made my vow
I want Jesus to walk with me
King Jesus is a listening
Oh freedom
Lazrus
Rockin' Jerusalem
Ride the Chariot
Soon-ah will be done
Live a humble
Ride the chariot

One band I'm playing with went from 3 piece to 2, I'm no longer supporting percussion but playing full kit. Enjoying that but it limits my wardrobe somewhat. Also slightly more time consuming since I have to practice new songs & not f them up but it has been really fun so far.

our new album is OUT
http://societyofrockets.org/
https://societyofrockets.bandcamp.com/

woo!
looks like my band will FINALLY have an EP available on bandcamp sometime this month! i think it turned out pretty cool! i love playing music, even though I don't do it too much these days.

this is Forces at Work yr talking about?

yeah! it's only taken us like 4 years to put together a 4-song EP.

I'm guessing you're not in a German progressive metal band?

haha no

call the lawyers

those guys are more like Farces At Work imo.
those are great song titles though

lol @ FORCILIZED

apparently my colleague in the spiritual group has access to accompanying tracks for our solos, which is good

it also looks like I'll be singing something like 5 solos in this gig, which will be silly (I've only ever sung 1 or 2 but this is what happened when all the conservatory-trained adults drop out and you're backfilling them with skittish high school kids)

that looks like a wonderful setlist DJP

Our actual set list is going to look more like:

In Bright MAnsions
Joshua fit de battle of Jericho
Soon-ah will be done
Old Man Lazrus
Way up in Beulah land
Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel
Ain't-a that good news?
I can tell the world

Solos that I will be splitting with the other adult include some of the following (the first 7 are hers):

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child
My Lord, What A Morning
Just Another Day
Balm in Gilead
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
I love the name
Stand still, Jordan
Been in the Storm
Ride on, King Jesus
You may bury me in the east
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen
I want Jesus to walk with me
Deep River

Balm in Gilead is a beaut, one of my favorites

The only church music I know is "you saw me crying in the chapel" which, by the use of the word "you" introduces a third party, which really isn't necessary.