what is going on in your musical life

The solo nylon string guitar project is taking its sweet time getting off the ground- I should have started in the cradle like Sund4r- so I went back to the egg and am now also playing bass in an adult student jazz band, which is actually kind of fun. man alive, maybe I can hook you up to play the instrument of you choice, but you will have to audition.

first show with new band: accomplished
second show a week from tomorrow, psyched about it because i set up the whole thing myself

emil.y -- i am ready for whatever you have to send me. i think you have my email but if not, message me somewhere and i'll get it to you. i'm in the mood to work on something different and new!

Congratulations!

I bought a cajon

Congratulations!

Last weekend I did two marathon recording sessions as part of a choir recording music for a marquee video game coming out next year.

Sounds cool

Choir Hero 3!

LL I'm continually inspired by your sticktuitiveness with the drumming and band-ing. Makes me want to do more.

thanks! it's something i have wanted for as long as i can remember and i've gotta work extra hard because let's be honest -- everyone expects me to suck. but i don't! i still have a lot to learn but i do not suck. and my ideas are finally starting to sound like real music. it feels like a self-propelling machine :)

yes, always impressed and inspired by LL's attitude and approach on this thread

agreed!

I bought an 8-track digital recorder, an older Korg D888 model. my wife and I are trying to make time to play music together, mostly minimal/modal jams as she is a total beginner (which I view as a strength), she is learning melodica and accordion and I have an Epiphone electric and a baritone uke. we finally got our basement cleared out yesterday, gonna set up the PA system down there and experiment!

Hey LL, I'm still up for collaborating but I've got a fair bit on my plate at the moment (trying to prepare for a big move), so I'm not sure when I'll get anything to you. It will happen at some point, I promise.

Oooh looking forward to finding out what game that's for in 2018

xp

emil.y -- no sweat! whenever you feel like sending me something -- some minimal rhythmic bloops, whatever -- send it on over! you may find amusing: sometimes if i am just playing for fun i play la dusseldorf :)
sleeve -- i am bored - if you record something cool send it to me, have fun!! also i am always heartened to hear of people embracing beginner energy.

show is tomorrow and i am trying to channel every ounce of positive energy toward making it a good one. i put this thing together myself and i'm not about to poop out on it now. you never know what could happen or when so i am hoping for the best. i am finally playing the kind of bill i want to be on, i think our music will sound cool and fun between the other acts, and if people aren't there to hear it then so what. at the very least it will have happened.
right?!

There may be better threads to post this, but well, this is what's going on in my musical life. A couple weeks ago I got booked to open for Cryst@l K4stl3s. I was very excited about this, because I've been trying to transition into doing club-oriented dj sets based around my new music (as opposed to my solo live set where I played drums). It's been slow going and I rarely get asked to do things where I live -- the dj community here is very insular and out-of-town opportunities have not been coming up, so this is essentially only the 2nd time I would have actually gotten to play out in a club setting this year. That, combined with some other challenges going on in my life, made it something I was really really looking forward to.

Now I'm reading AG's account of her time in the band (see the CC thread for that), and figuring out if the right thing to do is to drop off the show. It is, right? As much as I want to do this, I can't see how I could go through with it and not feel scummy.

it is absolutely the right thing to do

ha i was wondering if you had seen that and how you were dealing with it. it sucks to cancel but dude seems like someone you shouldn't associate yourself with. in my opinion.

I agree with sleeve and NA.

A co-worker suggested playing her statement (text-to-speech) at the end of my set O_O

That would be legendary.

I don't think I could survive the next couple weeks of social media still being on the bill though. I'm writing my email to the promoter now.

I bought a mandolin

um xp

(yeah don't do that show, everyone else otm)

nowhere near as bad as what jordan's dealing with, but the drummer in the band i've been playing with gets into a LOT of drama on facebook. he's always on there at like 2 a.m. accusing people of stealing $5000 in gear from him eight years ago, his wife got into an argument with his former bandmate on there, etc. etc. nothing terrible but just makes me nervous about his ... stability i guess.

Don't know why but "I bought a mandolin", coming straight after Jordan's story, made me weep with laughter.

Jordan, you are absolutely doing the right thing. And it sucks to have this raining on your parade but it is the right thing and I applaud you for it. Are you putting out a public statement as to why you are pulling out too? (just curious)

xxxxp

Yeah I definitely will, once I'm not at work.

Thanks for the support guys

dang i just read her statement -- agree with everyone here
he sounds HORRIBLE and totally by-the-numbers at the same time

sorry to hear about your drummer NA -- he does sound questionable.

I really enjoy mandolin. There is a conventional way to use it: chop chords until you are invited to play a single-note solo or until a tremelo bit is appropriate. Personally I almost never do those things.

I think I use it like a small guitar. Sometimes all I can manage is to use it like some people use ukulele: mainly chordal playing with a few embellishments.

The electric mandolin is probably my favourite instrument to listen to in Carnatic music. (Alice Glass statement is horrifying. Sounds like you're making the right call, Jordan.)

NA that sounds like a dude I would not want to be around.

Fyi the way it went down yesterday is that I emailed the promoter to say I wasn't doing the show, and they were sympathetic. A couple hours later the venue cancelled the whole show, and a couple hours after that the whole CC tour was cancelled (reported in some places that the band cancelled the tour, but obviously it was because venues were dropping out).

yes!
blacklisted
even though you clearly did 100% the right thing, i'm sorry you had to get caught up in it jordan

my mission to play with the Vuh-est band in town has been accomplished. Really glad I remembered to bring my recorder too. I love recording things!!! it's like having a wee memento.

I echo La Lechera; I'm sorry someone else's extreme shittiness fucked up an opportunity for you. I hope this leads to another, better opportunity.

I borrowed a mandolin for about a year and got familiar with it, I'm not a virtuoso or anything but I figured out how to do certain things well enough for my purposes, basically using it as an embellishment on country-ish tunes

(xps)

Really glad I remembered to bring my recorder too.

Read this as recorder-the-instrument and was hyped to hear a drums'n'recorder jam.

Recorder-the-instrument with mandolin-the-slicer duet.

http://https%3A//cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1301/7143/products/8_grande.jpg%3Fv%3D1489609686

^^ would listen

would go to great lengths to play with a recorder player!!!
laura cannell is a dream collab

Resurrect d munrow imo

if only!!
idk if i would want to play with his reanimated corpse but he was the best so...maybe?

I've been playing a lot of acoustic guitar lately and just recording ideas into voice memos on my phone. A lot of times I'll come up with a general kind of scheme, like a fingerpicking pattern and a harmonic or melodic idea or something like that, and just improvise around it for a while. I thought this one came out nicely in spite of a bunch of fuckups so I uploaded it:

https://soundcloud.com/leonardhand/proof-of-concept-1

I've been finding it productive to record these late at night, put them away for a couple weeks or more, and then go through them again when I've forgotten them to see what I like with a little distance. There have been a couple that I initially thought of as throwaways that I've revisted and started to work on further. Also, the car is great for coming up with vocals, just play the instrumental over the stereo on repeat and fuck around until something sounds good.

omg i love car time for singing as well as studying. i also drive a lot to get to the various sites of my job, so it makes the time i spend going across a giant city in a car by myself feel more productive. speaking of productive usage of time. i need to make a new car mix. i got kind of sidetracked on my studying for a while there!

i listened to a little of your track! not the whole thing tbh but it sounds like you are having a good time. that is an important part of improvisation imo. when the ideas just kinda pour/tumble out and it's enjoyable.
i am psyched because the recordings from my workshops this summer are supposed to go on the camp bandcamp and i am so excited to put them out into the world.

reminds me to remind them to put it on there. there is a lot of reminding/correspondence required in the pursuit of making music.

Yeah that one is definitely on the looser end at this point, and also kind of on the outer limits of my musical taste in terms of that bright, sunny sound, but I think there's the makings of a tighter idea in there, something I might use as an intro for a song I have.

we got everything set up and plugged in last night, and even recorded 3 minutes or so of elec gtr/melodica jamz

my strategy is to set up the PA speakers firing down the long side of the basement, with us set up on the other side of the speakers (like a stage w/no monitors)

I want to set up the Korg recorder at the far end of the basement on the speaker side, if we run 25-foot cords we should be able to wear headphones as monitors and get some nice room sound with two mics hung from the ceiling (or maybe even one)

In the spirit of the Ford Timelord, my car has a release out. I had nothing to do with it.

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1801419952_10.jpg

https://iceageproductions.bandcamp.com/album/chrysler-on-the-lawn