what is going on in your musical life

flappy: I am in awe of your use of tape.

I still have a cassette Portastudio. I did a solo album on it (maybe 2004?). I'd love to say that I use it all the time but I don't, really. Maybe I should get it out again.

oh you mean my tape collage? thank you! glad you liked it... it was very fun & I felt insane in the best way making it. I've passed a hump in making the companion piece for the B side & am enjoying feeling insane again making it. I did some rough math back in November and I think "The Streets Are Hot Tonight" has somewhere between 600-900 individual edits. this new one is 8 minutes shorter so it should be uh.. less than that lol

definitely bust out the Portastudio. they are so much fun to work with. I also use mine for demos & cataloguing riffs & melodies, but the tape collages are the only time I feel like I'm using the thing as an instrument.

put a weird old little album I made about 10 years ago on spotify recently, the songs are all really short and named after champion australian racehorses, genres are all over the place, there's indie and post punk and pseudo-jazz and momus-y shit and this goofy track that sounds like rpg castle music among other things, a cpl songs about books like the tripods and John Barth's end of the road, theres droney singing, one is a riddle, one's backwards... I dunno why I'm sharing this it's weird and personal and I never showed anyone really except a few friends many years ago

Anyway if u like

https://open.spotify.com/album/2TYAmYElwFZhDeLcmwd2Nb?si=tdyZct6TRou3dXOisNs44g

21 songs in 31 minutes (but no song feels rushed) and you really covered a lot of territory! i really liked 'victory vein', which reminded me of unwound a bit. did you record all the tracks or did you have a band?

also you shouldn't feel weird about sharing it, i don't think. i totally sympathize because i have also had issues with sharing certain creative things (obv not gifs, which for some reason i don't have any problem constantly imposing on people, but other things). but i think some people, often perfectionists, overthink what the others will think and decide not to share it at all, and that's a shame! also i could be completely projecting all of this, sorry!

appreciate you checking it out karl! it actually means a lot, i've always found much to enjoy in the projects of yours that you've shared here.

this was a super non-collaborative project, i did everything myself including the recording and the album art. at the time i had a couple cheap acoustic guitars including a 12 string, also an ibanez bass and a fender stratocaster, logic 8 + a bunch of st0len s0ftware + drum libraries, mic on everything was i think an akg c214. i'd been playing and engineering music for other ppl for a while at that point but never sang or wrote lyrics before, this album was (and is) the only thing that was a more or less complete synthesis of everything i knew how to do driven by stuff that influenced me into a finished project of my own.. i'm definitely proud of it in some sense even though i think it's kind of 'purposeless' music and wouldn't mean much to most ppl, which i guess is another way of saying yes, i def overthink about how it would be received (or ignored) if i took more of an open, 'hey this is my music' approach.. v scary! anyway, thanks!

mate

seriously this is wonderful

yeah this is so good! It feels so personal and intimate and cohesive in a way its stylistic variety wouldn't suggest. Well done!

my big news is that one of my tracks was chosen to soundtrack this video for the charity Bloodwise

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2fcUETdtHo

the Youtube views are low but the original video was posted to Facebook as an embed and has had 2000 views, which is more than I could ever imagine for me sitting in my room being a weirdo mucking about on Ableton, I'm really excited by that. I met the videography team at the weekend and they have lots of ideas of things they want to do so it could be getting interesting.

this is happening
https://flic.kr/p/26KYkJh

lol or is it

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/979/41848078352_986da54df9.jpg

Been discussing a collaboration for two months but not getting the tracks until today, deadline is Monday. Honestly kind of excited for the all-decisions-are-final-decisions pressure that brings.

congrats boxedjoy

ill be there shakes! i restarted the chaki project almost a year ago and have been playing a lot with other one person acts like captured by robots and bob log III. its been a trip getting to know these dudes that go on the road by themselves. kind of inspiring!

was really tempted by the bob log double bill been a fan of his since the 90s, sorry I missed that! things have been p hectic for me this week :(

i am playing some extra percussion with a well established band and we sound awesome
show is a week from today!!

omg i remember bob log III!!

Best of luck to all. My acoustic covers trio has gigs coming up, working from more or less this list

Somebody to Love
Just Like Heaven
Hungry Like the Wolf
Don't Get me Wrong
Lovesong
Dreaming
Dreams
I'm on Fire
Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
Straight Up
Things Can Only Get Better
No Myth
Tainted Love

Oh man I want to hear the HoJo!

Dreaming is a really sturdily constructed song, good cover choice

Well, I do have some decidedly uneven recordings from our first few drunken open mics:
Don't Get Me Wrong
Dreaming
Things Can Only Get Better

Ah sadly it looks like my band is done and right after getting our 2nd LP in hand. Figures. No biggy as I will keep playing music.

Anyway, now I got to figure out what to do with a lot of LPs that are never going to sell. I'm kinda thinking to try to spread them out by donations into thrift stores all over the place. It's got a good cover, so I figure someone might buy it for a buck.

I figure look at it as a bit of a cloud seeding project and see if anything comes of it.

the band i've been playing with recorded at electric audio with steve albini last week. in 20+ years of playing music i've never recorded in a pro studio before so i was pretty nervous but it turned out good. we recorded live to tape, so no mixing after the song was on tape, which actually ruled because obviously he knows how to get good sounds in his studio with his gear (the drums in particular sound amazing) and it means no mixing. unfortunately for me this band has a whole album they did before i joined that they haven't released yet, so they're going to try and get that out first before we put out the stuff i'm on, but i still think it might come out sometime this year?

http://www.liveeyetv.org/2018/05/listen-protovulcan-waking-up-dinosaurs/

that's the advance single from the album that i am not on

Whoa, that's a great life experience to have.

yeah i kind of felt like a tourist but it was fun

Any good SA anecdotes?

I got my deadline track done in a long afternoon, it's always a good lesson in committing to decisions and finishing things. Wish I could do that all the time (although it helps when someone else has already written most of the parts, lol).

It's basically a dancehall track, I think dog latin would like it.

no, he was pretty efficient and business-like, which was good because we were trying to do a lot in one day. he talked to us about cricket for a while

i like dancehall! NA your band sounds super cool in that writeup, why the release delay?

i am going over the last 8 weeks of material to prep my students for their final exam for my music appreciation class. and on friday i am bonus/2nd drummer for a band i met like a month ago.

i had a new experience for me while i was rehearsing with them. there were 4 songs i had learned before our first rehearsal, but then we played a couple other ones i had never heard before. as it turns out, i can play songs i have never heard before. idk if i could have been the only drummer, but i played along/in a complementary fashion well enough that everyone decided once was enough for those two. the spontaneity was enjoyable; i should probably practice those a few times before the show on friday though!

i bet steve albini talks to a lot of nervous people

earlnash, has there been a thread about bands whose greatest work was released after they broke up?

i think they waited a long time to get the album mastered, and then they were trying to get someone else to put it out (to no avail) for a while

that makes sense, was just wondering

congrats to everybody on your new records/gigs. looking forward to hearing it!

That sounds like an amazing experience, NA. (And, wow, no mixing!)

I got a video of dude performing my 10-string classical guitar composition that I'm really happy with and will share once he OKs it. Getting ready to perform in Edmonton in a couple of weeks, which I think will be livestreamed. (In between finishing all end-of-semester grading the week before and moving all of my things to Canada the week after. No pressure this month.)

I’m singing with a community chorus as a ringer and being strongly reminded of why I sing with professional ensembles

Is it the singing, or is it something other than the singing

It is mostly the singing. Admittedly the piece isn’t easy (Martin Mass for Double Chorus) but the other two times I did it, it was with singers who didn’t make the same mistakes every single time they looked at it. Like, every single time.

that is such a cool piece. I checked it out because of you iirc djp

Dad from my dad acoustic cover gettogether asked me if I want to join a full band he's playing with, and I was like "I would be into playing, but I can't commit to weekly rehearsals or gigs or anything right now," and, dripping with unearned attitude, he goes, "Well, I'll have to check with the other guys, but the thing is, we're starting a *real* band, and we need commitment." Yeah ok 45-year-old father of three small children, you're starting a "real" band.

lmao

Rock band attitude, why is it so bad and hated?

All bands are real

In the dark

recorded a 21 minute improv yesterday afternoon shortly after i heard about glenn branca's death. me on guitar, my friend corey on drums. i was pretty happy with it for a spur of the moment thing. i've gotta remember what i tuned my guitar to... something like FFEF#G#F...

https://soundcloud.com/narcstudies/duo-1-for-glenn-branca

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KZj3WdtbBU

Nice

great job!

I'll be playing three pieces for electric guitar and live digital processing at MacEwan University in Edmonton on Wednesday at around 2:45 MDT (4:45 EDT). The event will be livestreamed here: https://www.facebook.com/MusCanSoc/

We're releasing out first album (~6 years after an EP) on Friday week.