what is going on in your musical life

managed to learn the first part of the solo to Hell Bent for Leather. basic tapping and pulling off, yeah, but I couldn't do it when I was 18. am noticing my speed improving.

i should probably stop just playing my favorite songs and do some exercises now and then but hey

Always learning other peoples' songs is great & helps my playing & writing just as much if not more than exercises

I find i like the shit that tears up my fingers right now. Getting the callouses back

I had my first experience with publicly performing a straight jazz standard with jazz players on Monday. A friend who's a pro jazz pianist is leaving town and had a goodbye jam with a band at a jazz bar. I practised and led a version of "Take Five" with them. I had fun and got some invitations to play more so I'm thinking of doing more of this. I'd been wanting to try this revolutionary idea of playing with other human beings; also playing tunes that don't take months to learn.

That is awesome! Any recordings of it?

Ha, that's great Sund4r.

I've been enjoying playing drums more than I have in awhile. I feel like I'm playing better than ever, but not by actually being any better. I still have pretty poor technique but the continuing process of embracing my limitations and trying to be relaxed at all times goes a long way. I have a gig backing up a pretty legendary New Orleans trumpet player in a couple months, so I've been doing a lot of mental practicing for that.

(but really I'd rather be getting DJ gigs, lol)

Here's a video that someone took at a recent show with a New Orleans jazz group (not the brass band, this is the indoors version, some of the same musicians though)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN43JLwCPDc

Thanks, guys. I don't have a recording of the jam.

embracing my limitations and trying to be relaxed at all times goes a long way.

Something I've been learning for a while. Your upcoming gig sounds really cool; hope it goes well. The video looks like a really fun gig.

Been trying to play more guitar lately. Coming up with some new chord progressions, and also figuring out "Knives Out" by Radiohead and some bits of a Bill Frisell track.

I guess this counts:

My wife and I taped an episode of Beat Shazam that airs on Tuesday, Aug 14 at 8 ET/7 CT on Fox.

So stoked!!

!!!

Ayyyyyy!!!

hope you won a million dolloars!!

embracing my limitations and trying to be relaxed at all times goes a long way.
my mantra!! stay cool, fool ;)

Don’t forget!

Working towards having my first 'band' space in my own house, which is pretty cool. I'm getting my music computer setup in the new space this weekend and will start mixing the record we got in the can. I got a few vocals to cut but held off as this space has a nice high ceiling, which I am curious to see how it sounds recorded.

I'm really psyched as for the first time I will have a drum kit in my house that I can play whenever I want (within reason). I'm also psyched to have space to finally get the whole MIDI rig up and setup for the first time in years.

Guitarist is back in town for a few months, so we are probably going to play a few more gigs and do a a bit more recording. Could be cool, we will see.

Bought a used Squier J Mascis Jazzmaster because I wanted something to practice on with setting up and soldering and etc. - this is a seriously nice guitar for $300.

nice. that's a great price, I didn't know they made a Squier model

Yeah, I got one of the J Mascis Jazzmasters when they were new. It's a rad guitar, though kind of spendy for a Squier. I didn't end up keeping it because the tones I was getting out of it were just too similar to my Telecaster.

going through my SD cards and making ruff mixes, may interest the lovers of messy electronics

power ambient

a nastier one

At the new music school job(s), they want me to be able to teach some bass, ukulele, and keyboard as well as guitar so I'm practising those whenever I can and taking the odd keyboard lesson. Bass is fun. I've got a little less time for my own music rn, which is frustrating.

Second jazz jam was less of a success than the first; still want to keep working on this.

Recorded, mixed, and mastered a friend's song a little while ago with two vocal parts, guitar, five violin tracks, and Hammond organ. It was nice to be able to do that kind of thing again, even if it was a home recording.

xp nice stuff haitch!

and Sund4r lucky duck working with a Hammond, I still haven't. when I recorded my last solo record I went to town on the Wurlitzer my engineer had, I think it's on every song? beautiful sound. he was really excited about the clavinet he got halfway thru recording.

I was the engineer in this case. My friend was doing all the playing but, for certain, it was still a pleasure to get the chance to record a classic Hammond. It's been in his family for a while, I gather.

Both of those (Hammond and Wurli) are so fun to play! Rhodes too.

I've been searching high and low for a pedal that will make my Telecaster emulate a Fender Rhodes. I was really excited for the Electro-Harmonix KEY9 pedal because it has a specific Rhodes mode on it, but I was really disappointed with it. It went for more of a cheesy soft rock Rhodes tone where I want more of an early 70s Bill Evans / Ahmad Jamal type Rhodes sound.

Anyway, first new composition in a while yesterday.

Recorded quite a bit this weekend. Couple new ones that I like here and here.

Also, if I ever start talking again about how I don't really need a phaser pedal, knee me square in the balls.

I ended up returning the Avalanche Run. It was really good, but I just wanted a little something more. Upon returning it, I noticed that the Guitar Center I was in had a used TC Electronic Triple Flashback delay. I loved the Flashback X4 when I had it, but I grew weary of its somewhat clunky integration of stacking the delays. The Triple Flashback came up as a possible replacement some weeks back, but I was not keen on spending another $300 to special order one, so I decided to wait it out. And my patience was rewarded for a change! The Triple Flashback is an incredible machine. I do miss the instant runaway oscillation that was built into the Avalanche Run, but the stuff you can do on the Triple Flashback more than makes up for it.

Anyway, the Triple Flashback, being used, was not even $200, so I had a good amount of store credit left over. Some of that I used towards a an MXR M107 Phase 100, also out of the used case. This makes for the seventh or eighth phaser I've ever purchased; I literally can't remember all the ones I've purchased and tried out for a while (though I do know for sure that this is the fourth MXR one I've acquired: Phase 95 (twice!), EVH Phase 90, and now the Phase 100). The Phase 100 is actually a much different beast than MXR's other one-knob phasers. I think it's even got the Phase 95 beat in terms of diversity. Phasers are actually a sound I really like a lot; I basically turned on the Phase 100 Friday evening and haven't turned it off since. I think that's maybe why I never kept any of the other ones: I relied on them too much. I hate when I start to play with a non-drive and / or non-reverb pedal that's always on; makes me feel like I'm cheating somehow —I think? I honestly don't know. Why else do I keep acquiring phasers, only to get rid of them and then reacquire another one a few months later?

I really dig your stuff. You should team up with a vocalist. I’m hearing shoegazey reverb’d-out vocals...

Thank you so much! That is amazing that you would say something like that about my sound doodles. I completely don't take making music that seriously. I mean, on a really personal level, I do. But that's just because I want to make stuff that I like. I don't mean this in a puffed up pretentious kind of way, but I honestly don't expect too many other people to hear my music and get something out of it; it's kind of filled with esoteric references and completely random ideas thrown together.

But, again: thank you. To suggest that I should work with a singer implies that you think my music is somewhat accessible; which is such a weird concept for me. Very humbling. Thank you.

i have a lot going on in my musical life and it's partially stressing me out and also i feel like these are probably relatively common issues and ones i shouldn't allow to derail me
lotsa good stuff though, things i am looking forward to and proud of -- i am playing a very short (all sets are 5 min) solo set and later that week playing with a band-of-indeterminate-size but both should be fun and i feel i will have accomplished something new each time, which is important to me.

this flurry of activity is definitely helping distract me from other harmful stressors swirling around at the highest levels of power in the country where i live :(

Lechera, music is the best therapy! I would love to reach a point where I have so many music endeavors that I got stressed from it.

it really is
the best!!!

I tried to start the hashtag #therapythroughmusic on Instagram over the past several months whenever I would post something music-related (which is the majority of my posts). It hasn't taken off so far though.

Just in my experience, I do honestly believe that music is very therapeutic.

the field of music/art therapy is booming from what i hear
seriously -- it's drug-free and effective for many!

Yeah but imo, music and art are both more fun when I also have drugs.

Agreed. Drugs are awesome.

Music is a drug.

I've been asked to make some music to soundtrack a photography exhibition in two weeks. The theme is "apocalypse" and I think they are hoping for something dark and grimey and sterile, but all my music tends to be uplifting and warm. Its been really fun spending the week curled over my laptop pushing myself out of my comfort zone, and I think I am getting there, but I am also terrified. I'm also dreading the exhibition because as much as its thrilling to imagine people in a public space listening to my stuff, I hate the idea of talking about it.

photo/art openings & exhibitions are ime the worst way to experience, engage, and reckon with a piece of art. insight into process and intent are interesting but at a certain point putting it into words defeats the purpose.

yes I really can't be bothered with heavy-handed "DO YOU SEE?!?" chat

Been messing with short loops a lot lately. Like, just one bar or even just a half a bar. Just trying to do stuff that's harmonically different from what I've been doing over the last year or so. I usually don't record that stuff, as it can get kind of tedious to listen back to. But, for sure, it's been steering me away from the more grey / bleak tones I've been traveling in for the past several months. I expressed some interest some while back that I would like to get my music, just generally speaking, into happier territories and timbres and these exercises seem to be working as far as that goes.

A couple of the loops that I thought turned out well were this one, which is a very esoteric melody that I (sort of?) came up with. I linked to it in the description for the loop, but another lifetime ago when I was an aspiring hip hop beat maker, I created, what I envisioned to be a short interlude type of beat where I sampled and chopped a guitar riff from the intro of 'Sunshower' from the first Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band album. So, it struck me that my skills as a guitarist have improved greatly since I made that beat over a decade ago and that I could probably just play the riff for real. So, that's what I did. Just tried to expand on it with something else.

The other one is here. The idea for this one was to play just one chord, but in as many different voicings as I could. So, I got my chord book out and played as many differing variations of C major seventh that I could and just added on layers until a melodic line hit me.

And, finally, I did this one yesterday evening and I really like how it came out. The more I do those short loops, the more I'm starting to realize how valuable that one big, ornamental chord change can be. Like, you build this nice layer of very pleasing harmony and then just break it wide open with one carefully placed B minor seventh chord (or whatever) that makes the song take a turn that the listener perhaps wasn't expecting. I love that stuff. It's a rough take off on an idea that I sort of learned from the song 'The Motivator' from the T.Rex album Electric Warrior. Most of the song is just E major with a hammer-on on the A and D strings. It actually gets kind of droney if you try to play it without a drum track or rhythmic base, but it has an incredibly quick, but well placed changeup to C major and then A minor, and then right back to that E major. It sounds boring, but the harmony and release that emerges when those changes hit are just magical. So, I've kind of started to develop my own take on that kind of playing.

I've really just been having fun playing a lot lately. More fun than I can remember ever having while playing by myself than ever before. I used to get together with some buddies back in Reno and jam on Sunday mornings. We never really "got anywhere" when we played, it was just a really natural and good environment to be in. All three of us were really interested in the same music and we all had the same ideas about making music that was perhaps a bit indicative of its influences, but which also had a lot of unique things to say. More often than not, we just kind of worked grooves without much busy soloing or any really "flashy" playing, but that was kind of the point. Just really fun to get ideas bounced back at me from a perspective that I hadn't considered. I feel like I'm getting to that sort of point within my own head as, through the looping exercises and purposely "limiting" myself, I'm starting to see and hear things that would not have occurred to me otherwise.

Nice. The first one sounds a bit like Ph.D.'s "I Won´t Let You Down" – similar melody.

Every once in a while, something comes out of my brain and I'm genuinely confused as to where it came from. Case in point. It's probably the best thing I've done in quite some time, but it's so far removed from anything I've been into lately, I am really struggling to come up with context. The only thing I can think of is when I was really into Michael Jackson back in the late 80s and early 90s, I would buy any and all singles that he released because they were cheap. Now, I was ten when Dangerous came out, so I was just into the a-sides on the singles, but MJJ would oftentimes put these house remixes on the b-side and my young listening ears had no idea where that stuff was coming from. Now I know that there was obviously a huge house music scene going on at the time and this was obviously an attempt to get his music (back) into the dance clubs. But, being only ten or eleven years old, I had zero knowledge of that. So, these house remixes just kind of sounded like these jumpy, slightly familiar variations on a song I knew. It was pretty challenging music for me at the time, because I didn't really like "dance music", but you know, when you're that young you're not really cognizant of "Hey, this isn't my favorite music, maybe I should flip the tape over", compounding with not having any money to just buy a new tape, you make due with what you have. So, I would often listen to these house mixes and find aspects about them that I liked. And it wasn't just Michael Jackson that would put those house remixes on his singles (but I bring him up because that was the first instance I recall of encountering them). Sometimes, r+b groups would put one of those house remixes on the b-side of their singles and it was the same kind of scenario: look for the aspects I liked. And, inevitably, I would always hear a sort of moody and melancholy timbre that I would zero in on. So, maybe that's where this new recording comes from. I honestly have no idea.

Is there such a thing as "sad disco" and / or "sad house"? I feel like that's the sort of groove I was going for with this new recording.

When I think of songs that would have a similar type of mood that I was shooting for, things like 'Ceremony' by Joy Division / New Order, 'Missing the Moon' by the Field Mice, 'The Noose of Jah City' by Archy Marshall / King Krule, the J Dilla cover of EW+F's 'Brazilian Rhyme', and I'm sure there's some others that I'm drawing a blank on right now. But, stuff like that: definite groove, but kind of sad.

Oh yeah, I guess this context might also matter: that new recording is a remix of this original from earlier this year.

I'll ask my coworker about sad disco/sad house bc I'm pretty sure she makes it lol. "dark ambient"? "ambient techno"? we basically repeated the "what is ambient" argument in the musical controp thread verbatim the other week

v nice tracks Austin, I dig the remix quite a bit. I've found that the ideas that come seemingly unprompted or unrelated to other work are the best, most beguiling, and rewarding ideas and places to go. best not to question it and for sure try to capture it again when it strikes

totally prepped for my two performances this week
it's helping to keep my mind focused on things that are not horrifying on the micro or macro level
focusing on music really helps un-fuck my head; i wish there weren't such a stigma about self-promotion because it really helps diffuse the tension/horror.