what is going on in your musical life

I'm recording a part for a virtual guitar orchestra piece by a Seattle guy. It's long and kind of exhausting: all with a pick, almost all staccato, some tremolo, sometimes with bars that need to be repeated e.g. 23x before moving on to the next slightly different thing. Going to attempt one more take...

Also it all needs to be really precisely done to a metronome, with long stretches of waiting before and after.

Can you just record it piecemeal?

Don't think so: it's also a video recording and it's supposed to be more like a virtual live performance than a studio recording. So they are accepting imperfections, even though it's all done to a metronome, staccato, repetitive, etc. Everyone will be playing at a potentially different tempo and mixed in at different times! I'm going with the last take.

Ah cool.

I did a livestream last night playing New Orleans jazz, first time performing in public in many months. It felt better than I expected, was able to stay pretty mentally & physically relaxed and not too in my head (my main pitfall). I think the pandemic practice (and non-practice) has paid off some.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=359286345030459&ref=watch_permalink

I'll definitely be watching that.

I watched a little over half so far. I'm not an expert on the style but you do seem relaxed and totally in the pocket. I liked your short solo around the 52m mark, how you kept the groove going while doing a lot over and around it.

Just saw this, thanks Sund4r! I only wish I could have mixed it. The guy who handled sound & video was super nice and easy to work with, and cut us a serious discount as I understand, and I'm sure it's tough to do video while mixing sound, especially while hearing the room sound. But still.

On the other side of things I released some dance music versions from the kalimba album that came out recently: https://chants.bandcamp.com/album/millions-tip-ploy-drum-vips

Can we talk about middle-aged white men who play the guitar?

Partly from my circle of friends, and partly work video meetings, I am beginning to suspect that there are more middle-aged white men who play the guitar (at some level) than don't. Unscientific sample, I know. But.

Of course I include myself in the cliche-pile, as I do have and love and play a lot of guitars. But seeing the absolute glut of guitar players in my demographic has made me want to focus more on other instruments. One of these days imma show up at a open mic night with a triangle, a bouzouki, and an ocarina just to break out of the trap a bit.

Not sure what you want to discuss but fwiw this clearly unbiased study by Fender shows new beginning guitarists are 50% female and with %s of black and Latino players that exceed their share of the general UK/US population: https://sheshreds.com/study-confirms-diverse-guitar-landscape/

Of course I'm thrilled that people are diversifying the space! But it's still gutted with burb dads

Signed,

A burb dad

https://i.imgur.com/16IsPpi.png

i hope halloween shows happen this year bc i am starting to absolutely destroy this foo fighters set i've been practicing on the drums

none of the drum parts are too complicated but they're all like... rigorous in different ways. high-energy and fun

"big me" is the simplest drum part in the world but it's a delight to play

YMP, it's an instrument that exists in many forms that people play around the world. The guitar's roots in the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world (which includes plenty of non-white people) are deeper than its roots in the anglosphere. There are major guitar-playing communities in Africa and Asia.

speaking of guitar, my teacher told me in my Zoom lesson that I basically have Blackbird nailed down now and I just need rote repetition on it, which given that my previous attempts to do anything with a guitar began and ended with playing very simple solo lines and simplifying bass parts is a huge fucking deal to me

I'm also learning Fast Car

yessss

I’m working on 1er Gymnopedie again lately after first learning it a couple years ago. At the time I thought “wow, I can totally play this!” Now I’m marginally better at piano and I keep thinking “wow, I completely suck and it’s not actually possible to play the piano”

Never have I kept up for so long a learning a skill I am so unpredisposed to as piano.

In another 5 years I expect to be much better at it and yet feel that much worse about how good I am, I love it

Ha, I just came out of (taking) a piano lesson. I have most of that piece down now.

The room where I keep my music gear has morphed into my wife’s work-from-home office so my amp and the guitars hanging on the wall have turned into her zoom background. Other white middle aged burb dads see this and ask her excitedly about her gear and are disappointed that none of it is hers but belong to a fellow white middle aged burb dad.

She could totally mess with their heads. "Oh, hell yeah, I shred like a motherfucker. Yngwie learned from me, beeyotches. I run the Klon through the blockhead and I can melt faces in the mixophrygian mode."

We actually joked about me giving her talking points to fake it but after about a minute she absolutely no longer cared and made me stop

After a 5 year hiatus I've finally put out another EP on my super liw budget TTKK label for Bandcamp Friday: https://t.co/AhADAjPXhv

Crunchy house and breaks related oddities. Not sure its ILX material but thats whats been going on in my musical life anyway :)

Cool shit, thanks!

Sick!

cheers!

oh and *low budget, not liw ;)

So, I'm thinking of starting up my very own Bandcamp but I'm not sure if I have enough of a fanbase yet (I have no fanbase). I'm at the stage in my musical career where my friends are saying nice things about my tunes and a couple of label people who I've shared my stuff with have said they like them, so that's good. However, the only people who hear my music are people I know personally or people who I'm approaching. I'm not moaning here or anything like that, I know that everyone has to go through this when they're starting out.

I realise Bandcamp is free so I've got nothing to lose, but is there any point when you're basically a complete unknown? Do people go searching for artists like that and how do they go about promoting themselves?

Willl/wascal those are good. Didn't you have some dubstep releases back in the day or am I thinking of someone else?

my strategy is just to go ahead and make that bandcamp with zero fans, to send out links to everyone asking them to listen to your music, to throw in physical paintings and other artworks in an attempt to "sweeten" the deal in an attempt to literally pay other people and give them things in order to swindle them into listening to your music and accidentally donating to a mutual aid group that needs money

still zero fans for some reason

Can’t have fans until people can hear your music hence no fans required for bandcamp creation

Plus, going from 0 to 1 follower is growth so powerful that it breaks math

all my friends call me a fool
they say
let bandcamp take care of you

Bandcamp and SoundCloud, where musicians go to promote their music to other musicians who are simultaneously trying to promote their own music.

Like online musicians' groups where you go to promote your gigs to other musicians who are promoting their gigs.

It is Ourobouros, the snake which either its own tail.

That said, it is all fun, I enjoy the camaraderie, and I like it all, but it takes a really powerful booster rocket to break out of the gravitational pull of musos. There is presumably a world out there of potential fans who are, like, normal people, but reaching them remains an eternal mystery.

Either should be eateth

You could always go into classical or jazz and ensure that your listeners will always be other musicians.

Lol, I was wondering who that post was going to be by, thought it would be Jordan.

You could always go into classical or jazz and ensure that your listeners will always be other musicians.

― to party with our demons (Sund4r), Sunday, March 14, 2021 3:41 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is also "rock" of any description since maybe 2012-ish tbh

Earlier than that surely

I'm under the vague impression that more "normal people" are using bandcamp and soundcloud now tho. Especially soundcloud

Who were the last rock band whose young fans never went to guitar camp?it's been a minute.

I might have guessed Tame Impala but for the countless "what fx pedal should i use to sound like Tame Impala?" threads on internet messageboards.

Maybe Paramore

I made a Bandcamp page in 2017 because I made some music and I was proud of it and I liked the idea of something that felt a bit more serious than Soundcloud, which to me is still a bit of a world of unofficial bootlegs and low-bitrate DJ set recordings. I posted the link to my Facebook and Instagram, knowing full well that in my real life I'd be lucky if a dozen people came along to a show to support me, much less actively enjoy the music I make. I'm not reaching anyone who is interested in it because it's their "scene" - they just want to support a pal and take an interest in what I'm doing, the same way I follow twenty different make-up artists I know because it's a kindness to them.

One person I went to school with and hadn't seen in many years gave it a play and liked it and asked me to do some soundtrack work for their exhibitions and installations. It's not like I'm sat here raking it in as a high-profile artist, but getting to turn what was a bedroom hobby into something I could take seriously, it's a buzz.

I put some music up last summer and every Bandcamp Friday last year I shared it again because, why not? I haven't this year because I've had a lot going on. But this month, despite me making no effort, someone found it and bought the music I had put up. Someone who I don't know in real-life - in other words, a person who has no investment or obligation to me as a person, someone who just enjoyed it enough to think that it was worth putting a number in the name-your-price box (when someone buys on Bandcamp, I get told their email address, and it definitely wasn't someone I know). It's a really nice feeling.

I would recommend it 100%. The worst that happens is nobody hears what you do: they're not going to hear it if you don't share and promote your material anyway.

I would guess that Imagine Dragons and 21 Pilots have young non-muso fans but the only kids I interact with are guitar campers, for the most part.

heh, and they say rock is dead!

You didn't say anything about good rock.

https://watt.cashmusic.org/writing/institutionalizationofrock