what is going on in your musical life

i didnt realize you were a bass! it occurs to me that i have never actually heard you sing. i imagined you having a very high tenor voice. haw.

haha that would make my dad very, very happy (he's a failed tenor in a previous life, sang lead in a doo-wop group in college)

I am technically a "bass-baritone" which really means that because most of my singing experience comes from being in ensembles rather than private, focused vocal study, I have no idea how to use my head voice and sing practically everything in chest; I have a sneaking suspicion I would end up being a true baritone or even a low tenor after several years of focused, serious voice training based on how my low range actually sounds, but the flip side is that I can actually croak out low notes even if they're inaudible unless I've been binge-drinking the night before so I dunno. But yeah, I've always sung low.

(which is actually why, in my teens, I realized I was never going to be a pop or rock singer, and why I was so taken by the grunge explosion)

putting the last touches on my new record (doesn't feel new, been working on it for about 15 months now) to send to mastering next week, figuring out how to put it out.

then i want to take some time to switch up my process, shake things up a little. work on some new synth sounds without any goals, try to finally learn ableton, record a bunch of new percussion samples. i want to take some piano lessons too, since i do everything with midi + mouse. i can figure stuff out on piano very sloooowly, so i thought it would be fun to play through some tunes in real time and get some chords under my fingers.

honestly though i probably won't do most of these things and i'll go back to what feels easy & comfortable. :/

I just got our first track back from the studio. I love it and I also cringe a bit because I can hear bits where my voice goes a bit wrong or a beat doesn't quite land how it's meant, and I'm trying to work out if anyone in their right mind would really notice or care.

roxy high school is an amazing band name

this is a neat thread idea.

i've been playing with a couple guys for the last month or so but it's just working out that well. they seem like they really want to sound like real estate or something, which isn't terrible, but a bad real estate impersonation comes out sounding reaaaaally bad, and it's not much fun to play drums to, either!

i've been writing and recording some new tunes, which doesn't sound like much but it's actually been a big breakthrough for me after about a 10 year songwriting/music coma that i didn't realize was a coma.

i'm moving back to chicago in a few months and i'm determined to join up with a good band. i used to be good friends with the cave/bitchin bajas scene so i'm hoping i can be looped back into all that stuff and that someone needs a good drummer

and yeah, high school is good, although i have to say i liked it even more when i thought the name was high school??

haha

whoa z s do you want to be in a band with me?

this is going to be really awkward when you reject me

well, that was easy. sure, let's play!

it's gonna be more like september or so

i think we are gonna be called "high school"??
a
I started a band in college called junior high university. I recorded one song for it and we had two practices and then everyone split up in different directions. that was the last band I was ever in.

have not touched my recording computer since my son was born. I long for a classical acoustic guitar so i can play around the house but I have no money for that now. debating selling an amp or two. I think my creative well has run dry for the foreseeable future.

i'm really burnt out on school this semester & have been slacking off to spend more time doing music stuff. all three bands i'm in are pretty active rn which can be overwhelming at times but is really fun. most notably i went on tour in january and started a new band called l0ud s3x which i am just so, so stoked on. the other songwriter in the band is really prolific and i really want to keep our ratio of songs 1:1. it's been a really fun challenge trying to keep up, he also writes amazing songs so i've had to be really strict about scrapping my tunes if they're not up to par. we're playing our first show at the end of the month & i'm pretty nervous because not everyone shows up for practice consistently and i want it to be spectacular

sp3ctacular l0ud s3x

I am not going to go into any more detail than this but the biggest audition opportunity of my lap literally just fell into my lap; I fully expect it to go nowhere but still, you never know...

would watch n/a z s band

DJP on x factor, it's America has been waiting for
xp

l0ud high school s3x

the biggest audition opportunity of my lap

lol dan

oh no, I've said too much

I am in month 15 of releasing a home-made recording every month. A lot of times I put it off until the month is almost over and then go into crunch mode. But at this point, even though I approach each song as its own thing and wasn't trying to make an album or anything, I can listen to all the tracks straight through and it sounds really cohesive to me, which I think is really cool. I also feel like I get a little better/more efficient at production each time.

I haven't performed onstage in like a year though, which was a conscious decision and I don't miss all of the bullshit that made me sick of doing it, but I do miss being onstage. But I maybe just joined a band that I actually think is really good and is kind of successful locally, which is cool because I don't feel that way about hardly any local bands and also I've never really been in someone else's band. They have kind of a Modern Lovers/Beat Happening/Magnetic Fields/Morrissey vibe. It'll also be neat because I'll be playing synth and I'm not actually a keyboard player at all, I'm a guitarist and songwriter, but that's also why I'll be a good fit for this.

kicking off recording of a new album. finally a chance to properly use all this new synth gear

Hey all - could I get a little bit of constructive feedback on this please? We've had an initial "how's this?" from the studio engineer on one of our tracks. Overall, I think it's okay but it's very difficult to distance myself and listen to it with uninvolved ears.

I'd really like to hear your thoughts, particularly on the mixing/production (we can't really go back into the studio to do any overdubs or retakes so we're working with the raw material we have, for better or worse). Are there any glaring errors on this track or things I should mention before I get back to him? One thing I noticed is that he's been a bit heavy handed witht he gating and compression, particularly some of the vocal parts where the sibilants and plosives are almost non-existent.

I'm only gonna keep this track online for a short while, but if someone could give it a listen and let me know their thoughts, i'd be very much obliged: https://soundcloud.com/doglatin/honolulu-demo-050313

god this sounds like a super harsh thing but i dont mean it that way - do you want/intend the beginning to sound like a 80's nylons style acapella group thing? like exactly like one? because thats what i hear. also some pitchy weirdness in the "so afraid" "yesterday" multivoice responses. again, if these are intentional things, no prob.

Lol, I haven't hear the nylons but it is supposed to be a bit of a tongue in cheek doowop thing and if it comes across that way I guess that's intentional. The song is very much a comment on retro culture and so it's littered with 60s and 80s references. Cheers for checking it out jjjusten, I'll look into the autotune thing. Think the sound guy's gone a bit overboard with vocal manipulation, but then we're not at all trained singers so there's undoubtably gonna be a push/pull thing going on.

song sounds good to me, esp. for a demo. i like it.

Xpost If you're talkin about Housemartins/Flying Pickets, I def see what you mean and kind of don't mind. I (was made to) grow up with that shit, haha.

Cheers n/a

I am making a lil album of songs that are about a min long each, I have about 10 so far where the music is done but I have finished singing over one of them, I've come up w/ vocal melodies for about 3

I am seriously using the dumbest most unwieldy out of date programs to put the songs together because for whatever reason I like how it all sounds more than if I do it in ableton?

what are you using?

I (lol) am using cues in virtual dj to play my laptop like an mpc or w/e (I could slice to a drumkit in ableton and do the same thing I guess, but idk, when I use ableton I spend 3 extra hours on shit) and then editing shit further and recording vocals in audacity, its a forehead in my hands deal, but still

i love stuff like that.

well I hope it lives up to its rudimentary description, I'm starting to embrace it, at least this way I don't end up fucking around with corpus for a week with no results

Good sounding demo, dog latin. I'd get some friends in a room for the backing vocals. And as for your solo performance it's a little too measured, just make sure you're saying "gate" instead of "gay" and make it fast and effortless

I was just in Prague recording with a budget-priced orchestra, stuff for five different clients and some stuff for my own use. There were 30 "pieces" ranging from 45-second long bits of orchestral incidental music to 20-minute marathon workouts. A total of 2.5 hours of music and 24 hours to record the whole thing. I def. got paranoid and overworked but I didn't break. I drove that bus.

It went very well but I instinctively prioritized the work of my clients, taking the time to really get something beautiful out of that shaky orchestra. I left not enough time for my own material. Now I'm futzing.

cheers FGTI - I did the lead vox, the others did backing. I think the engineer's but too strong a release on my vox because yeah, "gaze" sounds like "gay" etc...

i'm listening to spotify

gotta get these tapes out soon (for this band i recorded) but have no idea what im doing! i need to buy a tape duplicator! i need to buy...tapes! i need to figure out how to get this shit onto a master tape! what am i doing with my life! HELP!

i told my mom i was in a new band called high school and she recommended that we call it COOL GIRLS instead. additionally, "i like just a girl's name, like maureen, or mabel, for a girl band"

lmao at cool girls altho tbh i would like it as a name for a coed or all dude band

I was briefly in a(n all-male) duo called "Sarah"!

haw

possibly touring in the summer with the black/doom band, havent been out in a long time bc our guitarist lives a couple hours away, so we havent been as "active" in general. mostly an east coast thing, possibly all the way to canada, where i have never been

come to Atlanta!

I have been recording bits and pieces for an eventual cassette release. I've also been asked to do a split release with a local drone act. AND my band is recording stuff. So hopefully soon I'll have lots of physical stuff to give out at shows!

I've heard good things about getting cassettes made through National Audio?

Yeah National Audio is great, I've done a couple things through them.

guitarist in one band left us cuz he moved out of london :( which is a shame. was looking forward to recording those songs. we'd played 5 shows or so. it was going well. oh well. i have a decent recording of the last practice, guess i'll stick that on soundcloud if i can be bothered to mix it.

started a new thing with the same guys, got a new guitarist, and he rules! he's a bit older than us, used to run a drone and kosmiche club. had a practice on sunday and ended up with 16 little things to work on, 3 or 4 fully formed songs just happened, so looking forward to this band. krauty space rock with big OTT vocals and thinking i'm gonna bring an edp wasp and delay pedal into the equation. will prob play a show in the next month or two. my drumming is really rusty tho, need to get back on the practice pad before they kick me out!

tracks sitting in the computer way into the 100s by now, mostly experiments with the ridiculous synth collection that lives in the studio where i live. none of the synths are mine, but i'm free to use what i want and i've set up a synthesizer room and got everything patched up. pretty sweet. currently obsessed with the doepfer modular and making new presets for the matrix 1000- that's a seriously powerful bit of kit but the presets that come with it are crap.

playing classical guitar again, got my nails all purty, think i'm going to try and start performing too. maybe get some restaurants gigs.

have also been digging my uni pieces, trying to put together some sort of composer portfolio. surprised myself by how good some of those pieces are. the goldberg ensemble performed some of my string pices, which was very cool, had to ressurect an old hard drive, thought i'd lost those recordings for good!

Why is having good nails important for playing guitar? I don't play with my nails. I guess if I had long nails it would be difficult but...

if you play fingerstyle you get more control over your sound, you can also play louder and as everybody knows louder = better

It's a really fundamental part of classical guitar technique. Your nails are the tools you use to create and shape your sound.

Do restaurants in the UK hire classical guitarists??

What are you putting a composition portfolio together for, CB? Graduate schools? Grants/gigs?

place in Milwaukee is a (relatively) new venue I think, supposed to be cool.

Great venue name, at least! Good luck on your sojourns!

McCombs/Valera! That sounds like a sweet gig.

boy it's a lot of work trying to book out of town shows

ha yeah, it really sends me into a spiral of "why am I even trying to do this" ... but the shows are almost always fun.

I am being roped into singing “When You’re Hood To Mama” again for a Mother’s Day fundraiser being put on by my church. This time I’m not going full drag, though.

thanks all, should be a fun jaunt, would have liked to make either Madison or Eau Claire work but couldn't get it done

also, I WISH venues would just write back promptly with a straight no instead of not replying

awesome, gonna try and make the chicago show. i love the hideout

i've been trying to book LOCAL shows to no avail. i have no connections at this point, hardly any friends in bands any more, and our streaming numbers are bad right now since we haven't released anything in a bit

i hate thinking about the fact that all those digital metrics probably do count as part of a booking agent's process now :/

i'm sure if a band that they've never heard of before contacts them, that's the first thing they look at (if they bother looking at all)

I emitted some more music for Bandcamp Friday, an album comprised of the last three singles and two new tracks.

https://chrisirregardless.bandcamp.com/album/honeycomb-ghost-logic

thinking we're like 90% done with new album, just need to finish tweaking some mixes slightly and get it mastered. then i send it to someone outside the band to listen to it and i can immediately hear everything that needs to be redone, we need to rerecord all the vocals, etc.

― na (NA), Friday, January 9, 2026 10:37 AM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Tbf, “re-record the vocals” is the most common bit of advice I give to any work in progress. Don’t be discouraged— trying the vocals again and again with different mics, mindsets and moods is non-destructive, you’ll find out new things about the song as you do it

(I get frustrated because my ideal vocal mic on my voice is not one I own— a U87– so re-recording vocals usually means a rental and/or asking a friend to help)

― ron zertnert (flamboyant goon tie included), Friday, January 9, 2026 11:44 AM (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I wanna check in on this. Did you record these yet and were the songs better off for it? I'm doing some vocal recording for my stuff now and struggling with what my final take should be. I am not an engineer but I have a decent mic (Shure SM27) running through a decent pre-amp. Recently I've been cranking the gain and backing off the mic more when I sing. I *think* it's helping? I have a friend planning to mix and master the songs, but I'm still a little lost performance-wise as to what should constitute a final take. I'm doubling the vocals, adding lite-reverb, harmonizing, ect. I guess I'm more curious on how that feedback works. Like, what were they looking for and did they get it?

I had my 2nd live practice/recording session with my noize friend this Wednesday...
― vague facial gymnastics (sleeve), Friday, January 9, 2026 3:51 PM (three months ago)

our debut gig!

https://testdelete123.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/IMG_8640.mov

I wanna check in on this. Did you record these yet and were the songs better off for it? I'm doing some vocal recording for my stuff now and struggling with what my final take should be. I am not an engineer but I have a decent mic (Shure SM27) running through a decent pre-amp. Recently I've been cranking the gain and backing off the mic more when I sing. I *think* it's helping? I have a friend planning to mix and master the songs, but I'm still a little lost performance-wise as to what should constitute a final take. I'm doubling the vocals, adding lite-reverb, harmonizing, ect. I guess I'm more curious on how that feedback works. Like, what were they looking for and did they get it?

― Heez, Saturday, May 2, 2026 2:45 AM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol i honestly don't remember any more? my memory is not good. we didn't solicit or get any specific feedback on vocals, but i just meant that the act of imagining someone else listen to it highlighted the work we still needed to do on vox. my guess is we did a combo of rerecording whole takes, rerecording certain parts, and deciding that some stuff was actually fine. i mostly focus on performance, it can take me a lot of tries to get takes that have decent energy AND stay on pitch (our other singer (my wife) is better at this though i occasionally provide some feedback on vibes/tone). i used to do a lot more doubling of vocals and guitars but it started to feel like a crutch so i've tried to move away from that when i can.

lol ok. I really just want someone to listen to my songs and say, that vocal sucks, but that one’s fine to get me out of this indefinite loop of re-recording vocals

leaving tomorrow for our little Milwaukee/Chicago/Kenosha tour, excited had a good practice last night. a little nervous to play bass in front of Doug McCombs

omg ums that is soooo exciting, i'm thrilled for you

i wish i had more updates about the EP we recorded last year but unfortunately we kind of have a hostage situation with our producer who just can't seem to mix six songs in a timely manner

ums i've got a ticket for the chicago show, i think some other chilxors are coming too

a small indie is going to put out our next album digitally (ie help with promotion mostly) and make a small-run 7-inch single, which is exciting, but i'm used to doing everything ourselves and having complete control over timing etc. so it's hard for me to not get impatient with someone else's timelines, especially when they aren't as communicative as i would like.

Milwaukee has certainly had its share of visitors.

That's been my life lately, choosing to work with blessed & hard-working one person indie labels in the hopes that an album will get heard by a few people, even if it means waiting 1 - 2 years to put it out.

(although I have to say it's been kind of nice to listen to something 6 months later and still be able to make a couple of mix changes, if I had chosen to self-release it would have been too late.)

I'm playing in Milwaukee 5/30 as well, lol.

thanks ivy! i'm excited. NA - look forward to seeing you!

that's cool about the label and the 7 inch, I feel like any time you have a chance to put something out that you don't have to pay for that's a huge win

for father’s day I have decided to ask for a new laptop, because my el cheapo macbook air that I got for grad school almost ten years ago is ready for retirement. On this laptop I will run a DAW. I plan to get Reason as my main, but I have two questions for this gang:
1. Is that enough?
2. If not, what should be my second? Logic Pro?

logic proooooooo

its like $200 and comes with a shitload of plug-ins of decent to great quality

Logic Pro seconded

I love Logic Pro

Definitely Logic Pro

OK OK now you’re just making me want to deviate intentionally

Ableton Live if you are going to be doing electronic stuff.

I hear you but six years of fiddling with Reason Compact and making loops has me hooked on their interface, and my prior experience with Ableton was that while it was *fun*, it didn’t get me where I wanted to go. I want to try writing “songs” and not just “building up tracks from stems,” if that makes a lick of sense.

(I am sure people can do everything with Ableton. But I couldn’t figure it out, perhaps too easily distracted by all the different doodads)
(Reason probably won’t fix this, huh)

the key for me has been spending more time in Arrangement view, where you have a regular DAW timeline, and not getting too stuck in Session (loop) view

The benefit concert I did on Mother’s Day is finally online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fblv-YIvPVM

The HC band I've been in for the last few years, Franky and the Slight Incline, is doing a record release tour of...one show! In New Paltz, NY this Friday night

https://dcxpclive.com/dcxpc-live-shows/hardcore-and-punk-show-snugs-in-new-paltz
https://www.instagram.com/p/DYIIc1OEUUs/
https://dcxpclive.com/store/p/dcxpc-live-vol-46-franky-and-the-slight-incline-live-12

...we were too disorganized to get any other gigs landed on our way up. Thank goodness Scott who's putting out this record has more of his shit together than we do. Hometown record release show June 5th at the Cave in Chapel Hill, NC

Cool!

i'm really excited about a project i'm in called Makes a Difference. it's a duo with me and Jessee (the funs, glow in the dark flowers; chicago people and others may be familiar) and our debut release is out today!

https://makesadifference.bandcamp.com/album/makes-a-difference

it's 6 songs, 33 minutes, 36 seconds.

i play in a few different projects around town, but this one is really special. Jessee really pushes me to make music in a way that i usually don't, and i think my playing and sensibilities lead them to new directions, too. the first song on here, 'angels without wings', is just...not at all what i would do if i were by myself. i love it. i love all these songs, to be honest. i'm really proud of it. we also have cds (they cost $3 + shipping).

the album cover is a drawing of a photo of a poster i made in kindergarten with ballet dancers - the drawing is on top, the photo is on the bottom it won a special "you're a little kid in southern missouri" award at an art competition. for some reason, though, i was heavily discouraged from my interesting in drawing little dancer men, in rural missouri, so the original photo stands out to me as a possible early artistic path i've found my way back to later in life.

wow i love that cover art z

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

one of the members of my band (tim, the guitarist) is a part of a worker-owned bookstore initiative in my neighborhood, and they recently got to try out having a real store via a two-month residency in a nerdy knicknack store called side b. it's a small but really beautiful space, and we joked about playing a fake "tiny desk" concert there often enough that it became not a joke. we got lucky, a really talented cameraperson offered to film it, and as a result we look very cool, and i'm also proud of how well we played (though i'm the queen of forgetting lyrics during performances)

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

one of the members of my band (tim, the guitarist) is a part of a worker-owned bookstore initiative in my neighborhood, and they recently got to try out having a real store via a two-month residency in a nerdy knicknack store called side b. it's a small but really beautiful space, and we joked about playing a fake "tiny desk" concert there often enough that it became not a joke. we got lucky, a really talented cameraperson offered to film it, and as a result we look very cool, and i'm also proud of how well we played (though i'm the queen of forgetting lyrics during performances)

ok that double-post is definitely not my fault, it was instantaneous, my god

yeah that album cover is sick z_tbd

cool video ivy. my band is also testing out a "live performance in an interesting location" video concept soon, it's gonna be interesting