what is going on in your musical life

if you don't need the money, don't do it

(i know this is not a bad problem to have. also i think the only compelling reason for saying 'yes' to these things is that i could justify buying that new synth to my partner, because i would just be putting music money back into music.)

xp

the trap I've seen people fall into is that they justify doing stuff they don't want to do for money as a way to fund their own things they *do* want to do... and then they don't actually have the time to do the stuff they do want to do, cuz they're too busy

that is the advice i was looking for, ty

Could these musical jobs help you: i) improve your skills in a way that would be relevant to the things you actually enjoy doing or ii) cut back on your hours at (or eventually quit) your day job? If not, Οὖτις probably OTM.

I, non-musician who got bored with what's out there, am slowly groping my way through four separate 'projects' in various stages of disarray:

- duo with fellow ILXor S- - 'punk electronics' I coined us, octatrack sampler and other synths and drum machines &c. basically this was an excuse to do a comedy 'world cup theme' for the last WC that turned into a real project. we've done a radio session and played a gig shortly after that last year, then I got a job and we haven't done anything since cept come up with ludicrous album titles and concepts. need to kick that back into gear.

- jamming with on-hiatus IMM'er electric sound of jim, shooting for the 'private issue new age' vibe. ppl we've played it to seemed to dig it; friend who runs small noise label likes a couple of tracks but wants the titles changed from the cloud types used as placeholder names, haha.

- trio with another two friends - me on synths and drum machine when I can be bothered bringing it along, guitar, bass (the bassist has just swapped to this after deeming her own cello work "too depressing"). seem to get some interesting instrumental soundtrack vibes going on, but we don't practise enough and the bassist in particular has too much going on elsewhere to do it twice a week. probably need a drummer too really.

- fiddling around with whatever my own thing is - I guess I'm shooting for a more chaotic take on tangerine dream-y repetition. this seems to be turning into an exercise in amassing gear.

You are doing a lot of musical things for a non-musician

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm writing a viola+orchestra piece! There's a section where I want it to sound like high-pitched static so I gave the entire string section egg shakers to swirl

:D

The viola is one of my v favorite voices

That is exciting news!

that's awesome.

so I gave the entire string section egg shakers to swirl

this reminds me of the time that i had dinner with a bunch of old symphony orchestra vets (the principal percussionist was a friend of the family), and to this day i have never heard musicians complain as much or as bitterly. one of the string players was talking about being made to play some avant garde piece where they had to tap on the bodies of their instruments, and how they should be getting paid doubling rates because that counts as percussion.

hahaha

for some reason that reminds me of an anecdote about the 60s/early 70s Marvel Comics inker Vinnie Colletta. He had an assistant whose job was to ink the backgrounds and Vinnie would ink all the figures. One day he passes his assistant a page with a crowd scene; Vinnie has inked all the people but one guy prone on the ground. "I'm not supposed to ink any figures," his assistant complains. "That guy's dead so he's background," says Vinnie

lol

Sounds pretty cool, fgti.

i've been playing in this band with a weirdo that plays only covers of local, small time musicians. i just joined it, but it's kind of a local institution, been around a while with a rotating cast of ppl around this one guy. i don't know. it's fun to play with him , and very fun to choose and learn the songs, but he has a weird value system w/r/t music, ie he doesn't want me to sing harmonies cause i sing "like an angel", which isn't really true. he also has no ambitions (how can you be ambitious with a covers band really tho) and is really skeptical of people who have them. its fun tho.

I think I'm in this band!!!!!!!!!!

Trying to sequence the tracks for an album I've been working on for years and cannot for the life of me figure out how to do it. Spent so much time with these songs that it's hard to get a sense of how they fit together. Any advice?

It sounds like you need external input from someone. I'd try assigning them an arbitrary order and doing an informal focus group-type thing with a small number people you trust to give you honest opinions on how well the album flows.

Tackling trying to learn staff notation by attempting various things in Notion on iPhone and iPad. Amazing program (the samples are even pretty good). Damn this is a big nut though. Thank god i played sax for nine years in band so i at least have that remnant literacy, but dang I am 45 years old and my brain is not the rapacious monster it once was

Xp yeah that's what I'm thinking. It's just so frustrating that I can't figure this out on my own. It's like I have no sense of how these songs function anymore.

https://soundcloud.com/djperry1973/at-the-river

My most recent solo at my church gig

Max for Live was being incredibly buggy for me all last week. Then, out of nowhere, it started working without a hitch. I'm trying to get some of my processed guitar pieces ready for a presentation later in March. Sooo rusty right now and I'll be away from my gear all of next week.:(

That was nice, Dan.

Thanks! I am very happy with the direction my new voice teacher is pushing me; hopefully in a year I'll have a reliable high range and can call myself a real baritone rather than a bass-baritone with very soft low notes, lol

Also, recently cranked out a trio piece for flute/tuba/piano (seriously) that will be played in Ottawa in April. I'm not really sure how it will come out but am curious.

I went up to Ottawa last weekend for this premiere. The performance could have been better, probably in part because I couldn't attend any rehearsals. the musicians seem interested in keeping the piece in their repertoire, though, which is great, so I expect it will get better.

So my acoustic drum set had been in my longtime bandmate's basement for like ten years. He's moving across the country, so I recently got my drums back. Tremendous fun to play at full volume again.

My ambitions had been more oriented toward acoustic folky-busky kind of activity. I'd been playing mandolin a lot. Comparatively little sound reinforcement, no set list, lots of string instruments, a more nimble ninja-like kind of thing.

Now that the drums are here I find myself once again craving a full chugging rock band with a backline and PA. I've been playing bass a lot. I suspect the load-in/load-out process for one or two bar gigs will remind me why I stopped playing in a rock band.

still lookin for a drummer

(altho u don't live anywhere near me iirc)

In the future all rehearsals will be over skype.

Heck, perhaps eventually all gigs will be too.

ugh no! i am looking forward to the upcoming months of easier show-going and socializing irl. tired of virtual people, bring me the warm real ones!

i am now involved in three projects and trying to line up some shows for the next few months. all three are duos and i am interested in getting at least one more person involved in at least one of them (probably not the long-distance one)

overall, outlook: promising

My piece from a few years ago "Locks and Ripples" was accepted to the Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium in August. I'm a little surprised because I basically never get accepted to electroacoustic things.

Congratulations sund4r!

Thanks!

I missed church this week but next week I'm going to be the cantor for an evensong service, which should be pretty fun.

After 20 something years of aimless dicking around with guitars I released my debut album today. https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LtCYJXsWRfXcBn32sAuQM

Had that on while making lunch and I enjoyed a lot of it, especially the guitars.

Thanks sund4r! You might like my ambient guitar stuff, i followed you from that a/c on SC.

Thanks. I'll listen.

i joined a femme avant improv collective

Awesome! Are you playing bass or sthg else?
I joined someone's synth pop solo project and it's nice to have her message me like "show at (venue) on (date)?"

Now I'm in 3 bands.

I am hoping our house hunt results in me having studio space again. Root for my future basement, everyone.

V cool, roxy.

playing some bass, some guitar, doing vocals, harp?, some other things (a contact mic in a box of grass)

the regular season at my church gig ended yesterday; barring a special Sunday in a couple of weeks, I get to sleep in again on Saturdays (as much as my kids will allow me, that is)

kind of at a loss as to what to do with myself though; maybe I should try to resurrect my barbershop group?

B-b-but what about your guitar lessons?

They were sort of annihilated by my toddlers ;_;

(that is something I want to get back into; I also want to keep up the work I've been doing on my voice as this year I've been able to sing stuff that would have been impossible for me to even attempt a year ago)

started a new EP and spent the whole session in frustration with new hardware & plugins.

i tried using this echo pedal as an outboard effect with my DAW, and after i got the routing figured out, i was getting way too much of the dry signal back from the pedal (even with the mix knob turned all the way up). ideally i want a true 100% wet signal that i can mix with the original dry track, but maybe that's not how guitar pedals work?

I usually work on music pretty quickly, but I've been working on this album with my wife and our friend, and due to the way that we're working on it it's a much much slower process, and the songs are a lot denser with more tracks than I'm used to. I've been working on it for like six months now and I've heard some of these songs probably 100+ times and remixed some of them over and over and over, and I'm getting to the point where I can't even hear most of it anymore, I can't tell if it sounds good or bad or anything. I'm doing most of the recording and mixing and my bandmates tend to not give me a lot of feedback other than "yeah sounds good." There's one song I think we finally decided to give up on because I kept adding stuff and remixing it and it never sounded good. I know I should probably step away from it for a few weeks but also I am having fun working on it, even though it's frustrating, and I want to finish it. But also I feel like I could finish it and go back and listen to it six months from now and hate the entire thing. I realize this is probably common for a lot of you but again I tend to work pretty quickly and simply so this is fairly new to me.

Maybe wait six months (or one month, or a few weeks) without listening to it, just to get some perspective?

Will be doing a few live hip hop gigs in the next months

some tracks require a kind of autotune effect on the live vocals, do any of you happen to know what's the easiest/cheapest way of doing that?