what is going on in your musical life

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?

I have a regular jam with my friend who plays an electric piano/synth and usually we play sort of bouncy improvised fun bloopy stuff but last night she suggested we try something more droney. I decided to record it and when I got up to turn off the recording, we had been playing for over 19 min. It felt like maybe 7-8? It feels/is grandiose to think this, but it reminds me of Phaedra-era TD only the ship is moving through space in a more propulsive way.

that sounds cool.

there's a regular jam night in a pub near me. anyone can just rock up and join in. it's loads of fun, but this time they've asked me to be 'house guitarist', which I'm a bit worried about being to be honest as my chops and scales leave a lot to be desired. Usually I just create weird noises with my pedalboard and let more accomplished players take over.

That's a totally valid and useful philosophy -- not everyone can be at the center. As it turns out, I really like jamming!

But if you are chosen to be at the center, why not?! It's maybe refreshing to have a guitarist who is more inventive than technically skilled?

yeah. i've no idea what the rest of the house band are going to be like as it's a different bunch from normal. plus i've gotta let other people use my guitar for the night, so there's that minor concern too. I'll prob bring my shitty Ibanez instead of my nice Gibson.

I'm gonna be playing in Damo Suzuki's band in a few months. I think I am gonna be on the verge of having a heart attack all the way up to the actual show.

Man that is so insanely cool. And you shared personal time (and a lol iirc?) with Jaki!! That's awesome.

ha

thats rad emily

Krautrock legends - gotta catch em all!!

Wowwww x 10

emil.y, that's awesome!

Oh, that's great, emil.y!

I got about 90% of the way through finishing a string quartet about two weeks ago, then wrote a couple of string players to get their feedback on the playability of the lines, but neither has gotten back to me.:/ Otherwise, just getting ready to play at the Toronto symposium next week and hopefully record my classical guitar piece when I get back to the US in a couple of weeks.

that is quite amazing, em.

I'm currently in the process of trying to figure out a fully electronic/midi way of creating music that I enjoy (or mostly, might do a little bit of direct electric guitar too). I've accumulated a Yamaha digital piano, Roland V-drums, a Scarlett 2i2 interface, and most recently a Novation mini controller, and I'm thinking about maybe getting Logic or Ableton. H encouraged me to do this, she was like "Look, you complain about how hard it is to make music in an apartment, how you wish you had a band right now, etc., but it's just not gonna happen, so you have to work with what you have." And she's right. I don't have time for a band, I can't play live drums in an apartment, so why sit around being a sad sack about it? She basically came to an equivalent realization with her art -- painting big/large sculpture and mixed media works are just not in the cards right now, so painting in a small format is better than not painting.

rad. i'm opening for Colin Stets0n a week from tonight, which is my big solo show this year. meanwhile rehearsing for a Prince tribute show next month is reminding me why i don't play in bands anymore (or at least bands that rehearse).

xp

Oh nice, really like Colin Stetson.

also i made a resolution to finally learn how to dj (i.e. buy a cheap laptop + controller and learn to use some software). not that i'm trying to actively get dj gigs, but it comes up every now and then, and last time i recorded the mix at home and loaded it in my SP404, lol.

Oooh, Colin Stets0n support slot is cool af!

I'm finally swapping from my old laptop to my new one and am gonna empty out the old one of everything except music software & hope it'll be strong enough to be a dedicated music computer. Then I'm going to get serious about properly learning how to turn the noises in my brain into noize-in-the-world.

Yeah, I think a new dedicated music machine is in the works for next year too. Considering a mac mini, esp since I already have a good large display. Right now just using H's MacBook.

i still use a desktop pc that never goes online. works great, but that's why i've never had a laptop for live or dj use.

every time I think of getting back into DJing practice it ends up with me looking at $$$$$ rotary mixers.

the crucial damo thread: damo suzuki's wang

i'm trying to get something small & cute that will earn the scorn of snobby dj dudes.

Heh, I'm still using a late 2011 Macbook Pro, souped up with a 1TB SSD, 10 GB of RAM, and a cooling stand when I run M4L. Spent so much time in the last couple of weeks on troubleshooting.

I kind of hate the Apple Corporation but I imagine that it would be a huge pain in the ass to switch all my stuff to PC/Windows software if I were to switch at this point? I also don't think Logic Pro, which I have to use at work, is even available on Windows, so it's a moot point.

yes, no windows version of logic since about 2003.

picking up one of those fancy tascam digital portastudios at lunch!

this one

finally I can get away from the computer!

Nice. I'm envious of the 8 simultaneous tracks. Synthy noodlers and noise doodz are fine with recording one or two tracks at a time, but for a live band or an acoustic drum set you want to be able to put down a bunch of things all at once, without losing the ability to tweak them individually.

I was looking at that portastudio to replace the one I have but it doesn't have midi, so it's a no sale :(

I'm gonna be playing in Damo Suzuki's band in a few months. I think I am gonna be on the verge of having a heart attack all the way up to the actual show.

― emil.y, Tuesday, 2 August 2016 23:22 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Amazing! We got him to play in Hitchin once ages ago with Drum Eyes and they were exceptionally good. One of the weirder moments in my life was eating breakfast the next day in a local greasy caf - Damo ordered chicken and white wine.

snarkoterrorist my thoughts exactly, all our good stuff comes from jamming together, we can record it on a zoom or whatever but then it's harder to pinpoint particular things we want to explore further... I guess this is having a bit each way, can jam it out then pull it apart in reaper later if wanted/needed. not against PCs but just find them really uninspiring when trying to be creative, I'm on one all day at work.

brownie my cunning plan for things that need sync is: 808 rim shot (from TR-8) through one of the assignable outs to a track in the porta, then route that via aux out to the clock in on my beatstep pro.

...which sends MIDI and CV everywhere else (have a MIDI thru box).

I have the bones of a song I feel pretty good about right now and am recording the parts little by little. I pretty much have a demo-worthy piano track done (it's a very rhythmic piano part so I'm kind of building around that), and some of the lead guitar parts laid down. I've learned to have a sort of zen discipline around the fact that I may only get an hour or two a night of time in between everyone going to sleep, getting the dishes done and the house in order, and one of the kids waking up and needing attention or something, and some nights there's no spare time, so I'm just trying to be ok with moving at a plodding pace. I need to decide whether to wait til I can record the V-Drums in the daytime or just risk the neighbor getting pissed at night (or play very softly, which might mess up the feel).

Once it's done, not really sure if I'm going to try to re-record it with a better performance and try to get a good sounding mix, or maybe just rent some studio time and do it on acoustic instruments -- may only be able to get a limited result with a Yamaha digital piano, v-drums, and my amateur self recording through garage band. I have contacts at a good studio where my band previously recorded (and that has done records for big name indie acts). Hard to decide whether my time and money is better invested in better home equipment/learning to do shit myself vs going somewhere where I can get a good sounding result more immediately but don't come away with anything I can reuse on other projects.

Also it's going to be hilarious when I try to record the vocals using a makeshift combo of couch/cardboard/thick comforter as my booth.

I've learned to have a sort of zen discipline around the fact that I may only get an hour or two a night of time in between everyone going to sleep, getting the dishes done and the house in order, and one of the kids waking up and needing attention or something, and some nights there's no spare time, so I'm just trying to be ok with moving at a plodding pace.

this has been my musical life for the past six years. i saw this tweet recently and was glad to see someone else dealing with it: https://twitter.com/twwalsh/status/758698734985314304

I typically do everything but the drums in those after-bedtime bits, then do the drums last, in the daytime. I'll start from a guide track (drum machine, acoustic guitar, scratch vocal), then start adding real instruments. At the last minute I delete the guide track then add vocals and drums.

Paying for studio time to do tracking as a solo act sounds like it would get pretty expensive. If you're on good terms with the studio, why not get it mostly finished (all the instrumental tracks, say) and then bring your tracks to the studio just for vocals (or just vocals and drums)?

A good engineer can take the individual tracks you've already recorded at home, make them sound better with plug-ins and such, and mix them intelligently with anything you end up playing in the studio.

still lookin for a drummer :(

Lol NA.

I guess it's been my life for a few years except what I've changed is my attitude, like I'm learning to accept that it may be six months start to finish for one song I'm happy with, but at least I'll have that song instead of a grab bag of stop and start ideas and snippets and frustration.

my wife and i have a recording project with our friend who plays drums, and the recording process isn't too hard in re: managing time with the kids and other responsibilities. but we've been talking about trying to actually play a show, but we have 4 kids between us and our friend's wife is pregnant and we all have real full-time jobs and anytime we play together either his wife has to watch all the kids while we try not to play too loud in the basement or we have to get a sitter and drive to a rehearsal space and it just doesn't seem realistic

Yeah being in a band that practices let alone performs is so incredibly time and labor intensive for such a minimal product, much moreso when you can't do it regularly. My wife basically gave me a talk about this that helped me a lot, like "look you've been banging your head against the wall about wanting to be in a band, but face if, you don't have time to be in a band. Focus on what you can actually do."

Because I'm working entirely in iOS with a variety of virtual synth and sampler/rompler apps, and without vocals, i get a couple of thirty minute sessions in during work while hiding in a stall in the men's room (everyone here knows I have Crohn's disease so it is not remarked upon, lol) and another 15 to 20 minutes on the train home with my headphones way too loud. And I try to arrange it so I have 30 minutes in the morning before I leave. And if my wife goes out with friends I jump on that time.

I played guitar for a good thirty years before injuring my elbow and definitely had a 'style' despite largely failing to form bands or finish concrete projects; this is my third year of working via touch screen and I feel like I've gotten to the point where it sounds like it's coming from the same place my guitar playing did but with the chance to sidestep a lot of the limiting tics I developed on guitar.

It delights me and makes me feel alive in that old way but of course I am also in touch with the fact that there could hardly be a more banal and unexceptional story than middle aged amateur musician makes electronic music.

that's why you pretend to be younger and invent an interesting backstory