what is going on in your musical life

^^^ nice man!

i put a bunch of 'beats' i've made over the last cpl years onto one of these online beat stores tonite, i don't even know if it's a good website in any manner, i just didn't want them collecting any more dust. some of them were songs i produced with vocalists that never got released so i reclaimed the music from them, and a cpl are just plain old beats of various genres.

http://www.firstdub.com/producer/autologico.html

i dunno. anyone have any experience selling music online in one of these kind of things? wonder if there's something better i could be doing.

i dig those beats! i don't have any experience selling beats, but i know a lot of people do it thru soundcloud & twitter via people they already know and building a following online. but i only have a peripheral awareness of all that

glad you liked STREETS... working on the b-side now, SIPPER OF TEA. gonna put out a tape in a few months

Made a bunch of cassettes with different covers and pretty pleased with how they look

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0012236483_10.jpghttps://f4.bcbits.com/img/0012236488_10.jpg

Sounds okay too, abstract field recording stuff if anyone wants to listen to that sort of thing https://automating.bandcamp.com/album/einstellung-zwei

they look great! I bet they sound good too. I'll take a listen.

ya i listened to that last night, sounds great!

i'm thinking about becoming one of those guys who, instead of hitting the distortion pedal in the loud parts, has the distortion/overdrive on all the time and uses the guitar volume knob to change level of distortion. feels classier. but i wonder how hard it'll be to train myself to do it.

What if you want a sound that is both loud and clean though?

Personally I want to be able to have a consistent level of loudness but with varying levels of dirt. Especially for fingerstyle bits, where I'm quieter and need more volume (but don't want distortion).

I always play with my volume knob at 10 and uses pedals (if any) to control volume. I understand it though, unlike ever putting your tone knobs anywhere but 10. why would you do that? Always sounds like shit.

If you need loud and clean to match your loud and distorted by a boost. Handy little buggers.

I tend to get all the toanz the same apparent volume (clean, dirty, weird), and use a boost for solos. So there are eight options:

- clean
- dirty
- weird
- clean + loud
- dirty + loud
- weird + loud
- weird + dirty
- weird + dirty + loud

Not sure how I would get to that array of options with the "everything dimed and control it from the guitar" approach, but I wish NA the best in the quest for tonal bliss.

A limiter?

EZ, we might just be talking past each other - NA was talking about not stomping on anything at all, right? Just cranking everything and controlling it with a pinky from the guitar.

Yeah, I was mixing your comments with his and trying to answer a non-existent question. Story of my life.

Agreed to do a dj set in Chicago that starts at 3:30 am, because as crazy as that sounds to me now, I'm sure with each passing year it will sound crazier and less appealing.

Also finally taking the plunge and using CDJs.

ha ha there is maybe a 1.4% chance i'll go out at 3:30 a.m. but let me know the details anyway

I started an instagram for posting short clips of me doing (so far) covers. It's a really easy and immediate way to put music out there without it having to be perfect, and it's helping me sort of break through the ice on singing/playing for people who don't already know my musical side, since it means friends from other parts of my life wind up seeing my clips. Just trying to learn to give less of a fuck at this point.

Plus I don't even have to even have an entire really good take, just a good 45 seconds or so.

I have a sort of slow funk song I'm working on that I'm proud of but it's being let down by some very dry, stiff-sounding programmed drums. Does anyone here have a way of recording drums that sound halfway realistic and would be interested in hearing it?

my musical life is stunted
i had been working so hard for so long and then things just kind of fell apart
i still have active long distance recording thing, but the IRL playing opportunities have all sort of vaporized -- one person i had a couple shows with has been very busy with other priorities in her life, and that's about all i had going on. i would like to revive my musical life, so that is my goal for this spring/summer. i have been working hard and playing for 5 years in june; can't stop now.

on the upside, i am getting my musical fix by teaching a class about music at work, which is both gratifying and educational. i've learned a lot too!

dog latin: I sometimes start with a drum machine as a guide track, record all the other stuff, and then overdub real drums as a last step. (And delete the original drum machine bit.)

The result sounds pretty bandlike to me, but it is kludgey and time-consuming. Happy to help if you like.

Wish I could DL...I did a drum session for some guys last weekend, and we got a pretty good sound in their living room (also one of them went in the basement with his iphone to get some trashy room sound through the vents). It was a pleasure to be able to record drums that someone else was going to edit/mix, and it was pretty much in my wheelhouse (focusing on sound & feel, nothing too technical, just replacing programmed beats & breaks to a click).

LL I think it always comes in waves, but I guess putting yourself out there and talking to people always helps. 5 years already!

yeah 5 years already! in june technically.
now for the real problem: i have real difficulty with the concept of "putting myself out there" for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the stigma against self-promotion. i don't need to go on about the shame and stigma of self-promotion among music-making people. however, if i don't do it, no one will come to me; unfortunately every time i try to do it, i recoil internally and stop before i even start. then there is the feeling of begging for attention, which has been trained out of me over many years. i'm not really sure how to reach out without feeling this way, like i have no idea how to do it. i feel like i need advice from someone who knows me & gets my perspective and situation, but ???

you're right though, it does come in waves. i am not having one atm but like i said, i am getting a decent fix elsewhere in my musical life.

LL, to me you are a hero for passing on to others what you know/love. The courage to do that is laudable - so is your general air of humility and wonder about it... being eager to exchange information with your students and cast out a net for suggestions.

Personally I spent a decade working frightfully hard on composing original music, recording almost every instrument myself, teaching it to a full band, and finding gigs at which to present it to the public. I love it but the cost/benefit ratio is way out of whack.

In contrast, my current ninjacoustic trio - beloved 80s covers but using folk/bluegrass instrumentation - is relaxing and fun.

Thanks! It's so fun too -- I went on outings with students on Sunday night (to see a string quartet play Wadada Leo Smith's borderline incomprehensible compositions about Marian Anderson and Ma Rainey AND talk about them at the cost of $5) and Tuesday (to see a house band play for swing dancers at a legendary Chicago venue). The only student who kvetched about it (and not even directly to me) was the young woman who spent her 20th birthday seeing string quartet free jazz with her mom (who is also in my class and reported the kvetching) <3 good times imo <3

i'm not really sure how to reach out without feeling this way, like i have no idea how to do it.

There's definitely a lot of people clamoring for attention, and social media really amplifies this. I have the same issue, but I realize, that in the context of the "news feed" you just blend in with everyone else (unless you go about attention-seeking in a very dramatic way -- which I also have seen plenty of), and you shouldn't feel shame or like you stick out in a bad way.

One thing I think is useful is to be specific about what you are looking for. Are you looking for collaborators? Are you looking for gigs? Are you looking for gigs for a specific project? And if you are contacting people, or just doing a fb post "putting it out there" people tend to respond to specifics, rather than more general things, where you will get "likes" and "hearts" but little actual action.

and in my life -- I have now been booking music in arts venues for 19 years, on and off, mostly on. I keep saying, "okay this is the last one" and then I get pulled back in ...

that's good advice, thank you <3
i know i have more luck getting things actually done by talking with people in person than via social media.

Performing tomorrow. Don't feel ready yet.

Just finished mixing my fifth record

Had a meeting with the label and they're saying "January 2019"

I feel sick to my stomach, lazy, stupid, but also happy that I might get a vacation this summer

daer fgti's label, ur slow coaches

grats though!

That sucks, but I've been enjoying the time between finishing the thing and the thing coming out. I always feel like I can't truly start on another record until the last one has been released, so it's nice to mentally let myself off the hook from feeling like I should be making music. That's obv a long time though.

If it was a novel it'd be an even longer wait! Way longer.

unless u lose patience and put it out yourself, like an idiot

A little readier

Sund4r, where/what are you playing?

I'll be playing at University of Ottawa in a few of hours, doing a solo set of ambient/proggy/fusion-ish electric guitar+laptop music with a couple of new pieces. Rehearsal felt good this morning. I'll do a similar set in MA in a couple of weeks.

Excited for fgti's new album! Summer vacation sounds nice, unless it means that money will be tight.

Agreed to do a dj set in Chicago that starts at 3:30 am

This went well, played from 3:45 - 4:45 and drove back afterwards, staying up all night at my advanced age was easier than expected.

Mixing on CDJ-900s was a little trickier than I expected but I think I played it smart. It would have been nice to be able to do longer, tighter blends but I stuck to quick + safe transitions for the most part and we all had fun.

Grats fgti, that's great news! Lj otm though, Jan '19... Sheesh.

I put a few tracks on a bandcamp page - the same ones I posted upthread - and I got some really nice feedback from some folk. A guy I haven't seen in ten years saw me share them on Facebook and messaged me - he manages a website for photography and videography and has asked me if I would be interested in supplying some soundtrack material for the content they produce. So I'm meeting up with him over the weekend for a catch-up and to discuss how this would work in practice. It might come to nothing but then again it might be interesting to do. At first I thought he was just looking for something he could get cheaply but he's determined to offer me a decent scale of money. It's exciting because he must, at some level, believe that what I'm working on is good enough that he's willing to associate his business and his name with it, it makes me feel kinda legit.

also, bedroom producers, how do you record your vocals properly? I thought I would give it a go by plugging in my (admittedly cheap) microphone into Ableton and using some EQ to take off the low frequences and adding some reverb but it sounds so tinny and unnatural and I have no idea which of the thousands of Youtube tutorials to start watching.

what kind of mic are you using now? if you don't already have one, even a budget to lower-midrange level condenser (say, $150-$300) microphone makes a big difference.

i don't know why i'm offering advice on production. i deeply hate the way that all my music sounds (although i think my compositions are ok, which keeps me going). what is going on in my musical life is that i'm re-recording a handful of songs at my best pal's studio, with my old college band as ace session players, basically. if all goes well i might actually play A Show, which used to be a core part of my identity but disappeared during my lost 20s

'person with projects sees my weird little bandcamp album and asks me to do soundtrack work' is pretty much my dream result, good on you boxedjoy

I record vocals at home with an SM57 & 58, usually thru a cheap rack compressor (or even sometimes thru a compressor guitar pedal, the blue Boss one). I mostly record to tape & eq on my tascam, but ime it's best to get a good clean/dry sound before you start adding reverb & effects. that's totally dependent on your voice so ya gotta just mess around with the eq and find the sweet spot. Compressors are your friend.

Congrats to boxedjoy and Karl.
At home I record vocals using a Shure SM57 connected to my computer via an old Tascam US-144mkII USB interface. The room I record in has a full height bookshelf behind me and heavy curtains on the window to the right, so this reduces a lot of the boxy room tone.

^ yeah any kind of dampening like that works great. also ime recording in hallways works really well for getting a little bit of natural reverb & a good tone, but ymmv. definitely worth trying tho if you can

what's going on in my musical life is, about two years ago I started piano lessons about 12 years after my musical life lapsed during high school. I bought a piano last year because I have more money and space than patience, it was the right choice because pianos are wonderful. I'm not practicing enough and each piece I work on merits weeks and months of effort but I've been working on Mozart K545 Piano Sonata in C major (well, the first movement, so far) and I can tell I've made progress.

For example: I can sight read the grand staff laboriously slowly. I can read the bass clef at all and read the treble clef a million times better than I ever could as a mallet percussionist. My hands stretch for a 9th. I can play the first few Hanons at 85bpm or so without totally falling over myself. I memorize pretty well. I don't spend too much time looking at my hands.

Anyway that's what's going on. My objective when I started was to have no objective or schedule for making any particular amount of progress and just do it indefinitely and see where things stood in ten years or so. Sometimes I wish I were more diligent at sitting down to practice, or learn pieces faster, but mostly I just keep going every week and hear stuff get better.

that's awesome! once you can sight read, even super slowly, it starts a positive feedback loop that eventually leads to you playing effortlessly behind your back in a speakeasy while people throw money in the air and cheer

keep enjoying yourself silby! that's how it's done imo
also learning feels good :)