what is going on in your musical life

Eh, messier than I hoped but that's what these things are for, I suppose. Was good to revisit the piece and I hope to keep playing it.

Incidentally, my anecdotal impression is that standards of classical guitar performance have really risen or shifted such that a much higher level of precision and cleanness is de rigueur even at the medium level compared to 20 years ago, which I was reminded of watching the younger guys at this thing. Feel like it used to be normal to expect more buzzing and fluffed notes even in concert performances by professionals.

*sigh*

Went to watch a jam session recently. Most of the guys playing at a really high level, but there was one guy who I have seen before who could play okay as part of the section but his soloing was a mess, which made me think of a recent discussion which was on this thread I think

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jlXKGPvm30

the fills: sloppy! the tempo: could be steadier! but this is what i've been doing for the past month or so, just trying to get competent at this smashing pumpkins song and a few others

Awesome!

That rules Brad

I traded my violin-that-I've-had-for-twenty-years for a cheaper and better new violin made by some guy in Minneapolis, sounds great, I am inspired, I've been practicing a couple hours a day, learning Mozart and Brahms.

My church choir is doing a compiled video of current and former members performing "Swell the full chorus" from Solomon by Handel; we do it every year in September when the full chorus comes back to sing services but, since everything has to be remote, the director asked us to record our parts to a guide track and invited former members to contribute videos as well. It should be interesting to see who appears in the final video.

Oh, that's cool.

And that's p huge, fgti. Couple hours a day makes me feel like I should get off my ass. I was close to that a couple of weeks ago but nowhere near with the fall underway.

My band played in our guitar player's driveway last week for the first time since mid January in preparation for streaming something for friends this week. It was sloppy and my left shoulder hurts more than it probably should but holy shit did I miss that.

I like your grip Brad, I always think it looks cool when drummers have a natural french (thumbs up) grip. I use it for certain things (like jazz ride patterns), but not everything.

I was taught that thumbs up was better for wrist and arm health?

Maybe? It's not as natural of a wrist motion for me (compared to palm down), but it does feel better for using the fingers.

I've been on a Philly Joe Jones kick after randomly catching this John Riley video, he breaks down the sticking in such a clear way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8pmpHp8hrQ

I love this guy (and I've been buying his jazz sticks for years), the point in the last few minutes about repeating yourself to convince the listener that your playing has intention is so 'obvious' and yet so crucial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNQO4y5TsLo

Thanks for posting that - nice grounded lesson and approaches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7p2gMwsPjw

I like Cleartune myself, which gives you your pitch to the cent and has a similar wheel. The guitar tech I always saw uses it. I haven't tried the one she mentions.

I played the original acoustic classical version of this piece at a local guitar society's Zoom event last Sunday: https://soundcloud.com/sund4r-subramanian/electric-currents-ii . Hoping I get time to do some rough classical guitar recordings before I get back to practising electric.

We can’t find that sound.

I spent a couple of hours last night learning the synth riff from 'Jump' on my nord lead and can almost do the solo except there's one part where I have to skip a note or two to play it up to speed.

I've had a synth for 15 years, it has been about 18 months since I progressed from playing it with just my index finger. I can now play with both hands as long as the left hand part pretty much stays on one note.

If James Redd's post was a reference to my link, 4=a

Oh hah, of course, d’oh!

My church choir is doing a virtual recording of a couple of choruses from Esther, including a double-chorus where we all recording choir 1 while facing to the right in profile and choir 2 while facing to the left in profile. I think it is going to be visually cute and sound weird

I've been playing a ton the last year or so as my band went on hiatus (or kaput TBD). I must be getting close to 10000 hours or something as my guitar playing has taken a step up. I think the big thing was that I played mostly for a year on an acoustic and doing that then getting on an electric seems easy breezy.

Finally getting my garage to the point I can record at home again. Busted out the MPC2000xl and got it setup and thankfully the USB Zip works w/ W10 and on the drum machine. Next step is to sample up my drummers kit which has been on the shelf at my house for a year.

This thing is pretty good, not sure who will be able see apart from Sund4r and myself: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10158021108782705&set=gm.881277882408883

Haha

earlnash that sounds like a very promising combo

Anyone here jamming on Endlesss?

It's the most fun I've had during the quarantine. You can jam using the built-in software instruments, but you need a bit of kit if you want to be able to use your own instruments, voice, etc.:

1. USB audio class-compliant mixer with 2 busses (I have a Behringer 1204USB), or USB class-compliant interface.
2. iPhone and iPhone camera kit

Then you send one bus (with whatever you want to record) to the phone and everything out to your speakers.

Once you get that set up, it's like an ever-evolving, collaborative Ableton session. You can join in jamming with all kinds of randos, or you can create private sessions with your friends.

I'm adapting a couple of self-indulgent Christmas carol arrangements I did for myself several years back for members of my church gig to record for the lessons and carols service. The scratch originals can be heard here:

https://soundcloud.com/djperry1973/coventry-carol-ladies (this is me pitchshifted up an octave, yay technology)
https://soundcloud.com/djperry1973/god-rest-ye-merry-gentlemen

I redid Coventry Carol so actual women could sing it and not murder me; it's now in F instead of E and stops making the top soprano line sit on a high B and the alto line hit repeated low Es. I'm in the process of editing GRYMG so it's feasible for remote recording, editing out a few verses and consolidating some of the sections, as well as fixing some egregious harmony mistakes.

I spoke to soon on the internal USB working. It worked twice and went back into whatever technical hyber-nation whence it came. Scurring through other boxes of musical equipment arcana; I finally found the powersupply to external SCSI 250, only to find something is now amiss with the power button on the SCSI Zip wheras it will not eject or allow the drive to be read. It appears caught in some cycle of there is power, but it is not really turned on and no I will not let you have back your Zip drive with your 'Shellac-inspired' sample kit. FU buddy, it is now mine...

Error message on said MPC2000xl reads some x and 0 arcana in that it cannot mount the drive and/or the chip powering the board has gone bad. MPC2000xl can be updated with the 'semi-modern' removable stamp sized media like a digital camera, BUT you need to be running MPC OS 2.0 and I am running 1.2 - and wait for it - you need to mount a zip drive with the update. And you need a functioning SCSI Zip drive to be able to load said OS upon the sampling drum machine. Good news is that my USB Zip drive works and functions a-ok on two different W10 devices. So I got a drive to download and get on a Zip disk to update.

I think the first thing to figure out is if that code means the chip is fried on the m-board of the drum machine. If that is cooked...eh, don't know from there. Can't see paying $200 bucks for a SCSI Zip drive, but it would be cool to get it working again.

I'm absolutely, absolutely addicted to the viola. I've been practicing it two, three hours a day. I've learned Bach cello suites-- I'm working hard on the very-difficult 6th one, I'm obsessed with Lillian Fuchs performance of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxuHSiG8sug

:) wow! that's really cool! ride the wave of learning and practicing and passionate addiction as long as you can (then do a double-axel dismount). it's the best feeling in life.

listening to Fuchs play all 6 of them now

She rules. She insisted on always using a gut A-string! Soooo difficult to play with one. I put some high-level wound gut strings on my viola and I can't hack it, I'm switching back to synthetics

Viola absolutely my favorite of the bowed strings and the one I’d attempt if I were gonna try to learn

Violas are amazing. Also, viola jokes suck!

I got a bit addicted to William Byrd's motets this year and have been analyzing and pulling the separate lines apart and using them as inspiration to come up with these...idk, classical/home listening-ish sounding tracks?

Lord knows what I'm supposed to do with them once it's all done, but there's almost a record's worth.

https://soundcloud.com/nowherians/byrd-004-mix-03/s-dAATc6bYXJe

My church choir recorded my arrangements and I’m really, really pleased with how they came out

Just put down the money with CDBaby. Limited run of CD-Rs and digital distribution expected for early January.

And just found that a 1m cello piece I wrote was selected by a local new music group to be part of a livestream concert of 1m pandemic pieces in the spring.

That's cool!

had good jam w/ electric sound of jim today! got some nice Berlin school vibes down.

I have been working on doing solo stuff all year (what other choice?!) and finally recorded what I consider the best sounding version of this improvised solo percussion jam. I recorded another one that is similar but this one turned out groovier so I am sharing this one. (description: instrumental solo improvisation with various small percussion)

https://soundcloud.com/marshmallowy/new-recording-33-12302020

oops
(description: instrumental solo improvisation with various small percussion and drumset)

I'm transcribing/writing an arrangement of Ride On, King Jesus based on the Burleigh version for our MLK weekend service

LL that percussion loop at the beginning is really cool, what is that?

It’s me! I looped some cymbals, a cowbell, some small bells

I just bought a cello!

Wow!

LL that is cool, love it

the now on hiatus band I'm in with global t. has an EP culled from a bunch of jams we did in our drummer's basement coming out, and a couple of the guys are doing a video for one song

I bought a midi controller and an trying to learn Ableton Live

did this kinda hip house song, just trying to learn how to structure stuff in Ableton and I'm pleased with this, at least did a breakdown then brought it back type thing

Ableton is weird/cool, very different from other DAWs I've used but starting to get the hang


https://houseofsleep.bandcamp.com/track/the-palladium

I recently upgraded my ableton set up as the gear I was using was ancient and collecting dust, new laptop, new audio interface, new version of ableton. I'm getting reacquainted with it, making various sketches, but still find putting together full song arrangements to be more challenging than it should be. Testing out various workflow approaches that might make it less painful.

Sympathies, moodles. I have a VERY clunky setup with utterly ridic workflow.

I vacillate between wanting to embrace the clunkiness (like in an "oblique strategies" spirit) and spending gobs of money on gear that will leave me slightly less frustrated but just as limited in terms of skills.

A couple weeks ago I had some free time (between jobs) and put put a call to my musical friends seeking collaboration opportunities. Got like eight songs, and am busily working up tracks. Things are good on that front for me at present... but I really do miss playing live.