what is going on in your musical life

I wrote a setting of Agnus Dei that is going to be sung by my choir this Sunday

Man Neanderthal that is a very political audition song choice, I like it

Congrats DJP! Is there going to be video available?

(And thanks!)

It’s going to be live-streamed, the replay will live on the King’s Chapel YouTube channel

Wow v cool DJP

just got home from band practice and feeling like playing drums every day for the past two years has paid off majorly

Yay!

The performance of my piece is in this video; fast-forward to 1:03:17 (pretty sure the ILX regex cuts off the timestamp parameter so you can manually add ?t=3802 to the end of the URL if it's not there)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xit7nF6suoQ

or rather &t=3802

that's so cool! it was really lovely, thank you for sharing

Thank you! I based the harmonic structure off of a pop song I'm putting together that my guitar teacher is having me write in order to force me to learn how to use more difficult chord fingerings, lol

Very tired of my usual songs and completely done with hearing my own voice. I'm just trying to stay active, even if it's mostly remote and online.

Currently starting on a new recording project with some oldsters who have a throwback 70s vibe. I can get out real drumsticks, and explore nonironic uses of fuzz and distortion pedals. May have to invest in some better ear protection though, because it's been a while since I had the space and mandate to RAWK.

At the same time, a bunch of my other one-off collaborators from the acoustic scene are (from my perspective) young persons. I confess that I don't always quite understand their taste. Case in point: I am casting about for a new female singer to work with. One 30ish scene denizen keeps coming up with cover suggestions that are charmingly random. "Jolene"? ok. "Black Horse and a Cherry Tree"? ok. "La Vie en Rose"? ok; I can probably work out a decent arrangement. I asked whether she had anything easy and she suggested "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)." Ok but wtf?

People of my own demographic tend to gravitate toward Blondie, Pretenders, Madonna. And/or Smiths, Cure, REM. That is comfortable territory for me. Edith Piaf is a stretch but not impossible. But Edison Lighthouse? I am always surprised by what Millennials know and don't know.

There is also a weird dude with a 7-string Fernandez and he does instrumental fusion shit. I can usually follow and find a groove, but I am just not quite sure what audience he's aiming for, if any.

there has been a tiktok meme using "love grows (where my rosemary goes)" recently

Aha! That explains it. Thanks. I should alert my teenaged child to inform me of what obscure 70s tunes I will need to study up on henceforth.

One of my peeves is discovering a great obscure jam, then pulling it out to wow my kids and them being like “that was a hit on tiktok last year.”

Completely out of the blue this morning I got a message: “Hey, what chance you could do a 3-week tour with [hardworking, competent, boring 4th-gen Springsteen-influenced singer-songwriter] in May?”

I’d have to burn all my vacation for the year, but I’d knock “doing a solid tour” off my bucket list (regret at having blown my early-90s window of opportunity has been a recent sore spot as I descend into deep middle age, so the serendipity of this speaks volumes). Such a random chance is unlikely to come again (especially if I decline this one).

Thinking hard about it.

DO IT

That sounds like fun.

do it

Had a phone call w/him this morning. He’s got himself sorted with another bassist. Equal parts relief (doing this would have put a complicated squeeze on the rest of my life) and disappointment (no rock & roll month of may for me). After sleeping on it, I would have done it for sure if he’d still needed someone.

Still, it’s cracked open a wedge of really wanting to do music stuff again, and opened my mind to other possibilities I wasn’t considering before, so that’s positive.

Thanks for the encouragement! CAPS AND ALL

Band played a show last night for the first time in 26 months. Went pretty well, although I vastly overestimated my general stamina & ran out of gas before the end of the set, leading to a massive cock-up on our Big Number. Ah, well.

I had donated blood earlier in the day, like a fool*. You’re not 30 anymore, mister!

*Obv donating isn’t foolish, but the timing was.

Played Bartok's "Merriment" on piano at a recital for my teacher's students a couple of weekends ago; it went as well as I could have hoped (and better than some recent guitar performances, heh).

I got my band's new single done. It is probably going to be going out to the SAFF for some sweet mastering sauce.

I'm pretty jazzed about the drum sound, it is raw but it's probably the fattest sounding kit sound I have gotten. I've got some sweet cut up and single shot samples to come out of this session. I'm going to try to build up my own kit from the sounds. There are also break beats and way we cut the drums, there is zero bleed. Curious to see what I can do with some of these things, recording was built on the click so it is definitely could be cut to a loop pretty easy.

As for the tunes...well, I think we have one that sounds like what a motorhead cover of little feat might have sounded like. It's also got a dicky betts sitting in with the minutemen string refrain part. The other one is I guess kinda grunge with a wah wah riff and some southern rock guitar army soloing. It's all sat to this mitch mitchell fatback beat. I'm happy how it turned out as I have had it written for years and never got a chance to work it up. I demoed it up a couple times with a drum machine.

Nice! Share bc links as soon as you have em, pls.

Nice, I wanna hear those drums

I’m going to release some ambient stuff in May. Can anyone point me to to any sites or blogs that specialise in reviewing that kinda thing?

emil.y, I see Slum of Legs is playing a show with one of my pals tomorrow: Samantha Savage Smith. Wonderful band; the drummer Chris is an absolute gem of a human as well as a monster player. Hope the gig is a roaring success and you all end up as friends. It is indeed a small world.

over the past year or two I've managed to build up a pile of half-finished techno tracks, so now I'm making a push to get some of these actually finished, here's the first one:

https://soundcloud.com/moodlesmix/dark-water

Bangin' stuff, Moodles.

I set myself a target of finishing a track every two weeks. Which may or may not be feasible for me. Anyway, here's a new jam:

https://foundriver.bandcamp.com/track/lofty-pines

Here is the new single. I'm pretty happy how it all turned out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWJEIjlnfg4

This was the previous one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5OkHaJqZeM

The ambient jail door slam and the drum machine loop a bit of a nod to the very beginning of 'eminence front'.

I've been going to the weekly jazz jam session for the first time in many years, because I hate sitting in and I'm bad at it.

I've been shedding a ton, my hands are feeling more relaxed than ever and soloing is more fluid. When I'm on one of my own gigs on my own kit, I feel relaxed and present.

But when I sit in on someone else's kit without warming up and feel the pressure to show out, I'm still prone to tensing up mentally and physically, after all these years. So I'm making myself go to see where the bottom line of my playing is. I'm definitely not where I want to be yet (i.e. able to sit in and calmly play the same way I do in my basement), but it's good to know that at least some of the things I've been working on come out when I'm on the hot seat.

Some players are the same way with recording. I've played more with a drum machine and a recorder than with a band, but I have seen musicians that are way experienced in playing live just wilt with red light fever even just doing some basement recording.

I get f'ed up trying to record myself singing. I got to think if I did not have to engineer and record it might be a better situation, but I always think my recorded vocals are not as good as I have done just playing with a group.

Oh yeah red light fever is real. I've noticed while practicing that I can trick myself into that mindset, like "imagine you're recording" or "imagine that so and so is watching and you can't stop and start again" and it's a helpful exercise.

i had no idea that was the name for it. I get that really bad, esp as a singer, when I'm a much looser singer live.

My trick as a recorder with overdubbing lead guitars with people is to just "hey let's roll through it and just practice and work something out." I then just go ahead and record the 'practice one' anyway and sometimes it really works out as you get their idea as it happened. Of course, sometimes you try to then take a solo idea and then do it again with something else and it just cannot get back to the 'live one not thinking'.

My old band we often recorded the band while we practiced and quite a few cuts on our couple CDs the solo (along with the take) was live. Being able to have it setup and keep it setup really helps in that way, but sometimes you end up with a killer take that the snare mike was off center a bit.

I was planning to record some hard hitting tracks but ended up making some chill balearic techno instead. Pretty happy with how this came out and the process was about as painless as I've experienced lately.

https://soundcloud.com/moodlesmix/galactic-dancer

My and my buddy recorded this live the other night. He's got a pretty nice modular rig, and I was using my Peak, Streichfett, and Minilogue. Dunmurry is a Belfast reference since the arpeggiator reminded me of that Orbital track.

https://soundcloud.com/balboa-park/dunmurrry

Spent the last week teaching drums to 4 campers/girls/gender-expansive youth aged 12-16 and it gave me so much life. Their showcase performance was today and seeing them play (and hold their sticks properly) def highlight of my summer. So proud of them! And me tbh.

Right on!

impulsively bought an arturia minilab mkii on craigslist, been messing around with synthesizers on ableton live and learning music theory properly (i.e., by watching youtube videos) for the first time after 2 decades of being a punk doofus with only a rudimentary understanding of blues scales and the cycle of fifths acquired in adolescent guitar lessons

hell yeah

That's great LL! I've started teaching a few students, and while the lesson schedule has been very sporadic (hard to coordinate schedules + covid), it's been pretty rewarding so far.

I also took my first drum lesson in many years, focused purely on hand technique/mechanics (from Dev1n Dr0bka), and it was shocking useful. So nice to find someone who's both a great drummer and can also really break down and articulate those things, and it also really confirms that despite the glut of drumming videos on youtube/insta, there's really no substitute for an actual lesson with someone who can see what you're doing.

I'm receiving weird fan messages in my Soundcloud inbox from a person who is extremely familiar with my work, over the top fawning and uncomfortably personal

not sure if/how to respond

Ask them for $400

as I lay awake in an uncomfortable couch bed for two hours last night trying to get my kid to fall asleep I remembered that my wife has a saxophone somewhere from high school band and decided that I'm going to learn to play "careless whisper"

Wow

my band has been practicing and playing shows on and off through the pandemic, but we're about to play a show where we debut two (!!!) new songs saturday. v excited, one of them is my favorite song we've ever written. hopefully gonna record an ep this fall

Beware: I think there's a note in the "Careless Whisper" sax solo that is technically impossible, yet it exists. That is, the highest note in the solo is normally outside the usable range of the instrument, and the saxophonist and engineer worked out some trickery.

There's an episode of https://strongsongspodcast.com/ about this. I forget the details but it involved either a different sax or speeding up the recording or some such. Maybe both.

Meanwhile I got two new instruments last week (coincidentally on the same day): a mandola and a 10" snare drum. I played both in open-mic settings over the last couple nights. The mandola is fun. I don't have a good enough ear to transpose on the fly, so I haven't yet had the courage to tune it to the correct CGDA, but it works fine as an octave mandolin, so I'm doing that. It's way better at that than my bouzouki is. Just a much more comfortable scale length for my chordal style.

The 10" Pearl M-80 (Short Fuse) snare is hilarious. I have it side-mounted on my hat stand and it is just so fucking cute. Saves setup time and weight. Tuned low with a Powerstroke 3 it gives tremendous snap. I am in love.