what is going on in your musical life

the first person I contacted about guitar lessons is too busy to take me on as a student but promised to give me contact info for other ppl, which basically means I am back at square one re: finding a guitar teacher

I am currently in the process of tracking down sheet music for a recital of solo and ensemble spiritual arrangements I'm doing as part of a quartet made up of ppl from my church choir (inc. my wife as the soprano) for the Tuesday before Easter; we're also going to take parts of that recital to do as music for the Good Friday service later that week.

I'm also looking over the Dvorak Mass in D major, which I'm doing at an evening Good Friday service in Dorchester; my primary responsibility AFAIK is augmenting the bass section but I believe I'm also going to be doing the tiny solo parts as well. (The other ppl from that include my wife again plus other folks from the spiritual ensemble we sing in.)

Also have a concert with the church choir coming up where we're doing Stainer's Crucifixion; I am not the bass soloist for it (thank God).

i didnt realize you were a bass! it occurs to me that i have never actually heard you sing. i imagined you having a very high tenor voice. haw.

i started a band with 2 of my girlfriends

Me too! We are called Ta1nted Pussy and have played 2 shows so far. We were supposed to have a show next Saturday opening for this weird Dutch guy, but he got detained by the Dutch government and told he can't leave the country without a work permit, so that show was cancelled. I play bass. I have not played bass since I was a teenager. So now I get to have fun learning/re-learning an instrument, plus I get to have fun with pedals. We are all noise/new music ladies, thus lots of fun with pedals. I got a Dr. Sample 202 for christmas! More fun! I kept one of the built-in samples, which is a lady saying "Stand By" for when we have technical difficulties during our sets.

We are planning to tour at some point later this year. L.A., maybe the South?

next month we have a gig opening for Cock E.S.P.

Our singer said, "Why do we always end up on shows with other bands with dirty names?"

having trouble finding time/motivation/energy to do anything too focused or serious over the past couple of years. i was playing with my friend who's a full-time musician but he decided to just play shows solo instead of with a band because the economics/logistics are easier that way. i've been doing some sample-based stuff on reason recently, i like it because it takes me back to when i was learning guitar and didn't know what i was doing and would come up with cool stuff by accident. also occasionally jamming/recording with the drummer from my old band, doing shitty lofi four-track stuff.

i would really like to have a more regular band where someone else bore the heavy lifting of the songwriting and i could just come in and play guitar and play shows a few times a year. but i'm not really connected to any kind of music scene anymore so i don't know how to find that kind of situation.

Band practice tonight. Eagerly anticipating our two track demo bak from being mixed/mastered although worried it might sound bad as we only spent two days on it.
Working on writing and practising our next batch of songs after an initial 6. It's now a concern that we have a 'sound' and aesthetic developing, meaning that we have songs we wrote and quite like that for one reason or another don't work very well alongside the others. Anyone had this problem? It didn't really matter before because we were still forming an identity which eventually formed into 6 upbeat slightly unhinged post punk numbers, but now this next one is a big dramatic sweeping thing with a more serious tone and we're not sure what to do with it.
Also written a reggae song, which I'm please with but need a way to subvert because right now it's verging a little too close to sixth form peace and love bob Marley cliches and I want to put a twist on all that really.
Wrote a sort of fast kinda sung-rap song but my girlfriend said it sounded like flight of the conchords. Not that that's an insult, but I wanted it to aoud more like Haim or something.

i didnt realize you were a bass! it occurs to me that i have never actually heard you sing. i imagined you having a very high tenor voice. haw.

haha that would make my dad very, very happy (he's a failed tenor in a previous life, sang lead in a doo-wop group in college)

I am technically a "bass-baritone" which really means that because most of my singing experience comes from being in ensembles rather than private, focused vocal study, I have no idea how to use my head voice and sing practically everything in chest; I have a sneaking suspicion I would end up being a true baritone or even a low tenor after several years of focused, serious voice training based on how my low range actually sounds, but the flip side is that I can actually croak out low notes even if they're inaudible unless I've been binge-drinking the night before so I dunno. But yeah, I've always sung low.

(which is actually why, in my teens, I realized I was never going to be a pop or rock singer, and why I was so taken by the grunge explosion)

putting the last touches on my new record (doesn't feel new, been working on it for about 15 months now) to send to mastering next week, figuring out how to put it out.

then i want to take some time to switch up my process, shake things up a little. work on some new synth sounds without any goals, try to finally learn ableton, record a bunch of new percussion samples. i want to take some piano lessons too, since i do everything with midi + mouse. i can figure stuff out on piano very sloooowly, so i thought it would be fun to play through some tunes in real time and get some chords under my fingers.

honestly though i probably won't do most of these things and i'll go back to what feels easy & comfortable. :/

I just got our first track back from the studio. I love it and I also cringe a bit because I can hear bits where my voice goes a bit wrong or a beat doesn't quite land how it's meant, and I'm trying to work out if anyone in their right mind would really notice or care.

roxy high school is an amazing band name

this is a neat thread idea.

i've been playing with a couple guys for the last month or so but it's just working out that well. they seem like they really want to sound like real estate or something, which isn't terrible, but a bad real estate impersonation comes out sounding reaaaaally bad, and it's not much fun to play drums to, either!

i've been writing and recording some new tunes, which doesn't sound like much but it's actually been a big breakthrough for me after about a 10 year songwriting/music coma that i didn't realize was a coma.

i'm moving back to chicago in a few months and i'm determined to join up with a good band. i used to be good friends with the cave/bitchin bajas scene so i'm hoping i can be looped back into all that stuff and that someone needs a good drummer

and yeah, high school is good, although i have to say i liked it even more when i thought the name was high school??

haha

whoa z s do you want to be in a band with me?

this is going to be really awkward when you reject me

well, that was easy. sure, let's play!

it's gonna be more like september or so

i think we are gonna be called "high school"??
a
I started a band in college called junior high university. I recorded one song for it and we had two practices and then everyone split up in different directions. that was the last band I was ever in.

have not touched my recording computer since my son was born. I long for a classical acoustic guitar so i can play around the house but I have no money for that now. debating selling an amp or two. I think my creative well has run dry for the foreseeable future.

i'm really burnt out on school this semester & have been slacking off to spend more time doing music stuff. all three bands i'm in are pretty active rn which can be overwhelming at times but is really fun. most notably i went on tour in january and started a new band called l0ud s3x which i am just so, so stoked on. the other songwriter in the band is really prolific and i really want to keep our ratio of songs 1:1. it's been a really fun challenge trying to keep up, he also writes amazing songs so i've had to be really strict about scrapping my tunes if they're not up to par. we're playing our first show at the end of the month & i'm pretty nervous because not everyone shows up for practice consistently and i want it to be spectacular

sp3ctacular l0ud s3x

I am not going to go into any more detail than this but the biggest audition opportunity of my lap literally just fell into my lap; I fully expect it to go nowhere but still, you never know...

would watch n/a z s band

DJP on x factor, it's America has been waiting for
xp

l0ud high school s3x

the biggest audition opportunity of my lap

lol dan

oh no, I've said too much

I am in month 15 of releasing a home-made recording every month. A lot of times I put it off until the month is almost over and then go into crunch mode. But at this point, even though I approach each song as its own thing and wasn't trying to make an album or anything, I can listen to all the tracks straight through and it sounds really cohesive to me, which I think is really cool. I also feel like I get a little better/more efficient at production each time.

I haven't performed onstage in like a year though, which was a conscious decision and I don't miss all of the bullshit that made me sick of doing it, but I do miss being onstage. But I maybe just joined a band that I actually think is really good and is kind of successful locally, which is cool because I don't feel that way about hardly any local bands and also I've never really been in someone else's band. They have kind of a Modern Lovers/Beat Happening/Magnetic Fields/Morrissey vibe. It'll also be neat because I'll be playing synth and I'm not actually a keyboard player at all, I'm a guitarist and songwriter, but that's also why I'll be a good fit for this.

kicking off recording of a new album. finally a chance to properly use all this new synth gear

Hey all - could I get a little bit of constructive feedback on this please? We've had an initial "how's this?" from the studio engineer on one of our tracks. Overall, I think it's okay but it's very difficult to distance myself and listen to it with uninvolved ears.

I'd really like to hear your thoughts, particularly on the mixing/production (we can't really go back into the studio to do any overdubs or retakes so we're working with the raw material we have, for better or worse). Are there any glaring errors on this track or things I should mention before I get back to him? One thing I noticed is that he's been a bit heavy handed witht he gating and compression, particularly some of the vocal parts where the sibilants and plosives are almost non-existent.

I'm only gonna keep this track online for a short while, but if someone could give it a listen and let me know their thoughts, i'd be very much obliged: https://soundcloud.com/doglatin/honolulu-demo-050313

god this sounds like a super harsh thing but i dont mean it that way - do you want/intend the beginning to sound like a 80's nylons style acapella group thing? like exactly like one? because thats what i hear. also some pitchy weirdness in the "so afraid" "yesterday" multivoice responses. again, if these are intentional things, no prob.

Lol, I haven't hear the nylons but it is supposed to be a bit of a tongue in cheek doowop thing and if it comes across that way I guess that's intentional. The song is very much a comment on retro culture and so it's littered with 60s and 80s references. Cheers for checking it out jjjusten, I'll look into the autotune thing. Think the sound guy's gone a bit overboard with vocal manipulation, but then we're not at all trained singers so there's undoubtably gonna be a push/pull thing going on.

song sounds good to me, esp. for a demo. i like it.

Xpost If you're talkin about Housemartins/Flying Pickets, I def see what you mean and kind of don't mind. I (was made to) grow up with that shit, haha.

Cheers n/a

I am making a lil album of songs that are about a min long each, I have about 10 so far where the music is done but I have finished singing over one of them, I've come up w/ vocal melodies for about 3

I am seriously using the dumbest most unwieldy out of date programs to put the songs together because for whatever reason I like how it all sounds more than if I do it in ableton?

what are you using?

I (lol) am using cues in virtual dj to play my laptop like an mpc or w/e (I could slice to a drumkit in ableton and do the same thing I guess, but idk, when I use ableton I spend 3 extra hours on shit) and then editing shit further and recording vocals in audacity, its a forehead in my hands deal, but still

i love stuff like that.

well I hope it lives up to its rudimentary description, I'm starting to embrace it, at least this way I don't end up fucking around with corpus for a week with no results

Good sounding demo, dog latin. I'd get some friends in a room for the backing vocals. And as for your solo performance it's a little too measured, just make sure you're saying "gate" instead of "gay" and make it fast and effortless

I was just in Prague recording with a budget-priced orchestra, stuff for five different clients and some stuff for my own use. There were 30 "pieces" ranging from 45-second long bits of orchestral incidental music to 20-minute marathon workouts. A total of 2.5 hours of music and 24 hours to record the whole thing. I def. got paranoid and overworked but I didn't break. I drove that bus.

It went very well but I instinctively prioritized the work of my clients, taking the time to really get something beautiful out of that shaky orchestra. I left not enough time for my own material. Now I'm futzing.

cheers FGTI - I did the lead vox, the others did backing. I think the engineer's but too strong a release on my vox because yeah, "gaze" sounds like "gay" etc...

i'm listening to spotify

gotta get these tapes out soon (for this band i recorded) but have no idea what im doing! i need to buy a tape duplicator! i need to buy...tapes! i need to figure out how to get this shit onto a master tape! what am i doing with my life! HELP!

i told my mom i was in a new band called high school and she recommended that we call it COOL GIRLS instead. additionally, "i like just a girl's name, like maureen, or mabel, for a girl band"

lmao at cool girls altho tbh i would like it as a name for a coed or all dude band

I was briefly in a(n all-male) duo called "Sarah"!

haw

possibly touring in the summer with the black/doom band, havent been out in a long time bc our guitarist lives a couple hours away, so we havent been as "active" in general. mostly an east coast thing, possibly all the way to canada, where i have never been

come to Atlanta!

I have been recording bits and pieces for an eventual cassette release. I've also been asked to do a split release with a local drone act. AND my band is recording stuff. So hopefully soon I'll have lots of physical stuff to give out at shows!

I've heard good things about getting cassettes made through National Audio?

🙏

I picked it because I’m one of the 3.3% of people whose legs go completely numb after back surgery. The doc was like, yeah you're an outlier

I very much enjoyed that.

― El Tomboto, Saturday, July 15, 2017 1:40 PM

hey thanks! here's a bad room recording of what the full arrangement is supposed to sound like.👍🏻🎸

Did my first public DJ-ing ever for a friend's art opening at a bar last Friday night. Glad there weren't any major technical glitches -- I did mostly digital files rather than over-complicate it. Here's an Apple Music version of pretty much what I played.

Funny having that experience of someone getting up to go to the loo, or a couple paying their tab and leaving after a few hours, sparking that thought "Oh wait, they must hate this song!"

(My friend who's art show it was suggested "winter soul" and "Chicago Soul" but also to play whatever I wanted, so that's how this mix came about.)

NI in insolvency, I have a lot of their instruments & libraries so pretty pissed off about this

Hm does this mean that my Kontakt libraries are going to suddenly stop working or nah

NI in insolvency

I bought Reaktor at the end of last month, my first NI purchase in about 16 years. Reminds me of the time I bought a SyQuest SparQ drive a month before SyQuest filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The most important companies to me right now are Cycling 74 and RME, if either suddenly dies I’ll be a mess. UAD, unfortunately, is in third place— their plugins are just really good and I don’t NEED them but I really like them. Tied for fourth is the companies that make Keyscape and Panpot

Crazy. I always hated using Kontakt, even though there are obviously cool instruments and libraries. Just the UI and menu structure feels so dated and offputting, it takes me forever to remember where to find my user presets. I only ever fire it up for Razor, which still sounds great to me.

I use Cuba and Africa, and Noire (rarely)

think I’m going with “Outliar”

― Heez, Friday, January 16, 2026 11:04 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Man, there’s like seven bands with this name on Spotify. None on discogs, but still makes me uncomfortable.

Anyone like Compson Q? It’s based on Quinten Compson from The Sound and the Fury, who has a love/hate relationship with the South, similar to me

Compson Q > Outliar

agreed

Word thanks

we have a new single and video, we worked really hard on this one, paid a professional to mix it and tried to do a really good looking video


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhsO-YLMBrk

excellent, will throw this on soon

great stuff!

really nicely done! was the person who mixed it local?

thanks!

was mixed by Neil Weir, until about five years ago, he operated Old Blackberry Way in Dinkytown (where the Replacements recorded Let it Be with the original owners), now he has a studio out by Turtle Lake Wisconsin in an old country church that's been converted, does great work, used to perform in the band Chambermaids and Pony Trash

Sounds/looks great!

oh i've worked with NW before, lovely dude and so talented!

ums that is great

I get to sing Anyone Can Whistle and Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat in an upcoming show and I’m very excited about it

thanks DJP!

xpost oh that's great budo, he's awesome

That’s a damn good song ums. Honestly better than any of the rock stuff I heard on the 77 best tracks of 2025

sounds great matt!

appreciate the kind words everyone

Just put out a new single for Bandcamp Friday:

https://chrisirregardless.bandcamp.com/album/slow-orbit

I also put out a sample pack on a whim:

https://chrisirregardless.bandcamp.com/album/wreath-minus-the-sample-pack

really enjoying this christine

Hello this thread. I have a track out! Well, it's a remix actually. But it is my first official non-self release after almost 30 years of dabbling in production.

It's a remix of Neon Pumps' 'Work From Home' and I'm actually kinf of chuffed with it:

https://neonpumps.bandcamp.com/track/work-from-home-charlie-stoic-remix

Support contract did not get picked up, so I am going to be looking for a new position and will probably go on the dole for the first time ever. One of a few bright spots from being able to get out of the wage slave clock even if for a short time is that I am going to be able to have a couple days to finally get my studio rebuilt.

I've been practicing music for the last couple years like a mf'er and I'm about ready to start recording some stuff.

Since I had the stuff from my band when we had a studio to record and practice and all and this old hard disk recorder, I think I am going to go back to my future and set it up and just record on the board and mix outside the DAW. Basically live mix to a 2 track on the PC.

I have a rack item that I can get paired up with an 8 channel preamp that I used for recording and could use it remote with a patch pannel that I can put into my old hard disk recorder and use the analog mixer for 16 channels.

Just do a trio of guitar, bass and drum machine with a bit of looper maybe thrown in. Work it up and then just live mix it.

I look at GD computers all day, the last thing I want to do is stare at the void of a DAW anymore.

All hail the new lords of mid-fi! Their past is your future. ha.

Sorry to hear about your lost contract earlnash, but glad to hear you’re getting into studio stuff

I am so the opposite re: workflow, I want to be able to do everything at my computer!

I’m currently debugging my new front-end application for live performance— it’s a Max app. The hardware will be ready on Sunday and I want to make sure it’s plug-and-play

xxxpost dog latin that is great

On my way for my Mark IV rig’s first test flight. Praying to the gods of data and wiring and Mackie Sound Protocol that I got my numbers right.

Asked my brothers in our group chat what I should call the rig and my waggish elder brother said “The Compensator” lmao

Just uploaded my latest batch of obnoxious tracky techno to Bandcamp: https://wascal.bandcamp.com/album/t-t-k-k-009

fgti, is the Max app the main thing, or how you're controlling the hardware? Like what's the actual interface while you're playing? Just curious.

Sounds like some peak time business, Willl.

Basically, my 2017 build (Mark 3) was centred around an 8x8 matrix mixer that allowed me, using presets and internal LFOs, to create a flexible set that could use effects in any order— I could use an H9 to process incoming sounds into a looper on one preset, and then on a subsequent preset use that same H9 to reprocess the looper material with another effect.

I ran into some obstacles over the past couple years— specifically that I was limited by my number of presets, and my sets are data hungry— I could only leave the house with 17 songs before I needed to do some arduous backing up and rearranging, I wasn’t really able to mix things up on the fly, and I struggled to freely create new material.

Matrix mixers need synapses to work— an 8x8 matrix has 64 possible connections, and that’s a lot of audio to process. The one I was using only could access 16 synapses at a time. Basically I spent much of 2024 and early 2025 investigating new methods of rebuilding, but kept hitting dead ends. In May 2025 I’d effectively given up, and elected to just “stop playing shows” and focus on collaborations and film scoring.

But then I took a trip to Finland to play a couple shows, using my Mark 3 rig. I interacted with some brilliant electronic musicians over there who heard my concerns about my current rig— and were already impressed with the capabilities of my Mark 3– and they urged me to keep working on my new build, and pointed me in the direction of Reaktor, which they told me was robust and could basically do what I wanted it to.

Working in Reaktor, I was able to build what I wanted, but it created a couple of issues— first, I’d have to have a large (at least 12x12) sound interface on stage, and second, that my computer was having to process (up to) 144 channels of audio to manage the synapses of the matrix.

A couple of friends tipped me off to the Fireface and RME’s TotalMix front end. I was eventually like “why am I working in Reaktor when Max is RIGHT THERE”, as I’ve spent years programming in Max and find it far more flexible.

Essentially what I build is this: I use the Fireface’s 12 I/O as my matrix ins and outs, but then use its fairly incredible digital capabilities to break out all the inputs into MADI, which is then looped back, and then assigned a fader in TotalMix. Effectively I have 64 faders of audio, all controllable with MIDI (or OSC), that control a 12x12 matrix mixer (with 64 possible synapses).

My Max patch needed me to experiment and do some annoying math to be able to replicate the methodology of my Mark 3 build. For example, I needed to set a dB value (-3 dB, for example), and have Max translate that number to a MIDI value, which would in turn be sent to TotalMix, which in turn would be translated to Mackie Protocol and sent to the Fireface. dB scaling has a trio of log curves (basically -oo to -6 is one curve, -6 to 0 is a second curve, 0 to +6 is a third curve) and I had to get Max to map each dB level to a curve appropriate to its range, translate that to MIDI.

And there were a lot of added concerns— ensuring there was drift so values didn’t snap in ugly ways, throttling the values so they maxed at 50ms per fader to limit the amount of data Max was throwing at TotalMix, ensuring that the last-value-sent took priority, etc. etc.

I build LFOs in Max and applied them to these values, build a patch storage system so I could save sets (with essentially infinite numbers of presets), and away we went. The best part of all is that this build allows for a 4-channel output, so it’s not quite “surround” but it’s 360 sound.

The important part is that my audio stays within the Fireface and never traverses the USB cable. All my Max patch (and computer) are doing is controlling the Fireface with incoming Mackie values from TotalMix. The digital loopback is just a MADI cable plugged into itself, and it hasn’t locked up even once (it did, before I got a proper MADI cable and was using a coaxial as an alternative, but it’s fine now).

My effects processing remains decidedly “retro” at this phase— H9s and Pigtronix loopers— I just haven’t found any more recent boxes that necessitate replacing either of those objects. The Empress ZOIA is in the mix effectively as a Nord Modular replacement— primarily using it for sound generation, I smack the instrument and the transient creates a synthesized hihat sound, for example.

Hey fgti - cos im interested by technically lost -can i ask if you could explain this less in terms of the tech but more in terms of what it allows you to do musically? (What instrument inputs for example... is this for you and a guitar in performance or a band? A string section...? )

more specifically what i might hear happening?

xxxpost dog latin that is great

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 21 February 2026 20:09 (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Thank you! I'm dead proud

Thanks for that fgti, very interesting & wild.

In May 2025 I’d effectively given up, and elected to just “stop playing shows”

This is the part I relate to, lol. After spending so long making an album with a very specific sound world, I'm just not up to trying to approximate it live anymore. My setup is very desktop/studio-bound and I'm not trying to buy any more gear just to play DIY shows that no one is asking for. The last time I did it was very stressful, even though it was relatively simple in the grand scheme of things (two drum kits, a drum trigger pad with loops and one-shots, a Zoom with some textural stuff from the album, a mixer, and a Kaoss Quad that everything is running into, including a contact mic on one of the drums). I just want to either play drums with a live band or make records at home...would love to play with someone who is more technical and could handle the electronic side live though!

I haven't played much of anything lately. Dusted off one of my guitars last fall with the intention of taking it back up again, but didn't spend much time with it. Had another guitar that I wanted to refinish, but I only got about halfway through stripping the paint before the weather got cold enough that I didn't want to spend any more time outside.

But last week I got a weird idea to play trumpet. I've never tried any brass (or wind) instruments before! I've always loved horns in music, but never thought I could see myself playing one, for some reason. I don't have a trumpet and didn't want to just splurge on one just yet, so I just bought a mouthpiece. Just been walking around with it in my pocket and messing around with embouchure and buzzing when I get a chance. Not sure if I'll graduate to a whole-ass instrument, but I'm having fun for now.

I got booked to play a set in two weeks time, pay is not great but I can finally dig for an occasion!

My choir is doing an edited performance of Hansel’s Solomon and I am going to do the bass aria. I’m really excited/terrified

anyone start to string some chords together for a new song and realize "shit im just doing [song x] arent i, no wonder i thought it sounded good"? i did this last night and once i put the capo on at 2 i was like, shit this is "sometimes" by mbv lol

No— my ears generally are on the detecting side of this, and I’m oftentimes ruining a client’s vibe by indicating melodic and harmonic correlations to existing material

That said, I did recently score a film that was entirely analog-electronic (think Stranger Things, Challengers), and the temp for one cue was a fairly chintzy-bad Tomita-style adaptation of Grieg. They told me they’d ripped it off YouTube. I googled it up and saw that Tomita had never adapted Grieg, and as this YouTube version was so chintzy, I thought it’d be fair game to adapt the temp. I did so, part by part, lovingly rendering an analog orchestra— it took me ten hours of real work.

I showed it to a film composer buddy like “isn’t this cool?” and she replied “when’s the last time you watched The Social Network?” So basically I wasted a day doing something Atticus and Trent already had done

it truly do be like that sometimes

Did another music thing for Bandcamp Friday.

https://chrisirregardless.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-nature-sounds-you-will-ever-hear