what is going on in your musical life

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?

Yeah National Audio is great, I've done a couple things through them.

guitarist in one band left us cuz he moved out of london :( which is a shame. was looking forward to recording those songs. we'd played 5 shows or so. it was going well. oh well. i have a decent recording of the last practice, guess i'll stick that on soundcloud if i can be bothered to mix it.

started a new thing with the same guys, got a new guitarist, and he rules! he's a bit older than us, used to run a drone and kosmiche club. had a practice on sunday and ended up with 16 little things to work on, 3 or 4 fully formed songs just happened, so looking forward to this band. krauty space rock with big OTT vocals and thinking i'm gonna bring an edp wasp and delay pedal into the equation. will prob play a show in the next month or two. my drumming is really rusty tho, need to get back on the practice pad before they kick me out!

tracks sitting in the computer way into the 100s by now, mostly experiments with the ridiculous synth collection that lives in the studio where i live. none of the synths are mine, but i'm free to use what i want and i've set up a synthesizer room and got everything patched up. pretty sweet. currently obsessed with the doepfer modular and making new presets for the matrix 1000- that's a seriously powerful bit of kit but the presets that come with it are crap.

playing classical guitar again, got my nails all purty, think i'm going to try and start performing too. maybe get some restaurants gigs.

have also been digging my uni pieces, trying to put together some sort of composer portfolio. surprised myself by how good some of those pieces are. the goldberg ensemble performed some of my string pices, which was very cool, had to ressurect an old hard drive, thought i'd lost those recordings for good!

Why is having good nails important for playing guitar? I don't play with my nails. I guess if I had long nails it would be difficult but...

if you play fingerstyle you get more control over your sound, you can also play louder and as everybody knows louder = better

It's a really fundamental part of classical guitar technique. Your nails are the tools you use to create and shape your sound.

Do restaurants in the UK hire classical guitarists??

What are you putting a composition portfolio together for, CB? Graduate schools? Grants/gigs?

*Show us your scoressss*

making new presets for the matrix 1000- that's a seriously powerful bit of kit but the presets that come with it are crap.

surprised to read this, mine is coming back from service today but from the little i got to play with it before it went in i thought some (though yes far from all, or even most) of the presets were absolutely lovely. insta-BoC!

i believe they ran a competition so the 1000 presets are all from users of the matrix 6 (which has identical innards) those patches are just a bit uninspired imo! but yeah totally get the BoC thing- if that's what you're after, they're perfect!

x-post, i'll up some stuff on my soundcloud and mayyybe post some stuff up here when i've got it all sorted, but i'm a bit shy about my own music, esp the stuff i've spent a lot of time on.

and just doing a portfolio for.. err.. i don't know really. i've seen a few bits of paid work recently, such as composing some piano pieces for an audio walk in london. i'd have probably had a chance of getting that if i had some music organised and online. unfortunately the only stuff i've written that's even half listenable i did at uni ages ago, since then i've just been obsessed with synths, microtonality, learning to play drum kit and never finishing things.

Do restaurants in the UK hire classical guitarists??

yeah, you can make pretty good money (read: actually make *some* money) doing functions/events/restaurants/weddings etc. i'm thinking some satie, beatles arr. for classical guitar, cheesy spanish stuff, play through a little amp. will be good practice anyway.

I played two harsh noise sets this week and someone who saw both of them posted that this city is "a patriarchal cesspool" on FB immediately after leaving the show tonight & now I'm irrationally worried that she's talking about me

don't worry about it

- offered up my sound work exp to a newly forming fairly hip arts council for my neighborhood in an advisory capacity. wondering how quickly that will turn into "hey i know it's 4 pm on sunday but the slam poetry competition needs you to come down and turn on their wireless mic."
- related to my endless pedal thread, but the fact that i am getting deluged with new pedal line offers is some strange mixture of feeling like the prettiest girl at the prom and huge stress wrt money allocation and decision making.

nice, my daughter will be there, as you know

eazy i was listening to your old album a few weeks ago after accidentally figuring out one of your songs, it holds up

i'm in a bit of a creative malaise as we're waiting on external factors that will impact scheduling of our album release and trying to figure out how much promotion to bother doing. thinking about spending a lot of money on new gear to spark creativity

I saw her yesterday but didn’t embarrass her by saying hi. She was busy w friends tootling down the hallway.

good luck ll!!! sounds like a fun gig

by mostly happy accident we had like three photographers at the album release show, so now i suddenly have more pictures of myself drumming than i ever have before

https://i.imgur.com/EPMY5gH.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/vPBkV0a.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/vm0JtEZ.jpeg

Great pics! I didn't know ddrum made acoustic kits (yours?).

ums, I don't really want to say publicly (mostly for jinxing reasons) but can email you if you're curious.

not my drums, the venue's backline!

god bless you for using the venue's kit

love,
band members the world over

God bless that venue for having a backline kit

it seems like that would have to be just about mandatory in NYC, though i don't really understand how bands work in NYC (in terms of having practice space, getting gear to shows, etc.)

i have played venues without a backline kit, it always sucks ass. i am still very lucky in that one member of the band owns a car

my neighborhood has a devoted music practice space, ton of rooms full of gear, also feel very lucky that that exists even though it can't possibly make money and must be a front for something

It does suck ass! I’ll do it but you have to be some kind of nuts to want to tote your own kit somewhere you do not need to tote it.

The drummer's dilemma, haul your own kit (sucks and increases changeover time, but you're comfortable) vs use the backline kit (which usually has beat up heads, stripped stands and throne that you can barely adjust, feels weird).

Backline is extremely rare here, reserved for festivals (to get that trademark Festival Tom Sound (TM)) and a couple jazz clubs. I think for rock shows there's that weird negotiation where one of the drummers need to volunteer to let everyone else use their kit.

best are the bands that show up without a kit or bass amp and just assume they can use yours

Heh.

One time I went to Dizzy’s at Lincoln Center and overhead the drummer for the late show being asked why he didn’t bring his drums and saying “well, I can just use the other guy’s.” Except the other guy from the first set didn’t let him so they had to go and find some old beater set for him to play.

my band has a new album coming out next month, there are three preview tracks up now on our bandcamp: https://shreddedsun.bandcamp.com/album/wilding
i'm really happy with how it turned out, we made some investments in some really basic gear (like some better mics and those mic stands that clip onto the drums themselves) that i think helped with a more consistent drum sound, and we stretched out our songwriting beyond our standard 3-minute bangers on some of the songs

Did you end up mixing this in the box?

yup
something you said about mixing on ilx actually stuck in my head, about how a lot of times a good mix involves having an element of the song being mixed "too" loud. it was helpful, i definitely think i used to focus more on everything being equally audible, now i'm more comfortable pushing elements that i want to emphasize way up to the front. the opposite sometimes too, mixing some parts "too" quiet leads to more dynamics. lol this all sounds so basic when i type it out

i guess i never really thought about it much in the past because i've traditionally gone for more of a "live" sound where things are more stripped down and the levels stay pretty consistent, but with this recording project i can be a little more creative in arrangements and mixing

I agree with all of that. Tracks sound great NA

yeah this sounds really good!!!

Love to hear that, yeah it sounds great.

My musical life feels like it's exploding lately - working on two records (trying to get up a an hour or two early to get some music time in before work, since I don't have much other time during the week), getting some video and live show prep together for an all-drums album that's coming out in a couple months, practicing.

Played a last minute sub gig yesterday with a New Orleans r&b guy who was in town, felt pretty good and it was fun to bring out all this Zigaboo/Clyde/Earl Palmer type of playing that I love but don't get to do very often.

With mixing I also stopped trying to aim for everything being the same volume. Now I go for audibility. Like that synth in the background is there and as long as the listener concentrates on it a little, they can hear it. Partly I did this out of practicality - ear fatigue while mixing makes trying to get everything the same volume a tedious chore. But also I love records where some instrument is a little bit hidden in the mix and I don't notice it's there until I've heard the song a few times already.

I need to get better at this, and to take my own advice more often. Sometimes when I keep turning something down in the mix, I take that as a cue to mean that it may as well not be there, and I do like mixes with only a few elements where everything gets room to breathe frequency-wise. But I think I also need to do more of what you're describing, tucking little subliminal things in the mix that you feel more than hear, sometimes that can really add depth and keep the ear engaged.

With mixing I also stopped trying to aim for everything being the same volume. Now I go for audibility. Like that synth in the background is there and as long as the listener concentrates on it a little, they can hear it. Partly I did this out of practicality - ear fatigue while mixing makes trying to get everything the same volume a tedious chore. But also I love records where some instrument is a little bit hidden in the mix and I don't notice it's there until I've heard the song a few times already.

― you gotta roll with the pączki to get to what's real (snoball), Monday, August 5, 2024 11:43 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

an engineer i've worked with a lot also taught me a nice trick -- say it's a little keyboard or guitar overdub that's going to play during the verse, if you raise it up in the mix a bit before the vocal comes in, you can pull it down while the vocal is there and psychologically you've already established it for the listener so they will continue to notice it even at a lower volume (it's very possible this is common knowledge too, i just didn't know it)

also the Cassini record is out! I played my very own record on my very own turntable :)

https://echodelickrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-cassini-promise

PSA: Sweetwater, Adorama and Alto have the Klark Teknik 76-KT on sale for $150 (not an affiliate link or anything like that):

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/1176KT--klark-teknik-1176-kt-classic-fet-style-compressor?mrkgadid=&mrkgcl=28&mrkgen=gpla&mrkgbflag=1&mrkgcat=proaudio&acctid=21700000001645388&dskeywordid=&lid=58700008696010903&dsproductgroupid=&product_id=1176KT&prodctry=US&prodlang=en&channel=online&storeid=&device=c&network=x&matchtype=&adpos=largenumber&locationid=9030985&creative=&targetid=&campaignid=21160912466&awsearchcpc=&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzva1BhD3ARIsADQuPnVo7j_U7OFHR5E6Uor5e4rtpJ0RrxS9_-Sbw9_v0M46R6MXuMTS_JMaAuKiEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

This is down from $349. A real Universal Audio 1176 reissue is $2999.99 new.

I took a chance the last time I couldn't resist a Klark sale (KT is Behringer, if you don't know) on their Roland Dimension knock off (a stereo BBD chorus). I think it was $79.99, and well worth it, though its a subtle effect and probably isn't the most phase-legal outboard you could find. I've never used this KT-76, but have used the real 1176s and probably would never buy a real one just due to cost. Thats a good price though if it's any good whatsoever. We will see!

oh I should add that it's backordered but they're still accepting orders that wont ship for several months.... but honoring the sale price.

That is tempting, I've never used a hardware compressor and I'd love to know if it would add something that I'm not getting from plugins. But I fear I would be too lazy to set up the routing every time and just use one of my many great vst compressors.

I recorded a bunch of hi-hat tracks the other day (incl. different stacks of crash cymbals on the hi hat stand), and remembered why I record everything but hi-hats at home. I think that there's nothing to expose a not-so-great sounding room more than hi-hats -- short, sharp, and metallic. I get surprisingly decent results with everything else in an untreated basement (drums, percussion, ride cymbals) but hi-hat sounds just drive me insane. May have to either use samples or re-record in a makeshift blanket fort.

Pls post pics if you go the blanket fort!

My band is finally going into the studio to shed the songs we’ve been slowly working up since 2018. Covid put a 2-year damper on stuff and we’re generally all busy adults etc etc

but i don’t 100% know how I feel about laying down songs that were written in the throes of a love affair that ended over 5 years ago, political stuff inspired by spring 2020, & all that. I should move faster but my bones are creaky. Probably nobody will notice the political stuff much, and tunes about a doomed affair have no expiry date, but it all just seems so … old.

Very typical, as soon as I have 10-12 unrecorded songs I get total writers block until they’re recorded at which point the floodgates open again. Maybe I should look at it less as an album and more as a creative enema.

I have yet another collection of bangs, drones, and hums available for your listening displeasure.

https://chrisirregardless.bandcamp.com/album/practicing-magic

my band's new album is out today: https://shreddedsun.bandcamp.com/album/wilding
i'm happy with all the songs. i don't know how cohesive it is as an album but i just think of it as the white album of diy indie rock

(mostly in terms of the diversity of song styles represented across the album but also in terms of it being a generation-defining classic)