what is going on in your musical life

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.

thanks to Rocksmith I can fake my way through the following songs on the guitar:

"Boys Don't Cry" - The Cure
"Islands" - The xx
"Go With The Flow" - QOTSA
"Black" - Pearl Jam
"Where Is My Mind?" - Pixies
"Angela" - Jarvis Cocker

I can't play triplets fast enough to really play the RHCP version of "Higher Ground" tho

also I have to learn some spirituals before a week from Tuesday, well really by Sunday because I think I'm supposed to rehearse them that afternoon oops

also singing Stainer's "Crucifixion" a week from Sunday; I don't have the big baritone solo but I do get one of the mini interjections in the bass section (it's not as big a deal as that may sound as the entire bass section is 4 ppl; one is doing the big solo and the three interjections are split up across the rest of us) this does mean though that this season I will have had a little solo interjection thing in every concert with our church choir, which yay

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

― C: (crüt), Thursday, March 14, 2013 2:29 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i apologize crut but this is making me lol. you need to write a piece called partiarchal cesspool

that was a typo but tbh it works

cesspool party!

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

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, 6 March 2013 17:47 (1 week ago) Permalink

someone help me, every song I make is extremely disorienting for other people

I had my first jam with some really nice neighbors I met -- they are both classical musicians (a Juliard-trained composer and a violinist) who have other careers now but the guy is learning banjo. I played through some basic folk tunes with them (with my sub-sub-sub-Doc Watson-style flatpicking) and it was really nice and unaffected and it felt good to just be playing some pretty songs without trying to have an edge or angle of any kind. First time in a couple years I've played with other people.

Also have been doing kids songs for my one-year-old, and played at her birthday party, which was the first time I've performed in at least a couple years.

hope you got free drinks at least

three cake tickets

My performance was very moving, a couple of audience members even cried.

haha

playing in Europe thruout beginning next week thru end of April. Very excited. First time (solo).

fantasy send links
I was just told my voice had a newfound maturity and it was a bittersweet thing to hear

I took the job because they wanted dark wave and indie sleaze and I’ve never done a score like that before and I know I can, coach!

That sounds so fun.

Ha, that does sound like a blast.

Thanks dubmill, I appreciate that. Good luck with your release, that track sounds great and I'm sure you'll be able to find a home for your new project.

I'd like to be so egoless as to have making music be its own reward, but making an *album* is a lot of work, and unfortunately that's the medium I fell in love with. Putting it into the world and it having a bit of life after release is part of it for me (I feel lucky to have had the experience of releasing some music that still feels 'alive' out there, and of course a lot that's digitally dead sitting).

There's nothing wrong with self-releasing of course, I just haven't had much luck with it and likewise at this point just can't play the social media game (and working with labels has felt specifically like the way out of that trap). So I'm feeling stuck between not being able to move on until I put this album out, and not wanting to just shove it out in the cold.

Anyway I don't want to be a downer, congrats LL on your studio session!

Mostly the experience of sending music to labels makes me very glad that I'm not dating or applying for jobs, the rejection without explanation eventually gets wearying.

the rejection without explanation eventually gets wearying.

I used to find that upsetting years ago, because I'd build my hopes up and my confidence would fall apart after a few rejections. I think I'm a bit more resilient now, like I wouldn't really care if they didn't like it. Because maybe I hate the things they like anyway. Not necessarily, but that might have something to do with why they didn't like what I'd sent them. It's not like I think what I'm doing is perfect. I know it's nowhere near, but I also know it's up to a certain standard, and I've had enough people tell me they really like it for me to continue. It's the lack of having a proper plan of action, a strategy, which is making me, not exactly lose hope, but foresee that I might begin to lose hope if I don't figure something out.

But I reckon you'll get offers eventually. It's just going to take a bit longer than you first thought. It might be later this year, or it might be next year. It's not like it has a short shelf life. It's unusual and it's good. In the meantime, you can work on something else, but also continue to push this out to other people.

My studio has been down for a year as I had to take it apart because of having an issue with some termites in the house. My garage studio is packed with stuff so it was a beast getting everything off the sides of the building into the middle and I have have been working so many hours and dealing with other BS, I have not had energy or a free weekend to get it together.

I mostly jam and practice guitar on a Vox Trailblazer in my bedroom. I play a bit everyday and it kinda sucks not having a band, as I think my skills have improved a bunch as player. I'm getting pretty good using the thump pick and playing claw style mostly with my index and middle finger on my picking hand.

Practice and jam a bit every day, some days 10 minutes and some days a couple of hours. Got a pretty good amount of raw material in the notebook.

My guitar practice material is pretty much same as it has been for a while, working on triads and then adding in other notes playing through the chords of major and minor. I also do a bit of game working on learning the neck playing say a A note or A chord in across the neck. I've been also doing some ear training playing along with records, which was something I have almost always sucked at doing. There has been some improvement though. I was jamming along to all of Exile on Main St. today.

Doing this kind of work, you do really start to 'see' the symmetry of how the 12 note music form is put together.

i bought a porta 02 mk II 4-track at a yard sale for $40 this weekend. unfortunately it doesn't seem to play or record correctly but i've been enjoying running my guitar through it with all the levels maxed out as a fuzz circuit. it seems like it would be easy for someone with a minimum of knowledge to convert this into a proper fuzz pedal but i have almost zero mechanical/electronical skills.

Oooh NA I have an MF-P01 that I think works but is of no use to me. I am not using, would gladly send along to a good home.

Btw I got some good, specific feedback (not from a label but from a trusted collaborator) and I'm going back to re-record drums for 4-5 tracks on my album. At first I wasn't sure about it for a variety of reasons, but these are all tracks where I sampled myself and made loops, and I did wonder if the loops were too static (even though I do a lot of dubbing to give them some life). But now I'm excited to go back and do live drums, especially because it's rare to get to play drums on an otherwise completed track with all the parts there.

Oooh NA I have an MF-P01 that I think works but is of no use to me. I am not using, would gladly send along to a good home.

― zydecodependent (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, June 9, 2025 4:09 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yes please! if you want to email me to set up details, it's naamme at gmail

finally got my shit together enough to peddle a cassette of wack lofi ambient interludes https://dreamscan.bandcamp.com/album/reduced-pathways

Question: does anyone have recommendations for how to approach mixing my first studio recording? I have another few hours booked with the engineer and so far I’ve listened to the tracks a gazillion times and have a Google doc where I have notes. I want to work some studio magic but I don’t even know what to ask for. Thoughts? Anyone?

I know I want certain elements to be louder but aside from volume I am not sure what can be done, so I don’t know what to ask for.

a lot of it is levels of different elements and where you want things in the stereo field. you could also add effects - the mixer might have ideas about that if they're familiar with where you recorded, ie if it was a dead room they might suggest adding light reverb/delay to give it more of a sense of space.

i've only ever done my own mixing and it can be a bit of a headfuck if you've got lots of different elements and/or are trying to make up for recording deficiencies, but on the other hand if you've got a limited number of elements and they were recorded well, it can be fairly straightforward.

I think I’m in situation B but the deficiencies are my own — playing too softly here, flubbing coming out of a fill there.

As far as editing goes, it can be tough when you're very close to the material, but I'd caution against getting too micro. Maybe listen and distinguish between 'mistakes' that are nicely human vs the couple things that you're pretty sure you can't live with. Then you can try to grab an alternate version from another take or a different part of the song, or it can be an opportunity to do something creative (dub out/add fx to a fill that's a little clunky on its own, or cut that bar and create a fill with fx coming out of the previous one, or reverse it (the classic), etc).

Volume might be taken care of entirely once the engineer adds compression, which makes the dynamics more consistent.

If you're looking for mastering (maybe you've got it covered already), would highly recommend this guy. Reasonable rates, great work, and great to work with.

I think people sometimes distinguish between mixing that's just applying EQ, compression, and reverb to make everything clear and sounding its best vs more 'creative'/production type mixing with more fx, but I think the line is always blurred. There's not one way to do things, it almost always involves some weird problem solving, at least it does for me, lol.

Like, my own home recordings have lots of 'problems' that are really just opportunities to create a unique sound in the course of solving them. Recently I recorded a bunch of drums where I was playing very quietly with mallets on toms using mics that basically picked up zero high end, so I ended up bouncing out the whole drum mix, pitching it up an octave, and cranking the transients. It sounded terrible by itself, but blended with the rest of the drums it sounds very cool and fresh to me.

I think good engineers should be open and excited about experimenting, but I know that can be tough in a short time. They should also ideally be good communicators and able to interpret feedback that's not expressed in technical terms.

that's who we use too and i agree. good communicator.
xpost

Good intel — thanks folks!! I have had some of my previously held notions confirmed (esp re:experimentation) and I’m honestly really looking forward to this so I want to get the most out of it. I’m not a perfectionist and I enjoy the unsteady shifting sands of parts that move parallel and not always 100% in sync. I think between the two sets of takes we can do some really cool stuff. I’m excited!!

One of the tracks has a rain stick (??) on it! I found it in the closet. It sounds really cool imo.