what is going on in your musical life

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

would ilxmail work 4 u? I need to rerecord some vocals today but I'll send em

yes

webmail'd u sorry 4 my voice

played a couple of "finished" lil songs for a friend and got a p bleak reception, I hate being in the room w/ people hearing my shit 4 the first time, turns me into such a demanding-yet-craven little thing (tho I'm probably just more aware of how demanding-yet-craven I actually am)

Sang in a recital of spirituals yesterday. It went well and my wife and I each made $50.

I sang:

I Want Jesus To Walk With Me
Don't You Weep When I Am Gone

My wife sang:

There Is A Balm In Gilead
Were You There

we also sang as part of a quartet:

Soon-A Will Be Done
Crucifixion (He Never Said A Mumblin' Word)
Since You Went Away
Steal Away

We're repurposing a lot of this for an afternoon Good Friday service; later that evening we'll be singing Dvorak's Mass in D major, with the Sanctus and Benedictus being done with us as part of an octet (really a septet; there's only one alto soloist). Bummed we don't get to do the solos in the Agnus Dei.

also I still don't know if I'm singing the opening solo for Easter Vigil or not; I've done it the past... two? three? years so it's no big deal but I keep thinking I should ask

I hate being in the room w/ people hearing my shit 4 the first time

i've learned that this is just not a good idea

i once accompanied hymns for a unitarian congregation. they replaced every instance of the word "god" with "all."

hey so, i have a question about getting asked by promoters to open for touring acts. if it's a popular act that's going to fill the room anyway then great, the promoter is basically doing you a favor. but when the idea is that the local act will provide a crowd for the not-super-well-known touring act, it gets a little weird, right?

the main problem seems to be, why would your friends/fans come and pay a higher cover to see you open for someone that they don't know (or don't like) when they know they can see you a few weeks later for less? i feel like i have a hard time getting people to these shows, and then worry that the promoter is going to blame me for a small crowd/losing money. i guess the only reason to do these gigs at all is to eventually get on some of the bigger shows?

You got it.
If you're worried abt giving your regular fans value for their money, maybe you think the headlining band isn't worth their time? and thus not worth yours?
Typically though it's always good to play direct support for anyone everywhere (and never play 1st of 3 unless you're less than a year old)

Puff puff I owe you an email but basically I just wanted to know your inspirations and intentions, also don't be discouraged

i feel like i have a hard time getting people to these shows, and then worry that the promoter is going to blame me for a small crowd/losing money. i guess the only reason to do these gigs at all is to eventually get on some of the bigger shows?

― shit tie (Jordan), Wednesday, March 27, 2013 5:27 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I doubt anyone is going to put you on the bigger shows if you don't bring a crowd anyway. IME getting a better show without bringing a crowd only came when we were new to a venue and the booker/owner/whoever REALLY liked our set.

Plus I hated subjecting people who liked us to bands I didn't like, although more often than not we didn't have a choice

Puff puff I owe you an email but basically I just wanted to know your inspirations and intentions, also don't be discouraged

― a source of "vegelate" (flamboyant goon tie included), Wednesday, 27 March 2013 21:38 (21 minutes ago) Permalink

thanks for the help, ur 2 kind, there's absolutely no rush

idk I think discouragement is kinda alright, it's just that there a part of me that doesn't really know if, right now, my stuff is lol bad or if my friend (and his gf silently shuffling around the back of the room) just didn't get it or if it really matters either way. I'm just happy making stuff. idk this thread is really cool tho because ppl like you and dan and jordan and every1 else are all in some diff part of their musical lives

hey, i wouldn't let the reaction of other people in the room impact you too much either way.

(warning: totally subjective and neurotic perspective (or total hangup) that is probably shared by <2% of the population coming up)

personally speaking, i HATE being forced to listen to someone else's music in the same room with them. if you're in a band with someone, or they're really familiar with your music, then cool, whatever. but if you're just a friend or, even worse, an acquaintance, then it's a really uncomfortable experience as a listener. because i'm not the kind of person who will come flat out and say "hey, i didn't like that song", or "i don't like your music". it's just too awkward of a thing for me to say in person. the worst i'll say is "yeah it's pretty good!" or something. so that means that having to listen to someone's music in the same room with them, and being expected to give some sort of reaction at the end, basically turns into a high-pressure acting experience. this, combined with the fact that people are understandably really touchy when others are listening to their music (god, a few months ago someone said "stop singing" and i thought they were referring to a song i had posted where i sang, i immediately deleted everything with vocals off of my soundcloud and just got WASTED by myself, so i understand!)...it just makes things way too artificial and awkward and uncomfortable!

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