what is going on in your musical life

my dude is a retiree with a dubious back, dunno how helpful he'll be moving stuff

i keep wanting to buy a cassette four-track, convincing myself that's all i need to do to motivate myself to make music more often. but that's the same argument i made to myself for buying new music software a few months ago.

sorry i always complain about wanting to make music but never actually making music. i just realized it's kind of like when people retire but then they get antsy and crazy because they're used to working all day and don't know what to do now that they're not working. just a constant feeling like i should be writing songs but no real energy/motivation/time to do so, and then guilt for not doing anything creative anymore.

that's a good way of putting it, don't know what to tell you. :/

sometimes i sort of fantasize about a creative retirement when i will stop pushing myself to write or produce stuff, stop dealing with booking shows and bullshit, and just play drums in someone else's band or something. maybe hold down a bi-weekly jazz gig where we only play slow and medium tempos.

trying to get into a habit of doing one small thing on recordings every night, hoping to get to a point where it feels odd not to have done something musical of an evening. finished off two projects over the weekend already so feeling good about this

Yeah I need to get back on that wagon. I've been sick on and off a couple weeks running and have NOT been in the mood to sing or write a damn thing and it has killed all my foward momentum. I'm hoping this NIN track will at least be a kick up the arse. Also listening to recordings of the last 2 band jams I did, and for someone who cant play bass to save her life, I'm at least passable sounding when I do, haha.

I dunno if I'm getting anywhere with my "musical project" but I think I've made a couple of breakthroughs. In that I'm finding that what I'm doing doesn't always sound horribly awful.

Tried singing with a cold tonight, thought red wine would "help".

Ow my fucking throat, ow.

fwiw, n/a, I don't know any active musicians over the age of 25 who don't have to mentally force themselves into a state of production.

Started playing in a kinda lame band again to get my chops back, now have my chops back but am playing in a kinda lame band. Hey, it's better than not playing.

1. Recorded a backing track around the singers vocal and managed to do the whole thing in the wrong key.
2. Played a show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DTjX23NWNA

finally mixed the hateful black metal project that i recorded. let the dudes hear it tonight and they were psyched. gonna release that v soon.

tonight i must make 200 tapes that are way overdue for a surf/metal band that i recorded like 100 years ago (feb 2012!!!).

bought a tape duplicator and 500 tapes for chump change and i'm very stoked for what this is going to bring to my life.

practiced for the first time in a long time with the band that i'm a hired gun bassist for. it was nice. being out of town for so long made me really miss practicing and such.

also renting out practice space in our show space. duh. why did this never occur to us

oh yeah and my main band's record is being mastered and im excited about that.

more excited about it finally coming out but this is obv a positive step

Just had my first solo with the spiritual ensemble. It went really, really well; the only bad thing is that a dude who's been in the group longer normally sings it so I likely won't get to do it again unless he can't make a concert.

thought of a song while out and had to call myself to record it on my voicemail

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_h7Lm7C9Nk

I've been asked to do vocals for a doom metal band based on a rather shitty one take freestyle I recorded over a track I was sent. Trying to weigh up whether I ought to do it or if I've already got enough on.

I bought a new guitar! An Ibanez Artcore AS73. It's nice. Though I don't have an amp yet and oddly going direct input into my laptop doesn't work particularly well.

I'm working on completely re-wiring my home studio and getting ready to do some recording to put out. I got a new rack and a couple of patch bays to make it easier to track through my stuff. In addtion, I have also worked on the recording setup in my bands practice studio getting ready to setup to record. I'm going to set it up for much "lower volume" basic tracks and with some things. We record new stuff in the works at practice, but we also play about 1/2 stage volume, so it's pretty loud.

My ex is offering to do a swap with me, he wants my shitty shit, beaten up old japanese Westone bass and he's offering me a telecaster copy in exchange. I hope the Westone isnt worth money or anything nuts (its certainly not in good nick - goes out of tune a lot). I dont even play much guitar. Itd be nice to own one.

Finishing up the new pedal board(s) (going with two small ones rather than one giant one). Still need to order new cables...

Any shoegaze/drone bands out there need a guitarist for a tour? REALLY want to get in the van and hit the road for several weeks.

Me and my buddy did one of those live film soundtracks at Latitude Festival on the Saturday Night just gone, it was very strange, in the middle of the woods facing a big screen showing Metropolis.

There was no room to set up anywhere so we played in the tiny sound booth which was a big set of illuminated comedy chattering teeth. It was super dusty and 2/3rds of the way through Kraftwerk came on stage, luckily they were miles away but every so often we could hear little me-lo-dees wafting over.

I bought a stupid douchey guitar made out of an oil can that looks super cool and sounds great except that it's the most out of tune piece of shit ever. I tried adjusting the bridge and ended up just breaking a string. now I have to replace a string which I hate doing because I can never do it right. :(

ive been making beats. they are p stupid. also kind of half-assedly working on a solo drone/doom project thing.

I just finished work on a film score, now I'm woodshedding a ballet that is a month late. I tried to sleep just now but I dreamt about e-mails from the choreographer "I am very disappointed in myself for ever having faith in you" :( back to work.

Either of those in 24tet?

Just received and was pleased with a recording of a piano piece I wrote in the fall. Still plugging away at the recording of the loop-based processed guitar thing I've been working on all year (which might mean that it fails by your "economy" criteria, fgti:P). I hope to have it done by tomorrow though. Preparing for a voice exam (!): thought I should make myself do this in case I ever need to teach solfège.

what does the exam require? just curious

It's Royal Conservatory Gr 5, i.e. not terribly advanced by the standards of anyone who can sing at all but enough that I won't feel completely ridiculous if I have to get up and demonstrate things with my voice in front of a room of people. Requirements are: singing four songs (marked on vocal production, diction, and presentation), a vocalise, technical exercises that should be sung on each of six vowels (melodic minor scale ascending and descending in a particular rhythm, ascending major triad arpeggio + descending scale starting on re, minor triad arpeggio + descending harmonic minor scale starting on re, major triad arpeggio in 6/8 legato and staccato, ascending and descending chromatic scale from do to le), ear tests (melody singback, singing intervals above or below a given note, identifying chords by ear), sight singing.

(Some of those things are much easier than others obv.)

loop-based processed guitar thing I've been working on all year (which might mean that it fails by your "economy" criteria, fgti

ha not at all, ascetic devotion is the best. I mean economy in the part of the players, like, rehearsal time.
Unfortch neither is 24tet this time. Ballet orchestra is good but they need to prioritize rhythmic performance over the tuning of chords :)

cleaned up and adjusted my guitar
clearing the clutter out of my tiny office/music room to make it easier to do stuff in there. trying to figure out what to do with broken gear; pay to get it fixed, try to sell as-is, or just trash it

-working at a synth shop on denmark st (london's tin pan alley), learning lots and using the downtime in the shop to teach myself piano. it's been damn cool working there actually. in the 6 weeks i've been there i've met m@tt bl@ack of ninja/coldcut fame, the cinematic orchestra guys, the dudes from UFO who still do UFO, err ricky gervais, tom waits, tom jones, ha, it's quite a lot of fun
-restrung my classical guitar hoping to do some violin and guitar duets with a guy from the LSO who popped into the shop to buy a mic
-haven't made any music at home for a few months, which is great, it's always good to have a break
-playing a techno night on the 23rd in dalston, did one before doing improv electronics and it went really well, looking forward to knocking something completely different up for this one
-am coming more and more to terms with the fact that i'm just an enthusiast and i'll never really have anything to say/offer that's of much worth. lol

ah if that's the life of the casual enthusiast then being a casual enthusiast sounds very fun. what's the night in dalston?

on thursday i'm gonna have a day long ~jam~ with some friends in an odd 2x guitar 2x laptop setup, i will be sure to upload all the many hours of it for everybody's listening pleasure.

playing first show with this band on friday! www.maura.com/288/listen-to-distant-correspondents-merge
kind of scared, it's pretty loosey goosey at the moment, but hopefully the next few practices will get us ready. haven't played bass in forever, but i'm enjoying it!

the life of a casual enthusiast sounds amazing

like, that job, omg

Third that, I'd love to work in a synth shop! I spent half my teens in the local Brash's fiddling with all the DX7s and wishing I could afford one.

working in a synth shop sounds fun! Fourthing!

Rehearsal tonight for an ensemble gig with the Boston Landmarks Orchestra. Doing Weill's "Lost in the Stars" (again)

Recording an EP in a fairly expensive studio. Expensive for us anyway. Realising the drummer cant play to a click requiring spending more money on studio time. This has probably happened to other people?

The drummer from my old band spent a lot of time playing to Orbital CDs precisely so he could improve his inner metronome

when I used to drum a little I would try to copy the beats on underworld CDs, mostly a fail

drummers: born sloppy

This has exactly happened to me and we (unfortunately) scrapped everything and (fortunately) re-recorded everything to "no click" and when click was necessary we made one to his limping and amazing drum parts

Had band practice last night and B3n has introduced an old bandmate of his in to do live drums. I dont know if the guy was just out of practice, not used to our already-structured songs or struggling using an electric kit (tbf those things are kind of shite) but I found his input a little overbearing. He kept speeding up, adding masses of fills, and basically rocking out like a mad bastard which given up til now we'd been doing sparse electronic/proggy/pretty stuff was doing my head in a bit. Not sure what to make of it.

LIke imagine if you took a minimal styles massive attack song and added bombastic rock drums all over it ugtggh dshfgsrwfhf

Nip it in the bud say "not like that" and give him listening homework

Yeah we played him some loops and said "this is what we're doing" and he was ok with it but just couldnt keep time with the loops and kvetched about it. Surely a good drummer is ok with playing to clicktracks? I dont buy the "you move in and out of time a bit" when it is bleeding obvious. It was a first, rough jam with him tho so benefit of the doubt and all that.

my ~jam sesh~ was fun, didn't quite know what I was doing for most of it cuz it ended up with three ppl using Max/MSP etc and me trying to work out how to fit guitar into that when I can't really play guitar, but if someone's willing to do a Teo Macero on our five hours or so they may have a nice couple of hours between them, 15 minutes of that with my valuable input.