what is going on in your musical life

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.

Jams are fun! I have no idea what Im doing other tbqfh, I'm sometimes playing bass and I seriously am shit at it. But if I keep a simple riff going Im ok. Next challenge: do that and sing at the same time, lol.

Trayce I'll be honest with you I have not seen a single drummer play kit convincingly enough along to a click track to make me think "I am so glad this band has a both click track and a live drummer" so I'd probably cut him some slack

not implying you weren't cutting him slack already :)
just saying it's a mountain I have not yet seen scaled except for that one video of "guy performing the drum parts to journey to reedham"

i recently had a drummer in to effectively replay a drum machine beat with the hope of giving it a more natural feel. fantastic drummer, great sounding kit, pretty much perfectly in time, but the end result sounded dismal in comparison to the DM.

a lesson was learned that day

goontie: yeah thats fair and I agree! I think I'm more thinking what Jim just said: I think I just prefer the sound of drum machines :/ I'm such a fucking 80s kid.

My prob with this guy anyway was less his keeping in time and more his MAD FILLS EVERY TEN SECONDS rock styles. No subtlety whatsoever.

But i've now told the other 2 lads this, so its up to them as well, democracy n all that. If we're gonna end up with a wall of noise we could at least get some Guthrie guitar happening.

ha not at all, ascetic devotion is the best. I mean economy in the part of the players, like, rehearsal time.

Well, that's the thing. After I figured out the setup and designed the Max patches, writing the material was by far the easiest part. Preparing it for performance and recording has by far been the hardest. (This is largely partly a reflection of my own playing chops: I'm sure Metheny could knock it out in a weekend.) Relating to the current discussion, this is largely because it requires a f high (for me anyway) level of rhythmic precision. It's probably the sort of thing where you could say "well, you could also just sequence all those loops and play over them" which is probably true but the challenge is part of the point imo. An actual really good guitarist has asked for a demo, though, so maybe there's a possibility there?

In any event, everything that's hard to do is recorded now, as tight as it will be with me playing. (I've decided not to quantize.)

I made a beat and then realized that I just completely recreated some random minor madlib beat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dG6bK5wxmE

(Btw, roxy, the songs I'll be singing for the exam are lol "When Love Is Kind", "Jardin d'Amour", "Moon, sing" by Jon Washburn, and "Let There Be Peace on Earth" so yeah, probably not the most advanced repertoire but enough to keep me busy. I figured out tonight that the trick is, counterintuitively, to think about chest resonance when singing higher notes and to think about head resonance when singing lower notes.)

Sat down to edit a note that was off by the duration of a 64th note, decided in the end that I liked the original imprecise take. This feels like some kind of triumph. This recording is done.

i spent three hours painstakingly transcribing a rough hand-played take to midi, then copypasted the best third over the other two thirds of it

My musical life as you guys are discussing it is still in its infancy. I'll probably spend --I have spent -- a long time gathering steam before ever considering myself capable of even doing this at all. But I have ideas! And I think they're not terrible! I'm writing them down. I'm probably going to have to meet some more people, that's not the easiest thing to do, but it's not going to keep me from moving forward.
This is easily one of the most earnest and embarrassing posts I have ever composed. Still, that's what's going on in my new musical life. It kind of feels like getting an extra life, tbh!

drummers are the worst huh