Molecules...

Well, the rest of my day after that last blog in Philly was really fun.  So fun I forgot to blog about it.  I decided on the Eastern State Penitentiary for my afternoon activity.  I opted for an immensely informative guided tour and, after it was done, walked around a little on my own, saw Al Capone's cell, learned about the tunnel escape and took a ton of pictures.

Afterward Virginia and I met up and had a bite at, you guessed it, the only place I eat in West Philadelphia: OCF.  Luckily, she had to be somewhere relatively near where I had to go for Darcy's dance performance, so we opted to walk it, a good 4 1/2 miles, because that's what we do when we're together.  Funny, I avoided taking public transit for most of the weekend, except for one bus ride to Center City Friday night.  Cabs are really cheap there compared to NYC as well, so it was tempting, a lot of the time, to just take a cab.  The walk was much preferred though.  I got to see (and smell) a lot of the city I might not have seen had I taken the bus.  Seriously, South Street in Old City was buzzing with activity and smelled strongly of cheesesteaks. 

Anyway, Darcy's dance performance was at Christ Church Neighborhood House in Old City, right next to one of the oldest buildings in Philly, a church, that, when it was built was the highest structure in the 13 colonies for a number of years (I think I heard one of the guys there say 40 years, can't remember).  The dance actually started out in the courtyard of the church and featured video projections of footage shot in the Redwood Forest in California, as well as music composed by Andrea Clearfield, featuring field recordings from the Redwood Forest, violin and didgeridoo.  The music was emanating from a couple of boom boxes, some nestled in the bushes, others carried by the dancers.  One dancer recited poetry through a bullhorn by Quintan Ana Wikswo with themes of destruction of natural habitats and the ills of colonialism.  After the courtyard, the dancers led us up to a space on the third floor of the neighboring building, a dark theater space with no fourth wall (we were standing around the dancers as they performed) and sheets hung from the ceiling.  Overall, I thought it was a pretty compelling piece and really enjoyed the dancers' performances. 

Here are a few pics taken in Old City and around the Church.  That night we cabbed it back to Darcy's apartment where her new roommate had a house warming party of sorts in full swing, complete with wine and a spread of gluten free food (she's gluten intolerant, too).  Met some nice people, had some good food and conversation and then slept it all off.  After one more breakfast at OCF, I snagged a cab to the train station and headed back to NYC for my performance. 

It went really well, by the way.  Only, I forgot to hit record.  MC took video of most of it and I ended up with some extra time last night to re record it at home and edit it a little.  Just posted it to soundcloud too.



The audience enjoyed it and gave me some good pointers, all stuff that I was thinking was wrong with the piece, i.e. there wasn't enough of a build (I still don't think there is). I can't remember what else right now but I have since come up with a few more critiques like the fact that it's kind of long right now but as the song congeals a little more, I will be able to scale back the length of it and still effectively cover all the things I want cover.  There are essentially four different loop layers each with harmonies and syncopated counter melodies built into them, so the overall number of layers tops something like 10-16 depending on which harmonies I play.  The only real ramp up in the intensity of the piece comes with the introduction of a sixteenth note pulse drone on the lowest guitar string, which, when I recorded this version, I layered harmonies on top of.

I solo melodically over the cacophony of layers at least a couple of times throughout and only the first one on this version was pre composed.  The rest were improvised.  The distortion effect on the backwards loop is something I'm still toying with a little.  It's still kind of unpredictable because I've been recording it silently and not fading it up until it's been effected with the reverse function and the distortion patch that I'm using from Native Instruments.  I'm using my controller to change one of the parameters which, as far as I can tell is a sub audio control wave (for those of you who know anything about sound synthesis).  Anyway, once it's up in the mix, I am getting some wicked awesome sounds.  Later in the piece I even slow it and another one of the actual loop tracks down by half to get some even cooler contrast to the rhythmic drive of the piece.

In later versions of the piece, I'm going to focus on ways to ramp up the intensity even more, possibly exploring drones with syncopation in them.  Syncopation is lovely.  Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the piece.

The rest of MC's salon was great.  She danced, Morgana Rose danced, Gilbert-Michel Rolle, the tenor, a Swiss man actually from MC's hometown, sang a few French Renaissance pieces a capella, Lacy and I did three songs scattered throughout the performance and lastly a man whose name I can't recall now came and gave us an impromptu poetry reading.  Lost of wine and good conversation followed and then I went home ate dinner and watched Breaking Bad's finale.  Great ending!

I'll keep updating as I record new versions of the song, Molecules, and I will even be writing some more and trying them out on you guys and also performing again at the next Marie-Christine Giordano artists salon.  By the way, I still don't know exactly why the piece is called Molecules. 

Also, as the week goes on I've been working a lot more on the recording of Amanda Brecker's song, "Another Day in the Life."  It's going well and tomorrow we'll finish up recording backing vocals and vocal effects and hopefully, I'll manage to record the two guitar interludes.  Updates on that as well once it's finished and mastered. For now, it's back to work!

Chilling in Philly before a show...

Hanging out at OCF in Fairmount right now.  Just spent the better part of the afternoon so far editing the song for the end credits and the full length trailer of "The Life." Amanda and I worked part of the afternoon yesterday at my place recording the guitar and vocals on isolated tracks so I could mix this weekend.  All that remains is to redo some of the backing vocals and vocal effects, and for me to record a few more guitar parts for the ending guitar solo.  I feel good for having made some strides with it this weekend.  Especially since I've been able to effectively utilize several chunks of time during which I might not have gotten much done.  Yesterday night I had the vocal tracks edited before the bus to Philly had even left New York City.  Today, I'm killing time while Darcy has her tech rehearsals for the dance tonight.  I'm going to the 8pm performance at New Spaces, New Formats tonight.  Sort of my whole reason for being in Philly right now.  One of Darcy's companies is dancing this, which looks way cool...so meanwhile, I sit in a cafe contemplating my next move.  Yoga might be involved, also the Eastern State Penitentiary looms across the street.  And so do some weird temporary gargoyles.

This has been a nice welcome break from the pace of the city even though, last night we had a bit of a wild night.  We went to an apartment party in Center City, someone's 30th, and then went to the Trestle Inn to dance.  We didn't get in until around 3am.  Now, I bounce back with caffeine and sunlight and figure I'd better enjoy my day while I can.  I don't need to head over to the area until around 7pm.  At some point, I will try to meet up with Virginia for sure.

Meanwhile, I'm also trying not to think too hard about my premiere tomorrow.  Most of the stress involved is going to be in getting there from here.  My bus leaves at 930am and arrives in NYC, in theory, at 1130am.  The salon is not until 3pm so that, in theory, gives me a few hours to run it again if I should so choose.  The Lacy is driving me because we intend to perform a few of her songs as well.

The piece has come together quite nicely and the few people I've shown it to over the past week have responded by either spacing out or being wildly impressed that I can coordinate all the pedal tapping with my feet and knob twiddling, etc.  Luckily, when I performed it for Amanda, I found that her energy and interest in the piece kept me focused for the most part.  So I can reasonably presume that a similar energy from the salon's attendees will keep me focused on performing the piece and hitting all the right buttons at the right time.  That's really going to be the hardest part.  Focusing.  Because I've found myself wanting to get lost in the piece like I do when I play and am really enjoying the act of creating the music as well as hearing it come together.  But if I do that I miss tapping a pedal to loop or switch tracks and I get flustered and the piece could fall apart.  

Once the piece gets going though it becomes easier to do what I need to do.  I will say that a lot of it is going to be improvised.  The structure will not be but what I do during each section will be largely improvisatory.  I'm really really excited to be doing this finally.  And really really hope that a lot of people will come out for this.  The other artists should be fun as well.  There's Lacy and I, a dancer and a tenor who will sing French Renaissance music.

Here's a link to the event on Facebook.

Show tonight!

Killing my last hour in Philly before I head back to NYC, finding myself in the same coffee shop as last time, the one with the gluten free bread option.  Lacy's at her friend's place doing makeup and we hope to be leaving before 11:30am.  We have to load in at Drom at 4:30pm but before that we're dropping by our respective apartments and then by a friend of mine's place in Crown Heights to pick up a keyboard stand because yours truly does not actually own one.

I was thinking about just going to Guitar Center on the way in to town because I need one anyway but it occurred to me that I do have a ton of keyboard playing friends in the city.  Luckily, the first one I tried was willing to offer his keyboard stand.  Hopefully, that won't take us too far out of our way.  

Meanwhile, I've been adding blog to the main web page at www.timdaoust.com, describing my process with my current guitar set up.  There's one more to write and I'm working on that one currently.  It's kind of exciting that I'm finally at a point with getting it all working where I can sit down and explain how I did it.  I had moments of stress with the FCB1010 MIDI footswitch where I asked myself why in the world I bought the damned thing because it seemed like so much work to figure out how to get it working and then tame it to do what I wanted it to do.  But now I can switch between different setups, turn effects in Guitar Rig on and off and most importantly, record, loop and overdub using a free software called Mobius.

The last blog entry will hopefully be up this weekend and if you're interested you can check it out.

And if you're in NYC tonight, please come out to the show and support us.  We'll rock your faces off.  We promise.

The Adventure Continues...

So, I just had a really great time in Philly playing with Lacy James at L'Etage for her CD release party, catching up with an old friend, and meeting new friends the whole weekend long.  The guys in the band we hired were all amazing professionals, most of whom played on the album.  And I got to toast 10 years of friendship with my friend Virginia.  

On Friday night we headed out there, late unfortunately, because, for Lacy, there was an overwhelming amount of stuff to get done so she was forced to push it down to the wire. We made it to Turtle Studios in South Philly just in time for rehearsal and met all the guys. Getting started right away we pushed on until just past midnight so that we could try to touch on each of the 14 songs at least once.  By that point, though, everyone was pretty much exhausted and Lacy nor I had even seen our respective hosts nor dropped off our bags.  Lacy and I discovered soon that the friend she was staying with lived ridiculously close to the friend I was staying with, which made the whole weekend's logistics just slightly less complicated.  And made for an easy decision on my last night there.  

Early Saturday morning we all reconvened at the studio and began fine tuning each song so the guys could all lock in the structures and we could coordinate things like who counts in which songs and for Tony, our percussionist and hammered dulcimer player, could learn the ins and outs of the occasional keyboard parts he had to play when both Ross and I were playing guitar.  It was so much fun working on a show like this with so many instrument changes and it really does keep you on your toes.  I had to play the electric and acoustic guitars, the keyboards (both piano and synth, sometimes multiple synth parts on the same song) and the mandolin in addition to singing backup vocals on three of the songs.  Tony was all over the place with different percussion toys and drums on different songs, the dulcimer on two songs and keys on a few more.  Even Ross opted to play the bells on In The Garden, a tune off Lacy's first album.   The only people who stayed put were Jeff on bass and Alec on the drums...and of course Lacy on vocals.  

After our Saturday rehearsal stretched until 2pm, we gathered up our stuff and I went to finally eat a decent meal (I had been eating mostly fruit and nuts to save time the whole morning) at a place called Silk City diner.  Steak and Eggs has never tasted so good.  Then I finally met with Virginia, with whom I was staying.  Poor Cylar, her daughter, was sick and miserable but we hung out with her the rest of the afternoon while we waited for the babysitter to come. Then we took the bottle of wine we had bought while out on a walk with Cylar to a restaurant called Figs close to V's place.  The food here was amazing and I didn't have to worry about gluten because all of their sauces are advertised as gluten free.  So, that was nice.  I believe I ordered the crab-stuffed sole with mashed potatoes and haricots verts while Virginia had this duck breast with some kind of bread and spinach.  It was pretty tasty, too.  

After our dinner, we went to meet some of her friends at a bar sometimes referred to as the most Philly bar in Philly.  Bob and Barbara's.  Home of the Citywide Special (a PBR and a shot of Jim Beam).   We were crashing a girl's night and stayed here a good hour or so listening to good jazz while I got to know some of her Philly friends.  Every time V ordered the Citywide, I ended up drinking the shot half, due to my dietary restrictions.  So, by the time we got to the next place, a combination beer and bowling alley in the Northern Liberty neighborhood often referred to as NoLibs, I was ready to call it a night. Luckily, so was V so we went back to relieve the baby sitter and turn in. After all, Sunday was to be a long day and I wanted to be at my best.  

A good eight hours of sleep later, I woke up refreshed and we hit up another local restaurant called the London Grill for brunch.  This place had a build your own Bloody Mary bar and several different infused vodkas, the most interesting one being bacon-infused, understandably listed at the top of the Vodka menu. I'm not really a Bloody Mary person but I figured, "why not?"  After all, when in Rome.  I enjoyed it, too, until I got a little too experimental, after going back to look over the other ingredients they had, and dumped too much liquid smoke in.  Before it was just tomato juice, celery bitters, pickled watermelon and a host of spicy things like chipotle pepper sauce, black pepper and the like.  

Kevin, Virginia's husband showed up part way through brunch because he had been visiting a friend of his, the previous night so we got to catch up a little bit too, which was nice.  I left them around 3, so I could reconnect with Lacy to pick up our equipment which was left at the studio all weekend.  I found her and her friend at a local coffee shop, OCF, (which had gluten free options for all the offerings!) across from the Eastern State Penitentiary and, after they finished their food, we walked back to her friend's place to get some merchandising details sorted out because her friend would be helping with that at the show.  Then we trucked it over to Turtle, picked up what we could and went to load in at L'Etage.  

The venue is above a creperie type restaurant on Bainbridge and N.6th Streets called Beaumonde.  Cool thing about this place is that, on our way back from Raleigh back in December, we stopped through and asked them if they would make their crepes without the crepes (as in just a pile of ingredients). They were accommodating and, in fact, said they do it all the time.  Gluten free seems to be catching on all over the place.  The bartender was even nice enough to check several dishes for me with the cooks in the kitchen.  We ordered and ate upstairs after having set up (which took almost no time at all) and sound checked. The stage at L'Etage was weirdly shaped (essentially a raised and elongated rectangle with banquets on three sides) so set up was a bit of a challenge but, even with six cooks in that kitchen, we were able to come up with a set up that took advantage of a long table that usually sits up there that we used for the keyboards and laptops. Lacy and I set up on either side of it at the front of the stage and everyone else behind us.  Tony and I were dancing around each other the whole time as my set up was basically right next to his and he had to use some of my setup (namely, the keyboard) and I had to keep going behind him to pick up different guitars.  

All in all, the performances were a success and we were well received by a diverse crowd, most of them either my friends or Lacy's friends and family and members of her production team and the producer from her first album.  We all had a great time and stayed behind for a few drinks after the premier of the video for Old Languages, which was also well received.  I had a ton of fun performing again and especially with such talented musicians.  All of whom were highly professional and pulled together an astonishing fourteen songs in an incredibly short amount of time.  I had the advantage of knowing them all ahead of time (some more than others) for the most part and having rehearsed them with Lacy a bunch, but they had to learn a lot on their own and piece it together without us there.  

Luckily, we made it work and were even able to improvise some parts that we didn't have the instruments for. The show at Drom in the East Village in a week and a half is going to be tons of fun as well but will present new challenges as we will have a slightly different lineup.  I will be playing guitar on more songs and Tony will play keys where I am unable to.  But the challenge of realizing recorded music in a live format is part of the fun of this whole experience.  I have been performing with Lacy for just about two years now and having a blast working with her.  She is such a creative person and her music presents all kinds of new challenges to me but it is always refreshing to be challenged musically.  It always inspires me to do more with my own music and reminds me how much I love performing live.  Up until Lacy and I teamed up I wasn't really performing live and would get something I dubbed "rock out envy" every time I went to see an awesome band. Now, I'm finally feeling in my element again performing.  And closer doing what I want to be doing.  

Anyway, we had one last night of drinking, just Lacy and I and her friend in the Fairmount neighborhood.  It was so damned cold that, after storing our stuff at her friend's place and parking, we slid into the first open bar we could find and chatted the night away.  This morning I actually ate at that cafe with the gluten free options, OCF cafe and we headed out of town from there, the Philly adventure over for now, arriving in Brooklyn with just enough time for me to decompress for half an hour before coming to work.  

This week we'll hopefully get to rehearse some and prepare ourselves for a slightly different experience. Next week's show at Drom is on the 28th of February, so if you're in NYC I expect you to come out and support!  It'll be legendary! Plus, there's the premier of the video for Old Languages directed by my good friend Mohammad Maaty.  Show starts at 8pm!