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.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
The Stone...
Last night got weird. But in a good way. I saw a band called Genes and Machines whose guitarist Lacy knows at a venue called The Stone in the E. Village at 2nd Street and Avenue C. The Stone is a hole in the wall not-for-profit experimental music performance space tucked away in a non-descript building on a non-descript corner in Alphabet City. Until they raise the gate, and you can see the name of the place in gold lettering on the front door, there's no indication that this is even the place you're looking for. Lucky for me, I knew this going into it and as I was passing a woman on the street, I overheard her asking someone where The Stone was and he pointed it out to her just as I was walking up to it. Looking down at the door, there it was right at waist-level, gold lettering indicating "The Stone." That same woman asked me if we were in the right place as I pushed open the door.
It was a very narrow long room inside with rows of folding chairs filling up the back half of the room. Lacy was not there yet so I found a seat near the front but fairly soon got crammed in with other spectators such that I couldn't save her a seat and wound up enjoying the show by myself. The show. They came out all dressed in funky outfits, all of them an homage to the fact that we are now in the year of the snake. The singer stripped out of a zipped jumper to reveal a snakeskin jacket, under which he was shirtless, and green sparkly pants. Their percussionist had the most outrageous cobra hat on his head. Lacy's friend Adrian played guitar, they had two kit drummers, one with lots of electronic drums, another female singer who played a keyboard (my exact keyboard, the M Audio Axiom 49) and bass alternately, and the first singer with the snakeskin jacket played also my same keyboard plus a weird looking painted ergonomic computer keyboard strapped to his belt which appeared to be controlling his laptop.
This set up and their outfits alone led me to believe this was going to be out on the edge. I was immediately enthralled by the palate of sounds they wove in all of their songs but as the night went on I was equally impressed by the array of musical styles they touched on throughout the night: punk rock, jazz, noise rock, even a song or two that sounded like surf rock. If that wasn't enough fun, they had a dancer improvising in a very tight space for a couple of the songs. This light and lithe dancer was also almost completely naked and painted head to toe in a bright orange snake skin like pattern. At one point she even danced around the crowd, picking random people to come and dance with her.
The band is called Genes and Machines and are well worth checking out. If not for their theatrics alone, the music is something else. To top the coolness of the night off, Lacy informed me post-show that the curator was none other than Vernon Reid from the band Living Color. How cool is that?!
Afterward, we walked the East Village in search of wine and food for me, even passing inadvertently by the venue for next week's album release party. Drom. It's hidden under a sushi bar...well not so much hidden. There is a sign above it. I took one look at it, though, and all I saw was a sushi bar.
The show is getting closer and closer every day and we're now planning a rehearsal in Philly on Wednesday night. That will put us coming straight back to NYC to load in because, we realized, it makes no sense to try and unload the equipment anywhere else first (like my apartment or hers) because we'd just be loading it back up in mere hours. As such, it looks like we're going to spend a morning in Philly and perhaps get to sleep in after a late night rehearsal. Meanwhile, I'm busy practicing the parts I didn't play in Philly and also, somehow, trying to keep up with voice auditions and, somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm thinking about my next tracks that I'll be sending to the licensing agency. Crazy life. I hope to see you guys out at the show next week if you're in town and can make it. Here's the event invite on Facebook.
It was a very narrow long room inside with rows of folding chairs filling up the back half of the room. Lacy was not there yet so I found a seat near the front but fairly soon got crammed in with other spectators such that I couldn't save her a seat and wound up enjoying the show by myself. The show. They came out all dressed in funky outfits, all of them an homage to the fact that we are now in the year of the snake. The singer stripped out of a zipped jumper to reveal a snakeskin jacket, under which he was shirtless, and green sparkly pants. Their percussionist had the most outrageous cobra hat on his head. Lacy's friend Adrian played guitar, they had two kit drummers, one with lots of electronic drums, another female singer who played a keyboard (my exact keyboard, the M Audio Axiom 49) and bass alternately, and the first singer with the snakeskin jacket played also my same keyboard plus a weird looking painted ergonomic computer keyboard strapped to his belt which appeared to be controlling his laptop.
This set up and their outfits alone led me to believe this was going to be out on the edge. I was immediately enthralled by the palate of sounds they wove in all of their songs but as the night went on I was equally impressed by the array of musical styles they touched on throughout the night: punk rock, jazz, noise rock, even a song or two that sounded like surf rock. If that wasn't enough fun, they had a dancer improvising in a very tight space for a couple of the songs. This light and lithe dancer was also almost completely naked and painted head to toe in a bright orange snake skin like pattern. At one point she even danced around the crowd, picking random people to come and dance with her.
The band is called Genes and Machines and are well worth checking out. If not for their theatrics alone, the music is something else. To top the coolness of the night off, Lacy informed me post-show that the curator was none other than Vernon Reid from the band Living Color. How cool is that?!
Afterward, we walked the East Village in search of wine and food for me, even passing inadvertently by the venue for next week's album release party. Drom. It's hidden under a sushi bar...well not so much hidden. There is a sign above it. I took one look at it, though, and all I saw was a sushi bar.
The show is getting closer and closer every day and we're now planning a rehearsal in Philly on Wednesday night. That will put us coming straight back to NYC to load in because, we realized, it makes no sense to try and unload the equipment anywhere else first (like my apartment or hers) because we'd just be loading it back up in mere hours. As such, it looks like we're going to spend a morning in Philly and perhaps get to sleep in after a late night rehearsal. Meanwhile, I'm busy practicing the parts I didn't play in Philly and also, somehow, trying to keep up with voice auditions and, somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm thinking about my next tracks that I'll be sending to the licensing agency. Crazy life. I hope to see you guys out at the show next week if you're in town and can make it. Here's the event invite on Facebook.
Monday, February 18, 2013
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!
Monday, February 11, 2013
Discouraged, I am not...
Discouraged. That's what I'm trying not to be right now. I've had a couple of hits in a short amount of time and I'm trying to turn my mood around because, after all these years of plugging away at this, I realize that it does me no good to dwell on negativity.
An exercise then. To list what's bothering me so I can go ahead and decide how I'm going to deal with it all. First off, my mandolin somehow broke itself while sitting in its gig bag on the floor beside my bed. We use it on an acoustic version of one of Lacy's songs and we may have to perform said version at an impromptu show next week. I'm sitting here hoping I can find one to borrow because I do not have the money to replace it and will find out tomorrow if I have the money (and the time, for that matter) to fix it. My day starts out kind of wonky and several tiny things get under my skin while making breakfast and while heading to yoga, to which I was late because the train sucks. On top of that a fairly new pair of boots I have been trudging around in broke today. We're talking two months old pair of leather boots, salt stained from walking over snow and ice-treated sidewalks and streets that I bought on sale for $40, and the sole underneath the right heel cracks and breaks apart from the uppers and I'm walking crooked for the rest of the day. It's true that I go through shoes a lot more quickly now that I walk everywhere but two months is absurd. Add on top of all of that, that I finally got around to listening to the competition for that remix contest I entered tonight at work and everyone sounds amazing compared to me. I feel like I'm standing naked in front of thousands of people who have on really nice tailored clothes.
And all I have at the end of it all is a gluten free beer and a cat on my lap to comfort me...oh, and the promise of money from the government in a few days in the form of my tax return, which isn't going to come anywhere near paying off my credit card debt, especially considering I now need a new pair of boots and possibly a new mandolin. I really want to crawl inside a cave right now and hibernate for the rest of this bleak winter until the sun returns.
But, I realize that this is detrimental thinking. I can't get discouraged. No, this is supposed to be an awesome year. I just picked up a freelance job at TruTV and will hopefully be starting in March, I'm able to afford gluten free beer, my cat still loves me, I'm still making music and learning tons from the people I'm up against in that competition and elsewhere, getting closer to finding my niche even. I can still get voice over jobs and, though I sometimes can't tell, I'm getting better at it, I think. Boots and mandolins are replaceable and sometimes fixable. Life goes on. And besides. This shit day ended about 30 minutes ago. And next week, there's a strong possibility that I'm going to rock the eff out. In Philly. So with that said, I go to sleep and tomorrow welcome a new day...and none of this neg-head downer crap!
An exercise then. To list what's bothering me so I can go ahead and decide how I'm going to deal with it all. First off, my mandolin somehow broke itself while sitting in its gig bag on the floor beside my bed. We use it on an acoustic version of one of Lacy's songs and we may have to perform said version at an impromptu show next week. I'm sitting here hoping I can find one to borrow because I do not have the money to replace it and will find out tomorrow if I have the money (and the time, for that matter) to fix it. My day starts out kind of wonky and several tiny things get under my skin while making breakfast and while heading to yoga, to which I was late because the train sucks. On top of that a fairly new pair of boots I have been trudging around in broke today. We're talking two months old pair of leather boots, salt stained from walking over snow and ice-treated sidewalks and streets that I bought on sale for $40, and the sole underneath the right heel cracks and breaks apart from the uppers and I'm walking crooked for the rest of the day. It's true that I go through shoes a lot more quickly now that I walk everywhere but two months is absurd. Add on top of all of that, that I finally got around to listening to the competition for that remix contest I entered tonight at work and everyone sounds amazing compared to me. I feel like I'm standing naked in front of thousands of people who have on really nice tailored clothes.
And all I have at the end of it all is a gluten free beer and a cat on my lap to comfort me...oh, and the promise of money from the government in a few days in the form of my tax return, which isn't going to come anywhere near paying off my credit card debt, especially considering I now need a new pair of boots and possibly a new mandolin. I really want to crawl inside a cave right now and hibernate for the rest of this bleak winter until the sun returns.
But, I realize that this is detrimental thinking. I can't get discouraged. No, this is supposed to be an awesome year. I just picked up a freelance job at TruTV and will hopefully be starting in March, I'm able to afford gluten free beer, my cat still loves me, I'm still making music and learning tons from the people I'm up against in that competition and elsewhere, getting closer to finding my niche even. I can still get voice over jobs and, though I sometimes can't tell, I'm getting better at it, I think. Boots and mandolins are replaceable and sometimes fixable. Life goes on. And besides. This shit day ended about 30 minutes ago. And next week, there's a strong possibility that I'm going to rock the eff out. In Philly. So with that said, I go to sleep and tomorrow welcome a new day...and none of this neg-head downer crap!
Friday, February 8, 2013
Four years!
I wanted to write this blog a whole lot earlier in the day but I guess it's just a mark of how busy I am that I couldn't even make that happen. Not that it was all work. I did accomplish a lot today, in terms of music mostly. Lacy and I rehearsed all afternoon but I also finished submitting my entry for the remix contest I've been talking about and even managed some errands, most notably finally taking my stuff to Goodwill to donate. Later on I had dinner with a friend at my favorite gluten free pizza shop (even got a gluten free beer on the house when they found out I was gluten free...think it was the owner who I was talking to, himself gluten free for 8 years) and then I went to Brooklyn Raga Massive at Tea Lounge in Park Slope to meet a friend whom I knew would be there.
Today marks my four year anniversary in New York City...well, yesterday, the 7th. It's 1am as I'm writing this. When I first got here, being as settled as I am now in my routine and having friends whom I could just call up and have meet me wherever, was as far from reality as anything. I knew no one, except a handful of college friends and my cousin, and had no full time job to fund such social excursions as I find myself in these days. You could say I've come a long way but it was all, of course, inevitable. I had to find my stride. I remember the few times I did go out back then I'd see people who had it all together, it seemed, sitting around a table with their friends, drinking and having fun at the neighborhood bar that they all seemingly lived close to, and I sat over there wondering when I would feel as stable as they all looked. Granted, I had no idea what their lives were really like but I knew what mine was like and I felt I had such a long way to go before I could be as comfortable as they looked. I called it Life Envy. Now, thinking back, who knows if they even had it together. The point is, I still don't feel like I have it fully together, though always on the cusp, but either way, I know how to relax and have a good time.
Brooklyn Raga Massive is a gathering of musicians who play South Asian music, mostly Indian with the occasional jam session thrown in a the end. My friend Robindra, whom I know from college and who I just recently discovered lives several blocks away from me, introduced me to the evening. Tea Lounge was a favorite spot already but now we try to make it as many Thursdays as we can. Tonight was amazing though. A couple of Indian singers highlighted the night while one of the best dulcimer players I've seen tore up the stage near the end of the night. We closed the place down and headed home not too long ago.
Now, I'm reflecting on my day. Lacy's and my rehearsals are going really well and the both of us cannot wait to get in the studio with the other musicians in Philly next weekend to start going over the set list. I can't tell you how excited I am to be playing with a live band again. My roles in this concert will be pretty diverse too. Doing guitar parts, keyboard parts and mandolin even on one song. The concert in Manhattan will be awesome as well.
In addition to that, I'm psyched about finishing the remix ahead of the deadline. Here's the link to my finished submission.
I wanted to write more about it in their submission form but was limited to some 365 characters or something like. Basically, I took one listen to the song, "Golden Arrows" and decided that highlighting the syncopation in the guitar part was the way to go. I wrote a whole new drumline with more emphasis on said syncopation but one of the first things that struck me before I even did that was this nice vocal ad lib part in between the first verse and the second verse where the singer just sings the word "Arrows" a few times. I sampled it and had it open the song, and then brought it back, slightly sliced up, during the guitar solo and other parts of the song as an almost percussive highlight. I messed with dropping certain parts out of the mix during different parts of the song to give it a more dynamic range, added some neat effects to both my drums for the bridge leading up to the interlude and the existing keyboard part there to give the whole section a spacier feel. Ultimately, until this morning, something was missing. I ended up experimenting with running the existing rhythm guitar part back through Guitar Rig with some effects, and played around with an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) on one of the parameters and came out with that triplet rhythm you hear in the guitar part now. That sold me and I realized it was done. Or as done as these things can be. :)
I suggest listening to the original version here, and then listening to mine again. Regardless of whether or not I win the contest, it was such a fun process that I hope to do something like this again soon.
Meanwhile, I think I've had a pretty awesome four year NYC anniversary but I am tuckered out and should have been in bed a while ago. Oh, and there's apparently a blizzard happening tomorrow so that'll be fun. More updates to come in the next few weeks as we prepare to rock Philly and then come back and rock NYC. Oh, and btw, I got another VO gig! Good night all!
Today marks my four year anniversary in New York City...well, yesterday, the 7th. It's 1am as I'm writing this. When I first got here, being as settled as I am now in my routine and having friends whom I could just call up and have meet me wherever, was as far from reality as anything. I knew no one, except a handful of college friends and my cousin, and had no full time job to fund such social excursions as I find myself in these days. You could say I've come a long way but it was all, of course, inevitable. I had to find my stride. I remember the few times I did go out back then I'd see people who had it all together, it seemed, sitting around a table with their friends, drinking and having fun at the neighborhood bar that they all seemingly lived close to, and I sat over there wondering when I would feel as stable as they all looked. Granted, I had no idea what their lives were really like but I knew what mine was like and I felt I had such a long way to go before I could be as comfortable as they looked. I called it Life Envy. Now, thinking back, who knows if they even had it together. The point is, I still don't feel like I have it fully together, though always on the cusp, but either way, I know how to relax and have a good time.
Brooklyn Raga Massive is a gathering of musicians who play South Asian music, mostly Indian with the occasional jam session thrown in a the end. My friend Robindra, whom I know from college and who I just recently discovered lives several blocks away from me, introduced me to the evening. Tea Lounge was a favorite spot already but now we try to make it as many Thursdays as we can. Tonight was amazing though. A couple of Indian singers highlighted the night while one of the best dulcimer players I've seen tore up the stage near the end of the night. We closed the place down and headed home not too long ago.
Now, I'm reflecting on my day. Lacy's and my rehearsals are going really well and the both of us cannot wait to get in the studio with the other musicians in Philly next weekend to start going over the set list. I can't tell you how excited I am to be playing with a live band again. My roles in this concert will be pretty diverse too. Doing guitar parts, keyboard parts and mandolin even on one song. The concert in Manhattan will be awesome as well.
In addition to that, I'm psyched about finishing the remix ahead of the deadline. Here's the link to my finished submission.
I wanted to write more about it in their submission form but was limited to some 365 characters or something like. Basically, I took one listen to the song, "Golden Arrows" and decided that highlighting the syncopation in the guitar part was the way to go. I wrote a whole new drumline with more emphasis on said syncopation but one of the first things that struck me before I even did that was this nice vocal ad lib part in between the first verse and the second verse where the singer just sings the word "Arrows" a few times. I sampled it and had it open the song, and then brought it back, slightly sliced up, during the guitar solo and other parts of the song as an almost percussive highlight. I messed with dropping certain parts out of the mix during different parts of the song to give it a more dynamic range, added some neat effects to both my drums for the bridge leading up to the interlude and the existing keyboard part there to give the whole section a spacier feel. Ultimately, until this morning, something was missing. I ended up experimenting with running the existing rhythm guitar part back through Guitar Rig with some effects, and played around with an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) on one of the parameters and came out with that triplet rhythm you hear in the guitar part now. That sold me and I realized it was done. Or as done as these things can be. :)
I suggest listening to the original version here, and then listening to mine again. Regardless of whether or not I win the contest, it was such a fun process that I hope to do something like this again soon.
Meanwhile, I think I've had a pretty awesome four year NYC anniversary but I am tuckered out and should have been in bed a while ago. Oh, and there's apparently a blizzard happening tomorrow so that'll be fun. More updates to come in the next few weeks as we prepare to rock Philly and then come back and rock NYC. Oh, and btw, I got another VO gig! Good night all!
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
A Sea Change...
At the end of my work week here and I'm trying to accept that it's not all productivity and milestones. But then I'm also constantly trying to remind myself, when I'm sitting here idle, at a slow moment in the work evening, that I did accomplish a lot earlier today (voice over auditions and work on re-editing one of my demos...oh, and rock star yoga class at noon before work) and that it's no big deal, as awful as it feels, that I'm getting nothing else done today. It's just too distracting right now at work and so many of the things I have to do, I need to be in the home office/studio to be doing them.
I'm on at least 5 major tasks right now that are preoccupying my time:
Working on the remix project which is due Feburary 8th
Submitting VO auditions on an almost daily basis if I can
Rehearsing for the upcoming CD release parties with Lacy
Networking with filmmakers to try and get another film scoring job
Revamping some of my voice over demos and creating a promo demo so I can ultimately start soliciting agents
...and I think that's it...maybe I can count trying to clean up my apartment on a grand scale. Right now I'm on the donating clothes leg of that race.
So, you see, very few of these things can be done at work. I guess I can be researching filmmakers and writing emails right now but everything else needs to be done at home. I'm in a phase with the remix contest where I really can't be doing anything in headphones. I need my monitors. I could be doing research on agents, too, I guess.
But all this comes with the sinking feeling that, with a potential change in my work schedule here, I may have fewer chances to get any of my work done during the day unless I adjust my routines. I've always been good at that though. A while back, I lost the overnight shifts, sorry, got rid of the overnight shifts and while it is nice to be rid of them, I did get a staggering amount of work done there. During the weekdays here it gets far too busy for me to have my laptop out and, lately, I haven't even been getting breaks because of how short staffed we are. Having more seniority when we finally get our new hires in here, I stand to completely lose all weekend and late evening shifts, which would be nice...I mean it'd be effing great! but the notion of doing any kind of work other than administrative stuff, and sending emails would be all but gone. Maybe I could get away with the occasional mixing and editing of music tracks on my break, or voicing auditions in edit bays, something I haven't done in a while.
Ultimately, depending on what my new shift is, I'm going to have to figure out when during the day I can do things like submit to VO auditions and compose and mix audio. Shutting the door to my room works but sometimes it's still too distracting when Katrina and I are home at the same time, which could happen, say, if I get a 10am - 6pm shift. Don't get me wrong it be a rock star shift and I'd eat it up. Imagine! Being able to get off work at dinner time and go home and cook dinner and eat it right away instead of this shit where I make three portions of the same meal and carry it all to work, risk spilling it in my bag (happened yesterday with chicken soup), then have to microwave it later so that the vast majority of dinners I eat have been reheated. Imagine, getting up at the same time every day and going to yoga at the same time and then having weekends off so I can hang out with people who have 9-5 Monday through Friday jobs. I've been on horrible dates that were my weekend night but the other person's middle of the week or vice versa (worse in my opinion).
But I digress. This blog is about my own productivity. I see it as a challenge that, with all the things that could potentially change with my schedule, I may have to do my freelance work at less optimal times of day. So far, I've actually enjoyed and actively benefited from working nights. I wake up fresh, go to yoga, then come home and work my face off and then go to work my night job feeling accomplished and in a good mood, get off work, maybe have one drink and sleep and do it all over again.
I suppose I'm getting a tiny bit wistful but, ya know, one door closes another opens, yadda yadda. I guess I'm going to post this blog and then get to doing my research. Later on!
I'm on at least 5 major tasks right now that are preoccupying my time:
Working on the remix project which is due Feburary 8th
Submitting VO auditions on an almost daily basis if I can
Rehearsing for the upcoming CD release parties with Lacy
Networking with filmmakers to try and get another film scoring job
Revamping some of my voice over demos and creating a promo demo so I can ultimately start soliciting agents
...and I think that's it...maybe I can count trying to clean up my apartment on a grand scale. Right now I'm on the donating clothes leg of that race.
So, you see, very few of these things can be done at work. I guess I can be researching filmmakers and writing emails right now but everything else needs to be done at home. I'm in a phase with the remix contest where I really can't be doing anything in headphones. I need my monitors. I could be doing research on agents, too, I guess.
But all this comes with the sinking feeling that, with a potential change in my work schedule here, I may have fewer chances to get any of my work done during the day unless I adjust my routines. I've always been good at that though. A while back, I lost the overnight shifts, sorry, got rid of the overnight shifts and while it is nice to be rid of them, I did get a staggering amount of work done there. During the weekdays here it gets far too busy for me to have my laptop out and, lately, I haven't even been getting breaks because of how short staffed we are. Having more seniority when we finally get our new hires in here, I stand to completely lose all weekend and late evening shifts, which would be nice...I mean it'd be effing great! but the notion of doing any kind of work other than administrative stuff, and sending emails would be all but gone. Maybe I could get away with the occasional mixing and editing of music tracks on my break, or voicing auditions in edit bays, something I haven't done in a while.
Ultimately, depending on what my new shift is, I'm going to have to figure out when during the day I can do things like submit to VO auditions and compose and mix audio. Shutting the door to my room works but sometimes it's still too distracting when Katrina and I are home at the same time, which could happen, say, if I get a 10am - 6pm shift. Don't get me wrong it be a rock star shift and I'd eat it up. Imagine! Being able to get off work at dinner time and go home and cook dinner and eat it right away instead of this shit where I make three portions of the same meal and carry it all to work, risk spilling it in my bag (happened yesterday with chicken soup), then have to microwave it later so that the vast majority of dinners I eat have been reheated. Imagine, getting up at the same time every day and going to yoga at the same time and then having weekends off so I can hang out with people who have 9-5 Monday through Friday jobs. I've been on horrible dates that were my weekend night but the other person's middle of the week or vice versa (worse in my opinion).
But I digress. This blog is about my own productivity. I see it as a challenge that, with all the things that could potentially change with my schedule, I may have to do my freelance work at less optimal times of day. So far, I've actually enjoyed and actively benefited from working nights. I wake up fresh, go to yoga, then come home and work my face off and then go to work my night job feeling accomplished and in a good mood, get off work, maybe have one drink and sleep and do it all over again.
I suppose I'm getting a tiny bit wistful but, ya know, one door closes another opens, yadda yadda. I guess I'm going to post this blog and then get to doing my research. Later on!
Saturday, January 26, 2013
New music uploads...
I finally decided tonight to go ahead and upload the tracks I recently finished mastering to my sound cloud page. Wanted to give you all a chance to listen to what I've been working so hard on. This is, of course, only the beginning. I've composed about 12 new tunes since August as well, all of them in various stages of completeness, and all of them which will eventually go to the licensing agency as well.
The tracks.
Black and Blue are songs that I wrote for Steve Pitre for the Insiders1 Promo that he produced last year. I liked the idea of making them sister songs and the color blue came to mind almost immediately when I thought about what to name Blue. Black followed rather obviously. The versions I just posted contain some new material not on the versions on the promo. Black got more keyboard parts that I almost cut completely from the track originally (just developed them a little more). Blue got some guitar parts with a wash of delay effects that had not previously existed.
A Million Shades of Blue I wrote back in 2010 but knew I wanted to send to the licensing agency as soon as I started thinking about which pre-existing tracks I could repurpose. I wrote the song one day starting from a riff that I came up with while playing around with new sounds in my Native Instruments synths (FM8, Absynth and Massive) and, as often happens, I didn't come up with a name for it until a few days later. I was walking home from a friend's party at around 5am with the song running through my head and my eyes wandered up to the sky. It being a little under an hour until sunrise, the sky was displaying this amazing indigo color that faded to black the farther from the eastern sky you looked. The phrase "A Million Shades of Blue" passed through my head and I knew immediately that that's what the song was supposed to be called. I can't remember if I wrote the keyboard part for this one before or after the name arrived. It used to be played with just the Absynth patch, that screaming sound you hear underneath the keyboard. I added the keyboard on this remix to give the melody more definition there and dropped the Absynth down in the mix to get rid of the muddiness I was hearing.
Song for the Awakened was written all the way back in 2004. I've always enjoyed the groove of this song and was particularly proud of some experimentation I did with truncating the groove before it could finish the measure and restarting it but not doing it the same in all parts. I found that the phrases in each instrument could fit together in all kinds of different ways if I just let go of all conventional time signatures. The mix on the old version troubled me greatly and I had to get ruthless with it. This was one of the milestones during this project that I blogged about a few weeks back. Getting a handle on the mix and actually liking the song again was a great boost to my confidence. All it took was realizing that I had three instruments playing what one could handle and that there were large chunks of the song that didn't need both the keyboard and the guitar part to be fighting for attention. Can't remember where the name for this song came from. Think I was re reading passages in Radiant Mind at the time and the thought of being "Awakened" resonated with me a lot.
Daresay was a favorite from the 2004 batch and I think it actually got released with Windy April and Pastel on iTunes a while back but I didn't really promote that incarnation of the Automatic Head/Disrupt moniker. Daresay was a tune that I wrote in Fruity Loops entirely but this version used some sampled harp from Kontakt and my own guitar playing to spice it up. Plus I used Kontakt to splice my own drum line up and create a breakdown drum part that I actually liked this time (vs. the old version that I felt I could never get right). I wrote a blog a while back on my main page about how to do this with Kontakt and have used the technique a few times now. Currently using it with the remix contest I'm working on, in fact.
The last one I want to talk about was another new one from 2010 called Sleepwalking With You, a track written with Fruity Loops and transferred to Logic. Another of the batch of tracks for the licensing agency that I had trouble with and then got ruthless with. This one, not so much with the mix but with the decision to add other instruments. I had written piano parts and several guitar parts that all got chucked one day when I just started using distorted guitar and the trademark backwards effect that I got from the Grain Delay box in Guitar Rig 5 and used on the score for "The Life." That eureka moment sent the song into overdrive and made it among the first that I finished. I can't remember why I chose the title Sleepwalking With You...maybe just that it sounds dreamy, like you're half awake, and the phrase sounded funny to me when it passed through my brain. Now that I listen back with the distorted guitar it sounds like it might be, not sleepwalking, but a night terror. But it does sound sort of mournful and wistful like you're dreaming about someone you've lost or that is not in your life anymore.
That's about as deep as I'm going to get about it. For now, I hope you enjoy listening to the tracks and that you've enjoyed this little insight into my compositional process. Take care!
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