Some Demos

Okay, let's try this embedding mp3s thing.

Here's a demo of the Stooge:
The Stooge (12-10-09 Demo)
It sounds like I actually decided to record Kevin's vocals on this take, but at the expense of the guitar and bass. I won't let that happen again! (Okay, so I'll use my new mixer to get it right, but really, who wants to listen to the singer?)
It also sounds like my strap-lok gave out for the thousandth time during this recording. During the solo, there are two bars where I abruptly cut out. It sounds like I caught my falling guitar, propped my leg up on the coffee table, and finished the song. You can also hear me cursing my strap-lok at the end of the song.

This demo of Tomorrow came out okay.:
Tomorrow (10-29-09 Demo)
Kevin's vocals get lost during the louder sections, but the Rock will do that to a singer sometimes.

Credits:
Kevin C: Drums
Kevin M: Vocals
Mike: Bass
Ryan: Guitar
Ryan: Music/Lyrics/Shitty Recording

Blog Revue

Just reread my 2009 entries. Wow, I got in-depth about rehearsals. It reads like a personal diary. Oh, well; not really sure if there is a target audience for this blog anyway, so it might as well be me.

I've missed entries on a ton of rehearsals in the meantime. A lot of rehearsing and refining what we've got. I've started setting up the 8-track to record some of the jams, so at least there is a musical record of what's going on.

I'm thinking I may be able to use drop-box to link to some of the tracks, unless I come up with a better way to get mp3s embedded in this blog. If not, it will continue to serve as my personal diary!

The real reason I started blogging again...

...is that I got new musical toys to play with (and to blog about.)

The in-laws got me a Eurorack UB1222FX-Pro mixer for Christmas. My sister also got me a gift card to Guitar Center, which meant a spree of musical purchases there and at Musician's Friend.com that went well beyond what I meant to spend.

The initial trip to Guitar Center yielded some cables and a Furman M-8Lx power conditioner. I don't trust the wiring of my old house, and my guitar amp has been buzzing like crazy, so the power conditioner was in order. The more exciting stuff is in the mail.

More on the guitar and recording toys as they come in. More on the mixer when I get more time to play with it!

NPR: Grumpy Old Men

My father-in-law sent me this article:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122114058&sc=nl&cc=mn-20100102

Here is my response to the article:

First of all, it describes two very different phenomenon: compression and digital quantization. The point of song compression is to raise the amplify the "softer parts" into a dynamic range that your ear can more readily enjoy, at the expense of the louder parts. For the Metallica example in the article, instead of bemoaning the loss of a sharp snare attack cutting through the song, they could easily mention that the raised floor of the music and vocals makes the actual content of the song easier to listen to. A good recording engineer should work with the band to compress the songs in a manner that benefits the song.

The concept of over-compression, or making the song sound completely flat, has been around long before digital music. In fact, radio is the culprit for the over-compression phenomenon. Radio has very narrow side-bands around the carrier frequencies, so the content has to be compressed significantly to fit within the sidebands. It's the reason why classical music is still better live and most contemporary music is dynamically flat.

Digital quantization noise was a big problem before 16 and 24-bit recording and dithering techniques were developed. Then, when mp3s first became popular, people chose to digitize at low rates to keep file sizes small. A properly digitized song's digital quantization errors will fall well below the noise level of the ear. As higher quality digital music becomes more prevalent, the only discernible difference between formats will be that analog music is more prone to noise and more expensive than digital music.

I have noticed that recorded music has gotten progressively louder. (There is something called "The Volume Knob," available on most music players, if the music is too loud.) However, without elucidating the benefits of compression or digitization, this article sounds like a couple of guys lamenting about "the way it used to be..."

Let's start again...

I thought I had deleted this blog. Apparently, I just never wrote to it. Oh, well.

Thank goodness I didn't resolve to start blogging again. (I never keep my New Year's resolutions.) But I did feel that it was time to track my musical journey again.

Lots of cool things happening with the band. We've continued to meet, and we're starting to polish a few songs. We're hoping to focus on 5 songs, then get into the studio for a demo early in 2010. The songs are:

1) The Door
2) Far Side
3) Tomorrow
4) The Stooge
5) Untitled Blues Song

I just need to write lyrics (and give a title to) the fifth song, then we'll rehearse and be good to go.

Why no word?

Not sure why I haven't been blogging right as things have picked up. The crew has been Kevin M on vocals, Kevin C on drums, Mike on bass, and myself on guitar. We worked Far Side for a number of weeks, and basically the 12/8 bar is the only part we need to lock down. Next came The Door, which came together relatively quickly. Only update there is the sparse guitar intro. Stooge and Tomorrow came together pretty quickly from there. Need to nail down the Tomorrow stop. After that its just polishing.

Trying to get a manager to book gigs. Need a name for the band. Wondering how Kevin M's first kid is going to affect us going forward. Things might get interesting again soon...

Anyway, band name ideas:
Team Badguys (From Jen C)
Bottleneck (From Steve N, C1NG)
Good Behavior (From Mike)

Kevin M apparently played in a band named Lesser Offense, so he was making the connection with Good Behavior...


Also, in recent news, somehow a cleanup effort popped the cap in my digital delay pedal. Wondering if I want to replace it or go a different route. Volume/Wah is still the mainstay, and I'm trying to get the Whammy pedal in the mix.

Back On

Started writing a couple things for the Stooge. Recorded an early version of the Lament. Have a couple more ideas floating around.

Should have the guys over tomorrow. We'll see what's going down with the band.

What's going on

It's been a couple of weeks since our last rehearsal. Business travel, Spring events..a few things have been interfering with our Tuesday rehearsal time. The time off has given my back and shoulder some time to recover, so maybe its not all bad. Not sure where the motivation to pull everyone back in is going to come from.

I need to start writing again.

12th Jam: Built to Spill

Date: 4/22/09
Location: Mt Prospect Studios

Mike: Bass
Kevin M: Vocals
Ryan: Guitar
Kevin C: Drums
Carl: Guitar


Had some good things going on in this one. There was a swung Em7-Bm jam going, and the C7-A7-Dm groove going again. Ripped off some good runs of the usual set...

11th Jam: Party Harder

Date: 4/15/09
Location: Mt Prospect Studios

Mike: Bass
Kevin M: Vocals
Ryan: Guitar
Kevin C: Drums
Carl: Guitar

So, I missed the Jazz show at Fitzgerald's, but this was worth it. Kevin C invited his friend Carl to jam. Kevin vouched for him, but I gotta admit I was a little worried when he pulled out the acoustic. No worries. He was solid, even over Stooge. I definitely never heard an acoustic part in Stooge, but it sounded good. Hopefully, we'll keep him showing up with Kevin C.

While we were waiting on Carl, we jammed through a little riff in Dm. Good stuff. Even remembered to turn on the 8-track. Someday, I'll have enough time to develop some of this stuff, but in the meantime, it's just fun to jam through it.

We whipped through Tomorrow and some Stooge after Carl arrived. The Stooge outro was rag-tag, but it finally held together. I know Mike is going to want some clean transitions, but I kinda liked how we followed each other through the mixed-meter stuff. Okay, maybe it was five minutes too long, but I was digging it. Kevin M had the idea to jump back in on vocals after our musical adventure, which was something I had in the back of my mind as well. Great minds, eh? Ha ha ha...

After Kevin M left, we worked through some Cowboy Song. We have a few parts now that are pretty cool. We're going to have to try to work some melody into the fold in the near future. And I haven't even busted out the original bridge I wrote for the song.

When we got bored, Kevin C took the mic and I laid down a beat. It was an upbeat blues groove. Kevin was spewing gibberish, but I liked the sound. I'd love to keep going, but...God forbid these guys let me start switching instruments.

Oh, one more milestone: This was officially the night I realized that my back problems were from extensive guitar jams. The Gibson is by far the heaviest guitar I've played, and thinking about it, I've rarely played standing up for 2+ hrs straight. If it's just me, I'll take a break or sit down. I'm usually on acoustic for composing anyway. Anyway, hanging a 12 pound weight off one shoulder for 2 hrs is a problem. I'll have to figure out how to handle that going forward.

And to think I blamed ice hockey. For shame!

Extra-curricular??!?

C had some NPR on this morning, and I'm not sure who the group was, but they were tearing up some jazz charts. All I caught was that they'd be at Fitzgeralds in Berwyn this Wednesday. Not that I'm pessimisstic enough to think we might not have a drummer again next week, but just in case...I might have to float the idea of catching a set in Berwyn instead of rehearsal this week. Hmmm....

Just used the power of the Interweb to find out who's playing that night: Rob Parton’s JazzTech Big Band.
http://www.fitzgeraldsnightclub.com/listings.html#Apr15

10th Jam: Roll-back

Date: 4/9/09
Location: Mt Prospect Studios

Mike: Bass
Kevin M: Vocals
Ryan: Guitar

Our smallest jam in a while. Mike had a conflict on Wednesday, so we moved it to Thurs. Never heard from Kevin C...

Ran through the Door a couple of times. Still solid things happening there, still areas of improvement, but overall just some minor tweaks required. I feel like we're the closest we've ever been to remembering the break, so big ups to us.

We started talking about the random riffs I've collected. No one seems to pick up Jaunty without Ann around, so we moved on to the "Found You" riff. Didn't come up with any complimentary sections, but Mike did hear a different voicing for the last chord. Instead of an F5, he hears another Dm with a 3-5-Tonic voicing. It sounds good, but I guess it all depends on the melody and other sections we want to use.

We did some good work on "The Cowboy Song." Mike came up with a 6/8 rhythm, and I did a little lead line over Am-Am-C-Dm. After a few runs of that, we had something that modulated to Dm. Mike played a line Dm-Dm-A-F. However, with no drums, I heard it as A-F-Dm-Dm. We still haven't resolved what will constitute the beginning of the phrase, but we agreed it sounded sweet. I ended up playing an oblique line that created a lot of 4ths, and reminded me a very dark version of Westminster Chimes. How badass is that? Not very, I know, but it's kinda goofy regardless...

Kevin got bored, plinked around on the keyboard. If he continues to let Mike and I go off on our musical adventures, he'll soon learn an instrument (or two) to stay amused. To close out, we ripped through Tomorrow. Nothing too interesting there, except that Mike is going to revive the E-G-B-D feel in the song, which I think he was doing occasionally anyway. Now it's official!!!

Ideas?

Haven't found a lot of time for the musics the past couple of weeks, beyond rehearsals. Still have some ideas floating around...

Need to continue to makeover the lyrics to Keepsake, add Song About Myself, remove MWB, and get out the CD.

Also had a few ideas to further tweak the Door. To start, keeping it really sparse, and passing it around to each instrument for 3 bars (plus the downbeat of the 4th.) Even the vocals could get in. I think I'm hearing two bars of the theme in E, then switching to B--B--B-G- for the 3rd bar. Vocals would be "(E) Come----with (E) me. We'll (B) go for a (E) ride."

Eh, we'll figure it out Wednesday

9th Jam: Full-on

Date: 4/1/09
Location: Mt Prospect Studios

Mike: Bass
Kevin M: Vocals
Kevin C: Drums
Ryan: Guitar

Had pretty good instrumentation finally. Started out by playing around with Stooge. Still working on what we want to do as far the Outro theme, but we had some good instrumental stuff going on post-bridge.

The Door got its requisite tweaking, all good stuff. A sparse guitar opening, elongated bass progression, before finally kicking in with drums, then switching over to a distorted guitar line before having the vocals come in. The last bridge also had less guitar before coming in with a lead line, whereas the doubling of the rhythm on guitar led to 2 repeats into the outro. It's gonna be sweet.

Hit Tomorrow with Kevin C. for the first time. Being that it keeps to the 4/4, Kevin picked it up pretty fast. That one is sounding pretty good, with the drums complimenting the switches between the clean and distorted channels.

8th Jam: The Build-up

Date: 3/25/09
Location: Mt Prospect Studios

Mike: Bass
Kevin M: Vocals
John: Guitar
Ryan: Guitar

Kevin C. caught the sickness, but we were able to get John back in the groove. Continued to work the Stooge outro. We've made it a 14-beat figure, but over the standard 8-beat Stooge groove, we're looking at 56 beats to sync up again. It's a work in progress.

Tomorrow's making some progress. Added a rhythm figure switching between the minor and major third for the main theme. Doing some different things with distortion coming out of the second refrain through the bridge, then again after the stop, which is adding some depth to the song. I'd love to hear how drums is going to sound behind this one...

Thinking the best way to go with the door is to pick rock or swing and stick with it. I'm thinking if we go rock, we'd want to remove the 6/4 bars, but we haven't worked through that in a while.

Adding I Miss You for next week?

7th Jam: Core

Date: 3/18/09
Location: Mt Prospect Studios

Mike: Bass
Kevin M: Vocals
Ryan: Guitar/Drums

Kevin C bailed late on this one. I was a little worried about being productive and having Mike drive all the way out here, but it was a very good session. We started with Tomorrow. After a run-through, we started moving it from its acoustic origins into a more dynamic full-band sound using a broad distorted sound for certain sections. I played with the third on the E chord, switching from minor to major within the measure.

The Door also got its mandatory update. I'm not sure why, but its the most malleable song I've ever dealt with. Anyway, I started with my new choppy intro (which no one is sold on yet), and tried to transition from a slower swing to a driving rock beat at the end. We're not quite there yet.

Ended the night on Stooge. I jumped on drums, and Mike worked through the locrian hemiola. I think he's got it. I hope he's got it, because I didn't really have a chance to practice it on guitar. Anyway, there's an opportunity to foreshadow the figure as a fill earlier in the song. I think we figured out that it works if you rest on 1 for the fill and start on 1 for the repeated figure, but we'll have to revisit. Mike also had a different bassline going at one point, so we'll see how to work that in.

At some point I also need to get serious about harmonizing the vocals...or get serious about having Kevin do it!

Jaunty Demo 1

Was watching a little NCAA basketball and had a couple ideas for lyrics for Jaunty. I wouldn't recommend hitting mute, sticking a mic near your acoustic, playing through it once, and calling it a demo, but it worked. I'm getting better with track editing, as I cut a few repeats out of the song.

I think I'll need to re-arrange the song, possibly add a minor segment.

6th Jam: Maintainance Jam

Date: 3/12/09
Location: Mt Prospect Studios

Mike: Bass
Kevin M: Vocals
Ann: Keys
Ryan: Guitar/Vocals

Came back from Austin Wednesday night, but I didn't want to go three weeks between rehearsals, so Thursday night it is. Mike got stuck in traffic, which gave me plenty of time to bother Ann into showing. She wanted dinner in return, and got ice-cream and beer. Pretty close.

Had a few ideas on how to start the Door. Two guitars would be nice, but I did like Mike taking the lead guitar idea and playing it on bass.

Mike's got the feel for Far Side, which allows us to hold it together without drums, usually a dubious task.

Whipped through Stooge, played a little Tomorrow. Since Ann was there, I jumped on the drums and we played through Fresh Air a couple of times.

Touched on Jaunty and The Cowboy Song. This reminds me that I need to name tracks before Ann weighs in on what they're to be called...

No Jam Tonight

We had a couple of conflicts tonight, so no rocking. But I'm looking for a webpage for the exact quote from the scene in Boogie Nights where Dirk Diggler pitches his idea for Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell to Jack Horner in the van. It's kinda funny when I use my Mark Wahlberg voice to say "that's not cool. That's not sexy" in response to something I don't like, but if I knew more of that monologue: now that would be something.
...so tonight's not a total waste.

5th Jam: Peanut Butter Only

Date: 2/25
Location: Mt Prospect Studios

Mike: Bass
Kevin M: Vocals
Kevin C: Drums
Ryan: Guitar/Vocals

All bidness this week. Mike, Kevin M, and I worked through the door a bit. When Kevin C showed up, we worked Stooge a bit, then Far Side, then the Door. Kevin C then had to take off, and we worked Tomorrow without drums.