Ok. how about recording?
Shoelove took a couple days and recorded some demo tracks of our 7 original songs, using the...
"
TASCAM 2488mkII 24-Track Digital Portastudio Recording Workstation"
Apparently it is THE most sold Tascam product on musiciansfriend.com. (dot com dot!) It seemed pretty nifty, and nick is able to transfer all of the individual tracks to the computer for mixing and mastering and effects and all that jazz.
Recording went pretty well - we finished everything in time. There were a few issues along the way - most, of course, involving dave's equipment. The jenga song in particular proves to be a difficult song to perform on bass because it involves so much pedal work (wah pedal and distortion pedal, switching between the two at the same time...) At first Dave asked me to press his distortion pedal for him at the appropriate time in the song, but we eventually gave this up and decided to let him record that part of the bass track separately.
I haven't heard the recordings, yet, but i have a feeling we will be able to get some good sounding stuff from them (with the aid of computer wizardry, of course).
Well, before that, actually, was the open mic night. This was an interesting, and somewhat eye-opening experience. Actually, this past week has been a very eye-opening time in terms of my perspective of the local music scene.
So, Dave and I arrived to find Collin sitting down outside Cowboy Monkey with a guitar and a drawing pad with words scribbled over it. He quickly told us how he had devised a plan - a plan to win back his audience. You see, the week before Collin pretty much bombed his stand up comedy act and started yelling at the audience (not making a very good impression in the process). This time, he decided, he would try not to be so offensive.
For whatever reason the best way for him to be non-offensive was to write out jokes on pads of paper and have a volunteer from the audience flip through them and show them to the rest of the audience while Collin sat there and played guitar. Hmmm. This sounded completely ridiculous.
"Collin, I know this is gonna bomb, you should at least give your stand up comedy another chance." I begged.
"Tommy, you weren't there last week. There were people about to throw furniture at me. If I go up there and even start talking they are gonna be pissed" he replied.
"But there is NO way they are gonna like this! This is weird, it's too artsy. With stand up you at least have a chance of success...."
This went on for about 15 minutes, and somehow I convinced him to go on stage and do stand up with me playing guitar on the side while he did it. He was excited and so was I. We were gonna do it.
We even did calisthenics before our set. We were READY.
Then, when it was time to go on stage, Brandon T. Washington von Hoffenberg the Third pulled Collin aside and said something to the effect of:
"I don't really like comedy at my shows, and I've been talking to the manager and he said if anything like last time happens and you offend someone we aren't going to let you back in here"
So, after that, with a face of sheer determination and revenge, Collin went over to the table that our friends were sitting at and said
"Where are my fucking cards?!?"
He then proceeded to do his "silent page turning" while I strummed away on his acoustic. It don't go so badly, I guess. No one booed, at least.
Then there was another act, and after that it was Shoelove - 3's turn to play. It went ok. Well, it was really the first two songs that went well, and then the last one sucked. The last one also happened to be our brand new song, which is probably why it sucked, but whatever. I completely forgot the words, even with the paper sitting right in front of me. I think it would go a lot better if mike was playing guitar and we added more words and we changed a few things. It could be a good song, but right now it just isn't much of a crowd-pleaser.
The first two songs, "Alkaline", and "Daisy", went fairly well. On the latter I played guitar, but it wasn't anything extremely hard, so it didn't "cramp my style". Some guy even said "good job" to me on my way out.
I really need to dedicate at least a paragraph or two more to this open mic night, not because of our performances, but because of the other performers. They were all exactly the same: acoustic, poppy, and boring as fuck. I didn't see a single act that I would actually GO to see. Now this may be my personal opinion, or taste in music, but I really don't see how anyone could get something out of all that stuff.
It IS an acoustic mic night. This, however, doesn't mean "non stop poppy chord strummin folk shit" night. I think I MAYBE saw one guy NOT play chords. It really made me want to puke. Granted, Staci is worse than all of them, but there were so many of them that it just multiplied the effect. And the fact that the audience applauded it, and not just as an of being polite, they were fucking cheering for this shit. UGH. AHH. EEEK!
Ok, moving on.
The digitech pedal. Oh, the digitech pedal. So, dave and I found an awesome deal on ebay for used Whammy and Boss DD3 pedals for 200 including shipping. Good deal. Everything arrives ok....but then we plug dave's bass into it....and....utter shit comes out of his amp. GOD DAMN IT. Seriously, it isn't even funny at this point....just the sheer amount of problems dave has had with equipment. It's like he's got bad music equipment karma.
So, of course, we start analyzing the problem, like the little techies we are. We tested the wet and dry outs, both of them sound shitty. The fact that the dry out continues to puzzle us....shouldn't the dry out just be a direct output of what is coming into the pedal? "Maybe the input connector is screwed up" I suggested....but it looks fine.
But we couldn't even figure that out, because after taking out all the screws on top the thing wouldn't open. We looked and looked, and could not find what it was that was keeping the thing closed. We narrowed it down to one of the corners, but we couldn't find anything over there that would lock the top plate of the pedal to the bottom. We even tried to unscrew the expression pedal, but we couldn't get the screws to move. Then grant almost pried it open with a screwdriver.
I decided to take it home with me, but not after I was forced to walk to Collin/Grant's from the Esquire, and THEN all the way back to my apartment. It was ok on the first half because Collin and I got to talk, but after that it was a little annoying. But when I got home I took another look at the pedal. What was wrong with this piece of crap? It was like they didn't want you to be able to even open the thing to fix it. Hmmm. But there was that MIDI port on that side that still wasn't unscrewed....
So I unscrewed it, just to see what would happen. And, believe it or not, that was it. The top plate was unlocked and came off the bottom plate, but with the circuit board attached. Phew. Now we could find the problem...or could we?
It took me a while to find anything remotely "broken looking" on the circuit board, and even then it wasn't the right thing. I pointed out to dave that the part of the circuit board with the LEDs was broken off from the rest of the board - maybe it needed to be reconnected. This, however, could not be the problem, as Dave pointed out, because they didn't need to be connected (he backed this up by showing how nothing was electrically connected between the two pieces except some wiring....which wasn't broken...) This meant that the problem was elsewhere.
In the current situation we don't know what the problem is. I want to try using the pedal with Dave's one spot power supply again, to check some more things, because I don't have the appropriate adapter to power it. We might just end up sending it back to the guy who sent it to us. Hopefully he won't be an ass about it.
Ok, one more topic, and then I'm gonna eat something.
IMC promoting....yeah, so I'm taking the "not so professional" position of "IMC promoter" by finding bands and putting together shows at the IMC. In the past couple days I have started putting together 8 shows, ranging from "folk/acoustic night" to "rap night". Hopefully they will all work out and I will make some money out of it.
The first reply I got from this rap group was one sentence: "how much you payin us?"
Oh, boy. If that's what you are here for, you can look elsewhere. There are tons of people who just want to play a show, not make lots of money. It's not like you are spending much to do your rap show, anyway. You just put in a CD and rap over it, for god's sake. I replied to him by saying "it depends on how many people you bring", sorta putting the pressure back on him.
As I've begun booking bands I'm slowly realizing the near complete monopoly Seth Fein and Co. has on the local music scene. pygmalion, for example, requires that all of its participants NOT play in CU from august 20 to sept 22. WTF? That means *I* won't be able to book a lot of bands. Then I was trying to book Shipwreck for a show, and I went to their website and it said "for booking, email seth fein..." hmm, ok, sure. So I emailed him asking about the 17th of august, and he replied saying "no, they are playing on the 23rd at the canopy, so they can't play the 17th." MAN, COME ON.
What this means for me is....if I want to book shipwreck I need to book them so far in advance that there is no "seth booking" in conflict with it. Shipwreck is an active band, and I know they are gonna have shows about once a week, and, according to seth, if any of them are in CU, then I can't book them for that week. *sigh*
I'm also trying to get a lot of "up and coming" bands, hopefully inspiring them to do more shows, not only at the IMC, but all around town and elsewhere. There is no cost for them to perform at the IMC, but they WILL make some money, no matter what. This is pretty different from most other venues, where you rarely actually get any money as a new band.
Ok....i'm a hungry hungry hippo, and I know there are at least a couple apples in the fridge so.....SEEeeeeya!
-t
Apparently it is THE most sold Tascam product on musiciansfriend.com. (dot com dot!) It seemed pretty nifty, and nick is able to transfer all of the individual tracks to the computer for mixing and mastering and effects and all that jazz.
Recording went pretty well - we finished everything in time. There were a few issues along the way - most, of course, involving dave's equipment. The jenga song in particular proves to be a difficult song to perform on bass because it involves so much pedal work (wah pedal and distortion pedal, switching between the two at the same time...) At first Dave asked me to press his distortion pedal for him at the appropriate time in the song, but we eventually gave this up and decided to let him record that part of the bass track separately.
I haven't heard the recordings, yet, but i have a feeling we will be able to get some good sounding stuff from them (with the aid of computer wizardry, of course).
Well, before that, actually, was the open mic night. This was an interesting, and somewhat eye-opening experience. Actually, this past week has been a very eye-opening time in terms of my perspective of the local music scene.
So, Dave and I arrived to find Collin sitting down outside Cowboy Monkey with a guitar and a drawing pad with words scribbled over it. He quickly told us how he had devised a plan - a plan to win back his audience. You see, the week before Collin pretty much bombed his stand up comedy act and started yelling at the audience (not making a very good impression in the process). This time, he decided, he would try not to be so offensive.
For whatever reason the best way for him to be non-offensive was to write out jokes on pads of paper and have a volunteer from the audience flip through them and show them to the rest of the audience while Collin sat there and played guitar. Hmmm. This sounded completely ridiculous.
"Collin, I know this is gonna bomb, you should at least give your stand up comedy another chance." I begged.
"Tommy, you weren't there last week. There were people about to throw furniture at me. If I go up there and even start talking they are gonna be pissed" he replied.
"But there is NO way they are gonna like this! This is weird, it's too artsy. With stand up you at least have a chance of success...."
This went on for about 15 minutes, and somehow I convinced him to go on stage and do stand up with me playing guitar on the side while he did it. He was excited and so was I. We were gonna do it.
We even did calisthenics before our set. We were READY.
Then, when it was time to go on stage, Brandon T. Washington von Hoffenberg the Third pulled Collin aside and said something to the effect of:
"I don't really like comedy at my shows, and I've been talking to the manager and he said if anything like last time happens and you offend someone we aren't going to let you back in here"
So, after that, with a face of sheer determination and revenge, Collin went over to the table that our friends were sitting at and said
"Where are my fucking cards?!?"
He then proceeded to do his "silent page turning" while I strummed away on his acoustic. It don't go so badly, I guess. No one booed, at least.
Then there was another act, and after that it was Shoelove - 3's turn to play. It went ok. Well, it was really the first two songs that went well, and then the last one sucked. The last one also happened to be our brand new song, which is probably why it sucked, but whatever. I completely forgot the words, even with the paper sitting right in front of me. I think it would go a lot better if mike was playing guitar and we added more words and we changed a few things. It could be a good song, but right now it just isn't much of a crowd-pleaser.
The first two songs, "Alkaline", and "Daisy", went fairly well. On the latter I played guitar, but it wasn't anything extremely hard, so it didn't "cramp my style". Some guy even said "good job" to me on my way out.
I really need to dedicate at least a paragraph or two more to this open mic night, not because of our performances, but because of the other performers. They were all exactly the same: acoustic, poppy, and boring as fuck. I didn't see a single act that I would actually GO to see. Now this may be my personal opinion, or taste in music, but I really don't see how anyone could get something out of all that stuff.
It IS an acoustic mic night. This, however, doesn't mean "non stop poppy chord strummin folk shit" night. I think I MAYBE saw one guy NOT play chords. It really made me want to puke. Granted, Staci is worse than all of them, but there were so many of them that it just multiplied the effect. And the fact that the audience applauded it, and not just as an of being polite, they were fucking cheering for this shit. UGH. AHH. EEEK!
Ok, moving on.
The digitech pedal. Oh, the digitech pedal. So, dave and I found an awesome deal on ebay for used Whammy and Boss DD3 pedals for 200 including shipping. Good deal. Everything arrives ok....but then we plug dave's bass into it....and....utter shit comes out of his amp. GOD DAMN IT. Seriously, it isn't even funny at this point....just the sheer amount of problems dave has had with equipment. It's like he's got bad music equipment karma.
So, of course, we start analyzing the problem, like the little techies we are. We tested the wet and dry outs, both of them sound shitty. The fact that the dry out continues to puzzle us....shouldn't the dry out just be a direct output of what is coming into the pedal? "Maybe the input connector is screwed up" I suggested....but it looks fine.
But we couldn't even figure that out, because after taking out all the screws on top the thing wouldn't open. We looked and looked, and could not find what it was that was keeping the thing closed. We narrowed it down to one of the corners, but we couldn't find anything over there that would lock the top plate of the pedal to the bottom. We even tried to unscrew the expression pedal, but we couldn't get the screws to move. Then grant almost pried it open with a screwdriver.
I decided to take it home with me, but not after I was forced to walk to Collin/Grant's from the Esquire, and THEN all the way back to my apartment. It was ok on the first half because Collin and I got to talk, but after that it was a little annoying. But when I got home I took another look at the pedal. What was wrong with this piece of crap? It was like they didn't want you to be able to even open the thing to fix it. Hmmm. But there was that MIDI port on that side that still wasn't unscrewed....
So I unscrewed it, just to see what would happen. And, believe it or not, that was it. The top plate was unlocked and came off the bottom plate, but with the circuit board attached. Phew. Now we could find the problem...or could we?
It took me a while to find anything remotely "broken looking" on the circuit board, and even then it wasn't the right thing. I pointed out to dave that the part of the circuit board with the LEDs was broken off from the rest of the board - maybe it needed to be reconnected. This, however, could not be the problem, as Dave pointed out, because they didn't need to be connected (he backed this up by showing how nothing was electrically connected between the two pieces except some wiring....which wasn't broken...) This meant that the problem was elsewhere.
In the current situation we don't know what the problem is. I want to try using the pedal with Dave's one spot power supply again, to check some more things, because I don't have the appropriate adapter to power it. We might just end up sending it back to the guy who sent it to us. Hopefully he won't be an ass about it.
Ok, one more topic, and then I'm gonna eat something.
IMC promoting....yeah, so I'm taking the "not so professional" position of "IMC promoter" by finding bands and putting together shows at the IMC. In the past couple days I have started putting together 8 shows, ranging from "folk/acoustic night" to "rap night". Hopefully they will all work out and I will make some money out of it.
The first reply I got from this rap group was one sentence: "how much you payin us?"
Oh, boy. If that's what you are here for, you can look elsewhere. There are tons of people who just want to play a show, not make lots of money. It's not like you are spending much to do your rap show, anyway. You just put in a CD and rap over it, for god's sake. I replied to him by saying "it depends on how many people you bring", sorta putting the pressure back on him.
As I've begun booking bands I'm slowly realizing the near complete monopoly Seth Fein and Co. has on the local music scene. pygmalion, for example, requires that all of its participants NOT play in CU from august 20 to sept 22. WTF? That means *I* won't be able to book a lot of bands. Then I was trying to book Shipwreck for a show, and I went to their website and it said "for booking, email seth fein..." hmm, ok, sure. So I emailed him asking about the 17th of august, and he replied saying "no, they are playing on the 23rd at the canopy, so they can't play the 17th." MAN, COME ON.
What this means for me is....if I want to book shipwreck I need to book them so far in advance that there is no "seth booking" in conflict with it. Shipwreck is an active band, and I know they are gonna have shows about once a week, and, according to seth, if any of them are in CU, then I can't book them for that week. *sigh*
I'm also trying to get a lot of "up and coming" bands, hopefully inspiring them to do more shows, not only at the IMC, but all around town and elsewhere. There is no cost for them to perform at the IMC, but they WILL make some money, no matter what. This is pretty different from most other venues, where you rarely actually get any money as a new band.
Ok....i'm a hungry hungry hippo, and I know there are at least a couple apples in the fridge so.....SEEeeeeya!
-t
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