(no subject)
Salindiwa's album sounds amazing, I have to say. Their music is pretty dense and complicated, plus they're all amazing musicians with huge bags of tricks. You could hear everything in the mix. I don't know how Angee Rozul did it. The depth of the mix was incredible! Whatever they spent for his time was completely worth it.
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Anyone want to vote for Helen for this years NU Rock Awards? We've been longlisted in the categories of Raw, Best Live Act(?!) and Song of the Year (for Back in My Home). We would like to get to the short list. If you like us, cast your votes at http://fliptunes.net/rockawards/. Thanks! ,D
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It's interesting how you can break down an action into it's little components and assign them to slices of time. My dad would say, well there's Frederick Taylor talking through your mouth right there. At the rehearsal last friday we were trying to figure out how Wig could perform this complicated sound. After a lot of hand-waving, we all sat down and wrote it out on paper, two bars of eighth notes.
"On the &-of-4, you pluck the chord with the wah all the way up."
"Okay ..."
"And then on the following 1 and &-of-2, you push the wah all the way down." And I indicated the up-down motions on the staff.
Wig grasped the concept right away, and then it just became a matter of internalizing the whole thing.
So we're really getting down to brass tacks here. Notating wah pedal movements, man.
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A different band rehearsed on saturday. We went and played our five tune repertoire six times. Thirty tunes. All with double bass. At the end of that, I was lying on the floor again, and they couldn't feel their hands.
It was actually a lot more than thirty tunes cause whenever someone would make a mistake, we'd start over. Plus we were training our new singer, so in between 'sets', we'd play this or that song over and over so he could figure out the melodies.
During all this time, we went through an entire bottle of brandy and a bottle of white wine. During the fifth set we everything was real sloppy, I missed some important cues, the guitarist's tempo was off, etc. etc. We had to take a break before the sixth set.
"We're going to play the set again?!" I think I almost shouted.
But it's all good. I got maybe double my expected cardio workout that day.
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Sunday was a different kind of tiring. Wig came over at 9am and we got started recording at around 10. We put his amp in the little storeroom and stuck a mic in front of it, then ran another cable from his effects out to my tube preamp. We got some amazing-sounding tracks. I had to take a lot of notes about which of the two (miced amp vs direct) sounded better for which tunes. For some, a mix of the two is what I'm going to use. Lots of options.
At one point we got a 70s guitar sound that would not have sounded out of place on the Theme from Starsky and Hutch. A definite keeper.
Jon arrived at 3pm and we recorded bass tracks till almost 8pm. At this point I'd been working for 11 hours and I could barely focus. Especially after the crazy work-and-drink-and-rehearsal sked I was on for the previous few days. But we got a lot of good tracks done too. Progress.
I'll have to go into the studio myself come early nov and record the next batch of drum tracks before the other guys run out of things to do, otherwise we'll have some dead time again, and we're trying to avoid that.
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After the saturday reh we headed for the Salindiwa album listening party. The idea there was to have a lot of friends-of-the-band come over, jam, drink, and listen to their freshly-mastered debut album.
A few minutes after sitting down, they got me to come up and jam because this guy was up to play the second jam set and didn't have a drummer. The only other drummer there had just finished playing, so it was my turn by default.
Classic rock isn't my strong suit but I think I managed. We did Balong Malalim, another tune I can't recall, and Hard to Handle.
I was so tired after the day of metuuuhl that I was having big mental blocks. I've heard Hard to Handle a million times before but someone had to sing the intro riff to me just so I could count off the tune.
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mood. thinking.
music. ... but I know it's not polite to ask you where you spent last night ...
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Anyone want to vote for Helen for this years NU Rock Awards? We've been longlisted in the categories of Raw, Best Live Act(?!) and Song of the Year (for Back in My Home). We would like to get to the short list. If you like us, cast your votes at http://fliptunes.net/rockawards/. Thanks! ,D
-
It's interesting how you can break down an action into it's little components and assign them to slices of time. My dad would say, well there's Frederick Taylor talking through your mouth right there. At the rehearsal last friday we were trying to figure out how Wig could perform this complicated sound. After a lot of hand-waving, we all sat down and wrote it out on paper, two bars of eighth notes.
"On the &-of-4, you pluck the chord with the wah all the way up."
"Okay ..."
"And then on the following 1 and &-of-2, you push the wah all the way down." And I indicated the up-down motions on the staff.
Wig grasped the concept right away, and then it just became a matter of internalizing the whole thing.
So we're really getting down to brass tacks here. Notating wah pedal movements, man.
-
A different band rehearsed on saturday. We went and played our five tune repertoire six times. Thirty tunes. All with double bass. At the end of that, I was lying on the floor again, and they couldn't feel their hands.
It was actually a lot more than thirty tunes cause whenever someone would make a mistake, we'd start over. Plus we were training our new singer, so in between 'sets', we'd play this or that song over and over so he could figure out the melodies.
During all this time, we went through an entire bottle of brandy and a bottle of white wine. During the fifth set we everything was real sloppy, I missed some important cues, the guitarist's tempo was off, etc. etc. We had to take a break before the sixth set.
"We're going to play the set again?!" I think I almost shouted.
But it's all good. I got maybe double my expected cardio workout that day.
-
Sunday was a different kind of tiring. Wig came over at 9am and we got started recording at around 10. We put his amp in the little storeroom and stuck a mic in front of it, then ran another cable from his effects out to my tube preamp. We got some amazing-sounding tracks. I had to take a lot of notes about which of the two (miced amp vs direct) sounded better for which tunes. For some, a mix of the two is what I'm going to use. Lots of options.
At one point we got a 70s guitar sound that would not have sounded out of place on the Theme from Starsky and Hutch. A definite keeper.
Jon arrived at 3pm and we recorded bass tracks till almost 8pm. At this point I'd been working for 11 hours and I could barely focus. Especially after the crazy work-and-drink-and-rehearsal sked I was on for the previous few days. But we got a lot of good tracks done too. Progress.
I'll have to go into the studio myself come early nov and record the next batch of drum tracks before the other guys run out of things to do, otherwise we'll have some dead time again, and we're trying to avoid that.
-
After the saturday reh we headed for the Salindiwa album listening party. The idea there was to have a lot of friends-of-the-band come over, jam, drink, and listen to their freshly-mastered debut album.
A few minutes after sitting down, they got me to come up and jam because this guy was up to play the second jam set and didn't have a drummer. The only other drummer there had just finished playing, so it was my turn by default.
Classic rock isn't my strong suit but I think I managed. We did Balong Malalim, another tune I can't recall, and Hard to Handle.
I was so tired after the day of metuuuhl that I was having big mental blocks. I've heard Hard to Handle a million times before but someone had to sing the intro riff to me just so I could count off the tune.
-
mood. thinking.
music. ... but I know it's not polite to ask you where you spent last night ...