Samanas at 40 Knots

Tomorrow night, Thursday June 4th, I'll be sitting in with the City Samanas at the 40 Knots Bar in Brooklyn.

My intent is to play with the Peavey Vypyr amp and my Gibson SG. I'm doing that so I can dial in my sound ahead of time (which, as of this writing, is the "plexi" clean with the preamp and power amp gains dimed with a little bit of Leslie and a big 600 or so ms of delay) and not be stressed about powering up a cranky tube amp and getting the pedals to all work and such. I'm not sure if I'll bring the pedal with the amp yet. Maybe. I have one of those Sanpera pedals (the small one) and with it I can control volume and the like. Maybe. I'll have to experiment with it tonight.
We have no set list. We actually only have the vaguest idea of what we'll play. But that actually works out okay for us, so I'll go with it. I expect we'll end up doing a very long version of Dark Star.

An Album's Worth

Greg Bartus sent me some stuff to listen to before we play together next week. I'm kinda digging this stuff which was all recorded one or two years ago. Maybe three years ago. Anyway, I think we should totally release the unreleased stuff. Dark Star First Jam Loosely Regarded by the Cat Asleep by the Door is actually already on an album. So is, ironically, Diatomaceous Earth part II The Porcupines Dream is on that same album Measuring the Invisible is also on In the Vast Iteration But Sapphire Road Tractors? Totally an unreleased song And The Wooley Mammoth's Last Dance is actually a Diatomaceous Earth song

The Oceans of Ganymede

The Gallien-Krueger bass amp plugin by Audiffex is really quite remarkable. First of all it really feels like a miked amp. It really does a musical job of making the bass "better-er". There's a weirdness with the plugin in Samplitude where it seems to lose the preset you were on when you re-open the project or if you split the object it's in, but the sound quality is fantabulous and I can just "freeze" the tracks where I've applied it.

I am particularly proud of my guitar lead on this track. Marc did all the work by coming up with that ostinato. The slow guitar is kind of exactly the thing I've been working toward for a while -- that legato, melodic sort of "sung" lead.
As of this writing I'm still working on the mix. The bass recording was noisy. I don't know what that was about -- converters needing a reboot, bad pots on the fretless, an issue with phantom power? I was too busy playing guitar to hear/do anything about it while we were recording.

In the meantime I saw Marc's band this week. They were awesome. But that's another blog post.

Alas, the Alien Mind Redux

I've done some remixing and replaying and Marc Schmied has done some replaying and then there was some editing and now the songs The Ghost of Marius the Giraffe and Alas the Alien Mind have new mixes and I know there's still some clicks I haven't redrawn and overall it's just too compressed. My that's just what the Alien Mind tells me. Personally I have no idea.

Earlier today when I was listening and mixing I was not that super happy with the overall effect. I went a little too overboard with things. We may have gone too acid rock. I don't know. That Dm, Fm, Ab, E thing still blows me away. Did I make it too crazy? Maybe if I edit the 22-minute Marius down it'll be more sensible.
The guitars on their own don't sound too bad. I'm splitting them fairly equally between Lindell and Neve preamps. The bass is exclusively through a Lindell.

One thing which really makes a big difference is the Gallien Krueger (I refuse to look that up to learn to spell it correctly) VST amp emulator. Now some of the distorted basses are done with Marc's stompbox, but the "bass amp" sound is mostly the GK emulator. 
Yeah, now that I listen to it again, the noisy section goes on too long and too loud.
This is a strange album. Not one I would have expected. But then again, what do I expect?
I'm always surprised at how hard rock things get. I also love the built-in delays, flanges, and choruses in Samplitude. We'll see how this all pans out. Ha. See? I do a lot of autopanning...

Red House (Live San Diego Sports Arena, May 25, 1969)

Just because, you know, Jimi. Red House.

The Big Bucks

I made $9.11 through CDBaby this year. That's nine dollars, baby. The big ones. USD. I think this is all for Tyrannosaurus Mouse. You know what? The rest of the band is gonna have to sue me for their share! Ha! It's all coke parties and yachts for me from now on! I don't care who I step on on my way up 'cause I'm never comin' down!

I have a feeling that all the Spotify listens are just me listening to the record. But the other part of this experiment is paying ten bucks a month to promote the record through radioairplay.com. The possible "real money" (and by that I mean a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty bucks) will be through BMI.


$4.91 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through eMusic
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$0.59 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through iTunes-Canada
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$0.35 for DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION SALES through Rhapsody - Mechanical Royalties
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Because Everyone Needs to Chime In on the Robin Thicke Controversy

Joe Bennett discusses the case from a music and a legal perspective. Judith Finnell is a musicologist who did a report for the court.

Click

So the last two recording sessions with Marc have resulted in a really irritating artifact. And by "irritating" I mean I should have known better. I freaking HEARD clicking while we were recording. I heard some strange broad-band noise too. Both sounds were intermittent. But I couldn't immediately trace either sound while we were recording and I had hoped it was just the monitor system.
It wasn't.
Intermittent clicks. And yup, they were there on playback too. I tried applying de-clicker plugins and they did nothing. Absolutely nothing. That was super unusual. So I found one of these clicks by ear and zoomed in on the wave. Normally a click indicates a huge spike which is easy to see. But these clicks weren't like that. So I went in to the sample level.
And hoo boy. There is was.

This wave bothers me.

That's what, maybe 9 samples long? Just complete dropout on the wave.
This is on the bass track. And there are scores of 'em. Through testing and comparisons I think I isolated the problem: my relatively new Countryman DI box. [UPDATE: it is not exclusive to the Countryman. It may indeed be an issue with the Lindell preamps or the Scarlett A/D converter. Although it seemed I could replicate the issue by swapping in and out the Countryman it now seems there are multiple clicks and noises which occur from different problems. That waveform above seems to come either from the Lindell or from the A/D converter. I won't know for several days.
But there are other sounds which clearly come from the Countryman, including some of the clicks. So there's more than one source for the mess.

Hoof. The Countryman 85 is the standard DI box. Reasonably priced. Been around for quite a while. Is it the finest sounding DI box? No. But for price/performance it's certainly a market leader. Something inside is blown. Maybe a cap? Sure. I don't have any idea but if say "I got a blown cap in the '85" with an authority in my voice it sure sounds like I know what I'm talking about, right?
So now I have to fess up to Marc that we need to do some re-recording. I'm sure he'll take it okay.
But with the Countryman out of the mix what do we do? Well the Neves have DI inputs. And so do the ART tube preamp channels.
Thing is, I've been liking the Lindells. I've been enjoying them on guitars and on bass. But there are no DI inputs on the Lindell preamps, hence the Countryman 85 DI.

For when you needed to balance a signal but only had a handful of cash and a Radio Shack. Even worse we used to use the in reverse. But hey, they worked.

Remember these things?  Radio Shack Hi-Z to Lo-Z balanced converters. "How do they sound on bass?" you ask. Compared to the Countryman? They sound... pretty good actually. The Countryman definitely sounds better (I mean, when it's not being noisy and then intermittently cutting out the signal) and has some prettier high end, seems more "airy" (and other malarkey audio buzzwords.) Would you be able to tell which DI was used when listening back to a recording? No. But if recording is the "accumulation of subtleties" then there will certainly be a bit of a quality boost with the Countryman. Not noticeable on its own but if you A/B'd between the Countryman and the cheapo Radio Shack DI you'd certainly notice.
But will it be better to record bass through a Lindell preamp using the Radio Shack DI or will it be better to go direct into in the DI input of the ART? I dunno. And it's kind of guesswork for me to play bass through one path and then play it through another to figure out which sound better. I mean, I might be able to do it but my bass playing skills are less than stellar and I can't really get the sound I want anyway. I mean, maybe I can get close. Who knows? We'll do some tests. Find out. Wish me luck.
Also I'll hit up Countryman and see what they can do.

Why Live Music Sucks B/W The Electric Bass Guitar

There is no target audience for Dude In Hat Spilling An Entire Beer On You, and yet that’s what we built this entire discipline of art upon.

This essay is hilarious.

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You know what instrument is hard? The electric bass guitar.
Just to back up for a minute, one odd thing about be bass is that there is no centuries-long established technique for it*. As an instrument it is very roughly similar to the upright bass but has a vastly different scale (length), is held differently (more horizontal like a guitar than upright like an acoustic bass or cello) and has only been around for what, 80 years? Maybe not even that long. But one can easily see why it became as popular as it did -- large, acoustic, double-basses are a huge pain to lug around and let's face it they're never as loud as you really want them to be.
But while I feel that I might have the most tenuous grasp on what I don't know about playing other standard rock instruments like guitar, or keyboards, or even drums; the ability to even think about how to play a bass guitar simply escapes me. I don't even know what I don't know. The electric bass guitar is rather uncontrollable. Getting the dynamics to be even is a nightmare. Even with a pick it's just not something legitimate humans want to become involved with.

Mouse seems to use a left-handed technique.

Now I realize that much of this is prejudice. I've not put in as much time as I should, certainly, on the electric guitar, but I've put in enough time to have some remote and conceivable (if not achievable) sense of control over the instrument.
But the bass is flippin hard to play. I simply cannot make it sound professional at all when I play it. Rather than do something rash like practice, I'm just going to quit. No more bass for me.

*This is also true of the trap kit (notice that there are "traditional" style drummers and "two-fisted", or whatever they're called, drummers) as well as the Hammond organ and electric guitar. But with organ and guitar there are some older traditions, and with drums... well I don't know if I would qualify this whole thesis of mine with drums. Let's just pretend that everything I say is true and leave it at that shall we?

Todays things

Naiant Studios makes a bunch of neat audio adapters. In particular they make inline attenuators. As I'm having an obnoxious time dealing with the outputs of preamps being too hot for my Focusrite A/D's. With 24dB of attenuation I think I'll be able to push the preamps any way I like. I look forward to that.

Delano is a bass pickup manufacturer.
Peter's is the best chocolate manufacturer in the world.

Alas, the Alien Mind

Marc has been blowing up with great musical motifs. And it's all stuff I wouldn't have thought of in a million years. Thursday was fretless bass night. In order to not embarrass me, Marc had lines painted on his fretboard. But he also brought a little digital multi-effects pedal. You can hear the impact of such things in the following recordings.
It's interesting to me to see what happens in creating a band. In this case we fall into a particular sound. Obviously we go in the acid rock direction with little or no prompting. Hard but psychedelic. Marc is a remarkably controlled player. I mean, he plays bass as his job so you'd think he got plenty of practice in all this time but really, his dynamics are very smooth. I'm liking the languid yet clearly "rock" direction we're taking. There are, surprisingly, no keyboard overdubs.

The drums are either played by me or they're MIDI version of other songs or Oddgrooves. These are both "laptop mixes" but I suspect we're going to want to expand on these musical ideas in the coming weeks. Dm to F to Ab to E. Man, that is just awesome. To me at least.
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The chords to Any Color You Like.
Nick Mason makes his own drum sound library.
Presumably a whole MIDI library of Pink Floyd songs can be found here.