Last day of Rokafonik Philharmonik :( I'm going to miss going there every saturday and playing. The people in the band with me are all incredibly talented musicians and fun people to work with. I'll definitely be missing that. We filmed four music videos again today; Sir Duke by Stevie Wonder, Telephone Line by Electric Light Orchestra, Me & Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin, and Over The Hills & Far Away by Led Zeppelin.
So Kevin and I today wrote a really interesting a complicated song. This is why it's interesting and complicated (and it'll be easier to explain this in person if you should come to my presentation on wednesday at 5:00!); the song goes from being in the 8/8 time signature, to 9/8, then to 4/4 for a brief measure, then to 6/8 in the choruses, then back to a switch between 8/8 and 9/8 in the verses. Then we do some sort of weird, noisy breakdown, similar to the bridge in Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. Just weird noises, and jungle-esque drums, then we get quiet, then BANG! And we're really really loud for 2 measures or so and then we take it back to the switching between 8/8 and 9/8. It's CRAZY! It took us awhile to figure out the drum parts to it and how to transition between the time signatures smoothly, great work on Kevin's part. Singing over that will be difficult, but it's a challenge we want to take on!
My title refers to our microphone setup. He brought with him a gorgeous Copperphone Mic and we've been singing into it a little here and there, but not really anything put together much. And we only have one actual mic stand, but both of us want to be able to sing. So, we made a makeshift mic stand for the copperphone. Here it is :) Those shelves are in my garage, and we took a plank of wood and put it on a shelf underneath a brick. Then, we took a bungee cord and hung the microphone, but we needed another bungee to pull it back ever so slightly. Works perfectly, and we're proud of our creation :)
My friend from boston, Kevin, landed in Fort Lauderdale today! Yay! He's staying with me until next thursday, and we're gonna be jammin'. He's a really good drummer, and as soon as we set up the drums today in the garage, music happened. It was a rainy day, and we started off playing blues, then some weird jam of a song happened, then a 9/8 song happened, and some Raconteurs and Led Zeppelin. It was intense, as the blog title says. Then later on, we watched a Live Led Zeppelin DVD that blew me away. It's incredible how the three of them could play, never miss a beat, and go off on such strange and outlandish musical journeys. Every song is a journey. They'll even sometimes begin a song, jam it for awhile, and right in the middle of that song start playing a different song, then eventually come back to the song they started with. One example is them switching between "How Many More Times" and "The Lemon Song", FLAWLESSLY. I'm amazed. I hope that one day, I'll be able to be a part of something as glorious and magical as Led Zeppelin.
WHOOT! I successfully figured out how to hook up my microphone to my amplifier through my interface! From there, I got the idea to connect my multi-effects guitar pedal between the mic and the amp. So what came of this? I CAN PUT CRAZY SOUNDING EFFECTS ON MY VOICE! But most importantly, I CAN MAKE VOCAL LOOPS! For those of you who don't know what vocal looping is, it's where you can record (using a loop machine, or the equivalent on a multi-effects pedal) a vocal track, loop it, and keep recording vocal layers on top of it. Not too long ago, I discovered the artist, Kimbra, who is very good at doing this and did so in a cover of Nina Simone's "Plain Gold Ring". In my opinion, the queen of vocal loops is Imogen Heap. This is her playing her song "Just For Now" live. "Escape Artist" is a song by Zoe Keating in which demonstrates looping done with the cello instead of vocals. This is my very first time doing this, so it's not the greatest thing you'll ever hear, but I'm super excited about it and will be practicing so I can showcase this in my presentation :D
I NEED MOVEMENT!!!! Sunday and Monday were spent on the computer and in my pajamas the entire day looking at apartments in California. I'm totally stoked about moving there, but WOW apartment shopping is a finicky business. One place I was looking into had pipe issues earlier this month and they finally burst, spewing waste and puke all in the building. Management did nothing and many of the tenants got sick as a result. Won't be moving there. Another place is roach infested. Hell no. Another place has rats. And many are just ridiculously expensive. I've found three so far that look really good and the rates are nice. Hopefully I'll find more as well to ease me and the parents up.
So the headline has to do with a 30-day vegetarian diet that I'm starting this week. Started yesterday, but then my family all wanted to go out to sushi together tonight, and then tomorrow my aunt is making dolmades (lamb stuffed grape leaves) and I cannot resist those in the slightest bit. Lamb is my weakness. Sushi, I'm actually getting a little bored with, but lamb. Never. What made me want to do this is that my friend showed me a PETA video narrated by Paul McCartney that shows footage of what life is like for an animal in the slaughterhouses and how messed up the treatment of the animals is. It's not the eating of meat I'm against, as a species, we've been doing that for a very long time. It's the way cows, chickens, pigs, and even fish are treated in these places, bred to make them extra fat and produce more product. Then they're slaughtered while some are even still conscious! It's absolutely horrifying to watch! As a meat-eater my whole life, it's going to be a challenge, but I want to do it. Wish me luck!
Zzz...right, that's a key. I'm very tired, as I got back from the Louisiana drive last night about 10:30 after waking up at 5:30 that morning. Then today, went to practice from 9-2, recording Over The Hills and Far Away by Led Zeppelin, and filming four music videos. We filmed videos for 'Baba O'Riley' by The Who, 'Moby Dick' by Led Zeppelin, 'Wish You Were Here' by Pink Floyd, and 'Gravity' by John Mayer. Then, I went to practice with my other band before we played a show at Relay For Life. Busy, busy day.
While I was still in Louisiana, I got some wonderful news...I WAS ACCEPTED INTO THE MUSICIAN'S INSTITUTE IN HOLLYWOOD, CA!!!! That's my choice school and I cannot wait to get there!! I'll get to study guitar and music all the time and be in the heart of the scene. Some of the alumni are John Fruciante and Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Jennifer Batten (Michael Jackson), Paul Gilbert (solo and Mr. Big), and Justin Derrico (solo and Pink), just to name a few. The school has great teachers and staff, and really nurtures creativity and the energy of the players. When I was there last summer, I really felt at home. Something else that's pretty neat about the school is that a lot of famous musicians, both alumni and not, come to teach classes and may also hold auditions there. That's actually how Pink found Justin Derrico. I'm finally going to go to bed and end my saturday night.
The drive to Louisiana went very well. My friend and I made excellent time and got to our destination within 13 hours. We weren't awake much longer upon arrival. Since I've been here, I've watched a lot of movies surprisingly and have explored the French Quarter more. We saw Trombone Shorty on saturday night and I was WAY impressed by the band. I'd heard TS before, but had never seen them live, so I was already excited. Then, the band just took the audience for a thrill ride with the funk/NOLA jazz fusion! All the musicians onstage were incredibly talented and creative in their playing. For most of the show, my eyes were closed and I was dancing, even got to dance with a stranger who was in front of us. I'm taking pictures and video of all we're doing here, so I will have stuff to post upon getting home :D And I've finally posted my song, Waltz No. 1 on soundcloud...here's the link http://soundcloud.com/sydney-everatt/waltz-no-1 This is my romantic-y song :) Enjoy!
It is five and a half hours before I am supposed to be awake and preparing to drive. I don't know if I stated this before, but it is so difficult for me to go to sleep at a reasonable hour. I'm nervous now that I'm going to forget something important even though I went through and packed all I needed to pack. Sigh. Being gone for a week does this to me, but I'm super excited. New Orleans awaits! And I found out that the French Quarter Festival is going to be going on this weekend, YAY! This week was mainly a school week for me since I was trying to get ahead in everything before I left for a week. BUT I have been playing a lot and learned the Reign of Kindo song "Soon It Shall Be" which has a total of 18 chords in it. If you consider that most popular songs are 3-5 chords, that's pretty nuts. It's a beautiful pop-jazz fusion sort of love song. I will be posting my romantic song by this weekend :D I'm going to get to bed because I don't want to fall asleep driving tomorrow. Good night!
It's only 8:33 and I feel like I'm going to fall over in my chair and fall asleep. I went to sleep last night at about 3:30 am, and woke up at 10:30 so I should feel rested since that's about my usual. Maybe it was the beautiful rain that came today and made me sleepy. I admit, I love the rain in all its wonder and glory, but it takes the energy right out of me. So tonight, I might do some homework, definitely play some guitar, and hit the hay maybe around 9:30. But we'll see what happens, usually when I say that I get to bed around 2.
I recorded a song last night, my romantic song that I'm calling Waltz No. 1. The song doesn't have a chorus or a real catchy line in it, it's all very metaphorical, so the name will probably stay. I'm very happy with it though, a simple recording with just two tracks; my guitar and my voice. I'm going to toy around with it some more before I put it up because I want to see if I can add anything else to it. Tried to add a violin track and that just ended horribly and I gave up. I have my guitar lesson tomorrow and I'm also teaching tomorrow. And this entry just sounds very choppy because I'm not really thinking straight. OH but Brittney and I played on the Fort Lauderdale boardwalk again just yesterday and made $22 to split between us and we only played for a little over two hours. Towards the end, I started playing a two-chord progression on my guitar and we just sang for about 20 minutes about the people walking by and about some of the people who stopped to listen. We got some good money on that song and it was way fun! And last night I went to a bonfire with three of my friends, one of them being a new friend who I'd just met named Gio. He graduated from Cypress a few years ago, but he's a great writer and he sings and plays guitar. We each took turns giving him three topics to freestyle about and he'd freestyle sing and play for about 4 minutes without even a stutter. Probably the most interesting one that he sang for us was when we gave him the topics "One-legged prostitute, a monkey, and a bungee cord". That was a twisted one, but someone who can do what he can do is extremely talented and it's certainly a gift. On that note, go listen to some Eminem. He's another very talented artist, and love him or hate him, he's one of the only rappers I can stand and he's worked way harder than many people to get where he is today.
I am burned yet again by the yellow ball of shiny in the sky. It's too shiny and hot! And it decided to burn only my right arm and right side of my face. On the good side of news, it was a brew day today in which I took home a few bottles of the beer we bottled two weeks ago AND a violin! WHOOT! My brew partner had a violin in his house that he wasn't using, but wants to get lessons for eventually. So I get to keep it for the next two months until I go away for the summer, which is very exciting for me. I was renting a violin for the past few months, but it's not as good as this one and not as FREE! Hopefully I can make more time to play with it than I've been able to before. Yesterday at band practice, we finished recording 'Wish You Were Here' by Pink Floyd, finished recording 'Telephone Line' by Electric Light Orchestra and my director just sent me what's called the scratch track for 'Over The Hills And Far Away' by Led Zeppelin. A scratch track is something used for recording purposes which includes a metronome tick in the recording and a rough guitar or piano track that outlines the song so the studio musicians can practice with the track and that's what they'd record over in the studio. The rough guitar or piano track is eventually deleted once the guitar player or piano player lays down their track. The order of recording for a rock band usually goes as follows: scratch track, drums, bass, rhythm guitar, lead guitar, keyboard if there is one, strings if there are any, backup vocals, and finally lead vocals. And tonight I'm going to record my romantic song in my "room studio" with my condenser mic and my door closed. Then tomorrow, Brittney and I are headed to Fort Lauderdale again to try and get some money for playing music on the boardwalk! I'm excited, so I'm going to go rest up and pray that this sun burn at least dampens a bit before tomorrow.
Today was such an invigorating day! Brittney and I headed off to the beach this morning to go play guitar and sing on the boardwalk for money. What sparked the idea for this is my road trip to New Orleans shall commence next friday morning, and I could use some cash. My friend, Melanie, and I plan on driving out around 7 A.M. (HA HA HA HAHHAHA) next friday morning, and arriving at our friend Randall's house just outside of New Orleans between 9 and 10 P.M. that night. Then we'll stay there until the following friday where we'll probably leave sometime that morning and get home late at night. I am SO PSYCHED! My dad okayed the trip tonight after meeting Melanie and I wanted to do a little dance, which I did later in private of course :) So today, Brittney and I made a grand total of ONE DOLLAR!! AND a friend! He's a pretty neat guy who makes and sells bracelets and travels around by foot. We're gonna go back and play on monday and hopefully we'll make a little bit more. But all in all, an exciting and successful day. And also, I found two blues songs I want to learn and grab some riffs from :D
Creativity is becoming something to be mocked and I don't like it. There's some sort of iPad application that let's one create music without an ounce of skill aside from a move of some fingers. What the Hell? Also, there was a story on Yahoo! News today about the man who wrote that blasted song "Friday" that's sung by Rebecca Black. First off, my opinion of the song is that it's a ridiculously lame and uninventive thing that for some reason has been given a chance on the airwaves. It's great to make fun of, as Stephen Colbert and Conan O'Brien can attest, but why is it out there to begin with? Patrice Wilson, writer of the "song", is the founder of a company called The Ark Music Factory. How TAMF works is that the parents of a young teenager can pay $2,000-$4,000 to sign a contract in which their child will be given a chance to sing a song that's been written by Patrice, studio time, a photo shoot, image consulting, and promotion. Now that's one hell of a package deal, but how did "making it" in this industry all of a sudden become synonymous with your parents having a fat wallet? I'm so sick of all of these kids who lack talent, lack skill, are all breaking into the airwaves and strutting about like they own them. Meanwhile, there's actual talent and hard working musicians that aren't getting the attention that's being thrown away on the trash that's on T.V. and on the radio. WHAT THE HELL?! I needed to get that out. I'll probably yell it all out to someone soon as well. I'm going to go play guitar angrily and maybe write a punk song, we'll see. Later.
This is my midterm! I finished all the touching up today and posted it on youtube earlier. Today was a day of catching up on all the homework I was putting off in my college and online classes, I am pooped. And now a friend of mine and I are planning a road trip to New Orleans!! Couldn't get enough of that city! So hopefully all works out for that. Started learning some of a swing song today, and still trying to come up with a good chord progression for a song I started writing in New Orleans. I want to make it sound like an old swing song, but a drinking one. In my head I hear a dobro guitar part, an upright bass, wash board percussion, stomping, and yelling vocals. Wish me luck.
The past week that I haven't blogged was super packed with stuff that was mostly non-music related. It was the last week in town for my friends and my date, who work with the renaissance festival. They stayed two weeks after the fair, but left yesterday morning :( So most of my week was spent with them, mostly of course with my date, Michael. He's a northerner, so we made it a point to spend a lot of time at the beach, where we both got very strange burn lines and spots. But the not-so-good news is that last saturday morning, I got a call from my grandma telling me that my cousin, Caitlin, was put in to the ICU the night before. Her blood pressure got to be about 40/35 and we had almost lost her. Found out a few days later that she had strep bacteria and another kind of bacteria in her blood stream that was causing her to be so sick. She underwent a few surgeries and lots antibiotics. Yesterday was her first day fully conscious and with food. Tonight I visited her again and she was speaking clearly for the first time. She's on the road to recovery, and we're so glad to see it. But we probably won't let her go back away to college haha. In other news, I did not get in to NYU, as I expected. The odds were way against me in that they accept 2,400 into the school and 42,000 applied. I don't feel so bad. Just polishing up my MI application and I will be sending that in by next week. With that, I am off to bed after a long day. Good night!
My New Orleans trip was SO MUCH FUN!!! The hotel we stayed in during the few days we were there was right off of Bourbon street, so we were in the heart of a lot of the craziness. The city is a creative hub for artists, musicians, and other street performers. It's got a perpetual groove goin' on and I really enjoyed it. The first day, we watched a jazz band play on the street called The Smoking Time Jazz Band. The music was so fun to listen to and they had a swing dancing couple. So I bought myself a CD of their music, asked where we could go see them play, and the guitar player invited me to their show that night at a jazz club called The Spotted Cat. So that night I heard more great music and watched the dancers go while I danced a bit myself :D The next day, we walked through many art galleries, saw more street performers, and ate some delicious food! The seafood there is fantastic and delicious and addicting and I really want to go back to NOLA. I also tried Absinthe for the first time which I thought was quite delicious, having a strong licorice flavor. That night, we went to listen to music at a small place called Fritzle's. The music was old swing, lighting was low, a very intimate setting. I met a man from Finland, named Ville, and we talked for some time while enjoying the music. It was definitely a nice night that ended around 2 AM. On the third day, we rose again and it was friday! Made it a point to get beignets at Cafe Du Monde as well as a voodoo doll. But when I walked into the voodoo shop, my finger started bleeding...felt like something from the Twilight Zone. Needless to say, I did not stay inside very long at all. That night was the big concert night for me...DOWN!! Down is, if not the best, one of the best bands I've ever seen live. The venue was very intimate and I got right up to the stage. Both Pepper Keenan and Phil Ansemlo actually fist bumped me! That's how close I was! Everything sounded flawless, heavy, and loud. The band was very animated, talking to the crowd between nearly every song. The crowd itself was a monster though. As soon as Down came on stage after the openers, I became a sardine...couldn't even reach to get my camera from my pocket at all during the show. It was a collective head banging fest, which was absolutely incredible. I left the show drenched in sweat, completely exhausted, hair all awry, shirt stretched out, sore throat, and a ringing in my ears. Now that's the sign of a great concert. Then we left early saturday morning, and I had a full day of band practice, brewing, and the renaissance festival. Was a great spring break :)
It's 1:30 a.m., I leave my house today at 8:30 a.m. for the airplane to whisk me away to the land of New Orleans. I'm so very excited :D The music of New Orleans has got so much history and soul, it's positively delicious. Whether it be the jazz, the sad bayou music, or some heavy rock, you can bet it's going to be good. While I'm there, I'm going to be going to at least one jazz club per night, and I will also see the band, Down. Down is heavy, not screamo, but what I would describe as blues for metalheads. NOLA rock bands have a heaviness about them that's very deep and sad, but have a monstrous power and ability to make you bang your head. ANd if you're a Pantera fan, you may recognize Phil Anselmo (Lead singer of Pantera, and also Down). Here are some of my favorite Down songs.
Stone The Crow -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBLbrJxGtro
On March The Saints -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FduXYJc9VA&feature=related
Learn From This Mistake (a real bluesy one) -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFT6TFw7e_w&feature=related
To give you more taste of the NOLA rock scene, I give you another one of my favorite artists, Dax Riggs. This music is particularly dark and haunting :] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdkX8vzRzEc
Today, I was more in the mood to make food rather than music. I woke up around 11 and went to practice with my band, then came home and made egg drop soup while listening to the Electric Ladyland album by Jimi Hendrix. What a great way to start the day off. My soup was pretty tasty, must say. After I ate, I spent some time doing research on the drink, absinthe. I was reading about absinthe connoisseur, Ted Breaux and his quest to prove that absinthe is not some kind of ridiculous poison that it has come to be known as. Breaux was born, raised, and continues to live in New Orleans, LA, which I happen to be going to this coming week. There, on Bourbon street is a place called The Old Absinthe House, which I will most definitely be going to to enjoy some of New Orleans' tastiest foods and sample some very good absinthe. 'The Green Fairy' does not look like what the general public has known it to look like, a glowing green liquid. It is actually a pale, translucent, olive color to begin with until it is diluted and prepared to drink. Absinthe is poured into a glass and then a slotted spoon is placed over it with a lump of sugar. Cold water is very slowly dripped over the sugar in the slotted spoon and into the absinthe. This makes the drink easy to taste and dilutes the strength of the 140 proof alcohol. After cold water is added, the absinthe becomes a cloudy, whitish color, and then it is ready to drink. I should mention that I, as a beer brewer and as a connoisseur in the making, my interest in alcohol is very much an academic interest. The tastes of different alcohols, mostly beer, and how the different styles are made intrigues me and I enjoy studying and tasting them.
After my little absinthe study, I made lavender cranberry cookies with lemon lavender icing and served them with warm lavender honey milk. Then for dinner, I made a variation on egg drop soup, also putting seaweed, a small onion, orzo, and a few other spices in it. Then I stole another one or two cookies ;) Needless to say, today was a very tasty day in my house.
My trip to Key West was a ton of fun. While there, I got to play a few songs for my friends which they all really enjoyed. Wednesday night, we went to Mallory Square at sunset to see the street performers do their thing. My friends who I was with work in the Renaissance Festival as swordsmen and an acrobat, so they were judging the shows with a more critical eye but they really enjoyed what was going on. Then I drove back REALLY early thursday morning to make it to BC in time for my music history test, which I think I did really well on. And after a nap, I went to see Apocalyptica at The Culture Room last night. Apocalyptica is a band of four cello players (but one of them, Mikko, plays drums most of the time instead of cello) and they play music ranging from beautiful classical compositions to heavy metal! The band is from Finland and they started off playing Metallica covers on four cellos and they got a big sized following for that. Then, they started writing their own music in this style, often featuring different singers from rock bands. They're a unique band and they were very entertaining live. Here are some links for their music :)
Have you ever experienced a magical journey that can only explained by weightlessness, euphoria, detachment from the physical and drifting into the metaphysical. You know what I'm talkin' 'bout. That's right, gettin' high. High on music of course, totally not drug related. *Ahem*.
When I get the chance to, I go in my room, shut off all the lights and doors, close my eyes and turn on my music. More often than not, I crave the blues or a slow, sexy rock groove when I'm in this mood. I'll make a little playlist beforehand, and the last time I did this, the songs in my playlist were as follows: 1. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-V) - Pink Floyd. 2. Alchemy (Live at Rockpalast) - Philip Sayce. 3. Beautifully Broken/When Doves Cry - Gov't Mule. 4. Since I've Been Loving You - Led Zeppelin. and 5. Porcelain - Red Hot Chili Peppers. I usually start off with Shine On You Crazy Diamond because it starts off slow and spacey, to get me in the right state of mind, and then everything else kicks in and it's this wonderful, and huge song until it calms back down at the end of the sax solo and gets all spacey again. Alchemy is one of the greatest instrumentals I've ever heard. The first time I heard this was live at their concert and I'm really happy I was sitting down. As soon as the first note hit, my eyes instinctively shut in the dark room. My body began to sway with each passing note and I was seeing deep tones of blue and swirls of black; pretty much my ideal colors to see in a song. When the song reached its climax, my eyes released their woeful hostages and I felt as if the music was all around me and running through my veins. This was one of the best musical highs I've ever had. I got a chance to talk with the trio after the show was over and got to express what that song made me feel. They were so happy that I got that feeling from the music, such down to earth guys. Beautifully Broken offers me almost the same escape. Warren Haynes on guitar is like my Buddha. He knows exactly what to play and when, with extremely melodic solos that could rock anybody. Same with Since I've Been Loving You. The guitar tones soar through my being and force me to move and groove and form that tender unity with the music. Sometimes I loop these songs and when I'm ready to come back to reality, I break with Porcelain. Soft and soothing, it brings me back and I'm calm. And that is really how I meditate. I've tried meditating in silence, and sometimes I can reach the state of actual meditation, but I so much more prefer my way of doing it.
Sometimes, when I feel any sort of sadness, or uncomforted with whatever might be going on in my life, I either listen to some particular music, or play some. This music is usually something like Gov't Mule, or Philip Sayce, something to take my mind beyond the limits of this world and let me break free from reality for a little while so I can feel good again. The other night, I can't explain why but I just felt sad and sort of empty. Which is absurd and ridiculous because I'm anything but lonely, but it happened anyways. I was listening to The Civil Wars and on my mix, their cover of 'Disarm' by The Smashing Pumpkins came up. This is seriously a must listen. It's one of the most emotional songs I've ever heard, and the way The Civil Wars plays it is so extremely beautiful. So I was listening to this song and felt as if every negative emotion I was having was pulled out of my being and replaced by a feeling of oneness with my life and myself. It was an unexplainable moment and difficult to do it justice. But I cry every time I hear or play this song and it simply makes me feel great. My quest in my musical life is to make at least one song, if not more, that will reach at least one person the way this song reaches out to me. If I can find a way to dig beneath the outer shell of one person and make him/her feel moved and pull emotions from them in such a way that they discover something about themselves, I will feel that I have succeeded.
In other news, I started recording my song 'Trouble' today with the new music for it. I will be as diligent as I can in finishing the recording.
Yesterday was a wonderful day. Spent the better part of it and some of the night at the beach. I even got a little color which is almost unheard of for me! YAY! But before that, I had a really great guitar lesson. My teacher had me work on some more funk rhythms, like some Earth Wind & Fire and some Red Hot Chili Peppers. I'll definitely be working on those rhythms and funk improv this week. Still looking at interesting songs to cover; so far I'm wanting to cover 'Where Is The Love' by the Black Eyed Peas, and I might also do 'Forget You' by Cee Lo Green. What has me waiting is that I want to do an upbeat song before 'Where is The Love', which isn't completely mellow, but I have a mellow song idea for it. Was thinking about covering 'Crazy' by Gnarles Barkley, but Ray LaMontagne beat me to it! Check out his version! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mEfDSP4g_U
I also had my first successful go at writing a 'love' song yesterday! I've been inspired. You might be hearing that one soon :) And Brittney Rothal came over today and we wrote a song together...the video is down below. Enjoy!
I've been playing around a bit with open tunings for guitar. This is when the guitar is tuned so that when all the strings are played together, it's a chord. A very deep, thick chord... :D Makes me happeh. So as I was messing around with the DADGAD tuning (Low E tuned to D, A, A, G, B string tuned to A, high E tuned to D) today, a thought popped into my head about who might have started this. So I consulted the supreme powers of GOOGLE! A man named Davy Graham invented the DADGAD tuning, and he became a big inspiration to players like Jimmy Page, Bert Jansch, and Paul Simon. At age 19, he wrote his most well known piece, called Anji. It's been covered many times over and is truly a beautiful song. Davy traveled the world and each place he stopped he learned different styles of playing, especially enjoying Indian melodies and fusing them into his folkish music. A very creative man and a true artist. I'm writing a song now that I'm calling 'Trouble'. I posted the lyrics for it a few posts back and I had music for it, but I'm trying a new idea I got in the car tonight. Instead of doing a guitar backing for vocals, I'm going to do a vocal backing with some slide guitar touches. I recorded the scratch idea for it tonight and I'll get to work on doing a proper recording tomorrow. Also taught my little cousins tonight. They're improving nicely! Finally been practicing. I'm teaching my cousin Kyle, the guitar student, a John Mayer song now...'Not Myself'. And I'm teaching his brother, the piano student, 'Bliss' by Muse. They both got inspired by seeing my classic rock band play, which is a pretty cool feeling :D I'm off to bed though, was up way to late last night. Need to rejuvenate.
AHHHH!!! I really wanted to make an entry right after the show last night, but I totally crashed. The show was AWESOME!! We kicked it off with 'Prelude/Angry Young Man' by Billy Joel, which the crowd loved, and played through the set list ending with 'Gravity' by John Mayer. For Gravity, I got the big ending solo that he does live and I get very, very into what I'm playing. Especially on that song. So my eyes were squeezed shut and I was making all these spectacular faces that come completely unintentionally, and my makeup must have gotten into my eyes while this happened because in my solo they just started burning. And this, for added dramatic effect, made my eyes start watering and made me appear like I was crying for my solo. Great. Haha, but the crowd really loved it and we all had such a great energy going throughout the whole show, it was really amazing. I get to play with such talented musicians who all absolutely love what we do. I'm going to put up a video of my Gravity solo soon on youtube, so I will post it on here too :)
Also over the weekend, I took a dance lesson with Brittany. Dance of course goes hand in hand with music and it's a way to feel music more. Even though I don't hip-hop music for the most part, I do have respect for some of the artists and their work. So we helped out with a class full of little kids at the YMCA who were learning how to dance to hip-hop music, and we got to dance a bit too and just have a good time. It was very cute to see the kids dance and how fast the child's mind wanders on to something else. But after that class, Britt taught me some belly dancing moves as well as some more hip-hop oriented stuff. Definitely got me a good work out! Loads of fun though, dancing is a blast and something I'd like to do a little more of.
I'm in a bluegrass fascinated phase of my life right now. It's really fun, but sometimes depressing music to listen to, but it's extreme musicianship leaves me wanting more. If you can look past the twang that this genre is known for, you may find yourself lost in the stories and the skill of the great raconteurs that have created before us.
Tennessee Rocky Top is a very well known bluegrass tune. In this video, you can see classic bluegrass instrumentation; acoustic guitars, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, bass, and multiple vocalists. Bluegrass styled vocal harmonies definitely have their own characteristics that make it easy to differentiate between say rock styled harmonies or blue harmonies. This is a really great video to hear the vocal harmonies we're accustomed to hearing with bluegrass. There's always the "high lonesome tenor" with other accompanied singers. And of course, this aspect of the music has influenced SO much, such as Simon & Garfunkle, The Doobie Brothers, The Civil Wars, etc.
Last night, my band decided to do an open mic appearance at Mr. Laffs in Davie. We saw two other bands there that went on before us, and just wanted to say that they were really quite good. Didn't catch the names of the bands, but there was a rock cover band and a blues band. Had a really good time, even though we had a large number of technical difficulties, one being a drummer missing in action.
Tomorrow! MY BAND'S SHOW AT DEKKA! 7:30! WHOOT!!! I'm very excited for this! Gonna go get some much needed rest.
Yesterday at the Renaissance Festival, Brittney Rothal and I decided to go hear some story telling by Lady Merilee Effingham of England. She sang us the story of The Witch of The Westmoreland, and exciting tale about a wounded knight who seeks the Witch of the Westmoreland so he may be healed. She heals him with a goldenrod and three kisses, and the song ends with "There's none can harm the knight who's lain with the Witch of the Westmoreland." After this, I decided to do some research on the music of the renaissance.
The renaissance was a very exciting time for music and musicians alike because music printingbecame available in Europe, as opposed to music being copied by hand or learned by ear. Thebooks that were available before printing were very expensive due to time it took to copy the music by hand, meaning that they were exclusive to religious establishments and the rich. But Ottaviano Petrucci in 1501, published the first big collection of polyphonic music (music with mulitple tones or voices such as a chorale like this, Abasalon, fili mi) that was inexpensive, so more people could learn to read music and have it in their households.
At around 1550 in northern Italy, a brand new four stringed bowed instrument was developed and many, many people started to take up the instrument. It was originally called the viola de gamba, looking much like a modern cello. Other instruments around this time period included the lute, recorder, harpsichord (similar to piano, prominent in Baroque music), and the organ.
Yay! First day of the Renaissance Festival was today! Got me a season pass, call me a dork all you want...it's fun :) My classic rock cover band (ROKAFONIK PHILHARMONIK)'s show is next saturday! Just a week away, I'm so excited! I'm going to try and keep this entry a bit shorter than the rest, I just feel like I'm writing a ridiculous amount. I wrote yet another song today. Actually, just now. I had written the lyrics a few months ago, inspired by the painting by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, The Philosopher. I had part of the music written years ago, just never had anything to put it to. But, as I was digging through some old recordings, I found it and started playing with it a bit and turned out to really like it. Added a chorus and it was ready to go! It's definitely still in it's rough state, needs some cleaning up and I'll probably add more fancy guitar things :)
My band (Qualified For Response)'s show last night at the Talent Farm went really well! We were all completely "in the zone" and just having a ton of fun. There was a band that was getting ready to come on after us, called The Wholetones, from Naples, FL. Truth be told, I was very tired, so I really only stayed because they had a cello. So they set up after us, the instrumentation goes as follows: cello, acoustic guitars, banjo, upright bass, and drums. What came from the stage threw me for a loop! I was expecting kind of mellow music, jazzy and "chill". That's definitely not what happened. What I heard was some kind of incredible fusion of american folk, bluegrass, irish folk, pirate metal, and the power of the GODS! THE GODS I TELL YOU! I've never seen anyone's fingers move so fast. The guy who was playing the cello, banjo, and later, the acoustic guitar (Alex), made Yngwie Malmsteen seem slow. And not only that, it was completely incredible that he could be so amazing on all three instruments AND SING! After their show, I gave them a 20, they gave me 3 CD's, two stickers, and a shirt. Really great band, nice guys, definitely give them a listen.
Also, I've been really wanting to write a bit about the band Elbow. Haha, short blog entry. Right. This band is from the UK and I recently heard about them. Another band that five minutes after hearing, I bought an album. The first song I heard was 'Grounds for Divorce'. This, however, is pretty different than the rest of their songs. What really got me interested was the sound of the guitars along with the overall style of this song. What the guitar player and bassist did was pan their sounds right and left. This means that the guitar player, in this case, mixed his sound so that his guitar sound will be prominent in the left speaker. And the bassist mixed his sound so that it's prominent in the right speaker. The bassist for this song made his sound very distorted and downright dirty. The guitar player mimicked that dirtiness to the sound, but since it's an octave higher than bass guitar, it adds a very interesting texture for the listener. The Civil Wars did something like this in their song, 'Barton Hollow'. Except, since they have no bassist, John Paul White (guitar) made two guitar tracks and panned them to both sides of the speakers. His acoustic guitar sound is prominent in the left speaker, and he either plugged his acoustic into an amp and dirtied the sound, or plugged in an electric hollow body and kicked the distortion. But I think, since he's always got his acoustic, that it's the former. What makes me think it's either an acoustic or hollow body he's using is the tone of the sound. Typically while using a solid body electric, like a Fender Stratocaster that many people are familiar with, the sound gets through very clear. And while you can certainly dirty up a Fender's sound, it's difficult to get anything but a clear cut, maybe crunchy, tone. Whereas, if you were to use an acoustic or hollow body guitar through an amplifier, the tone would become muddy and dirty with enough distortion because of the resonance provided by the acoustics of these guitars. A hollow body will resonate more than a solid body. In 'Grounds for Divorce', the guitar player is using an acoustic guitar plugged into an amplification system with a distortion pedal. In the video, you can see when the guitar player hits the distortion pedal and the sound becomes huge, and dirty.
So, Dream Theater is still difficult to play, but it's getting there. On a quick side note, just want to post a video of my guitar teacher, AJ Niilo, playing in Brazil with Joss Stone because it's one of the best performances I've seen. All the musicians on that stage are ridiculously great! And Joss just has a huge presence and really gets the crowd going. It's a long video, and I'd really recomend watching and listening to the whole song, so set aside 11 minutes if you can. If not, at least watch my teacher's solo at about 5:05, I really like his playing :)
Other good news, I discovered this band that I have deemed amazing. And I do not use that term lightly. They're called The Civil Wars. A duet made up of John Paul White, from Alabama, and Joy Williams from California. If I had to classify the duet to a genre, I'd say folky but with their own twist. The vocal harmonies soar, John's acoustic guitar playing is tight and ever melodic, as is with Joy's piano playing. I discovered the band because they were iTune's last week free single with 'Barton Hollow'. This song has more of a country feel to it than most of their other music. Normally, I don't pay much mind to the free singles, but this is truly a gem. Right after listening to the song, I bought the album and downloaded their live album free off of their myspace. Then, I heard them cover Leonard Cohen's song 'Dance Me to the End of Love', which was beautiful in every way, then I heard them do a folk cover 'Billie Jean' by Michael Jackson. I learned this version, love it so much. John and Joy's chemistry on stage is very intense. After watching their music video for their song 'Poison & Wine', I actually thought they were married, but as it turns out, they're both married to other people. But they are very, very good story tellers. By the way, all of that discovery happened on monday alone. Needless to say, my world religions homework did not get done that day at all.
After hearing, and learning, the acoustic version of 'Billie Jean', I decided to pick a known song that's far from being acoustic, and make an acoustic arrangement of it. I chose 'Stockholm Syndrome' by Muse. I ended up playing it in almost a flamenco fashion. And this band makes a ton of noise, especially for being only three people, so an acoustic arrangement is pretty interesting. I'll practice it a bit more and then hopefully post a video of me playing that, and acoustic Billie Jean by the end of the week.
Also on monday (a busy day for just staying in pajamas the entire time), I wrote two songs. I'm so happy that this spout of writing song after song is happening during my Wise project, because I never write this much. Makes me happy :D The songs are two parts of a whole. The story behind them is a couple in love, but the man has become an alcoholic, getting completely lost inside of the disease. Part one is the woman's perspective, which is very somber and soulful, and is played on piano. The second part, the man's perspective, I wrote for guitar. Since they were written on the day I found The Civil Wars, they have some folk feeling to them in the songwriting and in the guitar playing. I'm going to work on part 1 with my voice teacher, Beth, tomorrow. It's funny how I started writing these too; was tired of staring at my homework trying to make it write itself, so I went for a walk, came back and sat down at the piano. I started playing random chords then started playing a progression I wrote a long time ago. I was in the mood to sing, so I sang the first thing that came to my head which was "You're swimming through my veins like any drunk sailor would", and the song wrote itself. Lyrics....
Part 1:
You're swimming through my veins like any drunk sailor would
The only things left to lead you are the memories in your head
Well you're right in the place where you need to be
But you're riding the spaces of the in between
Come on my sailor, come on home X2
Just a little more time and you'll be completely gone
So come sweet sailor, come on home
Well you've had enough to drink
And I've surely had all I need to think
You always gotta jump, but sometimes I think I've just plain fallen down
Fallen just as far down as anyone could ever go
Oh im beggin you darling, time to leave the seas alone
Come on my sailor, come on home X2
Just a little more time and you'll be completely gone
So come sweet sailor, come on home
Oh im beggin you darling, time to leave the seas alone
The only things left leading you are the memories in your head
But the only thing you'll be comin back to is an empty bed, that's right
The only thing thats left now is an empty bed
So sail on my love, your horizon is far down the bend
Part 2:
Trouble
oh, that's what I am
I'd love to shake your hand for awhile
but it'd cause you more grief than it's worth
It's a problem I'd love to face,
oh but it wants me dead
and when your eyes meet the beast up above
a true coward before it kneels
there's three places I could go
but not one of them keeps you
two institutions or a sea of blackness through and through
oh believe me darlin'
I know I never gave you what I could
but the trouble's troubling me and I gotta do everything I should
to keep it down now
that look in your eyes is telling me I'd never been so far away
might as well keep going, my horizon is long, long gone
Yay, sad stories! I should have recordings of those soon since they're fairly simple musically.
Title song by Philip Sayce by the way. Check him out :)
Some changes have popped up into my outline plan for this week. That's probably going to happen a lot since life likes to throw twists, turns, and all kinds of new tricks at ya. Oooo triple T's. Saturday, at my Rokafonik practice, the drummer Mikey and I jammed a little on 'Crazy On You' by Heart...at least we tried to :P He'd never actually played the song before, but it was fun nevertheless, and I got to play a Guild acoustic. But out of that, he brought up doing some recording together, which would be a ton of fun. So now, I get to try and learn a Dream Theater song called 'Pull Me Under' . John Petrucci's guitar part is definitely going to be tricky for me, he's an incredible player. The whole band is truly made up of VERY skilled players. But once Mikey and I get the song together, it'll be such a great feeling. We're also going to work on 'Nightmare' by Avenged Sevenfold (A7X). Sadly, their drummer (Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan) died before the recording of the album (Nightmare) at age 29. Jimmy's favorite drummer was Mike Portnoy, the drummer of Dream Theater, now ex-drummer. So the band brought in Portnoy to record all of the drum parts on the record that Jimmy had written. In September of last year, I saw A7X perform and it was one of the most intense concerts I've ever seen. Mikey and I are going to get together on Wednesday and work on these songs and maybe jam on some of our own material. These songs to learn by ear, maybe with a little tablature help, are going to be a handful for this week.
However, I did keep one of my plans intact, and that was to get 'Over the Hills and Far Away' by Led Zeppelin as best as it could possibly be. Saturday at practice, we played the song as best as we ever had and the intro was flawless! YES!!! And we played 'Joining You' by Alanis Morissette instrumentally with a violin playing the vocal melody line, and it was hypnotically beautiful; I'd never felt that song so deeply. It was seriously amazing. I cannot WAIT to play that for an audience!! That entire show (FEBRUARY 19th 7:30 PM AT DEKKA IN HALLANDALE!! IT'S FREE!!!) is going to be a buzz.
This weekend for me was pretty simple...Band practice, voice lesson, some artwork, brewed, and caught up on homework. I'm not sure what else will be in store for me musically this week. For now, I'm just really looking forward to Wednesday.
PS, my microphone makes my heart jump with the invigorating, intoxicating power of love. It makes me go all girly excited on the inside :)
Since the interview with my guitar teacher, A.J. Niilo, I have been thinking about how had spoken to me about his opinion on modern music and how unsure he would be about pursuing music again if he were my age now. So I decided to see how some of my favorite more modern bands got their big breaks.
Avenged Sevenfold -- According to Wikipedia, the band had just finished a second tour on the Vans Warper Tour and made a music video for their song "Unholy Confessions". This video, because they had made some connections via the Warped Tour, had made its way onto MTV's Headbanger's Ball. After that had made its debut, word of mouth got going and the band got popular enough to get Warner Bros. Records' attention. The band was offered a deal and they left Hopeless Records shortly after their second album was finished and signed with Warner Bros. Their 3rd studio album debuted at #30 on the Billboard 200 Chart, selling over 30,000 copies in the first week. The record went platinum in August 2009.
Halestorm -- Frontwoman Lzzy Hale and her little brother, drummer Arejay Hale, began writing music since she was 13 and he was 10 years old. They started forming a bit of a gathering playing local shows in Pennsylvania, and eventually brought Joe (guitar) and Josh (bass) into the band. In 2005, after working on their sound and more material, Halestorm started showcasing for labels and one snowy night in NYC, a rep from Atlantic Records saw them play and loved the complete sound and attitude. The band was offered a four year recording contract for their first studio album, and they took it. The band kept touring like mad and it's gotten them a good sized following. They're about to head back to the studio and work on a second album.
Muse -- They originally called themselves Gothic Plague, then Fixed Penalty, then the Rocket Baby Dolls. In 1994, as the Rocket Baby Dolls, the band entered into a Battle of The Bands Contest around Teignmouth, England where they lived. They ended up smashing their instruments on stage and just went all out punk. It came as a surprise to them that they won. Afterward, they took the band more seriously, quitting school and their jobs to do music. They played their first few gigs in Manchester and London, and eventually had a meeting with the owner of Sawmills Studio, Dennis Smith. That meeting led to the band's first studio recordings and their first record deal, recording their first three albums with Sawmills.
Apocalyptica -- This band got LUCKY. A band of four cellos from Finland that decided to go against the norm and cover Metallica songs on cello without vocals. They were signed after their first show.
My Chemical Romance -- The band formed in NJ as a two piece (Gerard Way on vocals and drummer Matt Pelissier) one week after the September 11th attack. The band began writing immediately, and recruited Ray Toro on guitar. Gerard's younger brother, Mikey, dropped out of college and started playing with the band. 3 months later, the band adopted Frank Iero on guitar and shortly after recorded their first record with Eyeball Records. The band put free downloads on Purevolume.com and Myspace.com, getting them a large enough following to get a good booking at venue Big Daddy's. In 2003, the band signed with Reprise Records and got on a tour with Avenged Sevenfold. They recorded their 2nd studio album and it went platinum quickly.
I think this research gives me a bit more hope because I know that I can get in people's face when I'm on stage, and as far as off stage goes, I want my music to be heard enough that I will get it in the ears of not only the right people, but as many people as my amplifiers can reach.
Monday, my big accomplishment was that I wrote a song in full, lyrics and all! Which is wild because normally in a day I'll just get a spark, if anything at all, for a new song. The song is titled "The Three of Us" and it's out of my writing norm in that I usually write around a guitar part, but this is vocals with some strumming. I might add in some fancier parts for the guitar, but nothing much. I wrote it about two of my best friends who both live in South Carolina. I've known both of them since I was in 7th grade, one is my age (Colby) and one is a year older (Landon). We are all big Harry Potter nuts, so we call ourselves Moony (me), Padfoot (Landon), and Prongs (Colby). What is weird is, we've all sort of adapted traits of these characters along our lives. So there's a reference to that in the song..."We got two paw prints and some big strong antlers...". I'll post the rest of the lyrics at the bottom of the post, along with a vid. A lot has happened to us since we've become our own little family. I moved back down to FL halfway through 9th grade, which was so difficult, I loved it there. And Colby, who has anxiety, constantly worried about me losing touch and what not. It's been 3 years now and we've only gotten closer :) But late last year, Landon started talking about joining the Navy because it had such great benefits, and he'd be able to travel which is exactly what he wants to be doing. That made both Colby and I very worried, especially Colb. The past month, Colb has been so frightened that we're all going to lose touch due to college and Lando joining the navy. And it scares me too, but not half as bad. So all this is referenced in the song, looking on the bright side of things and putting trust in love. I played the song live monday night at Churchill's pub and got a great reaction from the crowd, even though I completely went blank on the lyrics and had to improvise a bit.
Today had it's ups and a down. After the Wise meeting at school, I went to MAE Music Store to pick up a mic cable I needed to make my microphone work through my computer since the power supply finally came in! When I walked in the store, I decided to have a bit of fun before I got to buying, and I went straight to the Acoustic room to check out some 12 string guitars. I picked up a Martin 12 string and started playing a tune I recently wrote and it sounded 100 times better. I got a bit excited :) While I was playing, the other guy in the room who had a Taylor 12 string in his hand started jamming a bit with my tune. Well that sounded good, so we talked a bit (his name is Mike) and kept jamming on some different stuff. Everything sounded so great! A guy I had walked by on my way in apparently heard us and walked in the room and picked up another guitar and started playing and talking with us (his name is Joseph). Another guy came in for a short while and played one song with us too. So we all sat there talking a playing, even drawing a crowd, and I got to play and sing Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin while Joseph busted out a harmonica. Two and a half hours passed and Mike shot up and exclaimed, "Damn! I have to be on stage in 45 minutes! I gotta go!". He invited us to his gig, unfortunately I couldn't make it, but I had a blast with the guys! It was so cool to just be able to hear what someone was playing and go along with it, making great music to listen to. When someone would start a song, I'd make up a second guitar part and we'd go from there, adding solos and vocals. Way fun. Then I came home and had a guitar lesson with A.J. Niilo, and interviewed him as well. The most difficult part of the lesson was when he showed me how to play La Grange by ZZ Top. The song requires an intensely strong pinkie. My pinkie is currently lacking in its strength, but I now have some good workouts for the little guy and I'll be able to play La Grange soon, yay! After that, tried getting my mic setup to work, and yet again I'm left in frustrated tears as it's not working. Another quest I have for this week is to get that thing working so I can record with some better quality!! Soon...soon.
The Three of Us
The sky was leopard printed and Lucy was there in all her finest jewels,
we were spending the evening all wrapped up in the afternoon.
Time mocks us cuz it moves too fast and
we're left in the envy over what would never last,
but you and I were built far too strong.
We rise and we fall
Like bridges in the war but the bricks don't
matter 'cuz we become the dust before the winds of change
But before ya know it we'll be right back here,
making good times like we never left eachothers arms,
laughing at time Like we knew all along
We got two paw prints and big strong antlers
We fit together like the birds of a feather
You may sail the seas boy but I know you're comin home
Anxiety ridden and always full of fear
But you're the bravest lion with the tug of an ear
You might not be at my side but you're always near
Yesterday was a good day. Had Rokafonik Philharmonik practice from 11-2, guitar lesson, discovered a great band from the UK called Elbow and bought one of their albums (THEIR NEW ALBUM COMES OUT IN MARCH!!!), played some more guitar, and went to Rocky Horror Picture Show! Always a blast.
In my guitar lesson, my teacher (A.J. Niilo) showed me a really sick song, Little Guitars by Van Halen. It's more so the intro to the song that got me pretty excited. Eddie has always had really great ideas and technique and could fuse other styles' feels to create something that would make the listener go "WHOA! What WAS that?!". I had one of those experiences while listening, but mostly watching my teacher play it. What Eddie is doing here is tremolo picking (plucking a string repeatedly very, very quickly) the high E string of the guitar, while tapping notes on the bottom E string with his left hand. So the two hands are doing something very different from each other, but it fuses together nicely. This is an old technique of playing rhythm and melody popular in Spanish flamenco music, but originating in the renaissance period. But the original players wouldn't have a pick. So in this way, Eddie made it his own.
Here is a great example of the older way of playing this technique. I wanted to find something other than the famous Malaguena melody that most people have heard. This is a fantastic and very famous flamenco player named Paco de Lucia.
This week, my challenge to myself is to be going to learn a classical piece. Probably from the renaissance period, since I adore that music and also, REN FEST IS NEAR!! YAY!
The power supply for my new microphone comes in today! When I had bought the mic a week ago, silly silly me (and the guy who sold it to me) didn't know a power supply was necessary for the mic. Kind of thought plugging it into a computer would be enough. And surely something necessary to run a mic would come in the box? Ha! Of course not. Also had to buy an interface so I could plug the mic into my computer for some recording action. An interface is a device that's a lot like an adaptor. I can plug the interface through a USB into my computer and plug the microphone into the interface. But I can also adjust input volume, plug headphones into it, plug in a midi (like a small keyboard used for recording), and also have one more microphone input. The microphones I had been using before were my regular computer microphone and a Rock Band mic. Rock Band mic's plug right into the USB port since they're made for gaming. PERFECT! It provided me with happiness for awhile, but I could not get a very good sound quality from it. I had to adjust the mic sensitivity and bring it down low so I didn't get sound distortion from being too loud. This made my music come out much more quiet than what you might hear on the radio. The mic also picked up a lot of fuzz. Again, I went through some adjustments and was able to minimize the fuzz, but it was still there. It's one of those sounds that enters my nightmares and screws with my head. It had to go.
So I took a look at what the pros use. The most affordable was an Audio-Technica AT2020 Cardioid Condenser Microphone. A condenser mic relies on amplification through vibration. This means that you can get a clearer, more precise sound because it won't pick up fuzz, but it will pick up faint tones. This is what makes them so fantastic for radio and recording. Cardioid refers to the shape of the area it picks up sound in; cardioid being a heart shape, for anyone who suffered through pre-calc. If the mic is facing forward and three people are singing in front of it and one person snapping right behind it, it will pick up best the person directly in front of the mic. It will pick up the other two in front just fine as well, and the person snapping behind it will only be faintly picked up. There are other mics that record with shapes such as an hourglass, and/or a full circle spectrum recording all around it. Those are ideal for a group recording session. This video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qahZ-whM6o ...showcases many kinds of microphones. The mics that are half silver and half black are used a lot in recording, called AKG414, the skinny silver ones are Shure 57's and there are also some other condenser mics that I'm not sure of the names.
The condenser mic was developed in 1916 by E.C. Wente who worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories located in BA, Michigan.
My mic -- http://www.sweetwater.com/images/closeup/750-at2020_img_lifestyle.jpg
front and back of the interface -- http://www.joegiampaoli.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/FTP_front+back.jpg
the phantom power supply -- http://cachepe.zzounds.com/media/quality,85/brand,zzounds/at8801-307cbe360e3772dff535627c46d965c6.jpg
This week so far, like most of my days, has been heavily saturated in music and music related activity. Monday, I played guitar for a better part of the day, even breaking out the mandolin for a bit, and ended up writing some new music on my acoustic. Writing on an acoustic as opposed to my electric gives a totally different perspective on the vibrations that are going on beneath my fingers. On an electric, little nuances and a lot of times mistakes can be hidden quite easily by distortion, hence why I like writing on an acoustic. There's a ton more honestly through an acoustic and it's easier to add in more notes and colors because every tone, every pitch can come through completely clean and loud. An interview with David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) on his writing technique got me playing my acoustic more. Ah, David Gilmour. I should mention that he is one of my deities. Others are Warren Haynes, Slash, Jimmy Page, Jack White...list goes on. I'm a bit more polytheistic than most agnostics :P I digress. Monday night, went to Churchill's Pub for the first time and it happened to be jazz night. Stayed listening to music and hanging out with people until 2:30 am. GREAT night. Tuesday, dragged myself out of bed, went to my BC classes and rocked out with Soundgarden on the drive to make me at least a little conscious. Then came to Cypress and heard all about Wise, sadly missing my music history class, but getting to see the ever-wonderful Coach Love and meeting Ms. Stoklosa was lovely. Then, tuesday night, a friend of mine picked me up and we went to this Portland-esque coffee shop in Ft. Lauderdale. Great hang out spot for those interested in a tasty tea and coffee menu. Undergrounds Coffeehaus. Check it out. After getting home, we watched 'It Might Get Loud' starring Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin, The Yardbirds), Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs, The Dead Weather), and The Edge (U2). For music lovers, one hell of a documentary. Explores the three guitar masters' journey through music and how they all approach playing. It was so cool to me to see how people can play so differently and how people can be inspired by others to create all of this beautiful music. Be still, my heart! Great film. This entry is already way longer than I thought it would be. I'm going to the studio and lay down my guitar track for Prelude/Angry Young Man (Billy Joel) for the classic rock cover band I'm in, Rokafonik Philharmonik. Also get to play my teacher's Guild 12 string. SQUEE!!
My title refers to our microphone setup. He brought with him a gorgeous Copperphone Mic and we've been singing into it a little here and there, but not really anything put together much. And we only have one actual mic stand, but both of us want to be able to sing. So, we made a makeshift mic stand for the copperphone. Here it is :) Those shelves are in my garage, and we took a plank of wood and put it on a shelf underneath a brick. Then, we took a bungee cord and hung the microphone, but we needed another bungee to pull it back ever so slightly. Works perfectly, and we're proud of our creation :)
