7 Years in the Cellar
Saw us at our first ever performance and still coming to our shows.
Notice anything? Yep, still smiling.
Thankyou guys.
Saw us at our first ever performance and still coming to our shows.
Notice anything? Yep, still smiling.
Thankyou guys.
It's quite a joy to go through the development process of a new song.
In our case, it generally starts with a guide track recorded on my little apogee mike and ipad.
This device has proven a great replacement for doing guide tracks on my iphone/wav recorder. the technology is getting smaller and better all the time.
We even used the ipad/apogee to record and release a song (onward traveler, go check the video over the on the left to hear it).
As the song progresses from initial idea to final recording, it will go through multiple iterations, keys, arrangements, instrumentation and yes, lyrics.
I have the great pleasure of listening to recordings of the guide tracks - rough, raw recordings with great vibe and lousy sound quality. I love them. Some of our best playing will remain unreleased. Spontaneous, rehearsal studio/lounge room stuff, some of which would have been entirely worthy of release if we'd been recording it 'properly'
tonight, in the wee small hours, I am listening to brand new guide tracks for songs that until a few days ago, and in one case, a few hours ago, didn't exist.
I've said before that we make 'records' not albums. each of our releases has captured the song writing of that time and is a 'record' of what we're up to, rather than a thematic 'album'. Mind you, that might be a differentiation that only exists in my mind. Oh well, it's crowded in there but fun.
Right now, 6 new songs have turned up almost overnight and some of them are really enjoyable to work on. the curious Assembly project has really encouraged us to ignore the rules we had been ignoring previously., except this time with mad gleeful abandon. Wanna mix Blues and Reggae? Go for it. Folk and Indy sounds? yep. Check that box.. Oh the places you will go.
Tonights stand out winner for me is The Sun Shines On, which feels like Queens of the Stone Age doing Gordon Lightfoot.. What's not to like?
Studio rehearsal testing is dangerous ground for new songs. I was amazed that all of them survived tonights test which means either we're A: getting better at songwriting or B: our standards are slipping. What's even more interesting is, as Theo says, that the songs are 'out of left field' and you just never know what's going to come next.
On one hand, this makes us hard to classify into one genre. On the other hand, we get to play some really interesting stuff that still falls within the canon of Harp and Slide, just nudges it a little into deeper waters.
At tomorrow night's show we'll be bringing some of the new puppies out to play, where the metaphor meets the proverbial. If you're a Cellar Dweller you'll be accustomed to new songs turning up on a regular basis, and until we get them, recorded, the only way you'll hear some great, new and interesting songs is to come hang out with us.
Meanwhile, I'm putting my headphones on and looping the guide tracks in Audacity. Ahh...so pleasant.
Yay, another one done.
Rosie, Mr Wizard and myself were doing the final tweaks on Twice Shy Girl today, with Theo on the phone to discuss the idea of Hip Hop drumming :-)
Mr Wizard considering the Mix
It's done. yay. off to mastering. well done Russell.
That's 4 down, 1 in the can awaiting final tweak, 5 new ones ready to be recorded and three for rehearsal.
So it looks like yep, the collection of singles will in fact be a full albums-worth, by the time we're done.
if you're at the show this weekend, you'll hear us trying out some of the new songs. Will they fly or die? You'll have to be there to know!
After a few quiet weekends, so begins the summer in the cellar as we start playing pretty much every weekend fro the next...er..until we stop. or look at the calendar.
What the heck, there's a bunch of shows coming up, starting this Saturday night at the RHB. It's always a good night there.
We'll also be doing some video stuff and we'll need a few volunteers and their phone cams (glutton for punishment me) to come and film us, so either volunteer on the night or we'll come up and ask and you'll be able to get right in the middle of it. Yeah.
Let your inner director out!
Here's my favourite moment of an actor working with a director.
ARGH!!
Big thanks to Alan, Bro, Karla, Cam and various mates who helped me to shoot a video yesterday.
Sad to say that I killed half the footage.
Yep, once again we recorded on the phone camera (hey I blew all my money on props at Propco) and I deleted the files from the phone before double triple checking that the transfer to the PC had worked properly. Just cos it didnt report an error during the cut and paste doesn't mean it worked, so I merrily thought, sweet it's done and deleted the files to make space.
(sigh)
So that's my fault, however, I have a few gripes:
- transferring large files from the iphone to the PC sucks and doesn't work under native Xp (yeah I'm old school) so you have to use a 3rd party product as a file browser.-
-The fact that these massive tech behemoths cant work out their @^&# in order to make things easier for the end user makes me GRR.
- This 'Walled garden' @^&# makes me GRR, thats why it's hard, cos they choose NOT to play nice to try, and lock in customers, yeah yah tell me its just opposing tehcnical visions and I still call bull@*#*
- Yes its a phone, whaddya expect, but it's a clunky crappy way to have to deal with videos longer than 1 minute of continuous footage, so if you're at an event and wind up with 10 minutes of something and 8 gig if footage, rots of ruck.
Good procedure removes problems - double check that your files are secure. I am lucky that I took the morning's footage off to another machine so I have only lost the two sscenes after lunch. Only. ARGH.
BY THE WAY avoid these scam 'recover your files' programs, in my case, they couldn't have recovered them and if I had shelled out the $70 I'd be doubly unhappy. Mostly what they do is so low level that with a little googling you could sort it, if it was sort-able.
The last way for me to recover my footage is to Jailbreak, SSH in, create an image of the disk, move it to another machine and then scan it for video files without the headers.
Which is fine except my home PC is a little locked down and doesn't like to talk to strangers.
Rod for my own back, yes? Yes. Remember, what would Jesus do? Jesus doesn't lose his files cos Jesus Saves.
So, Apple Vs PC ARGH Files transfer and Double Check.
ARGH!!!!
POOP!