Good times people, good times. Jo was with us last night and it really lifts the show :-) She even sang rest my bones with us as her backing band.
Shout outs to Stuart, Tony, Michelle, Alicia, Hanna, Anna, Jenny, Mark, Shane, Natalie, the lovely Suzanne and Claudette and all the folks who spent the evening with us.
That was a good solid gig with much dancing. A grand way to spend an Easter Saturday :-)
We're entering a busy period with 4 gigs a month or so (and possibly more to come) over the next three months, plus all the other stuff we're up to and as per usual, what ever we do, it'll appear here first.
For people on our Newsletter List the link is included in todays newsletter, for our FB buddies I put a separate link up on FB and for all you random wonderful readers, hidden on the site somewhere is our new song.
Ok, so we have 2 mixes of this new song. We had hoped to do a sun records style take of it, fairly low tech, raw and i think we have it, but there are two differing opinions on which opening to use?
I wonder what we'll do?
Aha! I have it! I shall ask you , Dear Reader, to help us pick.
Ok so here's the plan. I'll go find the Polling software component, load up a player or two with copies of the song, post it to an article and then you can listen and pick.
Brilliant! Let's crowd source this sucker.
Even better, your reward will be to download the one ya want :-) It'll be our Easter Present.
Ok, stand by, this is going to take some technical jiggery pokery to make happen...hmm.
We recorded on Saturday and today was mix day and y'know what, we're done.
Ah but there I've gone and given you the punch line. Oh well, here's some of todays fun anyway.
We started today by borrowing some studio monitors to test out, whilst we were picking them up, I spotted some other cool objet de musical art :-)
If I was a guitarist or an Amp Dude these would be meaningful to me, but as the Harp Dilettante, all I can say is 'oh, lookit pretty!' or "Gee I like that font' (sigh).
I am sure they are cool.
The next phase was putting the borrowed monitors into the studio and testing them with various sounds and songs, including some rare Mark Hunter tracks (jazz!)
Later on during the finalisation of the mix, it turned out the bass response on the monitors was up too far and there wasn't enough bottom end on other test playback devices (the car, the boombox, the ipod). As none of us had a flashlight to hand I had to use the Flash function on the phone to brighten things up so we could check the teeny tiny dials on the monitors.
BTW they were very nice.
There was quite some discussion about the opening of the new song and various arrangement items. When you're working with Tape, it behooves you to Have Your Sh-- Together Before Pressing 'Start'. There's none of this Namby-Pamby 'what if' that accompanies Digital Production.
Meanwhile, I contributed in the manner that any Executive Producer worth his salt contributes. I made John a sandwich.
Here's my latest art piece entitled 'Desk With Lunch Roll'.
I make quite good sandwiches, ask any member of the band :-)
And last but not least here's another bit of the song being mixed.
It's done, we're reviewing it :-) Stand by for what we do next! Thrills! Spills! Lunch!