T-Rox Rocks

Recently, my sons played live for the first time. My younger, 11, played a drum solo and my elder, 16, played a Black Sabbath tune with his teacher accompanying on bass. It was part of the twice yearly show that T-Rox Music Academy (where we all take lessons) puts on. This is kind of like a recital, except the students can play pretty much anything they want.

As a parent, obviously I'm totally stoked that my boys did this. It's hard, it's nerve racking, it's work but it's fun. I also admit to feeling all of their anxiety along with them. It was hard for me too. Of course, that didn't prevent some good natured ribbing. On arrival, our young drummer saw no music stand next to the kit and asked where he would put his music. My daughter and I both said, "What?!? You didn't memorize it?"

As a person interested and concerned about music, I'm really pleased too. Anybody that's worried about the future of music need not worry. The kids are learning to rock.

Which brings me to the big thing. Full disclosure time. Way back in the Stone Age, when I was in high school I became friends with a young guitarist who had charm and an infectious smile (which I tried to ignore at the time cause I was too cool). Our experience together, lugging amps for some great players stuck in the wedding/party band circuit gave us a desire to play but with no outlet. Constantly, we were told we had to "pay our dues"...

Unlike myself, Sean continued on the musical path, did a bunch of cool stuff and ultimately became one of the founders of T-Rox. It is he and his team that built this outlet for young musicians to "pay dues" and learn their craft. It is one of those very special things. The depth of which may not be immediately apparent. I, for one, am very grateful.

And yeah, I'm definitely playing in the next show and, more importantly, the boys say they will too.

Photo courtesy of T-Rox.

Virginity Lost

I, like you, have spent most of my life watching professional musicians make faces while they play. As a teen, I didn't think too much about it because things in my own life were plenty intense and it was all about me anyway. As I got bit older and more cynical I started to wonder how much of the whole thing was an act. Then I read that book... This Is Your Brain On Music. Awesome. Opened my mind to the possibility that some artists are actually feeling something profound.

My own facial expressions while playing have been of intense concentration or grimaces as I've hit wrong notes. What do I expect, I suck. But recently, I had some quiet time so I laid down a 4 chord organ sequence, added a bass, looped the thing and strapped on the guitar to just make some noise.

Over the next couple of hours, I played and I played. At some point I crossed over. My face was a glow. I felt electric. To paraphrase Winnie the Pooh, I felt "tingly in my jingly". It was the closest thing to rapture that I have felt in any remotely recent memory. For a full ten minutes after I put the guitar down, I had a stupid post-coital grin on my face. It was almost embarrassing!

It was good. It was scary. I'm not entirely sure about letting go in this way. I want to go back. But I'm afraid. Makes no sense. Makes no sense at all.

CC licensed photo by Heart Industry.

At Minute Marker 480, Pull Over and Enjoy The View

At the bottom of your iTunes window, you may have noticed the stats. Before I resumed making music, I read somebody's blog where they had finally crossed the one month threshold. They had finally collected enough music, that if played continuously, a month would pass. It's an interesting number (my own collection is now at 10081 items, 34.5 days).

But what's recently surprised me is that my own music (or music that I collaborated on) now represents 104 tracks spanning over 8 hours. Really?!? Holy crap!

If any of it were any good, that would be like 7 CDs. That would have been pretty good career for a successful pop act :-)

If I built this up on hobbyist time, what kind of "extra" music might a pro have? Perhaps their own month of music?

Grab Bag

Been a while. Won't bore you with the usual excuses and crap. Just dive in with some stuff that's been on my mind.

First up, the fabulous Inside Home Recording podcast. Specifically, episode 71. In it one of the hosts discusses some work that he did using a big band sample library complete with audio examples. His specific topic was funky MIDI control of sample libraries to add a human element. All very interesting but what really caught my ear was the mixing step. Where he went from a flat, sample based arrangement to a professionally mixed big band. Wow. The early taste Dave gives of the arrangement makes me think, wow what a crappy sample library. People pay for this stuff? But he soldiers on and magic happens. Something to be said for get the performance right and worry about the tonal canvas later. But please Dave, a segment on how you mixed that would be really cool.

Second, we all have favourite tunes from our teens. Somehow they imprint on us. I happened to be a teen in the mid 80s and one of the tracks that I've been listening to on and off since then is The Spangle Maker by The Cocteau Twins. This is not their best work but the rawness of the track has always, for me, added that certain je ne sais quois. This weekend, for the first time I actually heard something different in it. With my recording geek / guitar player wannabe ear, I actually was able to pick out the various guitar parts. As separate things, rather than the swirling soup that I always loved. There are two things about this experience that are totally fucking cool to me. For starters, no matter how much I learn about music it is still magic and still touches me deeply. And the other thing is that you can listen to a track for 20 years and find something new in it. How fucking cool is that.

The last bit of news is that I went out and bought a Boss GT-10. Best. Toy. Ever. I've been playing with it for a couple of days now and I've only explored half of the presets. Let alone making my own, or the looping function or connecting it to my computer, recording or any of that. Just like getting a new synth can inspire, I gotta say there's something magic the plethora of guitar sounds that my feet now have access to. More on this amazing device soon.

What Will They Think

Years from now, when we're all dust and the archaeologists, anthropologists or spacemen are picking through our stuff... what will they find?

This morning, I read my email which included this item from the Lefsetz Letter where Bob enumerates and editorializes on the weekly record sales for the top 40 or so. Now I'm not a top 40 guy but when I was a younger angrier man I at least had heard of all the artists on it. Now not so much. Chrisette Michelle? Who? My story only I makes Bob's point. Of course, willful ignorance is the worst kind so I consult the Oracle of Google and watch this. Wasn't missing much. Next.

Later, I see a tweet from Peter Kirn of CreateDigitalMusic pointing me at another youtube video. A cover of Fleet Foxes' Tiger Mountain Peasant Song. Wow, what voices and harmonies. Who are they, well they're First Aid Kit out of Sweden. According to their myspace page they sound like what Gary Numan would if he did folk music! Brilliant.

Of course, I hadn't heard of Fleet Foxes either, so I clicked on one of the related videos and saw this beauty.

And it hit me, like it has many many times before, that there's a ton of music out there. You could spend 30 minutes a day exploring things you never heard of everyday for the rest of your life and not scrape the surface.

So what will they think when they start digging through all this?

For us? We do live in interesting times and it fucking rocks.

CC licensed photo spaceman2 by The Untrained Eye

Silly Rabbit, Picks Are For Kids

I have had in my possession for a whole three days now a thing of wonder. Now that I'm playing guitar (or attempting to) and I find myself looking hither and yon for "talent enhancers". I had heard about E-Bows when I was a teen but never seen one so it seemed perfectly logical that I should buy one on impulse.

Now the sales guy warned me in a heavy southern drawl, "now when you first use an E-Bow, you're gonna suck!" Strange both in the directness and that here in the Toronto area we don't hear drawls like that. I was taken aback but I bravely plowed on and said, "well I make experimental music so it's ok if I suck."

Once I bought my new treasure home, the Southern Man turned out to have hit the nail on the head. I did suck. Was it broken? Did I need a new battery already? Should I take it back? You mean I need to read the instructions? You mean I might need to listen to the included CD with a players guide? The buyers remorse lasted a good 15-30 minutes.

Somewhat fortuitous for me, sandbags had recently posted Rytme Shifter 1 which seemed perfect to E-Bow along with. Soon enough things were getting completely out of hand. I felt like Fripp! Perhaps I should have recorded all that but I didn't. Instead I played and played late into the night...



The next morning, I woke up and decided it was time to record and in a much mellower mood, I came up with this:



Of course, the training wheels are off now and I'm working on the next track and all thoughts of taking the thing back are gone. I even went back to thank Southern Man for his warning.

Disaster

Good Friday my ass. My MacBook video died just like a certain religious figure.

This means no music beyond what's already on my iPod. No guitar (why have an amp when you can have a computer that fails).

Good thing I have other things like this iPod Touch that offer a backup connection to the world and my data.

But let's explore this a little shall we? In this digital age (for lack of some other pretentious label) are very dependant on machines costing a big chunk of our change. We are all told about backing up our data but what happens when the machine dies? Some people point at the cloud and say that's the future. Maybe. But right now could you replace your main machine on a moments notice?

For me, this has ceased to be a hypothetical question. This is the second major failure on a holiday weekend (you may have read about my drive failure) and it has me thinking. No big ideas, just thinking and fuming.

This time I got very lucky. My local Apple store has a new motherboard in stock and I bought AppleCare so it shouldn't cost me any $$ right? Almost. Apple has this extortion racket called ProCare. For another $99 per year you can get expidited service. Or you can wait longer for them to get around to it. Obviously I paid the ransom but I feel like I've negotiated with Somali pirates.

Now I sit outside the store waiting for my Precious... Hope it's ok.

Edit:

So the above was from my iPod Touch. This is from my (newly repaired) Precious. Driving home from the Apple store I thought that I was perhaps unfair. Yes it's expensive. Yes it's unfair. But how many other computer companies will repair your gear same day for any price? This is not my first time dealing with the store as well.

My wife's Macbook logic board was replaced.
My son's ipod touch was replaced.
My harddrive was replaced.
My logic board was replaced.

I know from experience that failures with other manufacturers gear involves me taking shit apart and replacing parts myself. Mother/logic boards would be pretty much impossible too.

So all in all, I'm $99 poorer but infinitely happier.