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shermaramaLast weekend there was a mixing marathon to get all those tracks up to the same standard to compare. From those, it's easy enough to pick the real stand-out ones and Gerard knows someone who'll do the mastering for us so there will soon be finished results to hear, oh yeah. Perhaps predictably, I Want didn't sound as good in the morning but in combination with Expose/Reload and IFHY there's something like a recognisable sound there and it certainly sounds like we were having fun, what I consider one of the most important bits of the whole shebang. We're trying to convince people to give us gigs with this, to let us on a stage to entertain people who want to be entertained, and we sound like we might be capable of it. IFHY's got three vocals trading around and something that sounds like a comedy car-crash complete with lone wheel rolling from the wreckage in the middle, s'good.
In the field of getting gigs, there's another band I've been messing around with of late. I did once swear I would never do the all-girl band thing again because of the emotional drama that tends to go with it.. Excessive drama remains a necessary feature, it seems, as adjacent emails in my inbox tell me of the date of our first gig (three weeks away) and that inter-personal friction has just lost us a decent bassist. Humm. Happily I'm a natural born optimist and the other two both bristle with confidence (perhaps a little too bristly, indeed) and I think we might just get away with it. Rock and/or roll.
And some of this afternoon has been in the loft remodelling the interior of my brain. This newest version knows how to get in and out of fills whilst playing a fast off-beat. It's easy enough when going slow because there's time to go
3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4
bass bass bass (right foot)
hat hat crash hat hat hat (right hand)
snare snare snare (left hand)
in the simplest form, if that makes any sense, because there's time to get the right hand from the crash back to the hat after an on-beat, bar-starting crash. Time to get to the crash in the first place might not be so much of an issue if you're actually doing a fill before the on-beat crash, style of thing.
But as you go faster you can't make it back and you have to go:
3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4
bass bass bass (right foot)
hat hat crash (gap) hat hat (right hand)
snare snare snare (left hand)
with that gap in the hats on the first off-beat. The listener hardly notices it when it's going at a rate, of course, it doesn't matter from the point of view of the sound, but from the point of view of getting your right hand to restart in the right place, it's a bugger. I've eventually got this to work by counting the one (crash/bass) and the two (snare) out loud and bringing the off-beat back in right after the two, but it's till taking mental effort at the minute. Everything has been working, y'see, on shuttling between the left hand and right foot always via the right hand. But this one time you've got to not go via the right hand. The biggest problem is keep ending up with the right hand then moving into the snare's spot and everything else shifting along to relate to it, which goes like this:
3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 &
bass bass bass bass (right foot)
hat hat crash (gap) hat hat hat hat (right hand)
snare snare snare (left hand)
which is very odd to keep up what with both snare and bass now running on the offbeat, and quickly transmutes into just a lick leading into this very John Spencer Blues Explosion thing and probably one of the first things I worked out for myself, which goes like this:
1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
bass bass bass bass bass (right foot)
crash hat hat hat hat hat hat hat (right hand)
snare snare snare snare snare snare (left hand)
You see the trace of the up-and-down, the shuttling, still in the centre there? But this feels like half the time of the other despite the same frequency of hats and there you are left playing something that sounds a lot different and the route back to what you were doing is hard to find.
Yeah, anyway.
(edit: I have tried all sorts of cunningness to get those spaces to work. It all works if you can get the window wide enough. The font has been changed to a monospace one but the size isn't changing, dammit..)
In the field of getting gigs, there's another band I've been messing around with of late. I did once swear I would never do the all-girl band thing again because of the emotional drama that tends to go with it.. Excessive drama remains a necessary feature, it seems, as adjacent emails in my inbox tell me of the date of our first gig (three weeks away) and that inter-personal friction has just lost us a decent bassist. Humm. Happily I'm a natural born optimist and the other two both bristle with confidence (perhaps a little too bristly, indeed) and I think we might just get away with it. Rock and/or roll.
And some of this afternoon has been in the loft remodelling the interior of my brain. This newest version knows how to get in and out of fills whilst playing a fast off-beat. It's easy enough when going slow because there's time to go
3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4
bass bass bass (right foot)
hat hat crash hat hat hat (right hand)
snare snare snare (left hand)
in the simplest form, if that makes any sense, because there's time to get the right hand from the crash back to the hat after an on-beat, bar-starting crash. Time to get to the crash in the first place might not be so much of an issue if you're actually doing a fill before the on-beat crash, style of thing.
But as you go faster you can't make it back and you have to go:
3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4
bass bass bass (right foot)
hat hat crash (gap) hat hat (right hand)
snare snare snare (left hand)
with that gap in the hats on the first off-beat. The listener hardly notices it when it's going at a rate, of course, it doesn't matter from the point of view of the sound, but from the point of view of getting your right hand to restart in the right place, it's a bugger. I've eventually got this to work by counting the one (crash/bass) and the two (snare) out loud and bringing the off-beat back in right after the two, but it's till taking mental effort at the minute. Everything has been working, y'see, on shuttling between the left hand and right foot always via the right hand. But this one time you've got to not go via the right hand. The biggest problem is keep ending up with the right hand then moving into the snare's spot and everything else shifting along to relate to it, which goes like this:
3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 &
bass bass bass bass (right foot)
hat hat crash (gap) hat hat hat hat (right hand)
snare snare snare (left hand)
which is very odd to keep up what with both snare and bass now running on the offbeat, and quickly transmutes into just a lick leading into this very John Spencer Blues Explosion thing and probably one of the first things I worked out for myself, which goes like this:
1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
bass bass bass bass bass (right foot)
crash hat hat hat hat hat hat hat (right hand)
snare snare snare snare snare snare (left hand)
You see the trace of the up-and-down, the shuttling, still in the centre there? But this feels like half the time of the other despite the same frequency of hats and there you are left playing something that sounds a lot different and the route back to what you were doing is hard to find.
Yeah, anyway.
(edit: I have tried all sorts of cunningness to get those spaces to work. It all works if you can get the window wide enough. The font has been changed to a monospace one but the size isn't changing, dammit..)