Thursday, March 27, 2014

Sonya and Silas Smokin' at Cat's Art MusikCircus

Things went a bit awry in some business away from the Rockhouse and I didn't see any faint chance we would get back in time.  That turned out to be true for Sonya's Jevette's set and that's quite a shame as she was planning on debuting her piano playing online and she was going to do some new originals.  I haven't said much about Sonya's covers as her originals are so incredible and I much prefer original anyway ... but she does "Rumor Has It" by Adele only it's the Sonya version and she will own you with it.  Her version is just gorgeous.

I signed onto the system at almost the top of hour after about four hours of away from the Rockhouse and a time of major suckage.  I was demolished and was so tired that I didn't know if I was arriving at the end of my show or the start of it.  Cat saw me and said come quick or the audience will leave.  Well ... unless there's a broken bone sticking through your flesh, you don't walk away from that.  I suppose if the bone is from a leg then you're not walking anywhere anyway ... but that's a different problem.

There wasn't even time to get a drink.  We seriously had only just come in off the road.  Next thing that happened was that the stream was started and I was tuning the guitar.  There's starting cold and there's starting completely bewildered and this night would be the second kind.



Cat shot the pic.  Is that pretty damn cool or what!


"My Musical Catastrophe" has been a project on which I've been dancing for weeks now.  Is it "Cool Enough for Cat," a "Cascade of Butterflies," or "My Musical Catastrophe" as each is a part of it but all that's important from that is did it suck?

I always feel a need for a disclaimer as there's so much fishing happening but that's not what I do.  There was never any belief in my guitar playing from anyone which sounds whiny but really it's not as what was important to come out of that was the understanding that it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.  If I don't like it then no-one will ever hear it anyway.  A lot of people aren't so good at this and constantly require 'validation' but that will never mean anything so long as it comes from outside yourself no matter how much you get of it.

So the guitar was too loud and the echoes were pissing me right off.  This is on playback as it was sounding pretty cool when I was doing it or I would have changed.  Your ear can be very deceptive as it works kind of on a narrow beam or a wide angle.  When it's on a wide angle, you listen in the silence of the dark for wild animals that may eat you.  That's not so good for music and you tighten the focus ... but you also make it more selective.  All of this is automatic so the recording can be a surprise as it is an accurate recording, your ear just didn't hear it when it happened even though you were right in the middle of it.

What I hear in the recording is pretty good guitar tone.  She is sounding very very close to how I want her to sound but the guitar was too damn loud and was drowning out the loop.  This doesn't even reach negative cool but there is a way too boring to describe that will bring a better match the volumes.  (I wish, sort of, that it could be as simple as just turning down the guitar.)

Echoes are important to me as there's nothing else that will give the effect, at least not like that.  For me echoes are much more than a trick ... but that makes the guitar very prone to noise and every noise gets multiplied by the number of echoes.  Sometimes I'll hear something and cringe as I think could you possibly do that without bumping every string except the you one you really meant to touch.  What I will do about echoes will need some thinking, playing, thinking, playing.

(Ed:  did the song suck or what?)

We can skip to that punchline quickly:  I don't know.

The song is made up of three independent phrases in the looper, each of which I can kick off with the push of a button by my foot and each loop will play out before going on to the next.  The 'chart' for the song goes no more than this:  start on 2, 3, 2, 3, 1 (long), 3 (long) and out.

Loop 2 is kind of an introduction as it has a simple version of Loop 1.  Loop 1 is fairly elaborate and this alone was "Cascade of Butterflies."  Loop 3 is a bit of a jar after Loop 1 or Loop 2 but that was my purpose as I wanted high contrast.  This is where I ask myself whether it's cool or just clever ... or neither one.  But it is clever, there's no concern over that as most loopers can't dream of doing stuff like this and it's good to push the device as far as it will go.  Whether it's cool is something I'll leave to you and I'll upload it later.

I have prepared an upload but there are two versions as I did it twice.  Voodoo got there midway in the set and he has big fun with looper dances so I played it for him.  That's the one I prepared but now I'm thinking it would be better to upload the one from when I had gone pretty much straight from the car to the mike.  You just can't get any more live than that!

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