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Gigs Rants

A little notice would be nice…

I’ve had a very busy few days. I’m beat. I was finally had a chance to relax for about an hour and a half and have some dinner before I had to go play a gig at a really crappy club. I dragged myself away and got to the gig to find that there was an opening act. If I’d have known this nugget in advance I could have stayed home for another hour and a half rather than sitting in a damn smoke filled bar which only had people that were all tatt’d out (lots of tattoos).

I can think of many things I’d rather do than sit there breathing cigarette smoke looking at ugly chicks covered in tattoos…

The club sucks. My singer apologized for booking the gig and I took the opportunity to let him know that I don’t want to play there again…

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Gigs Musicians

Everyone thinks they’re musicians…

At the gig last night this guy comes up on the first break and tells me “man you’re off the chain.” I didn’t quite understand that. I guess this means he liked my drumming. I think he mean to say “you’re off the hook.”

He then tells me and my singer that he plays drums and bass. So my singer says “come up and play a tune with us.”

Guy jumps up on the next set and we play a 1-4-5 slow blues song. This is cake. Well he starts “soloing” (badly) over everything and can’t even follow the damn progression. Our singer is yelling across the stage “C man, C!!!” and he’s looking at the bass like the C note left the building.

What an ass.

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Musicians Rants Recording

Learn how to play the friggin’ guitar

So I’m working into the rotation at the big studio. Right now I’m not getting the most “prestigious” gigs.

I’m working with a hack acoustic guitar player and I just can’t get his guitar to sound very crisp. I’ve got a friggin’ $8000 Neumann microphone on this guy’s guitar and it sounds terrible. No crispness at all. It sounds like the mic is across the room pointing the other direction.

I go in the sound booth to see what is up. Maybe the guy took his shoes off and hung his shoe on the mic?

All thumbs

As it turns out, this guy is paying $100/hour to record his acoustic tracks and he’s playing the guitar with the meat of his thumb. DOH! I asked “where’s your guitar pick?” and he says “I don’ t use one.” Hmm… I say “that’s probably why it doesn’t sound very crisp.”

Later in the session when I go to set up an auto-tuner on his vocals I ask the same guy what key the song is in. “I don’t know” is his answer. So I ask “what chord are you playing on the last note of the song?” “I don’t know” again. The guy is self taught, doesn’t use a guitar pick, and doesn’t know what a chord is. He was playing a bastardized G chord…

Normally I’d say “kill me” in this situation, but I’m glad to have a gig at this point so no worries. Just get a friggin’ guitar lesson before the next session please…

Categories
Gigs

Sub gig tonight

After writing the last post I realized I should have mentioned that my day is only half over. Tonight I’m doing a drum sub gig for a variety band. This’ll be my first time playing with these guys but they’re so tight and play all these tunes so well it will just be like playing along with the original recordings. I’m confident I’ll do fine and these guys will be happy with my performance. The gig is in Deer Valley for some corporate party. Dinner included. Yes, we musicians love free food.

Killer musicians

The regular drummer for this band is one of my best drum friends, and probably one of the top three drummers in the state. The guitar player for this band has been regarded as the best guitar player in the state for years. The key player is one of the best too. The female singer I wonder about. She was not terribly nice to me on the phone when I was doing some web site work for their band. She was mad at me because their band picture had the old female singer from 4 years ago. It wasn’t my fault as I was only working with what they gave me.

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Recording

Finished harp session

Today I was pretty much on my own. Started up with the harp client, finishing tracks and then mixing.

The chick’s harp sounded a little different. I started to wonder if my trims were the same as yesterday and while f’ing around with them I accidentally padded one half. The Euphonix console can be so deep with menus and hot keys I couldn’t figure out what the hell I did. The harp player and producer didn’t notice but I was in some trouble… One of two of the mics were working and if this chick nailed a take I’d have to figure out a way to compensate in the mix to make it sound like the other tracks.

Fortunately the harp player was struggling and I finally figured it out and got it working right. Later she did the another take of that tune which was much better… Other than that the session went perfect and the client left happy.

So I’m close to being able to run full sessions with no help. As I find a snag with ProTools (prodrools) or the studio setup, I figure it out. I only like to make mistakes once.
Harp Recording Session