So last night I finally succeeded in playing at our local Open Mic (the Saracens Head, Hertford). Run by Matt I had a graet time. The atmosphere was welcoming and supportive. I was along early so got to play the second slot, while the pub was still reasonably quiet - this suited me no end. Played 3 songs , and was well received, and got to do a second slot later in the evening when the pub was considerably more crowded.
The quality of the other musicians was outstanding ( I certainly felt like bottom of the bill.. ). But job done - now to find another one...
P
Tuesday 6 December 2011
Tuesday 15 November 2011
Progress?
Lots of odds and sods..
Put up a new song - Armistice Day - on Soundcloud (my first), and on Songwriters Forum for comments.
15 plays, one comment "i thought this was very well done its not my sort of music but i can still appereciate the work & craft youve put into it" - woo dammned with faint praise - still, listen for yourself: www.soundcloud.com/martin-pescatore
On the plus side, made a Broadjam top ten (albeit fleetingly).
Nearly got along to the local open mike, but cut my finger 10 minutes before leaving...
The IO dock gets more and more fun...
New synth apps from Moog (Animoog) and Camel Audio (Alchemy) are turning the ipad into a serious synth. And I got AC-7 set up as a control surface for cubase - awsome!
Proper post next time...
P
Put up a new song - Armistice Day - on Soundcloud (my first), and on Songwriters Forum for comments.
15 plays, one comment "i thought this was very well done its not my sort of music but i can still appereciate the work & craft youve put into it" - woo dammned with faint praise - still, listen for yourself: www.soundcloud.com/martin-pescatore
On the plus side, made a Broadjam top ten (albeit fleetingly).
Nearly got along to the local open mike, but cut my finger 10 minutes before leaving...
The IO dock gets more and more fun...
New synth apps from Moog (Animoog) and Camel Audio (Alchemy) are turning the ipad into a serious synth. And I got AC-7 set up as a control surface for cubase - awsome!
Proper post next time...
P
Thursday 8 September 2011
Alesis IO dock
As I mentioned I was lucky enough to receive an iPad for my birthday this year, and obviously my first reaction was, how can I make music with this? There are many, many apps out there and sorting through them can be a bit hit and miss, so I thought I’d try to add a little to the mix by giving you my personal opinion on the ones I’ve tried out so far starting with the Alesis IO Dock that I bought to turn the ipad into more of a serious music making bit of kit..
Basically the IO dock is a big slab of plastic that you slot your iPad (v2 with an adaptor) into that gives balanced i/o (and headphones), phantom power and usb & traditional midi ports. It should be great but currently has a couple of not insignificant issues. Firstly the IO dock itself is experiencing some teething problems with both midi and audio input. I’ve experienced infrequent audio recording problems, the signal has occasionally been strangely distorted – and not because I’ve been overcooking the input! More frequent (in my experience) are hanging midi notes and phantom high midi notes, that get recorded in to the midi sequencer I’ve been using. Alesis are aware of these issues and are promising a firmware update. If they rectify the problem it will turn the dock into a cracking bit of kit, but not one I’d like to use live at the moment.
The second issue isn’t really Alesis’s fault – some apps don’t support the IO dock for midi and audio (amplitude is a major irritant at the moment). The newer apps seem to be planning updates to enable them to work correctly, but the older apps probably won’t get one – I’m particularly disappointed with the tongue drum app, which I would dearly love to use on a recording but don’t think miking the ipad speaker will do the trick! It’s a free app tho, so I guess you get what you pay for!
At a future date I'll look at some of the music apps that I can't get enough of (and some that I can...).
Tuesday 6 September 2011
Baby Steps
Well I tried...
Showed up at my most local open mic last night, guitar in hand, ready and willing to break my open mic duck (as it were). The place was packed (unlike last month when I'd just come to listen) and a wonderful group of young women were making a fab sound - 4 part harmonies and different acoustic instruments.. I think that they were called The Folk and I'll certainly be looking out for them.
As I was saying - packed, too packed it would appear for me to get a slot... The organisers tried, and later in the evening offered to put me on, but by then I'd had a few too many beers and luckily my good sense somehow prevailed. Still, I made lots of new contacts, showed my face about, and got the promise of a slot next month so we will see.
Watch this space
P
Showed up at my most local open mic last night, guitar in hand, ready and willing to break my open mic duck (as it were). The place was packed (unlike last month when I'd just come to listen) and a wonderful group of young women were making a fab sound - 4 part harmonies and different acoustic instruments.. I think that they were called The Folk and I'll certainly be looking out for them.
As I was saying - packed, too packed it would appear for me to get a slot... The organisers tried, and later in the evening offered to put me on, but by then I'd had a few too many beers and luckily my good sense somehow prevailed. Still, I made lots of new contacts, showed my face about, and got the promise of a slot next month so we will see.
Watch this space
P
Monday 25 July 2011
Gear Acquisition Syndrome
Last week, after being delayed for 2 months my new toy arrived - A VHT Ultra Guitar amp. It has all been a bit frustrating, the cab arrived 2 months ago and was entirely useless without the amp head, which has finally shown up. Now this is my first real guitar amp, I had a little practice amp many moons ago, but have been quite happy with my Behringer Vamp 2 for the last few years. However, I cannot overstate the difference of playing through a real amp - wow! Its not particularly loud (well that is I'm not playing at a high volume - it can go very loud :-) but it behaves so differently (and is really showing up all the problems with my technique). I won't review the amp - I'm not experienced enough to do so but it really is putting a smile on my face.
Anyway the point of this article was (supposed to be) that after the arrival of the amp I was complete, no requirements left, I was ready to record and get on with making music. And then this morning an email arrived telling me that the Alesis ipad dock is available, I was weak, I had an Amazon voucher from my birthday, and a new ipad as a shock birthday present from my wife... So now another new toy will arrive in a few days, and I can put off actually making some music once again while I work out how best to integrate it into my studio. You can expect a review soon :-)
Anyway the point of this article was (supposed to be) that after the arrival of the amp I was complete, no requirements left, I was ready to record and get on with making music. And then this morning an email arrived telling me that the Alesis ipad dock is available, I was weak, I had an Amazon voucher from my birthday, and a new ipad as a shock birthday present from my wife... So now another new toy will arrive in a few days, and I can put off actually making some music once again while I work out how best to integrate it into my studio. You can expect a review soon :-)
Tuesday 19 July 2011
Life gets in the way
The biggest challenge at the moment seems to be finding the time to do music, and I am sure I'm not alone in this - life just keeps getting in the way. For once I have a surfeit of new material all ready to record and perform, but no time to work on it.
Curiously there's plenty of spare time in the office - but you can't record there... ( I have managed to become a bit more active in the forum world - so thats step 1 of the plan underway)
Given that time is limited the temptation is to make a list of all the thing I want to do, this is fine as long as you don't actually expect to get them done! What to do instead? Well I guess what's required is to ensure that any "spare" time can be used to the full - and I have as plan for this!
1. Practice - make sure there is space available to play. And get my teach yourself this, that and the other books out so that instead of random riffing or knob twiddling I do a few pages of one of them
2. Rehearsal - I want to play songs at open mics in the area so set up amp, mic and guitar and sing the songs I want to perform "as live". And decide which songs they are going to be. And learn them properly so that I don't need the music :-)
3. Recording - Get the basic right. I have a tendency to record lots and lots of tracks of "almost" parts, the majority or which get muted/deleted from the final version. So I am going to concentrate on 4,5or 6 tracks for each song and get them right (well played/recorded). If the song desperately needs a final additional kbd part that can happen later.
So with my new highly focused methodology I should be able to build my new album and gig circuit.. step.. by painful...step.
Curiously there's plenty of spare time in the office - but you can't record there... ( I have managed to become a bit more active in the forum world - so thats step 1 of the plan underway)
Given that time is limited the temptation is to make a list of all the thing I want to do, this is fine as long as you don't actually expect to get them done! What to do instead? Well I guess what's required is to ensure that any "spare" time can be used to the full - and I have as plan for this!
1. Practice - make sure there is space available to play. And get my teach yourself this, that and the other books out so that instead of random riffing or knob twiddling I do a few pages of one of them
2. Rehearsal - I want to play songs at open mics in the area so set up amp, mic and guitar and sing the songs I want to perform "as live". And decide which songs they are going to be. And learn them properly so that I don't need the music :-)
3. Recording - Get the basic right. I have a tendency to record lots and lots of tracks of "almost" parts, the majority or which get muted/deleted from the final version. So I am going to concentrate on 4,5or 6 tracks for each song and get them right (well played/recorded). If the song desperately needs a final additional kbd part that can happen later.
So with my new highly focused methodology I should be able to build my new album and gig circuit.. step.. by painful...step.
Tuesday 12 July 2011
Community Service
So todays plan is to join a forum or two in order to share all that wisdom I've gained doing this for 20 odd years. I'm a great fan of Sound on Sound and their forums but to be honest there are far wiser and more knowledgable guys than me on there so I'm going to start with the songwriters forum where I can add something meaningful about the technical side, while hopefully learning more about songwriting - and maybe even getting my music reviewed...
Talking of music reviewing, I've found broadjam to be a great site for sharing music and getting feedback (mostly constructive). You can find my broadjam page here.
Talking of music reviewing, I've found broadjam to be a great site for sharing music and getting feedback (mostly constructive). You can find my broadjam page here.
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