Entries tagged with "musicgeek"
Monday 22 October 2007
One of the comics I’ve been keeping up with online is Sordid City Blues. It stands out among the throngs of webcomics out there, with a cast of smartly written and charmingly drawn characters wrestling with issues of love, faith and art. The author, Charles Schneeflock Snow, is taking a few weeks off to work on other projects, and recently put out a call for guest artists to fill in for him on the web site. So I chipped in with a page, and went for the most obvious subject: Luther and his bandmates. (Luther’s the one in the blue hat - the central characters in SCB are colour-coded.) Here it is!
There are some references to earlier stories - particularly Chapter 43, which deals with the origin of the mural. The conversation about the bass is one I’ve had several times (the Fury LS-4 I play has an unusual headstock which tends to attract the attention of gear nerds) but also, Barkey does play a rather odd-looking bass.
(Like SCB? The first collection of stories is available in book form… help support independent artists!)
I’ve played around with comics before but never in a big way. And I’ve used Adobe Illustrator for years, but this is one of the few times I’ve actually been using it for hand-drawn illustration. Lessons learned: use layers. Lettering using a tablet is a pain in the ass. Background detail really helps a panel to spring to life (as was the case with the graffiti and cinder-block wall in the second panel). Also, it’s really freeing to write in a different voice for a while, and play with someone else’s characters. I did my best to capture a little of SCB’s look and its rhythms.
For quite some time I’ve been tossing around some story ideas, but I’ve never settled on a satisfying way of telling them. The format and characters keep shifting around on me - first it was a series of radio plays, then it was going to be podcasts, or maybe just short stories, and now I’m thinking of doing it in comic form. It may end up being a combination of all of the above. This has been a good chance to test the comics waters, and see if I’m really up to the task.
Some of the characters I’m developing are musicians as well, which means that at some point there will be music played. Which brings up the fascinating question of how to represent music in a silent, static medium. Usually comic artists just resort to a sprinkling of eighth-notes and some lyrics. But what about taking a crazy graphical approach, one that breaks out of the usual rhythm of panels, the way a big number in a musical jumps out of the “real world” of theatrical/cinematic structure?
The example that springs to my mind at the moment is Hot Jazz by the ever-wacky Hunt Emerson. I don’t know a whole lot about comics history, so I’m sure there are others… Any suggestions? I should probably look into some Matt Howarth, for instance.
In the meantime I’ve been hunting through The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics (see here for images, mostly the ones by Alan Aldridge). I’ll have to have a look for What The Songs Look Like too, which does the same for Talking Heads… and I wish I had a copy of More Dark Than Shark, a collection of artworks created by Russell Mills inspired by Brian Eno’s early “rock” albums, now out of print and hard to find.
My next comic-related project, then, is going to be this: pick a few songs that really inspire some visuals, and do one or two pages for each one. Strong contenders for the first couple: Stereolab and the Pixies.
Tuesday 27 March 2007
This winter I seem to have been in a sort of musical hibernation. No gigs, no writing, hardly any jamming, no listening to any new music.
My main musical effort was playing bass in the band in show-tune revue some friends were putting together. Good experience, and while I still can’t sight-read well, it certainly gave me the chance to improve at it. (My favorite tunes to play: “Nobody’s Side” from Chess, “Life Of The Party” from The Wild Party, both full of syncopations and time changes; “Take Me Or Leave Me” from Rent, where I got to rock out a bit; and “I Could Be Happy With You” from The Boy Friend, just because it was so damned cute in that faux-’20s, so-very-English sort of way.)
But other than that - perhaps in part because of it - I’ve just been burned out. Frankly, I was getting worried how little interest I had.
I managed to rouse myself enough to familiarize myself with Yes and Peter Gabriel, having borrowed some of their albums… and suddenly, much was explained to me about ‘70s rock.
A while ago J and I laid down some scratch versions of a whole pile of songs, both new and old, to use as the basis for a new CD. They sat untouched until a few days ago, when I stuck bass parts on some of the newest ones to send to our drummer. Here’s one:
Hold_Up_Donny.mp3 (3’43")
I was afraid I was getting into a rut with my parts, so on these new songs there’s all kinds of pushed rhythms and other oddness. For the first time I’m making use of the Jazz bass, and taking advantage of its punch and sustain with a much more legato line. I’m attempting to play chords on the “choruses”, also for the first time, and the whole thing has a sort of Fender Rhodes feel to it. Starting to sound pretty trip-hoppy. Fleshing this one out is going to be a lot of fun!
New music discoveries this week too. Currently on the playlist:
Flook (borrowed from my Go-playing friend downstairs, also a Celtic music aficionado) an Anglo-Irish band who specialize in wonderful hyperactive flute-and-bohdrán grooves.
The Golden Dogs. Ran across two of their videos while browsing idly, and immediately went and got their album Big Eye Little Eye. Chock full of my kind of hooks (my favorite is “Runouttaluck” - if you cranked Stereolab up to double speed and mashed it up with the B-52’s it might sound like this) plus the same sort of dueling boy/girl vocals that make the New Pornographers and other bands so addictive. And they exude such joy in the video for “Construction Worker” that I think I have a crush on the whole band.
Friday 9 March 2007
There’s nothing like looking down at the last bite of your lunch and noticing that part of it is blue.
This morning.
Sean: [rummaging through our room] Where’s my Blackberry?
Me: [spying the empty belt clip for it, and unaccountably reminded of Flanders and Swann] “There was the case, but the horn itself was missing.” [belatedly realizing the play on the word horn] Ha! Now I’ll think of that song every time you lose that thing.
Sean: Great. Are you sitting on it? Yes you are, you bastard.
Me: Oh. Oops.
My extended Shakespearean mondegreen:
OSWALD:
The leopards have wunched the poor boy
For every dollar he’s got. Feast your eyes upon him
[Mumble bumble] O! Unto her death!
Dies
EDGAR:
A serviceable villain;
As like to the right forth of the [mumble, radio static].
GLOUCESTER AND/OR EDGAR:
Is he dead? Sit you down, father; rescue him!
Wednesday 6 December 2006
That “five things you might not have known about me” meme is going around the blogs lately, so what the heck - here are my answers, previously published elsewhere (except for #4).
1. When I was a kid, I drew quite a bit. My dad had a box of old, unused forms for tracking lab samples of plant material, which were my standard drawing paper for years. There were two sorts: white, legal-sized ones and heavy, green-tinted ones with a perforated section at the bottom (there was a serial number that you could stick in the bag with the smelly bits of collected leaves).
To me, the functional side of the paper was the blank side. And it seemed really weird to me that anyone would draw on anything else. I drew pictures of the house, the cats, and some incomprehensible comics - the detachable section at the bottom was roughly Sunday-comic sized - about talking mugs and bunnies that spent all their time falling into water and yelling at each other.
2. A couple of years ago, I was Purple for Buddies in Bad Times’ Pride promo photos.
3. I talk to cats in made-up languages in addition to English. I sometimes use something like the peculiar dialect of “cat talk” spoken by everyone in my SO’s family, particularly when talking to Gomiya (her name is actually a form of address used when speaking to a cat; a more formal version is “Gohdemiya"). I think my personal cat dialect is also influenced by an old George Booth cartoon in the New Yorker called “Ip Gissa Gul” ("Ip Gets A Girl") which was written in a made-up caveman language (I also find myself addressing dogs as “Huppy dod!” sometimes). Tarquin I talk to in something reminiscent of Inuktitut. I have no idea why.
4. My nickname in middle school was “Fish”, for reasons known only to the maybe three or four vaguely in-crowd kids who started calling me that. The only thing I can think of is that my last name has a similar rhythm to the word “mackerel”.
5. I owe a lot of my understanding of musical chords and chord progressions to a program I had for the Commodore 64 when I was in high school called Instant Music. The flip side of the disk had a whole bunch of example songs in different styles from rock history, all rendered in binky three-voice synthesis, and the book that came with it had a helpful rundown of chord types. The interface was horrible without a mouse, but I soldiered on anyway, even after my joystick died (I jammed its wires into an old calculator and used that as a controller instead).
Tuesday 28 November 2006
As mentioned previously, I’ve been all excited about setting up an Immersion Composition lodge. Enough so that last night, I did a mini-session on my own. It lasted about four and a half hours, during which I recorded these three pieces:
Not In Nine (1’19")
As I was walking home to start the session, I had an odd-meter groove going in my head, but by the time I started recording, I’d forgotten it. I thought it was in nine, but this turned out to be in seven and four and extremely Phleg Camp-y, particularly the 6+6+4 section at the end. I seem to end up aping them whenever I bring out the Fender Jazz bass. This one earned me the “trying very hard to say something positive” look from my SO.
How’s About You (0’35")
Drums -> title -> lyrics -> chords -> done. Self-explanatory I think.
Frost (1’55")
My keyboard-written songs tend to either be in a particular vein I’ve followed since high school, or these more lyrical things that wander from one melody to another. I’ve just realized that this is more or less a restatement of a piece I did a while back called “Dawn River”, right down to the clicky percussion. I can’t escape myself!
All in all, a fun exercise and most worthwhile.
One and a half hours per song. Too much futzing and trying to get parts “right” (especially the slap bass on #1) and take down some of the hiss that crept in somewhere. I’m still very much getting used to my new setup: Logic on a laptop, equipped with a very finicky Mbox. Before I try another one of these, I have to get a few specific cables, figure out the ideal signal path into my computer, and set up some new Logic templates so I don’t have to mess with setting things up on every song.
Edit: more discussion of this mini-session on the ICS discussion forum.
Friday 17 November 2006
Two recent song-a-day pieces, the latest in celebration of my new monitors. Of course, it was recorded at one in the morning when civility required I keep the volume down, so I haven’t yet heard it through the new monitors, but hey.
(And of course, now that I’ve got everything assembled, I’ve discovered that the Mbox2 emits a soft, high-pitched whine on its monitor outputs whenever it’s getting a digital audio signal from the computer - the data stream, presumably. Grr. I’ll have to see if a better-shielded USB cable helps.)
mobile (3’51")
This one got me some dubious looks from my SO. Investigating the possibilities of Logic’s bundled FM synth - run through delay, reverb, EQ, filter, compression, trem and distortion, not necessarily in that order. Partway through it started to remind me of a bass clarinet piece by Evan Ziporyn, which plays with intervals and distortion in a similar sort of way… but in a purely acoustic way, by playing and humming simultaneously, so it’s much richer and more organic. (It’s called “Tsmindao Ghmerto”, if I recall correctly, and it’s on an album by the Bang On A Can crew.)
It felt good doing something that’s all textural, without any beat to it. When your recording software is always thinking in terms of bars and beats it’s sometimes hard to get out of that mode of thought yourself. I find it’s usually hard to combine the two methods of working - especially so since piling on all those effects eats up practically all the processor time.
If I do more like this I’ll try different tunings too.
awning (1’32")
I still don’t totally get the Environment screen in Logic, but I’ve figured out enough to run my external MIDI devices (gosh, that was a fun day, let me tell you). Unfortunately, I don’t have the right cables to run their audio back into my computer yet, so I had to use all softsynths again.
The drums are picked out of Apple Loops (shhh, don’t tell), then distorted, compressed and gated all to hell, as seems to be my thing lately. Mostly it’s a quick and easy way to unrecognizableize a beat. And similarly, I like sounds with really short release times, that you can play like you’re sending Morse code. Ended up sounding a bit like a ‘90s remake of an ‘80s song, really…
Tuesday 10 October 2006
When we moved into this place a couple months back, the idea was that by now we’d have the music studio all set up and be in the midst of recording our next CD. But just before we made the move, I discovered that my Windows machine had been doused with cat wee, right through the back grille, and its hard drive controller was getting flaky in a scary sort of way. So I commandeered my SO’s old PowerBook G4, and got me a copy of Logic Express (a belated birthday present). It’s taking a while to get everything back in gear - not for nothing does Ronan Chris Murphy write that “Home Studios are Killing Music”.
It’s a complicated piece of machinery, is Logic, so as a way of getting my bearings while also getting a few creative ya-yas out, I’ve decided to start up the Song-a-Day project again. One track every day, or at least a few a week. Length doesn’t matter, but they usually average about a minute and a half. Sound quality isn’t as important as the ideas in the piece, and most important is learning from the experience.
So here’s the first: 2006_1009_Scales.mp3 (1.2 megs)
Still very much getting the hang of the way Logic handles regions and quantization and such. At some point I’ll read a manual.
I was excited (read “squealed like a girl") to discover that alternative tunings are available just by picking them out of a menu - I’ve wanted to do pieces using just intonation (or some other non-even tempered scale) for a long time. There are literally dozens of them included, and you can define your own as well. Right on! So this one’s in a 7-limit JI, since I’ve always loved those rich, flat-flat sevenths. Other than that, there’s nothing so remarkable about this one, except maybe that I used a pair of scissors for percussion somewhere in there. Synths are the subtractive and FM ones bundled with Logic.
Friday 6 October 2006
File under Things You Really Need To Know: My office mate’s computer makes a little ‘bing’ noise every now and then. It happens that it’s the same pitch as the opening guitar note of “There She Goes” by the La’s, which runs through my head every time his computer does that.
A few years back, I noticed that the elevators at the Ryerson library make a ‘bing’ of their own that’s the first guitar note from “No Surprises” by Radiohead. And then there was the snack vending machine at UW that made a beep near-identical to the first note of “Librae Solidi Denari” by the Shamen.
Other songs that have been running through my head lately: “The List” by Metric - Sean just bought Emily Haines’s latest, which I haven’t yet heard, but every mention of her makes me think of Metric songs; and that same office mate’s a cappella rendition of the Andy Griffith Show theme (used in a recent project).
And now, since it’s apparently Catsmas, I give you Gomiya in loaf form, and Tarquin demolishing a big bag of catnip he stole out of an upper kitchen cupboard.
Friday 29 September 2006
Sitting in a darkened theatre watching Bring On The Night, which follows Sting and collaborators through the recording of and tour for Dream of the Blue Turtles. (I’m not a huge fan, especially when it comes to his lyrics, but I like a lot of his tunes.) Something about that outlandish key change at the top of the chorus, with one of his trademark melodies swooping over it just sent chills down my spine. It’s like the whole song’s just sailed over a cliff and soared up into a pitch-black sky.
La Mer by Debussy, I don’t remember the conductor or orchestra - I think it was a Time/Life box set we got at a library sale. There’s a moment when the horns rise up, lifting a single violin note with them like a wave cresting. No vibrato on this version, just a pure, sweet little zing! - perfect.
The Pixies, “Vamos”. The Surfer Rosa version. While the rest of the band chugs along frantically, Joey Santiago’s guitar, possessed by the insane ghost of a police siren, suddenly sits bolt upright and goes: vipvipvupvipvupvipvipBOAINNNNGGGgggg. (New list: favorite weird guitar noises.)
XTC, “New Town Animal In A Furnished Cage”. Near the end, Andy Partridge just lets out this scream. Not a long, drawn out holler, but a pinched, neurotic, can’t-keep-it-in-can’t-let-it-out scream that’s cut off about two microseconds after it starts. “AA!” And then he goes into the chorus. (Compare to Björk’s longer, trumpet-dive scream on “I Miss You”.)
Monday 25 September 2006
Muffy recently posted a list of “perfect album” picks, and it got me pondering what my own list would look like. I’ll stick to various sorts of pop music - it’s much easier that way. And it’s in chronological order, according to when I discovered the album, earliest first.
Camper Van Beethoven: Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (1988) - My first exposure to Camper, back in high school. Every song’s great, and when guitarist Greg and violinist Jonathan get to playing off one another, it’s just brilliant.
Thomas Dolby: The Golden Age Of Wireless (1982) - I must agree with Muffy on this one. And make sure it’s the vinyl version, with the “rock” version of “Radio Silence”. Always made me think of those British “boys’ own” annuals full of adventure stories, and from what I’ve read of the songs’ origins, there’s a grain of truth to that.
The Pixies: Doolittle (1989) - Spiky and sweet and grinning like a dog that might be about to rip your arm off but you can’t quite tell but she probably is so you’d better start backing away slowly. And I credit Frank Black for making me realize the wonder of uneven rhythmic cycles - like the 4+2 bars on “Dead” or the mesmerizing coda to “No. 13 Baby"… Actually, come to think of it, Surfer Rosa belongs here too.
Talking Heads: Remain In Light (1980) - Best album ever. It just is. I’m careful not to listen to this one too often for fear of overdoing it. Lyrically, I think David Byrne reached greater heights later on, but it’s the music on this one that gets me right there. Drop the needle on track one, side one and it’s like you’ve tripped in the dark and fallen into a pit that turns out to be the inside of some crazy clockwork machine that’s full of funk-crazed jungle creatures who do frightening and unnatural things to guitars. I have to stop gushing now, because it’s all been said before, and I might never stop.
Orbital: In Sides (1996) - lush interplay of melodies, and their trademark wonderful, oddball chord changes. (I got into this at the same time as Remain In Light, while I was deejaying at CKMS at the University of Waterloo.)
The La’s: The La’s (1990) - Their one and only album, thanks to frontman Lee Mavers’ legendary perfectionism. Good thing it’s brilliant. CD bonus tracks are hit and miss, but they don’t count.
XTC: Drums and Wires (1979) - Why didn’t I find out about this one sooner? It took me until a year or two ago. Strikes just the right balance between their even spazzier early stuff and the gentler pop tunes they ended up doing later. The bonus tracks are all swell. My favorite line is from “Helicopter”: “She’s landing on the town - look out, town!”
A.C. Newman: The Slow Wonder (2004) - There are a lot of bands that I adore but I can’t put on this list because there’s always that one song, on every album. Even my beloved New Pornos aren’t here - mostly because, while I want to love Dan Bejar and everything he stands for, his songs just don’t do it for me. Except “Jackie Dressed In Cobras”. But I digress. A.C.’s solo album is a whole pile of little pop gems.
I’m sure there are other albums that I’m forgetting. I’ll add them as I think of them.
Of course, I’m usually the type to get lost in the details rather than the big picture, so perhaps I’ll post a “Favorite Music Moments” list next.
Thursday 6 July 2006
The fever’s broken at last, musically speaking. Not quite burnt out on the New Pornographers, but they’ve finally been ousted from their stranglehold on my day-to-day playlist. By whom? Well, by the time I finally finish writing this, I’m sure it’ll have changed, but…
First, Neko Case. (Er… does that count?) Her latest, Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, is lovely - I’m especially fond of the closer, “The Needle Has Landed”. (By an odd coincidence, my dad found a little button promoting the album in the parking lot of a restaurant where we’d happened to grab takeout. It’s now adorning the strap on my bass, along with a few of Spacing’s subway buttons.)
Second, dj BC’s Glassbreaks - an online-only album of mashups pitting Philip Glass against a diverse assortment of hip-hop and rap. It’s been taken down at the request of Glass’s publisher, but I think it’s still floating round the peer-to-peer networks. Faves: “Einstein On The Beast”, “For The Glasty” and “Stand Up Dance”, partly because of the choice of Glass bits, partly because of the texture of the voices. I think that’s what I like most about rap in all its myriad forms: low-key Q-Tip and growly Busta Rhymes, the speedy, way-glottal Dizzee Rascal. (Black East London accents sound marvelously exotic to my insulated, middle-class Canadian ears. Would I still find grime so interesting if that weren’t the case? I’m not sure. Man, I feel like such a tourist.)
Finally, Señor Coconut’s latest, Yellow Fever! Following up on his cha-cha tribute to Kraftwerk, Coco sets his sights on the next logical target, Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra, and it seems to me to work better. There’s more here musically to dig into, especially on their early electro-lounge ("Tong Poo”, “Simoon")… but oddly I think it’s the spare, difficult stuff on their middle albums ("Pure Jam” and “Music Plans") that comes off best. And of course there’s Martin Denny’s old exotica chestnut “Firecracker” which, after what seems like a dozen different remakes by YMO and their remixers, finally comes full circle. Neato.
(Speaking of Kraftwerk covers, “Europe Endless” is a bluegrass tune just waiting to get out and sing. Listen to it. Is that not a banjo arpeggio? And a fiddle line? And aren’t those vocoded vocals a natural for a big soaring tenor harmony?)
Saturday 10 June 2006
The other day, I stumbled across a used Electrix FilterQueen in a store, and snapped it up - a bit of a treat for myself. Instant musical fun!
I spent a couple of hours today playing my basses and guitar through it (using my POD as a preamp), and playing with long delays on the POD. So liberating to play with sound in realtime like that, instead of recording things and poking at them using software. Haven’t been able to use my Roland hihat pedal as a foot controller, though - not sure why not, since it seems to work fine as an expression pedal with my Alesis QS synth. Got to experiment.
And if that weren’t enough, the FilterQueen also takes a phono input! So I’ve finally got my turntable working again, and am currently listening to some traditional Japanese music from my grandparents’ collection. I have no idea what it is - I think it’s a Noh play, but I can’t enter Japanese text on this computer to look it up. In any case, it’s quite interesting and sounds hilarious when I filter the bejesus out of it. ^.^
[Addendum, some minutes later: wow… this thing can turn anything - especially weepy Japanese enka ballads - into early Yellow Magic Orchestra. This thing has totally paid for itself already.]
If I weren’t running sound for the play tonight I’d totally be here all night making weird noises.
Saaaay…
Saturday 13 May 2006
Last night was a blast - great sets from Dave and Rich DeJonge and the David Hein Band. Each act did two sets, and for our second set we played as a quintet. Great three-part harmonies on “Gold Thieves”, and “Searchlights” finally came together live like it did on the CD. And we covered “Lucky” by Radiohead and “A Day In The Life”, which both benefitted enormously from having Lance and Ellen there. Hope we got a good recording.
Halfway through our breakneck rendition of “Idiot Grin”, I felt something sharp hit me in the back of the leg. I realized after a moment that it was part of one of Clark’s “hot rod” drumsticks. Hot Rods are essentially a slim bundle of narrow wooden sticks that are a little quieter than solid sticks, while still having a comfortable weight for playing, and Clark’s were disintegrating on the spot. Another piece of wood pinged off the back of my head during the bridge. After the show, Clark told me he’d bought them just when he joined Flickershow about a year and a half ago, and was curious to see how long they’d last. As it turned out… it was exactly long enough.
We’ll miss ya, Clark. Happy dadhood. :D
Clark lent me his DVDs of
The Beatles Anthology, which are fascinating viewing (though how the band ever put up with the screaming fans I will never know). I wasn’t as familiar with their early stuff, so I’ve just heard “I’ll Follow The Sun” for the first time. What a nifty melody, with that augmented fourth!
Dreams: lots of people I didn’t recognize, all living together in a big (sometimes small) house for a few days. Middle-aged… but were we on some kind of sports team? Looked briefly like my Grandma’s house (the setting of many of my dreams when I was young). There was a thunderstorm, and lightning struck an old dead tree out the back, about three times. I could see the electricity snaking across the yard and into the foundation of the house to ground itself.
I woke up speaking in the voice of a mysterious new character for my radio plays.
Tuesday 2 May 2006
There’s nothing like being awakened at 5:30 in the morning by a cat throwing up on you.
I’ve realized that I don’t really care for sax solos on rock songs… but I love rhythm parts, especially with bass/baritone sax. I’m thinking of “Good Morning” by the Beatles, and the neat arrangement on “This Song” by Ron Sexsmith with a pair of (tenor?) saxes, the lower of them doubled by an electric guitar.
Hmm. Might have to try doubling violin and piano, or violin and guitar.
Other voicings I’d like to try sometime:
- Two male voices singing an octave apart. The Fembots have some octave-doubled voices on their latest. Also, Julian’s got me listening to some early Tears For Fears, and “The Hurting” in particular does this. It’s very ‘80s, come to think of it - Depeche Mode used it all over the place; also Bowie’s “Ashes To Ashes” (and “Space Oddity"), and Talking Heads on “Mind”, the Police on “Bring On The Night” and “Spirits In The Material World"… a quick survey of an ‘80s compilation turns up A Flock Of Seagulls, INXS and Squeeze.
- Heck, just two voices in unison. I instinctively go for harmonies, but unison can be powerful too.
- And speaking of octaves, piano octaves. I just did a disco-ish track for a short film, and played the melody on a piano that way. Punchy! Ooh, and how about 12-string guitar?
I’ve finally gone and wiped my studio machine and reinstalled Windows. It’s so much perkier now - years of forgotten software layers and busted registry bits swept away… ahh, that’s better.
Unfortunately, I can’t find my Cubase install CD - gah! But I did bring home my Mbox and installed Pro Tools 7, which will be very nice to have. Next step: good monitors.
Fun rehearsal last night, in preparation for our next gig (our last one with Clark for a while - details on the Flickershow site.
