Most liked posts in thread: Talented Bantams

I’m a dab hand at reverse parking.

 

Please can someone translate this thread. I can't speak music . But very jealous of those who can.

I remember a music lesson at school - musical dictation! The teacher played something on the piano and you had to write the notes down. It was an absolute total mystery to me...and still is

 

Thanks for the kind words @Ozbantam

This is a link to my You Tube channel with fifteen videos I made over the past two years. They started out as simple guitar/vocal recordings shot straight onto my laptop. As I got more adept with using Shotcut video editor and Cubase recording software the videos became more complex and ambitious. Hope you enjoy some of them.

https://youtube.com/channel/UC-v52tn3p_LEK4cQ8NK5fLQ

 

Just old enough to be in on the punk movement from the start, though really a post-punk by nature and music. First band in 1981, at the age of 18; lasted til 85. I was a keyboardist in those days; the singer and I listened to just about everything, the guitarist was a Mod, the drummer more punk than anything else, and the bassist a skinhead. Mostly originals, mostly the singer's words and my music, with some select covers: Bauhaus, Joy Division, the Cure, Siouxsie, Lou Reed... Played a few gigs here and there; recorded a few songs for a local college's "new music" radio show; had the, um, how shall we put it?, interesting experience of being behind our bassist when he decided to rip a bandage off his arm -- it was annoying him -- and thus spurt blood all over the stage...he'd slashed his arm with a beer glass earlier in the evening, in good punk fashion. By all accounts the club's loo where he had been patched up was an even bloodier mess than the stage... We changed names on a regular basis; think it was one gig as Konspiratsia, then a few years as Psychic Response, and finally a few more years as Beyond the Pale. Brushes with greatness -- opening a few times for Chalk Circle, who went on to be big.

The guitarist and I then joined up with one of the drummers we'd had, for a keys-guitar-vocals outfit called The Backward Eternal. Don't ask; even I don't know what I meant by that name anymore! All originals; all of us wrote lyrics and music. The drummer actually didn't drum, but was the lead vocalist; I added drum programming to playing the synths. Again a few gigs, another tape that never got further than a few master copies, and another brush with greatness: first on a bill that had the Cowboy Junkies after us, and A Neon Rome as the headliners. This was just before the Junkies made it big with the Trinity Session lp.

Real life then got in the way; never got out of the rehearsal hall with the next band. Still on keys.

More real life, now including the joys of grad school. But, one of my fellow students and office-mates was a guitarist, and we hit it off. I was by now a bassist; at first we'd rehearse in our office, later in proper rehearsal spaces, but most of all in various clubs, where he'd pick up gigs or residencies. There was a weekly 2200-0100 at one club that went on for a year or so; never many people around, but a great chance to work on songs. It was a mix of his originals and covers; it was usually just the two of us, guitar and bass, but sometimes we had a second guitarist and sometimes a live drummer. We did record a CD, basically a very high-class demo, as Vile Richard. He went on to record a few more CDs under that name; I moved a thousand miles away to be a professor. Real life getting in the way again!

But eventually, alas, government funding was cut, and so the university's budget was cut, and so my department's funding was cut, and...goodbye career, hello early retirement. My field is rather small and specialised, and there were just no jobs available in this country. So, I moved a thousand miles back, hooked up again in 2017 with the singer from that first band, and am now working on various projects that should result in CDs at the least. All originals. I can produce broadcast-quality material at home, so I lay down all the musical tracks -- now a guitarist as well as bassist, keyboardist, and drum programmer -- Rob comes over and does the lead vox, and we get the backing vox in whenever the singers are available. For the CDs proper we'll make use of various old musical colleagues and friends and connexions to have a more formal studio, a live drummer for most of the songs, and a much better guitarist than I.

It is a nice way to spend retirement -- growing old disgracefully with my guitars and other assorted instruments! One of the best things my parents ever did for me was get me started in music; piano lessons from an early age onwards.

Hopefully there will someday be something to post here; you can save your rotten tomatoes and eggs for then!

RCB

 

Well, ... get some rotten tomatoes in, practice your booing and snide remarks -- he calls that music / he thinks he's a bassist -- just in case. There's a chance, probably small but still a chance, that tomorrow's set by my band will end up on Youtube or Facebook afterwards.

Our lead backing vocalist is also a member of a chamber choir, Musicata, in Hamilton, and she's co-organised and co-hosting a 40th anniversary fundraiser for the choir tomorrow (Saturday). Today had our slot for dress rehearsal. So what happens?

First off, before setting off I had to go shopping. Get in the car, drive off, and after a few seconds the driver's side mirror falls off! Sorry Nick Lowe, but I did not love to hear the sound of breaking glass in this instance! The glass simply separated from the backing. Get home and improvise a repair with an old make-up mirror, some epoxy glue, and gaffer tape. Head off for rehearsal now 30 minutes later than desired, but at least with a functioning mirror.

Get to the venue, bring in my gear, including a rack case with my bass head and stuff, and wonder -- I see a Vox AC10 here -- cool, someone in another band also has that amp -- where's my bass cab? We've been rehearsing in another band-member's basement, the cab lives there as a result, and he was supposed to bring it with him. Cue sheepish grins...Your cab?...It's over there....Where? There! But, but... Yes, he'd brought my guitar amp instead of the bass cab! Arrghh! Thankfully there was a bass combo there that I could use -- but it's not the same as my rig. And I want - prefer - the sound of my rig! Growl!!

And then, someone's dog wanders in and around. Cats I like; cats I get along with; dogs I don't. And they can sense it. Sorry, dog people.

So, as we start our rehearsal we have one bassist who could not in any way be described as gruntled. End result is me hitting a wrong note on the first note of the first song! Was supposed to be a slide down to an A, and I hit the B instead!. And there is just no way that that note works at that point in the song, and no way to improvise some sort of flourish to get onto the A. I suppose it's an even worse clanger because I wrote the song, words AND music! Start again... Thankfully, things then went well. Not quite 'poor dress, good show' but perhaps still enough screw-ups so far to lead to a smoothly-running show!

And I will just use the bass combo that's there, to save having to set the levels all over again right before the set. It sounds good. (It's one of the smaller Hartke's.)

I suppose I should mention that we're called 'On Borrowed Time'. Not just because that movie is one of the lead vocalist's favourites, but also because we the senior and permanent members of the band have all been close enough to death to be now on first-name terms with the Grim Reaper. Yorkshire black humour at its finest!

RCB

 

Talented is pushing it, but I used to do a bit of concert photography a few years ago.

https://www.thesleepingshaman.com/live-reviews/church-of-misery-sedulus-pist-academy-3-manchester-28-07-2014/

 

Absolutely. I have a music room in my basement fully of acoustic and electric guitars, basses, mandolins, banjos, various lap side instruments, harmonicas, plus a good computer, interface, mics etc to allow me to record myself.

I really do wish I'd had proper music lessons when I was young. Most of my playing is self taught. I understand some music theory - chord construction etc - but I can't sight read music. I'm very much an 'ear' musician, which has certain advantages but also many downsides. I keep telling myself I must apply myself learn more scales, modes etc and to sight read, but I never have the patience for it. Lockdown was my big opportunity to do it, but I spent it down a deep video and audio recording rabbit hole instead. Oh well.

 

Always be careful taking the mick out of drummers. They hit things for fun and a flight case of cymbal stands makes lifting a 4x12 cab feel like picking up a portable radio.

We had a singer came and rehearsed with us a few times without being great and the drummer had already taken a bit of a dislike to him when he tried to crack the joke "what do you call a guy who hangs around with musicians?", the drummer's response was "madly violent". The singer didn't come back.

 

Ha ha ha.

I'm well aware that good drummers are worth their weight in gold. I've also helped carry our drummer's stand case on many occasions!
But I do still like the library joke.

Q. How many guitarists does it take to play the riff from Smoke on the Water?

A. All of them. (I realise this dates me badly)


Q. How long does it take to tune a banjo?

A. No one knows.

 

For me, no. I'm rubbish at the improvisational stuff, I guess I'm quite good at copying (although I usually prefer to do my own thing) but I generally just work stuff out through repetition. I don't have perfect pitch so I'm not very good at following what someone is playing by sound but weirdly I can follow visually so if I can see their hands on a fretboard or keyboard then I'm OK.

 

It's about tomato season isn't it? Get yer rotten ones ready!

After a long time I have found a recording of the fundraiser we played at back in April -- an unedited and unproduced raw recording of the live stream of the whole 8-hour day. And boy is it raw -- it sounds like a lot of the bootlegs one used to buy back in the day! The vocals are almost inaudible, the piano unfortunately isn't -- the pianist admitted to playing the wrong song at one point! Drums & bass & guitar are alright though. I must say it sounded alright live; on stage one couldn't hear the piano, and the vocals were clear. Strange how the sound carried, or not, in that space.

bass: J. Tamm / drums: D. Jones / guitar: O. Alders / vocals: R. Tratch / backing vocals: B. Kittle, P. Marques

Jump ahead to 3:48:50 to get our set: (all songs copyrighted by the composers)

3:48:50 Beautiful Disasters (words & music J. Tamm)
3:53:13 Sunlight Fades (words R. Tratch, music P. Marques & J. Tamm)
3:55:40 Waltz of the Dead Flowers (words R. Tratch, music J. Tamm)
3:58:40 13 Steps (words J. Tamm, music S. McNab)
4:02:10 Rise (words R. Tratch, music J. Tamm)

4:05:30 the end, unless you want to watch me packing up my bass and pedalboard...



It was fun, and way to just get out and play in front of people again. Our aim though is to be recording the material properly come the autumn, as opposed to playing out.

RCB

 

Ambitious project. Sounded quite 70s prog to me. Shame about the virtually nonexistent vocals and the drums too loud. Live recording is a bit of a lottery, although my band have had reasonable success with just a handheld Zoom recorder in the past, and then tarted the sound up a bit afterwards in a DAW. Good luck with the studio recording.

 

Enjoyed that a lot. Multiple influences from the 60s & 70s on show there. Shame you aren't still doing it.

 

I'm in the middle of producing a band project in Cubase at the moment. An original song written by our singer. Everyone has recorded and sent me their parts separately and I'm putting it together and mixing it. As inevitably happens, when you're each coming up with parts without being in a room together, everyone overplays, so it's a mammoth task to edit it so that it doesn't sound like the kitchen sink being thrown at the wall. It's taken me squillions of hours to get it into shape and that's before I've EQ-ed it, added any reverb etc and properly mixed it. I've now heard it so often that I feel like I'm singing it in my sleep! I think it will be worth the effort though. When it's finished I'll post it on here for your appraisal, although I don't know if you can post sound-only files on here.
In the meantime, here's one I did earlier:

 

I must look into that app -- sounds like something we could put to very good use.

Yes, I suppose the half-decade or so from one's mid-teens onwards do play an outsize role in one's musical development -- certainly they did for me. I went into them without really any preferred genre and came out of them certain that my place was amongst the various splinters of the punk explosion. I'd love to get the band to cover 'Not Great Men' or 'Damaged Goods,' but for an audience over here they're probably too obscure.

Agree about inspiration. As you say, we'll just keep at it and eventually the right solution will arrive.

The Lorries started around 80/1 and went on for about a decade; their fifth and last LP came out in 91 but by then only the singer/guitarist Chris Reed remained of the 'classic' lineup. The same surname appears in both bands, and though not rare it isn't at Smith- or Jones-level popularity. Thus I wondered if there might be a connexion.

RCB

 

My band supported a band who supported a band who supported a band who supported Radiohead so we were very obviously nearly massive.

Actually, I did beat Noel to the main riff of Wonderwall which meant that I subjected my mates to quite a bit of swearing when I first heard What's The Story...

 

I'm tone deaf and can't hold a tune so therefore wasting my time in this thread .