Jun. 27th, 2013

solarbird: (strictly outdoors)

Overdid it a bit singing last night at rehearsal, so today is NO TALKING DAY. Well, not much talking day. I’m okay, really, and will be fine for shows this weekend, but it just shows how much you just have to be careful with songs at the very bottom of your range.

Talking of, I’m really excited that we get to do King of Elfland’s Daughter. We’ve worked out how we’re going to make it work with me having to drop out on rhythm in order to do the bridge solo (on flute, rather than fiddle) then come back in; Wednesday will be echoing me on guitar throughout and will just step it up for that section.

Anybody have advice on what to take for a series of shows where you’re camping instead of crashing with people? There’ll be water but no electrics. I’ll be loading up on batteries and chemical cold-packs because it’s supposed to be nearly 40 for all of these shows. Uh. Nearly 100F. Ish. I am going to die. Dead dead dead. Just bring back the recordings, will you? And put them on Bandcamp. :D

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

solarbird: (music)

Hello, The Future! appeared with Glen Raphael on Geeky and Genki, talking about working the geekmusic scene – or, at least, one of them. Obviously, this ties right in to my whole series of posts on music in the post-scarcity environment, and covers a lot of the same ground, but in convenient podcast form.

A couple of the comments she and Glen made were kind of interesting and even vaguely surprising to me. First, she’s in the no-backing-tracks-live camp. I think that’s probably true for her section of the geekosphere, absolutely. But at the same time, I look at chiptunes bands, nerdcore artists, occasional geekrock people, quite overtly using the backing tracks – typically from an iPod or laptop – and wonder whether some of that won’t make its way over. It’s something I’ve explored but haven’t tried yet.

There’s material I just can’t do solo that I’d really like to do solo – if I used my phone or laptop or something. I guess for me the differential is faking it; if you’re up there with your zouk or guitar or whatever and actually playing and singing it, and not pretending to do so, is there an actual problem with an effects track or extra-instruments track? I go back and forth on it myself.

Two other takeaways, for me. First, that the “friendship buy” is also known as the never-going-to-listen-to-it buy. And that’s still very nice of them, and supportive, I think, but it doesn’t build a fanbase because they aren’t going to listen and then tell other people. I’ve seen this expressed before, but I just love that terminology.

Also, and I’ve worried about this: both Nicole and Glen asserted in strong terms that putting as much as you can out there doesn’t hurt you, even if some of it isn’t, in the end, very good. Even if some of it is kinda bad. You can talk about contaminating the potential fanbase, but what they both point out is that the listeners will do the sieving for you, so it’s better to have more production and less filtering on the artist side.

This is the total opposite of the photography scene, and the fine arts scene, which I suspect has to do with relative sizes of potential audience. But I’m just speculating.

Anyway, it’s a good overview, and they talk about lots of things other than I am in this post. It all applies to any creative endeavour, so give it a listen if you’re trying to get your work out there.

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

solarbird: (face-of-moe)

I keep trying to see this bat’leth bagpipe and not think “keytar: the next generation.” And it’s not, it’s a generalised midi controller, and acts more like a guitar than a keyboard.

But as much as they try to differentiate it from the keytaur, all I can think is KEYTAR KEYTAR KEYTAR.


Or, you know, bat’leth bagpipe

I still want to play with one tho’. If it’s actually any good, there should be entire bands made up of Klingons playing it in shows at conventions.

IF YOU DO THIS I WILL BOOK YOU FOR NWCMUSIC. I AM NOT KIDDING, I WILL DO IT.

bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth bat’leth KEYTAR KEYTAR

Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!

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