I’m working on Fake Drumkit part for Song for a Free Court/Anarchy Now, and it needed more real drums, so I got out…

Oh, right, it’s been a while since I’ve talked about Fake Drumkit. So the musical shtick behind the band – as opposed to the political/theme idea – is, “what if a bunch of elves heard metal and thought WE HAVE TO DO THIS” and used what they had.

Since that includes a drumkit, I make what I call Fake Drumkit. It’s made of real drums like bodhran and djembe and bongo and wood block and metal and glass, and fake drums like big sampled bass taiko or at least things which sound kind of like taiko. Anarchy Now also has three tuned glass cymbals. It’s gonna be awesome. n/

Anyway, I have a few drums recorded (and all those glass cymbals), but it needs more. And the bongos sound right so far. Not as bongos – I don’t play them as bongos, don’t expect that – but as midrange drums.

But I don’t have a stand, which makes them a pain to mic. So I drilled a hole in the little plastic bridge that holds the two bongo drums together, and epoxyed down one of those metal threaded rings that are on every mic stand ever and I don’t know why.

Anybody know what these are supposed to be for? They’re no good at anchoring mic clips, so that can’t be it.

I clamped it down with wax paper and tape, to keep the epoxy from sticking to the wrong things (like the clamp), and let it sit until this evening. Then I tried it tonight.

I’m holding the mic stand up, to be safe, but I didn’t need to.

Hey, it even looks kind of intentional:

Lots of room for underneath microphones

I’m a little worried about leverage on heavier strikes, but so far, so good.

Fake Drumkit is a lot of work, but I like it when it comes together. Wait’ll you hear the track for Something’s Coming. It’s not half as complex as this, but it’s totally bombastic – kind of 80s hair metal, really. BOOM BOOM BOOM awesome XD

eta: This one didn’t last. Here’s the new, still low-cost, and much stronger version I made later.

The soundtrack album may not be finished yet, but I’m looking for people who would post reviews (50-100 words or more, about the length of an Amazon customer review) if they received an advance review copy. Is that you?

You don’t have to review music regularly to do so, and you don’t have to promise what kind of review (positive, negative, etc) – just give it some actual words and thought. And it has to be posted publicly online somewhere.

Interested, or have a pointer? Here’s the contact form. Let me know. Thanks!

Aside from tampering recklessly in god’s domain, and catching up on some media, I spent mine playing with Leannan Sidhe. Thanks to everyone who turned out on such a hot night! If you’re looking for the free downloads, they’re right here. And thank you again to The Dreaming Comics and Games for having us!

Life-Size Spiderman Sold Separately
(photo Angela Korra’ti)

We also watched the new Doctor Who, which was… nowhere near as good as the 50th, but so much better than the awful Christmas Special departure for Matt Smith. I’m with Anna on Moffat’s sexism, but at least Clara’s feeling like a character again, finally. And Peter Capaldi as The Doctor is extremely strong out of the gate.

It’s not up to Legend of Korra levels though. If you bailed out during the sluggish first year, I don’t blame you – but since then, Legend of Korra became pretty awesome. The turnaround happened about halfway through year two, and year three has just been insane. Seriously, start with the run-up to “The First Avatar” and catch up from there, it’s totally worth your time.

So that’s what I did. But I digress – what’d you do this weekend?

I may have spent my Sunday off – my first day off in like three weeks – debugging UNIVAC Star Trek game code that was ported to TRS-80 Level II BASIC some decades ago. That may be a thing that happened.

(Well, I found some bugs. No, I did. One crashing! That doesn’t happen anymore. Also, now if you enter your name wrong, instead of hanging, it names you Captain Dunsel. It seemed appropriate.)

Here, have a copy of the audiocassette. Or a printout, if you’d prefer that. 16K required.

Did you know Level II BASIC’s built-in programme editor was based heavily on TECO? I feel a bit like Scarf Doctor stumbling across Shemp Doctor’s TARDIS console room and tin whistle. Or maybe it’s kind of like I spent Sunday afternoon flossing out my brain. For SCIENCE! Or something.

It’s a pedal that’s an effects switch-in box, but it’s also just an A/B switch, so you can just switch between two devices. The two top plugs are from my zouk and mandolin, the output is to the recorder, I can pick which I’m recording. We’re doing this so we can record tomorrow’s show (6pm, The Dreaming, 5226 University Way, Seattle) with separate tracks for all instruments.

Note the extra cable sticking out the right side, which is connected to nothing. It’s there because the box won’t work without something being plugged in there. It doesn’t use anything that’s plugged in there; it just won’t work unless something is.

So I plugged in a signal-reduction cable. If we’re gonna have basically a noise antenna plugged in on stage to make this dumbass pedal work, I’m by gods gonna use a noise reducing noise antenna.

Honestly some days I don’t even know. This isn’t as bad as the USB-cable-to-nowhere I’ve got in the server room to make the KVM switch work, but it’s close. At least that cable plugs into something on both ends.

This came up in talking about posters for this Saturday’s joint show with Leannan Sidhe at the Dreaming. (6pm, 5225 Univeristy Way NE, Seattle, hope you’ll be there.) What matters more in a poster graphic: relationship to music or dynamism?

I had came up with this poster design:

YELLING

The background image is from a comic, drawn comic style, which makes sense because hi, comic book and gaming store, and we’re doing some related songs, so it all works. I think it’s quite dynamic and eye-catching, which was my primary consideration.

Shanti, quite correctly really, felt it didn’t relate to her music, and she came up with some other imagery for the background. That’s what made the official poster:

Godking Owl Has No Pity For You

It’s a good image, I like it. It is more evocative of her music. It’s also lower contrast, and less dynamic from a distance. The eyeflow is still good, but… as a designer, I think it’s less attention-grabby.

So, as someone seeing these posters, which matters more to you? A graphic that is more grabbing (but not as evocative of the music style), or one that grabs less attention (and thus makes people less likely to see it) but which is more evocative of the music on some level?

And does it matter if you already know the music or not?

I tried to fit this into a poll, but couldn’t quite get it together in my head. So I’m just asking outright, in text. Do you think relationship of poster graphic to music is more important than eye-catchiness in show posters? Would you even think about the two if you went to a show, or would you forget about it as soon as you walked in?

No, that’s not the new album title. The people on the other side of the top of the hill have started doing Something which smells occasionally like asphalt, and occasionally like rubber, and sounds like a combination of drills, compressors, and dumpster juggling. We can’t see them from here, but wow, can we hear them. Any ideas what they’re doing? ‘Cause we don’t know.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada just made it easier to book gigs – the work-permit requirement to perform anywhere serving food and drinks as a major part of their business model has been removed! Well, mostly – you can’t work anywhere on an ongoing basis without a work permit, and that includes bars and restaurants. But still!

This is a big deal for some of us. Everyone else, carry on as usual.

We have a joint show this weekend! It’s at The Dreaming in Seattle, two sets, some Supervillain music, some Leannan Sidhe music, a few covers, it’ll be fun and awesome. Here’s the Facebook event page for the show.

Print resolution version of the poster (which is jointly by Shanti and me) here, if you want to, oh, print things and post them places and stuff. That would be awesome.

I may have stolen the circles in the poster design from another music graphic of the past. One hint: the reddish one should be blue if you want a more obvious match. You get a zillion music geek points if you can figure out the source. 😀

See, these are simpler, but still better/stronger drums. They also sit better in the mix. This isn’t a final mix even in this sample, but it’s a lot closer than just yesterday. Less is often more, and this is a case where less was definitely more.

At this rate, I should maybe be just playing every possible drum strike and then excising all the ones I don’t actually want, like subtractive sculpture, a giant marble block of drum strikes that I slowly excise in the DAW. I kind of seem to end up there anyway. XD

(You can play the previous version here, for comparison.)