Today and tomorrow are the last days that the “cyber2015” code will work at checkout. It’s for 20% off everything on our Bandcamp site – not just Bone Walker, the long-list Grammy Award nominated album, but everything, including the Free Court of Seattle books, Faerie Blood and Bone Walker. Plus everything else on the merch page.
plus other stuff too
Also, I’ve just handed off the single to Conflikt. I wish I could just throw this out at you now, but I can’t, it’s a 2016 release and I did it for them, so I have to be good and have to wait. Which is really hard, because I’m not good at that. I MADE SHINY, LOOK AT IT!!!1! is just too much of my nature, I admit it.
ngngngngngngngh oh well. I guess I’ll just go bury myself in some other project. (but shiny!)
Finished up the single, “Thirteen,” for Conflikt; I’ve got a release candidate sitting on the hard drive, just need to run it by a couple of listeners to make sure I’ve not done something foolish I haven’t noticed.
It’s pretty crunchy, which is lots of fun. Not much overdrive on the octave mandolin, but that’s because it didn’t need any – it sounds all trashed out already. ♥
It’s also the first time I’ve recorded anything on the Godin A5 fretless bass. I’m doing very little fretless-specific playing (not zero, but very little), but I’m certainly spending a lot of time hanging out on the low fifth string. Subwoofers will have things to do. n/
I also experimented with a new technique, recording both a clean bass take and a take through a couple of really cool efx pedals and an amp that clearly wants to be making cookie monster metal, then mixing together. That was awesome.
I think I felt like making a statement here. I’m really proud of Bone Walker, but elfmetal it ain’t, particularly not in the “metal” category. This is kind of resetting that pointer a bit. Recalibrating.
I’d like to link you to the track, but I can’t, because first, it’s still an RC, not a released track, and second, it’s going to premiere at Conflikt, so they get it first, and third, I kind of have to ask permission from the person whose song I’m covering (with new lyrics) here – I got permission to use it for Conflikt, but not to put it up as a free download after. I just didn’t think about it. But I think they’ll say okay, I just have to ask first.
Now to see if I can get “We’re Not Friends” to come together in time for rehearsals. I sure hope so, it’s got a hell of a lot of good parts!
Use cyber2015 at checkout for 20% off all music, includingBone Walker, the long-list Grammy Award nominated album.
Woah, VCON starts tomorrow! I’m on a bunch of panels and my concert is Friday at 7pm, with the possibility of an ish on that because I don’t know if that includes the setup time.
Because I’m just goofy, I’m bringing like three instruments just for the show, plus a few others for a panel, and I’m doing some really old material and a couple of things I’ve just written. BRAND NEW AND FRESH FOR YOU!
This is a raw single mic recording I just made of the “Thirteen” riff, no effects at all, barely any compression for levelling, but it’ll give you the idea:
I love how overdriven it sounds even though there’s not a hint of actual overdrive. I’m still getting a feel for it and a SRS BSNS PRO probably wouldn’t play it out yet but SINCE WHEN HAS THAT STOPPED ME? Muah ha ha!
Relatedly, Part Two of the Doctor Who series opener… surprise! It was pretty good! I’ve got a nit or two to pick, but nothing major, and again, several bits I really quite liked. Still on probation, but this is the best it’s been in a while. I don’t know what happened, but I’m glad it did.
Anyway – see you at VCON, I hope!
said count by the minutes and count by the hours
you’ll see a future that you never knew
but the path’s all covered with the blood of strangers
raggedy man, there’s too many of you
Well-known filk band Vixy & Tony have this song, “Thirteen,” that Vixy wrote. It’s on their previous album, and I liked it the first time I heard it. So I wrote a song around their song (a “filk”) that made it about Doctor Who, which, of course, makes it correct for only the geekiest of venues.
I don’t get to play the song often, partly because of the venue issues, but also because arranging Tony’s guitar part into something that you can legitimately play on the zouk isn’t easy. Functionally, it demands special tuning. And for one song? Well, I’ve already talked about what a pain in the ass that was to try to do with a single instrument on stage. (Moral: Don’t.)
Now, Anna has had an octave mandolin for a long time, called Autumn. It’s not a zouk, but it’s a relative. I haven’t liked playing Autumn in the past, because something about it hurts my hands. I don’t know what or why, but my fingers get achy and weird. So I didn’t think of borrowing Autumn just for this one song (pre-tuning to the open-power-E tuning “Thirteen” needs) until today. So I finally did, and tried it.
The resulting sound is trashy as fuck. I love it. And it’s entirely unexpected. Normally – in regular tuning – Autumn is pretty quiet. Autumn’s a little reedy, a bit woody, and very traditional-instrument-sounding in the way that my Irish bouzouki and mandolin aren’t.
But bring that tuning down a few steps, release some of that neck tension, and suddenly Autumn is knocking back whiskey, smashing the end off of bottles, and trying to start knife fights. Who knew an octave mandolin could be such a cheap drunk?
I’m all, “Hey, Autumn. I like this version of you. Maybe we might ought to get to know each other better.” I’ve been wanting to do some esoteric tunings – I was fiddling around with an open-sus-2-major tuning not long ago. Maybe this might just work out.
I’ve been writing songs again for the first time since all those eye surgeries, and the Clallam Bay Comicon show is going to be any of them I can get to a really solid first draft. There’s going to be at least two: “Thirteen” and “Supervillain for I Love You.” There aren’t enough supervillain love songs, so I’m writing one. And will likely write more.
There’s at least a shot at “We’re Not Friends” and I can’t rule out “Everybody’s Famous (at the NSA)” and maybe another one. “Everybody’s Famous” is pretty fucked up, I’m just putting that out there now.
Here, have an orchid picture. I semi-inherited this plant; I found it abandoned and pretty dried up. But it recovered and now it has strange little flowers.
So what is
supervillain for I love you?
supervillain for I care?
supervillain for I need you?
supervillain do you dare?
Working on a couple of new songs – one that I’ve been sitting on unfinished for a long time, another that’s brand new, a third that’s an adaptation of another song but which I have to take apart and re-engineer because the original is guitar and I don’t play that. Also, it’s written in DADGAD and then partially-capoed two stops (so.. EBEABE?) and yeah, no.
So I’m playing with a drop-E powerchord open tuning that looks something like this:
E2 E3 / E3 E4 / B3 B3 / E5 E5
I don’t want to take it all the way down to D-like and then capo up because it gets kind of flabby down at that D.
This isn’t a tuning I would use for lots of things, but I’ve played with it (well, a variant of it – E2 E3 / D3 D4/ B3 B3 / E5 E5, Edrop3sus2) some before and it’s got a nice heavy sound. Which is not really where the original song I’m modifying goes, but kind of is where my version goes, so I think that’s okay.
I’m hoping I can get it playable for this weekend at Anglicon. That’d be cool.
A second one that’s completely new has a chorus that’s pretty much together and which is made pretty much completely of pop hook and I regret nothing. SO MANY POWER CHORDS. So many.
But the the verses are not happy yet. I seem to have written the ending of the song and getting back to the beginning is problematic.
The third one is complicated as hell and was supposed to be on Dick Tracy Must Die but there ware big swaths of it I never could actually make work. Turns out the solution was hidden in a rhythm change, so that’s kind of a huge surprise.
I wanted to write today about how Jupiter Ascending is basically the Cronenberg Dune with the “Chosen One” arc swapped out in favour of “Hidden Princess” – an arc that fell out of favour in Hollywood live-action several decades ago – but I don’t quite have my head wrapped around it yet. It’s still percolating, I guess.
But that gets back to the songwriting, funnily enough. I don’t seem to swap back and forth between “songwriting” and “blog writing” writing very well. So if blog posts lately seem a little hinky? That’s what’s up.
but I know that
when I see you
that it’s true even so
that the future has a place for me
that the future has a place for all of us now
I’m going to have to go upstairs to practice this synth part because GEORGE WILL NOT LEAVE ME ALONE WHEN I PLAY IT. And he purrs like crazy. What are you hearing, cat?
All instruments (real, MIDI, otherwise) are complete. Flute was the last to the post, and I got that done over the weekend.
Vocals this week; final mixes next. Fun announcement hopefully shortly thereafter, and maybe not the one you’d expect given all the other things I’ve just said. There may be some surprises included in all this, oh, stuff. But I’m waiting on word from other people.
Once I know, you’ll know.
I have my first outside feedback on this album, or one song from it. A release candidate recording made its way further out than I intended. It leaked, like Doctor Who scripts leaking leaked; I had no idea until I got reaction mail about it on Sunday. So I’ve asked permission to quote that reaction mail, because I don’t mean to brag, or maybe I do, but this is the kind of reaction you really want to quote. It comes from an area pro, someone I know but not super-well, and involves the words “superb” and “addictive” and also “knockout,” and those aren’t all the good words.
