Last night Jonas forgot his bass at home and had to borrow one from our sister band Ampel (sister band=bands you share a rehearsal room with). After playing for about an hour we grew restless and tired and bored… not really a good sign when rehearsing ones own music. But anyway, Rasmus started messing about with a cheap toy microphone also found in Ampels equipment box…. and then suggested that we record a song using only other peoples equipment.
This is what we improvised with Ableton Live.
If you want to hear the equipment played in a live setting you can go here on the 6th of sept. Though it will be the actual owners of the equipment that are playing on that occasion. If you do go, don’t tell Ampel we borrowed their equipment…. we have yet to ask them =)
Whenever you read music magazine article where a famous producer says something like “it’s terrible, because now a days bands just _____”. This is an opportunity to create something unique, by going out and doing whatever it was, to an extreme.
It’s like Like Miles Davies said-
Do it once it’s a mistake
Twice it’s clever
Thrice becomes a style
Fourth time it’s a cliche
Fifth is retro
Sixth is the pastiche
Seventh kicks off the reunion tour
8&9 are ‘post’ something or rather, and gets you to double digits, which is where it’s been taken it too far and it’s just not funny anymore.
I’ve spent too much time reading about music instead of making it. (and writing for that matter too)
Today on the train over to Copenhagen I got to play a bit more with the Bhajis Loops sequencer for Palm OS. Bought a 2nd hand Tungsten T3 exclusively to mess with Bhajis. This may seem a bit excessive, however the Tungsten cost 335Dkr (including delivery). So all in all pretty good value for money (read: Extremely good value for money! In case you didn’t catch the understatement)
What follows is a short track I made entirely with Bhajis.
Also in the above picture are my new Etymotic ER4s (the little blue bit in my ear). Very good. Isolation is fantastic, sound reproduction is top notch and the accessory bag has lots of little useful bits (had to use the slightly bigger ear buds, apparently my ear holes are bigger than normal). However they are NOT earbuds for moving about with. They have to be dug into the ear canals to reproduce the bass end properly, and as such they transmit a lot of low end rumbles through the earbud wires. Still great sound, if you’re not biking with them.
Now in the words of Oliver Gillet “Go eat ya Bhajis!”. I my own words “Stick that in ya iPhone and smoke it!” (Argh, you’re both reading this on your iPhones, arn’t you?!)
My first electric guitar was a Danelectro that cost me 89GBP including shipment. I had it for a long time before I got an amp, which most guitarists would say is pretty essential for an electric guitar. But missing an amplifier was probably what got me so accustomed to it’s acoustic sound, so much so that I now prefer the Danelectro’s acoustic sound to the plugged in sound!
I’ve always thought about putting a piezo pickup in it in order to capture that great acoustic tone. This is what I spent this my evening doing (with a bit of soldering help from Jonas, Tak!). The fruits of this labour can be heard in the below improvisation. Recorded with lots of processing and an Ebow.
The guitar has baritone strings for the low end, but standard E and A for the high, so that all the strings are wound.
New tuners had to be installed to carry the tension load…. and the neck has been made fretless.
Eventhough we were officially called Alastop (sans the first ‘t’) on the festival calender, we convinced the check-in guy at the reception to let us in into the festival grounds and played our set on the DSB Wildcard scene. Pics on Rasmuses Flickr- note the photos varied colour palette.
Twas brain boilingly hot!… Record spring temperatures in Copenhagen colluded with a wacky, but well-intentioned lighting guy, who was armed with about 15 spotlights pointed exactly at my head. I was dripping by the end of the concert, and our songs are not exactly high energy stuff.
