I haz band

digitalscream

I can't remember if I've mentioned this on here, but I left my last band (BlackHawkDown) in January and had pretty much sworn off doing it again on the basis that I was sick of musicians.

The idea was to write music, find a singer, get shit recorded first and foremost and then maybe recruit a band and tour it if it was any good. After months of the depressing search you're all familiar with, I found a singer...and then randomly had the rest of what is now the entire band contact me separately.

In short, the whole "no band" thing didn't last long, and what we've produced so far has put a whacking great smile on my face. Here's the first track we wrote, taken at the beginning of the second session:

http://www.digitalscream.org.uk/music/new_band/20130806/Wall of Haze.mp3

Sure, there are mistakes and the odd missed note here and there, but...well, I'm actually quite hopeful about this one

John_P

Awesome!!!     Sounds like it all came together pretty naturally, which the best way.    And that tune has some hooks and from what I can hear he has a good voice AND you're all enjoying it

digitalscream

John_P said:

Awesome!!!     Sounds like it all came together pretty naturally, which the best way.    And that tune has some hooks and from what I can hear he has a good voice AND you're all enjoying it

Aye, thanks - it really did just work straight away, while we were all expecting it to be a long and painful slog. 

Just one thing. "He" is a "She"

The great thing is that it's only the drummer and I who've got experience of originals bands. The others have only ever done covers, and the bassist hasn't even been in a band before.

I think I got lucky

John_P

digitalscream said:

Aye, thanks - it really did just work straight away, while we were all expecting it to be a long and painful slog. 

Just one thing. "He" is a "She"  

The great thing is that it's only the drummer and I who've got experience of originals bands. The others have only ever done covers, and the bassist hasn't even been in a band before.

I think I got lucky

Oops - I'll have another listen lol       edit:   yes it's obviously a girl....  I think I just expected a guy for some reason lol

One thing about musicians from cover bands I've found is that they are often (not always of course!) more organised and have their gigging act together.

digitalscream

John_P said:

Oops - I'll have another listen lol       edit:   yes it's obviously a girl....  I think I just expected a guy for some reason lol

One thing about musicians from cover bands I've found is that they are often (not always of course!) more organised and have their gigging act together.

I've had some of these songs in my head for a while, and I just couldn't ever see a guy hitting the notes that I was hearing. All my mates laughed at my obsession with finding a good female singer, but after hearing it they've all admitted that I might've had a point

The singer and the other guitarist don't really have a lot of experience with cover bands. Which is fine - it means there aren't many bad habits that I have to break them of; I'm very particular when it comes to professionalism at gigs.

One thing that I'm really happy with on that recording is the last note of the solo, where it just smoothly drifts into feedback without getting out of control. I've finally figured out how to keep the amp just on the edge of going mental, and riding the guitar's volume knob to keep it under control. For context, I've been struggling to do that properly for...well, forever, really

monquixote

Sounding very good Lee. 

You likely to play anywhere near me or is it too early for that kind of thing?

ddlooping

Congrats, Lee, I hope you get loads of fun out of it.

digitalscream

monquixote said:

Sounding very good Lee. 

You likely to play anywhere near me or is it too early for that kind of thing?

It's pretty early for that - I'm planning to get a couple of tracks recorded and launch the FB page around November, then have an experimental gig with a local opening slot towards the end of the year. Proper gigging will probably start in Feb next year...

Cambridge doesn't seem like a particularly onerous journey, though...that's somewhere near you, isn't it?

ddlooping said:

Congrats, Lee, I hope you get loads of fun out of it.

Well, it's working so far

monquixote

Yeah I work in Cam.

digitalscream

monquixote said:

Yeah I work in Cam.

In that case, I may well be in touch towards the end of the year to figure out which are the best venues

PolarityMan

The clean chord strums really remind me of until it sleeps by Metallica. Not bad recording quality either. What did you use?

digitalscream

PolarityMan said:

The clean chord strums really remind me of until it sleeps by Metallica. Not bad recording quality either. What did you use?

Interesting. I hadn't thought of that...that part's not mine, though; that's the other guitarist

The recording's just the audio extracted from my Panasonic HDC-TM15 camera. It compresses things to an extreme, and the low end response ain't great, but it's still pretty decent. Better than the exaggerated low-end of a Line6 Backtrack IMO.

PolarityMan

wow....When we record from a phone or camera all we get is clipping! O_o 

digitalscream

PolarityMan said:

wow....When we record from a phone or camera all we get is clipping! O_o 

Yeah, those Panasonic mics are excellent

viz

Enjoyed that. Is it panning a lot? I'm deaf in 1 ear and for some reason the guitar seems to fade in & out

digitalscream

Thanks

The camera mic is stereo, so there may be odd things happening in there. Haven't tried listening to it in mono, because I have at least 1.5 functioning ears...

viz

I'd say it's a fair bet to say you have more than the average number of ears! (though actually there are 9000 of us in the UK, and the following people have been DIOE: lewis carroll, julius caesar, 25% of dalmation dogs, Rowan Williams,Paul Stanley from Kiss, Rob Lowe from Wayne's World, Stephanie Beacham, Nico from Velvet Underground, and does Vincent Van Gogh count?  

digitalscream

Hehe...I was actually referring to the fact that I have about 10% loss in my left ear (fairly even frequency-wise) and 16kHz tinnitus in my right.

Funnily enough, my dog's had something called Horner's disease, which is effectively nerve damage causing paralysis down one side of his head. We've got most of the muscles working again (dogs' regenerative powers are actually incredible), except the bits that move his ears. He has real trouble locating sounds these days

I only mention this because it's interesting. I don't think he particularly cares for my music.

viz

Haha - well he's probably got monophonic hearing then. He can still identify sound location if it's more than 1 sec long by moving his head around and judging by the timbre, but he can't do what you stereophonic chaps do, which is detect the difference in arrival time of a signal to each ear and identify location that way. We (well, dogs and cats) twitch their ears better to amplify the signal, not to identify location. By the time they twitch towards the signal, they already know the location (sometimes they do an initial twitch to amplify, then they calculate location by time differential, then they retwitch). I digress.

OilCityPickups

Very nice ... you were right to have stuck to your guns and found a female singer fits perfectly with the material ... which I like very much. Seems to be a bunch of us saddling up and climbing back on the band/live gigging pony Keep at it and hurry up and gig in the London area ... I'll drag a possy along!

Roaster

Hi Lee, best compliment I can give you is that usually with other people's tracks after a few seconds it doesn't catch my ear, that's it, but I listened all the way through and really liked it, good melody, nothing I had heard before and "Up my street" love to hear a studio version of that mate. Keith