As an engineer I have the advantage of being also a professional musician with 30 years of experience. I've studied music thoeory and all that. I also had a bit of experience with analog recording,
Maybe you're good at electronics, or something like that? Or good at business?
My unfair advantage is that my instrument of choice for the past 20 years is a bunch of mixers, eqs, compressors, delays, etc feeding back into eachother. I have a knack for unconventional signal flow, and a sense for the breaking point of feedback that is like second nature.
My unfair advantage is that my instrument of choice for the past 20 years is a bunch of mixers, eqs, compressors, delays, etc feeding back into eachother. I have a knack for unconventional signal flow, and a sense for the breaking point of feedback that is like second nature.
I guess some is the same as you. I spent years mixing between gigs, and everyone asked for me for that same reason... As a musician, playing on those same stages, I knew exactly what it was like for them, so I'd just treat it like what I wish I had when I was up there on the stage, often the night or week before
But I am a bit of a hack of all trades, I do light electronics, build and design stomp boxes and other circuits when I'm bored, etch my own PCBs and so on. I program microprocesesors (Arduino, Raspberry Pi and others). I've been programmer dude for almost as long as a musician of which debugging at the enterprise level is my day job for the last 14 years.
I still gig 3-8 times a month, write and record at home etc. I have a bit of a hobby with photography and video (used to do some light pro photography early-mid 2000s). I don't know, it's a long list of stuff I do pretty good but not guru good, but some of it is guru good, hell I don't know, I just know I have my fingers in enough crap to keep me entertained 24/7.
Tonight's todo list:
1. Finish up configuring a VPN I setup on a Raspberry pi.
2. Brush up on a few new covers for band practice tomorrow night.
3. Test out this new raw 10" touch screen I want to use on one of my Raspberry pi's.
4. My normal guitar practice routine which is pretty much relearning every possible inversion/arpeggio/dyad/triad/voicing on the guitar - cuz I have to improvise a portion at gigs and I want to be more free under the fingers than I am now. I mean I can play a pentatonic box all night long but that only takes you so far when the chords/keys are a changin' up under you.
Damn... I better get on it.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
I guess some is the same as you. I spent years mixing between gigs, and everyone asked for me for that same reason... As a musician, playing on those same stages, I knew exactly what it was like for them, so I'd just treat it like what I wish I had when I was up there on the stage, often the night or week before
But I am a bit of a hack of all trades, I do light electronics, build and design stomp boxes and other circuits when I'm bored, etch my own PCBs and so on. I program microprocesesors (Arduino, Raspberry Pi and others). I've been programmer dude for almost as long as a musician of which debugging at the enterprise level is my day job for the last 14 years.
I still gig 3-8 times a month, write and record at home etc. I have a bit of a hobby with photography and video (used to do some light pro photography early-mid 2000s). I don't know, it's a long list of stuff I do pretty good but not guru good, but some of it is guru good, hell I don't know, I just know I have my fingers in enough crap to keep me entertained 24/7.
Tonight's todo list:
1. Finish up configuring a VPN I setup on a Raspberry pi.
2. Brush up on a few new covers for band practice tomorrow night.
3. Test out this new raw 10" touch screen I want to use on one of my Raspberry pi's.
4. My normal guitar practice routine which is pretty much relearning every possible inversion/arpeggio/dyad/triad/voicing on the guitar - cuz I have to improvise a portion at gigs and I want to be more free under the fingers than I am now. I mean I can play a pentatonic box all night long but that only takes you so far when the chords/keys are a changin' up under you.
Damn... I better get on it.
You're busy! Great! Pentatonic scales can do a lot, just don't think of the normal box you'd use on a certain chord, just try others. It's mental what you can do.
You're busy! Great! Pentatonic scales can do a lot, just don't think of the normal box you'd use on a certain chord, just try others. It's mental what you can do.
Yep, and I wasn't cracking on pentatonic scales but that one box everyone tends to gravitate to that just happens to be pentatonic.
The beauty of pentatonic is if you learn all 5 positions of it correctly and learn to land on chord tones well, you can play over any progression that exists, regardless if it changes keys, in any single position on the neck without moving. Of course that is expandable and you can move, but it's just to make the point of how strong they are and how important knowing them and the inversions are.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Everything about that song is cool. It was on my list of songs to perform when I did that live video series a few years ago but there was just too much cool stuff I couldn't cover with just a guitar and a vocal - I might have to try again sometime.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
Everything about that song is cool. It was on my list of songs to perform when I did that live video series a few years ago but there was just too much cool stuff I couldn't cover with just a guitar and a vocal - I might have to try again sometime.
I love the trade offs happening between the clav on the left and a guitar on the right, and how they play in the holes of each other.
That's the kind of stuff I try to do in my writing and mixing today, but that was recorded and mixed way back in 1973.
I never got to play that one live, but always thought it would be a sooper fun one to do. Prolly bring the house down if played well.
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Glennbo
Hear My Music - Click Me!!!
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I love the trade offs happening between the clav on the left and a guitar on the right, and how they play in the holes of each other.
That's the kind of stuff I try to do in my writing and mixing today, but that was recorded and mixed way back in 1973.
I never got to play that one live, but always thought it would be a sooper fun one to do. Prolly bring the house down if played well.
Absolutely. Might have to suggest it to the band. Here is something interesting and off topic. I play to 21-28 year old crowds proverbially every weekend. We cover a lot of 70s, 80s classic rock type stuff but we also play 25% much newer stuff (last ten years to present) because of the age of the crowd however...
They seem to far prefer the old stuff. There is the occasional Kings of Leon tune or something they dig (newer) but they keep telling us how much they come to hear the older stuff, they sing and know every word because "that's what my dad played when I was growing up".
Ha, found this on my phone, I don't play during the verses so I pulled out my cell for a moment...
That's so strange, that was not the case when I was coming up, we'd never listen or care about our parent's music for the most part. But not now, I've gigged with this band for 3 solid years and it's always the same story. It's a proof/litmus test that that period of music isn't just something old farts grew up with, it still holds its own 40-50 years later. That's 20 years before they were even born.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
My unfair advantage is that my instrument of choice for the past 20 years is a bunch of mixers, eqs, compressors, delays, etc feeding back into eachother. I have a knack for unconventional signal flow, and a sense for the breaking point of feedback that is like second nature.
That sounds fun!
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The Sounds of the Hear and Now.
Absolutely. Might have to suggest it to the band. Here is something interesting and off topic. I play to 21-28 year old crowds proverbially every weekend. We cover a lot of 70s, 80s classic rock type stuff but we also play 25% much newer stuff (last ten years to present) because of the age of the crowd however...
They seem to far prefer the old stuff. There is the occasional Kings of Leon tune or something they dig (newer) but they keep telling us how much they come to hear the older stuff, they sing and know every word because "that's what my dad played when I was growing up".
Ha, found this on my phone, I don't play during the verses so I pulled out my cell for a moment...
That's so strange, that was not the case when I was coming up, we'd never listen or care about our parent's music for the most part. But not now, I've gigged with this band for 3 solid years and it's always the same story. It's a proof/litmus test that that period of music isn't just something old farts grew up with, it still holds its own 40-50 years later. That's 20 years before they were even born.
Cool clip! I played a lot of clubs surrounded by adoring fans like that. In the 80s, we had a band with a couple singers that could sound just like McCartney and Lennon or just like the Beach Boys, but we were playing to glam rock / hairdoo 80s kids and doing 60s rock to a T for them.
My dad was a jazz sax player when he was younger, and had a marvelous collection of stuff like Ramsey Lewis Trio playing songs written by Herbie Hancock. He also had some dorky stuff I was less impressed with. I still like a lot of what I heard growing up though, and even jam on acoustic drums to some of it streaming from YouTube.
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Glennbo
Hear My Music - Click Me!!!
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That's so strange, that was not the case when I was coming up, we'd never listen or care about our parent's music for the most part. But not now, I've gigged with this band for 3 solid years and it's always the same story. It's a proof/litmus test that that period of music isn't just something old farts grew up with, it still holds its own 40-50 years later. That's 20 years before they were even born.
That's a great clip Karbo and a great story to boot, I had no idea kids were into the great old stuff.
Quote:
My dad was a jazz sax player when he was younger, and had a marvelous collection of stuff like Ramsey Lewis Trio playing songs written by Herbie Hancock.
Hey Glennbo, so was my dad, only he was from the 1930s and 40s. I grew up listening to all the great old jazz records, and they definitely contributed to the rest of my career. Now I don't know if I could call it an unfair advantage but I did pretty well through the 60s, 70s, and 80s, even into the 90s. I also had the opportunity to play with some great jazz musicians, a few of them somewhat well known.
Everything about that song is cool. It was on my list of songs to perform when I did that live video series a few years ago but there was just too much cool stuff I couldn't cover with just a guitar and a vocal - I might have to try again sometime.
David Spinozza tells a really funny story about that solo. He was running out of a jingle session on his way to another and Rebennack spots him and says he needs a quick blues solo. They were mixing and had forgotten to do it! So he goes in and they play the part of the song and he wails away, feeling it out. They stop tape and Spinozza says, OK, I got it, let's do it. And they said no, we got it. And he says no, I want to do it again! And they went nope, sounds great, gonna mix it now.
He felt like it wasn't any good and slinked off to his next jingle session.
Three months later he heard it in a cab.
It's one of the greatest guitar statements to come rocketing through AM radio in the '70s, IMO.
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The reason rain dances work is because they don't stop dancing until it rains.
Shout out to anyone with no inherent knack or musical background whatsoever (parental or otherwise) and just liking listening to music and trying to learn requisite limb movements to imitate it.
My advantage is, uh, my lush and flowing locks
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AM bient, rund funk and heavy meteo
my bandcamp+youtubings
I'm a developer so I can usually pretty much fix anything that breaks in my software studio environment. Not a huge advantage, but at least I can use whatever time I have on actually making music.
They were mixing and had forgotten to do it! They stop tape and Spinozza says, OK, I got it, let's do it. And they said no, we got it. And he says no, I want to do it again! And they went nope, sounds great, gonna mix it now.
LOL, says more about the studio than Dave Spinozza! That pressure to get stuff out is like Netflix, etc today.
Then you are a turd polisher. Worst job ever. Trust me, I know. Dealing with musicians who don't learn their parts with correct phrasing and pitch. Who lay down tracks without listening to what they did. Basically amateurs.
Then you are a turd polisher. Worst job ever. Trust me, I know. Dealing with musicians who don't learn their parts with correct phrasing and pitch. Who lay down tracks without listening to what they did. Basically amateurs.
You don't work in a commercial studio, do you?
I don't get to pick my clients (unless they have a reputation for stealing stuff or whatever)
Most of my clients are great musicians, but some of them need help.
You don't work in a commercial studio, do you?
I don't get to pick my clients
I mentioned as much in another thread. The vast majority who depend on clients to eat and keep the lights on don't have the luxury of picking clients. And the client base is saturated with those who are not the cream that rose to the top. They just want to pay someone to record them.
The other guitarist in my band (the one actually playing in the video above), owns and runs a studio for his primary living. His client base is 20% pro and 80% "I don't really have any business being here but I have some lyrics and chords, can you help me make this a reality?"
He often goes back and replaces bad playing himself, because they are paying him for a finished product. How much they deserve to be there is irrelevant and if he turns down clients, he can't pay his bills.
__________________ Music is what feelings sound like.
C'mon, you have to have something. Maybe you're filthy rich, or very handsome hahaha
Yes, sadly you were right to laugh at wealth, good lucks and even puppies... but thinking about it, my vintage Levin does make me sound significantly better than I actually am so I guess I am very fortunate after all.
Haha, ... first of all I think of all the disadvantages: Too much
fiddling around, looking for plugins, decorating DAW colors,
too little focus on songwriting.
Insufficient understanding of the individual frequency ranges.
Inadequate comprehension of the settings of a compressor.
Getting used to a sound too much, with the result that I can no
longer hear the changes necessary for the mix. Too often badly
mixed songs ...
Not enough breaks, not enough sleep, too much coffee ... oooh,
the list of downsides is endless!
Location: Near Cambridge UK and Near Questembert, France
Posts: 22,754
As one of very very few local players in their late seventies still gigging regularly, I guess my advantage is living longer than most of my contemporaries.
Reverb and delay. And a bit of songwriting. Counterpoint when arranging. Make the most of the bass line. If down and out, don't bother with music-making, just sit it out. Trust the universe.