Progress!
*Obligatory I hardly ever blog anymore introductory paragraph*
I played my first solo show on Saturday night at the Live Bar, Yep, the Live Bar, apparently. Was first on the bill with God Bows to Math, Cat Venom, Wilberforces and Sherpa. Almost didn’t happen though.
There was some kind of problem getting my sound to come out of the PA properly - was all mushed up and distorted, and we had to do some lead juggling and gear switching to get it to work. Not sure why really - it’s just a stereo signal out of a laptop… but the sound guy got it going in the end.
It was a real learning experience - I’d told everyone I had no idea if it was going to ‘work’ beforehand, and was as surprised as anyone when it kind of did. I was nervous as hell, completely screwed up a couple of the songs by pressing the wrong buttons. Didn’t help that my fingers were shaking like Polaroid pictures, and the colour-coded stickers on my keyboard had faded so much, I could barely see which was which in the dim light on stage.
I spent far too much time looking at the computer screen, which is silly since 99% of what I need to look at is on my keyboard and in my instruction book. Also, it was hard to regain pitch once I’d lost it, since I have no way of making the vocal louder independent of the overall sound it’s all linked through the laptop so I can apply effects (ie Auto-Tune). Next time I’ll wear headphones, since I had no such troubles at home!
People said nice things though, and asked when I was playing next, so that was cool. I played ‘Fiction’, ‘Anti-Human Nous’, ‘Images of Bliss’, ‘Killer on the Island’, and ‘Purpose Of Man’. It’s been about 12 years since ‘Purpose of Man’ was played live with Sequester, haha! Oddly enough, ‘Killer’, the newest track, went down the best. At least in my view.
Anyway… been making progress on the new album front. When I was recording Battletech, one of the songs was proving so difficult to sing, I took what I had, sat down with some fancy software and rearranged my off-key warblings into a coherent melody, loaded that back into the hardware studio thingee I use to record, and sang along with it - and I had a satisfactory take within 10 minutes.
So this time around I spent a couple of days recording guide vocals, which I then processed into the exact melodies I wanted, regardless of what I’d sung, and am singing to it as a guide - and it’s proving to be a massive time-saver. Who knows if what I recorded today will suffice, but if so, I managed to get through six songs in under four hours, which is lightning fast by my standards.
No doubt it’ll all turn to custard in the mixing process though! Always does.
Tags: gigs, hide the decline, recording
