We're ready to rock!

Things have changed in this past year. Our band Serotonia is back in action. We have found a drummer, the amazing Jim Crego. Serotonia has been active since 1995, but we haven’t been playing out in recent years. Now that we have a drummer, we’re rehearsing and getting ready to hit the clubs in the early part of 2010. I have a new guitar amplifier, the sweet sounding Fender Super Champ XD. We’re recording a demo next week, and I hope to have a few tracks up on the web shortly after. It’s really great to play the old songs, and to work on new ones. We are rocking now! We will see you from the stage soon.
I’m getting Marcsonic ready, too, but instead of electronic beats it will be with human musicians, guests who will add a unique flavor to each performance. 2010 promises to be a banner year for the music I am bringing to the world. I will update you shortly.

The Drummer

I starting playing a drum part today onto one of the improv bits of guitar that I looped a few days ago. I used "Bossy", my Boss DR-5 drum machine/etc that is full of drum sounds, among other things. I tried many different kick drum sounds, came up with one and recorded just that onto a track. I actually played the pads throughout the session, so it consisted of human performances that I'll have to gussy up later to get my timing better! I found a different kit sound for the cymbals, and played those on another track. Same with the snare drum. I'll have to figure out exactly what I did later.. Then I rendered the track to a wav file, moved it via a USB stick to this computer, and am listening as I type. I'm listening for good bits that can be edited into an actual drum track. Ableton Live offers many ways of playing with beats with warp markers and slicing to midi files; more on all that later.

Recording as Instrument

A few days ago we both got to work on our art at the same time! Kordula was in the kitchen working on a new sculpture, and it looks great so far. Meanwhile in the awesome family room I took one section of the clean guitar track, just a few seconds out of a 12 minute jam, and looped it. Then using Ableton Live I started "playing" the loop at different points within it, and recorded those results.
Today I hope to add virtual drums to this part to make a whole section of the song. This sci-fi cyberscape version of putting a song together is different than recording with a band for sure, but also quite rewarding. Remember, it was a live "real" guitar being recorded, then manipulated in "real" time, digitally. It moves through the air and it sounds good; thus analog becomes digital becomes another form of analog sound.
I can already hear future versions of this in my head; we'll see how it goes!