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!

Back in the game

Today I got a chance to work on the song again! I layed down a relatively clean guitar track along with the first two tracks, and then I recorded a distorted guitar track along to only the original first track, which is the "directing" track for the main melodies. This distortion sounded BIG, because it's a dirty amp model (I forget which one) plus a distortion pedal model "based on" the Electro Harmonix Big Muff Pi. I may have to pick up the real thing someday, judging from the sound of this digital re-creation. Now I have 4 tracks to work with, with different levels of improvisation making wildly curving paths that meet, then go off again.
Soon I'll listen to what I've wrought, then start finding and isolating the best bits to use as melody segments that I'll put into the grid pattern that is the session view in Ableton Live. I'm glad to have actually made progress today!!

Mind, then matter

So far, I haven't updated this blog very much. This is because I haven't worked on my new song much, at least physically. In my head, though, it races and circles around. I add beats, connect sections, and dream of overdubs of vocals and guitars that I'm just hearing as they come to my spirit antenna and start to coalesce. The last song I wrote before this stuck in my head for a year before I set it down! It wouldn't go away, and so you'll hear it someday. I'm hoping to set down a few more guitar tracks in the next week, and then start bringing it together in sections in Ableton, which is designed for such songwriting; you can mix and match with ease. I will update soon, so please be patient.. this is going somewhere.

new world

I rehearsed with Serotonia last night. Once again, a technical difficulty presented itself for our perusal. Last time, it was the drum machine (hereafter in this blog to be known as “Bossy”) that ran out of battery power. We made do with Dave on actual drums while he wasn’t singing, which actually worked out very well, and gave a different feel to the session. Last night the tech problem was my old Line 6 digital amp making squealing sounds whenever I turned it on. I had to use my little Marshall practice amp, which gave me a choice of clean or distorted along with reverb or not. That was it, no stranger flangers and rotary speaker simulators or delays or whatnot. It was refreshing to just concentrate on playing, though I did miss the sound of twirling in place underwater that I sometimes get. Each session is a new world. -marcsonic

in between in a good way

I haven’t physically worked on my new song since my last post, but I’ve been running through the riffs and sounds in my head, and combining them, adding parts, etc.. so you could say that I have been working on it! I have also been thinking of what a future set might sound like, and how I’d structure it. My focus of late has been improving my sound, which includes my playing and how my GNX guitar processor influences what you will hear, along with some other concepts. I’ve got a cool little tube amp that’s going to keep the analog warmth fire burning. Stay tuned... marcsonic