Apricity – Fear
A long time friend posted her second video Fear, had to share 🙂
Still Alive and Kicking (around ideas)
The struggle of middle aged Dads getting together to make music is real… Scotty came over last night to throw around some ideas, and it looks like fun time will resume with the rest of the guys in September .. Looking forward to it! Short lil video from the other night….
Analogue vs Tubes vs Modelling Amps
We don’t have a ton going on at the moment because you know… old men… life, etc… So I thought I would start posting audio/music related stuff I found interesting and this is one of those videos. Cool little video of a blind play test of three amps to see if they could determine whether the amp was a an analogue amp, a tube amp or a modelling amp. The two guys in question have played a ton of equipment ( I believe one owns the music store it’s shot at) over the last 20 years so they definitely know what they’re talking about. The results are really funny to me just because I’ve heard and taken part in many arguments about how people can definitely tell which is which…. But wait there’s one thing that’s kinda cool/funny in the video, they censor out the words “shit” with a chicken clucking… but the audio is binaural so you would swear the chicken is the room with you if you’re wearing headphones, the moment is at the 18:05 mark so strap on some cans and start a few seconds before that if you want to hear an example of that type of audio… it’s pretty cool.
Personally I use an Eleven Rack when I’m playing, and LOVE Guitar Rig for recording, but after spending a bunch of time in the studio at Centennial College recording others, I have to admit I love recording with tube amps as well. Maybe it’s the romance of heating the tubes up, picking the right mics, spending time getting the cabinets mic’ed properly and then getting the level just right on the board. The process is amazing, that said though, I still believe you can get an amazing sound with a modelling amp and this video just strengthened my resolve. Especially in a live setting, I don’t think anyone could pick up the nuanced differences between a tube amp and a properly set up good modeller…. Lemme know your thoughts 🙂
Building A Song – Part Two
I told you I’d be back with a video! So a while back we started a series called “Building A Song“, basically what we wanted to do was track the process of writing and recording a song for ourselves and for anyone else that may be interested. I had written a riff, brought to the guys, then one practice Scott (the sexy beast singing and playing guitar in this video) suggested we revisit it, we did and then the process of fleshing it out began. For me it’s been a real learning process, Dan (the guy tucked away in the corner that plays the solo) and I had written a couple of songs back in our teenage years, but they were very basic and that was a long time ago. So in the first video we were in the starting to flesh it out stage, in this video we are starting to put together all the parts.
A couple of notes, there’s a whole lot of learning going on here, not just in terms of some of the guys learning the music but also in terms of the technology involved. We are learning how to do a multi-camera video shoot, we’re learning how to mix and record live audio (Dear JamHub you rule! We’ll talk about you in a separate video!), how to sync them both together and then a million and one different pieces that make up those processes, so, it’s sooooooo far off from perfect it’s not funny (ok it’s a little funny 😉 ), but that’s the point, we’re learning, and having a great time doing it. So let’s get to the video:
-Rob (The Bald Avenger wearing the snazzy gray Parry Sound Project sweater from the video)
Building A Song – Part One
OK, so this whole Parry Sound Project thing….. Basically it’s a group of guys that get together whenever they can to make music.. I know, I know, some middle aged dudes trying to relive their youth cheesy clichéd trope blah blah blah… Actually ya that’s kind of it, kind of not, we’re not really trying to relive anything. I think most people at this stage of their lives can relate to working crazy hours, rushing home to get the kids to whatever activity night it may, wait… crap is tonight soccer night??? Oh no I’m good.. wait where was I? Oh right, kids activities, then family and friend obligations and shit, where did my forties go? So we make a little time for ourselves in this life we lead just to get away to a darkened room with others of our life persuasion and try to do art. It’s a weird thing for a middle aged clichéd wanna be rocker geeky IT nerd Dad to say, but that’s what you try to do. You have no disillusions of grandeur, or real ambitions, or maybe you do, does it matter? It’s a great escape from reality doing something that’s good for your head.
So with all that being said we thought it would be fun to record the process of writing a song. Since we started last year we’ve been bringing in little riff ideas, working them out basically and moving on. This started as one I brought in, Dan was playing with us more so I wrote it out to three different guitar parts, Dan got busy in life and we put it on the back burner. So last Sunday Scott thought we should try it out again. We practiced/rewrote a basic arrangement, and then Scott added a new guitar part, solo and surprise surprise… a vocal line. I think the search for singer is over, but we’ll have to talk him into that. So this is where we are as of this past weekend. I like it, I think it’ll be fun to see where we go from here, we have ideas…. that can’t be good 😉
-Rob
Getting the band back together…..
So it was a long and busy summer for this group of middle aged men…. and 2/3’s of us managed to get back together last night to start making some noise and get this thing going again…. And of course we have some evidence to present in the form of the genesis of a cover song, any guesses as to what song and artist??
And some pictures, cuz why not?
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- Someone might have been checking Scott’s prostate when this was taken.
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- Practicing my death metal growl technique.. at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
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- This man smiles far too much… seriously.. someone kick him in the nuts
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- Wanna know what made Scott look like that? Robin’s giving you the answer….
The Language of Song Writing
Wow, I’ve totally been slacking on the updating front. It hasn’t been a case of us doing nothing, we actually have been practicing on a fairly regular basis, with the exception of the odd weekend interrupted by middle aged man obligations. As a matter of fact, we actually started the process of writing songs. For shits and giggles I thought I would capture what it’s like trying to communicate ideas while in the midst of that whole song writing process. Go ahead, laugh at us, that’s the only completely honest response available 😉