nadroj

I’ve always wanted to do something like this. If I went for a 2-tier setup again I’d be looking for something similar. Looking forward to seeing the progress!

He’s so undeniably Scottish in how he talks 😂 Real Gone Kid is brilliant. Seems every 5 years a new TV ad picks it up again. I used to love playing it too - the electric grand part in the intros and verses have such interesting voicings for a pop song!

Loved this one too. Jim is exactly how I pictured him. A classic Scottish muso through and through! Scotland's music scene is small enough that nearly everyone knows someone connected to Deacon Blue in some way. Eye opening and kinda nice to get that look into the upper parts of the scene here. I've never met him, but have played a couple of festivals this year where Deacon Blue have been headlining, and I've had to set my gear up next to his various flight cases a couple of times! Also caught part of their set at Belladrum after we played. Still only half way thorugh it, but his "it has to be fun and it has to be good" mantra sums up a lot of Scottish bands, including my own.

Catching up with these now. This one probably caught my eye for obvious reasons! Loved this, Mikey seems so down to earth, and is so quintesentially British compared to some of your other guests! I felt as if I could relate to him a lot more than some of the other guys that have been on it. Wonder if he'll get the Reunion Gig?

Rock and roll!

The way my brain is wired, I need a tactile experience when I’m performing. I need something that feels like an instrument and can take a beating like an instrument. I’ve yet to get that with any software+controller rig. I also don’t get it with cheap budget boards. My whole life revolves around screens and computers. Gigs are a little break from that. I’ll probably buy hardware forever, or until my body gets old enough that it’s not worth it.

We’re a 9 piece and our singer often goes off track mid-song into waters we’ve never explored before, and we all get to follow. Sometimes we’ll have an idea of where he’s going, other times he’ll make up sections of the song on the spot and we’ll turn into a jam band for 3 minutes, before coming back into land on a chorus everyone knows. We’ve briefly discussed using tracks live, but decided it wasn’t worth it for covers. Our new original material we’re working on might benefit from tracks… …But with aforementioned singer’s unpredictability (which is one of the best things about our band) the drummer and I agreed that even playing to a click would be a disaster. So we raw dog it every night, and will continue to do so!

Just saw the news on instagram. Genuinely shouted and swore out loud. I had no idea he was ill. I’m one of the younger folks here, and Shaun was probably one of the first contemporary guys who I could say genuinely influenced me. His first solo album came out at a time when I was still trying to find my voice as a player, and it was probably the first modern album I listened to where I thought “that’s how I want to sound”. Funky, soulful, filled with gospel charm, but not afraid to go out there either (there’s a video on YouTube of him shredding along to Butterfly while looking at his phone. He could play like a monster when he wanted to). And probably most importantly to me, it was a fun album. We did a lot of driving that summer, and I think even my daughter was able to sing every track by the end of it. I learned most of the solos and riffs on that album, have transcribed more of his stuff than any other gospel/Snarky player, I dived into his Kirk Franklin stuff to pick up some of the tasty little things he and Franklin did together, and I even took some things from his straighter jazz album, Focus - and I’m not a straight jazz guy. He was my favourite - more than Cory, and for a lot of folks in my circles, Cory was the big one. Not for me. You know when a musician’s vocabulary becomes a part of your own? For a lot of folks that’s Herbie, Jimmy Smith, Peterson, etc. For me that guy was Shaun. A lot of my most often used phrases are his. They fit in almost anywhere. He was just so soulful. And was the only one of the Pups I never got to see live. A massive loss to the music and gospel world. So young, too. This one hurts.

This is the Internet. If anyone has an opinion which conflicts with my own, that person is obviously wrong. Voicing such an opinion is seen as a personal attack on me, and is an affront to the nature of humanity and reality itself. Such things must not be left unaddressed. So if you have the audacity to even suggest to me that the FATAR TP-40M might be slightly more playable than the FATAR TP-40L you’d better be prepared, because I will end you.

It’s absolutely fine to not like her. Lots of people don’t. But I do think there’s a lot of unfair criticism aimed at her, from people who haven’t even listened to her. It’s the latest trend in people online (again, usually of a certain demographic…) spending their time and energy on something they don’t like/care about. It’s like the old Ricky Gervais joke of the guy who walks down the street and sees a sign for guitar lessons. He phones the number on the sign and tells the teacher “I DONT F**KING WANT GUITAR LESSONS”.

Anyone caught any of this yet? Some good performances, with some great keyboard players (playing live!) Some not so great performances, too. Shania Twain is a trooper for keeping on at her age, but she mostly left the choruses to her backing vocalists/tracks and just covered the low harmonies. Was a very flat set. Cyndi Lauper had some great energy, and her keyboard player was pretty stellar, doing a lot of iconic parts live. She did somehow manage to sing the whole of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun out of time, though. But again, there’s good live footage of the keyboard player there - the off beats were being played live, synced up delay and everything, and the solo (which is hard to make sound good) worked. You also get some close ups of him changing patches on the fly - fun to see on a big stage. Coldplay brought out Michael J Fox to play guitar, which was a nice touch. Parkinson’s is an awful disease, but he looked like he was genuinely having fun. Anyways, footage is all free online (BBC website, maybe YouTube) if you’re so inclined. Decent mix of young and old acts. Seems rare to get high quality footage of entire sets from a lot of these artists these days!

Is that the angry old guy who shouts at musical clouds, but who also occasionally puts out some genuinely great content?

The hate I see for Taylor Swift is usually from older guys who have never listened to her, or younger guys who just think it’s cool to dunk on her (similar to the guys who think metal is the only good music in the world). Most of her detractors haven’t taken the time to listen to her. They just think “pop music bad”, or get stuck thinking “if it doesn’t sound like the music I came of age to it sucks” mindset. Honestly, I think she is a world apart from the other pop princesses of the day. She is an excellent songwriter, she can play her own songs, and the collaborations she’s done (Bon Iver, The National, etc) are mostly with respectable pop artists of today, and are genuinely good. 1989 is an excellent pop album, and they’ve only got better from there, but her stripped down lockdown stuff (Folklore/Evermore) was what really won me over, as they showed how mature she can be as a songwriter, and how she is a step above the usual mass produced pop drones. My only gripe with her is her ticket prices. My daughter and wife (and me to an extent) are massive Swifites, but we just couldn’t get tickets. The Eras Tour itself is a marvel, and very well done, but the live show was restricted to a small percentage of her fans. It is ok to like Taylor Swift and Charlie Parker and Paul McCartney and The Allman Brothers and Slipknot and whoever the hell else you like. Musical gatekeeping (especially the kind performed by a specific demographic) needs to stop.

Video blocked in the UK for some strange reason. Anyone able to summarise?

Stem seperator is cool. I was initially (and still am a bit) wary of the AI stuff but then I remembered I've sometimes used Drummer and that's basically the same thing. I'll just have to get used to the future. In any case, my 2011 MacBook is still going strong but it can't support the update, so I'm stuck with Logic X for the time being!