SamuelBLupowitz

The combination of time at home and crushing ennui is killing me. I have time to write, to practice, to exercise, and I feel so little drive to do any of it. Just trying to work through it and be kind to myself... But yeah. No physical band get-togethers, and no end in sight.

I was just going to watch the keyboardy part, but I started at the beginning and now I'm mesmerized. Back when I played more jazz (high school and college), I was mostly playing bass, so... yeah.

The approximately 1,372 times I have listened to Quadrophenia has prepared me to play the entire bass part in my head after reading that.

And that means you found a great lady, but I think this is something we see a lot of on small scales and large in our current world, with such intensity and regularity that it can be hard not to be swept up in it. Rather than the interpersonal example, the one I go to often is the Orwellian one of "we've always been at war with Oceania." Repeat something enough times, with authority, and people can believe it whether it's true or not, even if they've experienced the denied reality firsthand, and that's dangerous. I don't think the "nice view of the mountains" is the point, it's the affect our normal routine has on our habitat, and that change is possible. Is that true? Are you defining "worth" as simply "what the market will bear?" Does that mean that if Craig gets stiffed on his royalties as mentioned above, he is worth less? Not to even get into the more philosophical question of "what is a human life worth," on a more practical note, are we saying the CEO is worth more than the production line workers? That an NFL player is worth more than an EMT? How does that assumption play when the normal routine is completely disrupted, as it is right now? I think one of the main points of this article is that we need to question our assumptions of what people are "worth," because the current systems don't hold up under pressure. Do we just accept that, knowing that the next catastrophe will devastate the same groups of people, or do we learn from this and change the system? I don't know, man. All this sitting around my house not being able to be with my friends and family, having our entire financial landscape altered, watching the death toll rise because hospitals can't get what they need, having talking heads tell me I only deserve medical care if I can afford it, has me feeling pretty depressed. Maybe you're just bored and annoyed. I'm having a very difficult time with this emotionally, and most of the people I know are, too. No, and I think that's what the piece is about: remember that the normal routine is fragile, and that we can do better, and act accordingly. Demand more for ourselves than "$1200 is coming, I promise, now shut up so that six months from now we can remind you that 'every man for himself' is the only way." I think KuruPrionz nailed it in recounting of the American Big 3 balking at regulation/change but being forced to follow Toyota/Honda and their philosophy of efficiency and improvement. We can try to tell ourselves that the way we were doing things is still the best way and that this is an inconvenient aberration and that hospitals being unprepared and the economy being devastated is a given, or we can do better for everyone so that the next time there is a catastrophe, we are better prepared to care for one another on a global scale, and "people being paid what they're worth" doesn't have to translate to "yeah, a lot of people won't be able to get to the hospital, that's the way it is."

The current environment of regular livestreamed performances has me wondering about best practices (and any unique solutions others have come up with) for blending software instruments with analog-domain sounds being captured into a computer. Because if my audio path is microphone/DI > interface > livestreaming software, I'm not sure what makes the most sense as far as incorporating a controller and a software instrument. Maybe this is a no-brainer on Windows; as a Mac user, getting internal sounds from one application to another requires a third-party application (it used to be Soundflower -- I think that's been replaced by iShowU Audio or something). My instinct was not to mess around with splitting processing power between audio/video capture/streaming and sound generation. It's something I've never had to consider as someone who has spent a lot of years using computers to create and capture music, but is a relative newcomer to using them for performance. I also wonder about this in a recording studio setting. My studio workflow is usually to start by recording a live group of musicians simultaneously (remember when that was a thing?), and then overdub additional parts one by one to flesh things out. Most of the computer-generated sounds I use in my live rig would either be replaced by an analog instrument in a studio, or would fall into the "overdub" category anyway, so I would perform the overdub in a Logic session with the software instrument as a plugin. But as I add more and more softsynths into my live rig, I'm wondering how I would handle capturing one of those instruments on a live tracking session with a rhythm section. Do any of you record a live band along with software instruments in the same DAW, capturing audio and MIDI simultaneously? Do you use separate computers for audio generation and for recording, and capture the software instrument as audio rather than MIDI? Not necessarily looking for a particular solution for myself, just the philosophies and practices of others.

Time has made Dennis more like Donald Fagan visually and more like Phil Rosenthal in affect, and I love it. Wasn't expecting that performance to hit me as hard as it did (though that's a recurring theme right now, I guess). My younger brother was/is a really big Styx fan, and we saw Dennis's band-plus-orchestra tour in Philadelphia when I was a teenager and had a blast. It's nice to hear from him right now; he was, some might argue, responsible for the cheesier, less "rock" element of Styx's sound, but it's unfathomable to me (artistically -- obviously it's a sound business move for the rest) that they've carried on the name without him all this time. Anyway, I appreciate the share.

nothing wrong with a little Rhino when playing B3...(sorry, couldn"t resist, huge fan of this band, and their excellent B3 player the the legendary Michael Fonfara..) [video:youtube] I appreciate the introduction to Rhinoceros as much as the bass pedal tips... to hop on one of my most frequent soapboxes, so many of the mainstream rock bands in the late 60s and early 70s all wore their Motown influences on their sleeves, especially bass players, and this track is certainly no exception. That pocket is what separates the grown-ups from the children as far as I'm concerned. Guitarist sounds like he's copping Jimmy Page a bit there on the solo!

In a time when it feels like we're mourning the passing of musical legends every other week, it's great to celebrate a pioneer living into what my old piano teacher called "extra innings!" This is hardly Herbie's most influential, jazz-centric material, but I will say that seeing this performance ten years ago has shaped my musical aesthetic and goals for the last decade: [video:youtube]

Spending more time on my organ technique these days, and it"s been really handy to have my old set of Roland PK-5 pedals â pre-quarantine, I"d been working them more regularly into my live rigs, not just as organ bass pedals, but also to trigger synths and samples. Those Taurus-style pedals don"t seem to lend themselves to the traditional heel-toe technique. I"ve always wanted to be John Paul Jones, and I"m wondering if there"s a better way to be working on my left-foot fluidity on that octave of pedals, so I don"t just feel like I"m Rhino-stomping everything.

It was a joy to get to put so many faces and voices to names, and especially fun for me to see that people kept at it for another two hours after I had to split. I really appreciate the sense of community right now. Glad I could help make this meetup happen in a small way.

Hey all, we're live now!

No worries David... assuming all goes well, we can schedule another that's a little more tailored to your time zone in the near future!

Oh boy, when I was sixteen I dated someone who loved that movie. I remember, like, the first half, maybe? Will echo that 20 Feet from Stardom is a must-see. Also, the 90s Beatles Anthology doc is well worth the many hours it takes to watch, if anyone still hasn't seen that. The Classic Albums mini-documentary series pops in and out on Amazon a lot. Some of them are just fair, but others have some wonderful insight... the one on The Band's self-titled album (also delves a bit into Music from Big Pink) is one of the best; Levon demonstrating his approach to singing and drumming is worth the price of admission, and then there's the occasional cut to Garth Hudson improvising chorales on early 90s synthesizers instead of actually engaging in an interview. Also, I just re-watched Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous," and it remains one of my favorite films.

Don't forget to check out my YouTube video, "7 Pro Tips You MUST KNOW About Compression, or Your Dog Will Die!!" These recording engineers in your city started recording with an off-brand compressor. You won't believe what happened next.

Yes, please. Obviously if I'm trying to evaluate music gear, a way to hear it in action is helpful, but so much of my day is full of video and audio that for the love of god I just want to read about somebody's experience with what a thing can do, and how they can apply it. I loved your CP73/88 review for that very reason.

Exactly! The classic "prog rock" genre was born out of rock musicians wanting to be more adventurous and less predictable. As soon as you can pigeonhole it into "long songs you can't dance to with English folk influence and lyrics about outer space" (for example), it just becomes another restriction to work within and without.

I'm sort of shocked how affordable that is, given that the last time I bought a 15' MIDI cable it cost $30. Unlike my Roli gear, there's no real advantage to, you know, my Roland PK-5 pedals being wireless... other than that I hate cabling and I'm a sucker for living in a future that's more like Star Trek the Next Generation than our current trajectory!

One of my musician pals told me just yesterday that he bought a banjo. Perfect.

Josh, I can't even... my wife and I gotta up our game.

I remember when I first got my Seaboard Block I was going to run all of my sounds for it off of an iPad, and it was actually going to make my rig smaller. Fast forward to now, and I've got the iPad plus a Macbook running Mainstage plus an interface and a control surface and USB and MIDI cables and dongles and dozens of modeled and sampled instruments controlled from the Seaboard and the Lumi and my bass pedals and the upper and/or lower manuals of my organ... I think if I had a more robust iPad (I have a mini) that didn't hit the CPU ceiling so quickly, I might make more of an effort to simplify. As it stands, I've just come to accept that playing with different ways to interface musicmaking with computers is fun, even though sometimes setting up my live rig isn't fun. But I wouldn't be surprised if in the next decade iOS evolves to the point where anything I can do musically on my MacBook is a snap. Or maybe all human society will collapse and I'll be forced to sing for the entertainment of the local warlord before he sends out his underlings to capture women and gasoline. But hey, life is full of possibilities.

One of the other guys in my IT group has been running Catalina since it was in beta... I'm sure it will be fine, but now that I actually use my MacBook for live performance, I think I'll sit with Mojave for a little while longer. Good to know I can check in here if I have questions.

Yes, if you're plugging the keyboard directly into the camera connector kit's USB, then you'd still use the iPad's headphone port for audio.

I picked up the Steinberg UR22 mk ii for my laptop rig because it's sturdy, high-quality, relatively inexpensive, and interfaces with iOS as well as Mac and Windows. It's also turned out to be great for livestreaming because you can monitor the input with zero latency. That said, the Focusrite interfaces are great; we have the Scarlett 2i2 at my office, and while I haven't checked to see if it will work with an iPad, I think everything else I like about the Steinberg holds true. Also comes in red (a divisive gear color around here ).

I got you all set up! Here's the info. If you haven't used Zoom before, it should prompt you to download the app when you click/tap the link, but you may want to try doing that ahead of time. If anyone's really lost, teaching people how to use this app has been the majority of my last three weeks... Here's the join link: Clonk. You will need to enter a password. The meeting password is "NordLead" (one word), but instead of the letter O, it's the numeral zero. Got it? Just trying to make it harder for trolls to jump on in, without me having to manually authenticate every single participant as they join... if we have any issues, though, I will switch gears and do that. You can also join from the app using the meeting ID 140-112-837. Same password. I did set the meeting up as "join before host," so you won't all have to wait for me to start the party. The meeting will become active a little bit before start time -- again, just keeping randos from stumbling on this link and wandering in there. Let me know if you have questions! Looking forward to this!

I would just like to commend Theo on submitting a track that, knowing him only from his posts, seems completely on point. Maybe a little Tom Waits influence in there? And Craig Anderton's track "Floating on Heaven" puts my humble attempt at cramming a bunch of styles into a single tune to shame! That one reminds me of Danny Elfman in the Oingo Boingo days. Lots of great stuff here, really enjoying it. Looking forward to hearing more about everyone's submissions.