Garage Band Test

I've been planning for a couple weeks to test my home studio setup to see how quickly I can put together a piece of music. So, what I did was this:
1) Open up Garage Band on my ancient Titanium PowerBook and plug in my Korg Nanopad drum pad and record some beats.
2) Edit the beats down to a single bar that I liked and copy and pasted it a bunch of times.
3) plugged my bass directly into my laptop and added some bass line off the top of my head. Not crazy about it but it fit with the beat...
4) plugged my guitar (Gibson SG Special) directly into the laptop and after fiddling with the effects and amp emulator I found a half decent sound so I recorded a quick-and-dirty solo.
5) I realized something was missing so I plugged in the korg nanokey and played a quick organ part.
6) added some compressor, reverb and eq to the drum track, put some echo on the guitar, distortion to the organ, and compressed the bass a bit and voila! Instant thing that might pass for music.
http://homepage.mac.com/dshimmyo/musicForBlog/OneTake.mp3

I'm not crazy about it but I am incredibly impressed that I was able to get a decent guitar sound and actually a pretty sweet organ sound. Dang, I just realized a leslie sound would have been awesome on the organ. Yeah, I'm a huge Deep Purple fan. Can you tell?
-D

Last Fuzz Jam of '09

Dec 3, 2009: Sheldon returns from hiatus and we're back with 8-track goodness. Among these tracks are some of my favorite jams since I started playing with these guys. (the photo is from a Sonic Youth show). I believe we booked 4 hours or something which would explain the plethora of material. I was really happy with my guitar tone which is rare. Eric, Jamie and I took turns swapping instruments. I believe Sheldon stuck with his Steinberger Guitar rig for most of the jam. Unfortunately, the amp he chose was acting badly on a few tracks.

fuzz.12.3.9a.mp3 - getting the cobwebs out. I think I played bass on this one.
fuzz.12.3.9b.mp3 - still sounding rusty, not sure who's who
fuzz.12.3.9c.mp3 - more cobwebs. still on guitar. I think Eric played drums.
fuzz.12.3.9d.mp3 - i'm on guitar. I think I'm warmed up at this point.
fuzz.12.3.9e.mp3 - short but cool - i'm on drums
fuzz.12.3.9f.mp3 - i'm on drums. Eric on his guitar.
fuzz.12.3.9g.mp3 - best ever! Jamie came up with a great bass line. I'm on drums. Digging Shel's FX and Eric's guitar playing.
fuzz.12.3.9h.mp3 - I'm back on my guitar playing with feedback and having fun. Sheldon's debut on drums.
fuzz.12.3.9i.mp3 - My gtr, sounds like Eric on Drums
fuzz.12.3.9j.mp3 - My drumming, Eric on his gtr, Jamie on Bass, Shel on gtr.

fuzz jam 11.5.09 - Sheldon's Day Off

This is my first mix using Digital Performer on my old Titanium PowerBook G4. I hope to post many more recording projects using this rig. In today's recordings I spent time adding some gates, compressor and eq to clarify some of the muddy tracks with lots of spillage from the other instruments. I also added a little reverb to the snare. Anyway, it's minimal work but I think it helped a bit. This was also the first time we linked Eric's and my 4-track field recorders to give us 8 tracks to play with. The last track may sound strange because half of our recording rig ran out of space. My guitar is panned right, Eric's stereo guitar rig is also right-ish. Jamie's bass is left-ish and the drums are everywhere. We switched instruments quite a lot so you'll just have to guess who's playing whose rig. enjoy!

1/30/2010 Update: I'll try to fill in some info matching musician to instrument. Also, a little more about our equipment: I'm pretty sure I'm playing the SG but it might be the Carvin with the Floyd Rose Tremolo. Today I think I brought the firehazard pedal that I built.

fuzz11.5.9.a.mp3 - unedited version - (Me: guitar, Eric: drums, Jamie: bass)
Edit: fuzz11.5.9.a.1.mp3 note: split from the original double-length file
Edit: fuzz11.5.9.a.2.mp3 note: split from the original double-length file
fuzz11.5.9.b.mp3 (Me: Eric's guitar, Eric: bass, Jamie: Drums)
fuzz11.5.9.c.mp3 (Me: Bass/guitar, Eric: guitar, Jamie: Drums) - yes I attempted to play bass and guitar at the same time towards the end of the track
fuzz11.5.9.d.mp3 (Eric: guitar and the wiggly sound, Me: drums, Jamie: bass)
fuzz11.5.9.e.mp3 (Eric:guitar , Me: drums, Jamie:bass) - this one is pretty cool
fuzz11.5.9.f.mp3
fuzz11.5.9.g.mp3

Taking a walk

Here's another from our latest jam. In this one I'm playing bass, attempting a walking bass line. I was inspired by Eric's artistic drumming. I'm guessing Sheldon and Jamie are on Eric's and my guitars but I can't really tell. Definitely one of our more unique jams. Maybe one of my favorites. It's growing on me.
http://thesb.org/fur/fuzz.10.7.9.d.mp3

fuzz 9/03/2009

This is an older jam that I thought sounded interesting. I think it's me on guitar, Jamie on drums, and I'm guessing Sheldon on Eric's guitar rig and Eric on Jamie's bass. The mix sounds a little guitar-heavy. I'm pretty sure I was playing the carvin which is the guitar on the left in the photo. I was probably testing out a new Wampler Distortion Pedal. Anyway, check it out:
http://thesb.org/fur/fuzz.9.3.9.f.mp3

Smoke break 10/7/2009

Okay, so I haven't been posting much for a while but I have been jamming semi-regularly for the past couple months with Eric, Jamie, and Sheldon. We usually jam after work and after many beers so we tend to be pretty sloppy but every now and then there's some cool stuff for sure. Here's something I found tonight while listening to our jam on Oct 7, 2009. It sounds like me on drums and Jamie on bass. Eric and Sheldon are out on their smoke break. After a few minutes of the bass/drums jam, Eric and Sheldon start playing. I assume it's Eric on his guitar rig and Sheldon on his rig (guitar or bass, not sure). A plethora of effects to be sure. Check this out:
http://thesb.org/fur/fuzz.10.7.9.h.mp3

Building Pedals

In my search for the perfect guitar rig I've decided to build my own gear. Here's my first attempt at a tube overdrive pedal based on a circuit called the Valvecaster, it incorporates a 386-chip-based boost circuit to get a nice overdriven sound. This is called the "fire hazard" because, well, I wouldn't leave it plugged in unattended...
You can hear my playing through the Fire Hazard pedal in this jam session from a few weeks ago. In this jam you can hear two guitars. Mine is the sort of obnoxious heavy shredding style and the second guitar is the inimitable avant-garde style of the one and only Eric Maurer. I'm also playing around with my wah quite a bit. Jamie Williams is on drums, and Sheldon Chow is on bass.

My second pedal is pure tube, using two tubes (valves). I went for a more crunchy distortion this time. I really like this pedal a lot although I'm not too happy with this demo recording I made the other day. I started calling it blinky because it has 3 knobs that remind me of the 3-eyed fish from the Simpsons. Here's a sample: http://homepage.mac.com/dshimmyo/musicForBlog/blinky01Test.mp3