Introducing Fuzz Cast! Launching my very first podcast

So, I decided to record myself talking about my music projects and other stuff. I didn't plan too much, just hit record and talked to my computer for 12 minutes or so.  In this episode I describe what was involved in recording "I just made this up" with my band Fuzz Bucket that I mentioned in my previous post. I'll try to get a co-host for every weekly episode if possible and discuss music, art and creativity, typical blog stuff, just a lot more spontaneous and fun I think.
For IOS folks it might show up on iTunes in the near future...

Also available at iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/fuzzcasts-podcast/id897769608

Fuzzbucket jam games

  I've been thinking about starting a podcast to talk about my music projects and jam sessions and then I remembered that's what this blog was for ...  It just so happens that I have some brand new tracks to share.

  This afternoon I finished posting 3 new jams on soundcloud that we recorded on June 12, 2014 in Eric's basement.  That night we were experimenting with a new way to start up a new jam session out of thin air. It was decided that one of us has to play 4 notes or basically a single bar of a melody or rhythm and the rest of us have to fill in the blanks.

Breakpoint
  Eric : Guitar | Jamie : Novax CH7 | Dan : Drums
  The first track, entitled "breakpoint" is a clip I pulled from a much longer jam which probably started with this idea but morphed into a sort of head banger metal jam which I happen to like quite a lot.  Well, it's self-indulgent to say the least.  As the drummer on that jam I slowed things down to what I think of as a black sabbath influenced groove. Jamie's bass line sounded pretty badass as well. I wonder if we're turning him into a metal head. Eric was obviously in his element. I think I hear a definite Iommi influence in there during the slower more melodic bits.

I just made this up
  Eric: Novax | Jamie: drums | Dan: sax
  In "I just made this up" I'm on the alto saxophone and it was my turn to start the jam with 4 notes.  I played the first 4 notes that came to mind and we were off and running. I think it was a successful execution of the original plan but it got a little too loose at times in my opinion.  I think my sax playing could benefit from a little more air support but it's all good.  Eric's playing the walking bass on the Novax.  I can't remember if he picked up my Novax CH8 or Jamie's CH7.  And Jamie's drumming kept things glued together. Overall, I think this is an idea worth exploring further if we ever decide to take more than 4 seconds to "compose" a piece.

Jungle Jam
  Eric: Novax | Jamie: drums | Dan: sax
  Jungle Jam was an off the cuff take on the beat from George of the Jungle theme, most likely instigated by me.  Jamie's on the drums and Eric's on the Novax.  At one point I think Eric's guitar sounds like it's talking which I think is pretty interesting.  A fun jam...

  And with that here are the new tracks:

Best first jam ever!

On March 10, 2014 around 7:30PM Eric, Jamie, and I had a pretty epic jam session. It started out with me and Eric warming up while we waited for Jamie who had been doing business out in Manhattan in the afternoon. I spent the day at Jury duty getting bored out of my mind watching them attempt to select 28 people that didn't have any problems with doing jury duty (everyone has problems with jury duty!). 8 hours of that crap can melt your mind. I assume Eric was writing code all day. But I digress...
  Eric hooked up my Novax CH8 (8-string, fanned fret, electric guitar / bass hybrid) and I sat behind the Traps drumkit and we played for a few minutes.  In retrospect I think the warmup contributed to the awesomeness of the following jam.  I needed the warmup to get used to drumming again, and Eric hooking up the Novax would turn out to be an awesome decision.
  So by the time Jamie showed up we already had a full rhythm section consisting of guitar/bass/drums. Jamie's Ch7 added 2 additional tracks of bass and guitar.
  When you listen to this jam you can hear Jamie's guitar and bass tracks occupying mostly the left side of the stereo field and Eric's bass/guitar/theremin tracks should be mostly on the right. Eric did something interesting and ran the bass side through a RAT distortion pedal which to my ears helps it blend together with his guitar track making a super fat textured sound.
  And finally, to send this track over the top Jamie used his looper pedal to loop his bass and guitar tracks freeing him up to play the drums which allowed me to play saxophone.  He took me by surprise and we clumsily traded places behind the drum kit but I think it just adds to the charm and spontaneity and energy of the piece.
  Well, enough babbling about this. You should listen to it if you haven't already clicked play. Check it out!

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Oh, just one more thing. This image below is of a mouthpiece that I have been searching the whole Internet for for a few weeks. It is a vintage Selmer metal soprano saxophone mouthpiece from probably the 1960's.  All I want is something similar. I almost had one but I got cold feet and let myself get outbid on ebay. I ended up getting a cheaper used possibly less vintage model. What makes this mpc so difficult to find is that it has an "F" facing which seems to be rare these days. The ones they sell brand new have an "E" facing. I've also learned to recognize the width of the groove down the side of the mouthpiece. The newer ones have a more narrow groove.  All I know is I played this mouthpiece and decided that I had to have one. Not the most exciting news, well it is to me, but I thought I should post an image with this blog entry so here it is! Optional oohs and aahs...

2014: Back to the basics

I just discovered that a co-worker of mine who was recently hired has been following my blog for about a year before we had even met. It's really nice to hear from people who follow my ramblings and recordings.  It's encouraging and it has reminded me that I need to update this blog once in a while so why not write the first post of the new year!

I'm getting back to the basics and learning how to read/write and transcribe music to help me build up a repertoire on the saxophone. It's probably going to make be better musician in general which is a plus . For a few weeks I've been playing a soprano sax and I needed to learn a few melodies so I started transcribing my favorite tunes.

The image above is a transcription of the melody part of a song that Jamie, Eric, and I "composed".  Actually the notes were first plucked on the guitar by Jamie Williams. I transcribed the melody for alto and soprano sax since they are E-flat and B-flat instruments respectively. I'm still struggling with rhythm notation but I'm pretty comfortable with the pitches.

If you haven't heard Zombie Town, this is one of the oldest recordings I could find, it might be the first. In this jam I'm playing drums, Jamie's on the Novax, and Eric's on guitar:



My most recent upload is a jam from early December 2013 after a long hiatus. Around that time I think I had been practicing my chromatic scales learning every note of the alto sax and I definitely think it improved my playing.  I still need to go through the hours long jam session to find more clips to post.

Date: 12/03/2013
Location: smashNY
Beverage: Lagunitas Brown Shugga'
Musicians:
Eric Maurer: Novax CH8 - guitar/bass hybrid
Jamie Williams: drums
Dan Shimmyo: alto saxophone

We just played again last night. It was our first jam session with the soprano saxophone. We were having technical problems with the mics but hopefully it came out alright...

Fuzz Bucket Sax Experiment 7.17.2013

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This was a historic Jam. I took a crazy chance and decided to play alto saxophone, technically an instrument I had never played.  And the planets aligned and after decades of playing musical instruments I may have found my favorite.  Might as well tell you how it started (long-winded story to follow) or you can just scroll down to the track notes...

Back in the summer of 1991 I decided to learn to play tenor sax so my parents bought me a student sax from Sam Ash and I spent a couple months learning to play the first couple bars of Harlem Nocturne. At the end of the summer I probably traded in the sax and bought a 4-track recorder or some guitar amp or accessories...  Apparently I wasn't ready to play sax back then.  But I guess I remembered a couple things which definitely helped me later on.

So last Saturday, about 22 years later, I decided to buy an alto sax. How I chose my sax was very suddenly and unexpectedly. I had just about decided to get the best student sax I could find. But I was concerned that I wouldn't get a sax that sounded good to my ears.  The thought began to form in my mind that I would know it when I heard it.  But I wasn't sure how I was going to hear a proper demonstration of each instrument.  Then it happened... I was googling in my area and stumbled upon a shop called KB Saxophone Services a couple miles away.  They had video demos of all of the saxophones they have for sale. The first alto I heard sounded amazing and I thought I had to have it.  I compared it to the other demos of the more expensive models but they didn't have the same charm.  The price was way higher than I planned to spend but I pretty much had my mind set on that instrument.  I imagined walking into the shop and having them laugh in my face.  Maybe in some alternate reality that's exactly what happened and they kicked me out on the street. Also, definitely in an alternate time-line I was in my car and turned around because I wasn't feeling well... which actually happened but then I changed my mind again and headed south to Long Island City changing this time-line for the better.  What did happen was when I walked through the door at KB Saxophone Services I met two of the nicest people I have ever met. Kim and his wife Angie spent hours helping me play my first notes in 20 years and even taught me the beginning of the chromatic scale before finalizing the sale. And that's how this thing got started.

  I practiced every evening for 4 nights. I'm in an apartment so I had to play in hushed tones after 9pm. I'm learning that it's more difficult to play quietly than it is to play at full volume. On tuesday night I practiced some of the chromatic scale hoping that I could use it to get my bearings during the next fuzzbucket jam session.  I even downloaded some iPad and iPhone apps to help me learn the correct fingerings.  My brain and mouth muscles couldn't handle learning the whole scale so half would have to do.  What's amazing is how good I feel during and after playing.  I've had fun playing guitar and drums over the years but when you play sax you put more of your self into the sound that comes out of the instrument.  You're literally breathing life into it.  It's breath-taking really... haha! No... really!

  And then on Wednesday night this jam happened... And it didn't suck!  (but it did blow) (another joke!) 

So here are some notes:

1)Dark Passenger is Jamie's jam on the Novax. I was playing drums and Eric on guitar/theremin. Somewhere in the middle I decided to drop out on the drums and play sax one-handed while playing the ride cymbal with my right hand and attempting to use the hihat and kick with my feet.. I found 3 or 4 notes and stuck with them for a while. Anyway, that's a neat trick that I have to remember for when I get better at this. Too bad I was playing flat most of the time.

2)KickIt - stupid name (sorry) ... a more traditional jam... nothing special but it has a pretty solid ending.  Well, maybe not... It's not that bad.

3)troublemaker - more sax! I had lots of fun playing this. I really started getting the hang of things and took more chances trying to hit overtones and bending notes. Jamie played some sweet drums and eric went nuts with the theremin.

4)cutItOut - we may have found another viable configuration of our band having me on sax, eric on novax and jamie on drums. This jam sounds like us in our element playing no holds barred improvised mayhem. Okay so next time I'll try to play in tune but it was pretty sweet!  I try to emulate eric's feedback with the sax. Too bad I kept losing my breath!

Thanks for checking out our jams!

-Dan

Fuzz Bucket Duo Jams

I know I haven't posted in a long while so I'm trying to make up for it.  So here's a quick post of my most recent jam sessions.  Here are a couple recent jams featuring 2 of the 3 members of Fuzz Bucket:
Eric: guitars, synth, theramin
Dan: drums

Rinoman:
  Since Jamie has been on vacation Eric has replaced his guitar with my Novax CH8 ,similar to Jamie's Novax CH7 prototype except mine has a shorter scale and one extra guitar string. I've been stringing mine as a 7 string with the high string tuned to E. Eric decided to add an 8th high A string. I think it brings a little extra life to the guitar tracks.  As usual he is running the guitar and bass through his awesome guitar rig with various synths and theramin incorporated into his sound.
  The drums were sounding pretty good during this session.  Apparently someone else used my kit during the couple weeks that we hadn't played and he tuned things up nicely. Sweet!

Fzzbkt.6.7.13.rinoman by shimster

flight:
Another jam from 6/7/2013
Fzzbkt.6.7.13.flight by shimster
wookiee:
  This is an older jam, the first jam Eric and I had during Jamie's absence. Eric's using my novax here as well but the setup was different as usual. I really like the tones coming out of Eric's rig.  They are a bit light on effects which is unusual for us. The wah was behaving a bit strange but I think it gave this jam a bit of personality as well. The theremin makes an appearance about half way through. Hope you like it.

Fzzbkt.5.16.13.c.wookiee by shimster

Fuzz 5.25.12!!!

Finally started mixing new tracks. This jam was productive. I think they gave us an extra half hour for free so we took our time coming up with ideas.  This session took place in our favorite rehearsal studio which has glass sliding doors and glass block window behind the drum kit. All those hard surfaces must create a more resonant environment that seems to inspire better playing, or maybe we just like the way it looks.

Eric's guitar was loud, Jamie's bass was low, drum sticks were flying.

My favorite track is "Eric2Loud" but I haven't listened to them all yet. If you're patient "Patience" pays off in the end. EpicCake has a cool riff at the end and the "TwoMinuteJams" were pretty fun. We attempted to limit each jam to 2 minutes but we probably ended up playing several 6 minute jams.