Fuzz 2.18.10

For those just joining us, Fuzz is what happens when 4 technical directors that work in cg animation get together and make noise with their instruments. We all kind of play guitar, bass, and drums so we have fun switching instruments to make things challenging. Eric usually brings a crazy stereo guitar fx rig, bunch of mics, a 4-track field recorder and records each jam. Sheldon usually brings his guitar/fx rig, which is also crazy. Jamie usually brings his vintage bass gear with vintage pedals (jealous). I usually bring my SG and my pedal board and some cymbals. I also bring my 4-track field recorder so we can link them together and get 8 tracks. We use the drumset and amps provided by Astoria Soundworks. For the past few weeks I've been mixing the jams on my old TiBook using Digital Performer. This time my TiBook almost blew up (again) because I used too many effects again. Almost time to upgrade, not yet...

This session Eric brought a pedal that allows him to pan his guitar sound between two separate guitar rigs. I brought my usual rig with the crybaby again and borrowed the same Orange amp that I used in the previous jam. We tried a different drum mic setup with one on the kick, another over the snare/hihat and one over the ride/toms. I bought a new korg nano kontrol which helped when I was mixing the tracks. It's like a mini mixing console, so cool. I'm also trying mixing a little more actively to balance the tracks and enhance the psychedelic experience. Oh, I played the drums so damn hard that my arms were sore for a few days. I've also started naming the tracks just to help differentiate each block of music. I know they're silly and the cover art sucks but I was tired and in a hurry.

fuzz.2.18.10a-Where_is_Sheldon.mp3 3:16 E:Gtr J:Bass D:Drums S:?
fuzz.2.18.10b-Technical_Difficulties.mp3 17:08 E:Gtr J:Bass D:Drums S:Gtr (one 4-track failed for the first 3/4 of the jam)
fuzz.2.18.10c-TheDingoAteYourBaby.mp3 11:09 E:Gtr J:Bass D:Drums S:Dark Magic
fuzz.2.18.10d-DeepFriedMonkeyBrains.mp3 9:21 E:Gtr J:Drums D:Bass S:Gtr
fuzz.2.18.10e-TheyStartedWithoutMeButItWasPrettyCool.mp3 15:07 E:Gtr J:Drums D:Bass S:Gtr
fuzz.2.18.10f-bassNDrums.mp3 3:05 J:Drums D:Bass
fuzz.2.18.10g-playedYourEyesIn.mp3 13:18 E:Gtr J:Drums D:Bass S:Gtr
fuzz.2.18.10h-A_Moo_Point.mp3 9:41 E:Drums J:Bass D:Gtr S:Gtr
fuzz.2.18.10i-CornNuts.mp3 5:07 E:Drums J:Bass D:Gtr S:Gtr
fuzz.2.18.10j-MyHandsFellOff.mp3 10:48 E:Gtr J:Bass D:Drums S:Gtr
fuzz.2.18.10k-FuzzTastik.mp3 17:09 E:Gtr J:Bass D:Drums S:Gtr

Happy Fat Fuzz Tuesday

Feb 4 2010 Jam Session: I recently added my old "crybaby" wah pedal into my guitar rig. Sounds great! I hope you'll agree. This was a very challenging mix with lots of tracks bleeding through and sync issues along with other mayhem but I scraped it together. Not the best balancing of tracks but pretty listenable I hope.

fuzz.2.4.10a.mp3 1:50 Shel and Jamie playing purty
fuzz.2.4.10b.mp3 1:28 d:drums, j:bass, s:gtr, e:gtr
fuzz.2.4.10c.mp3 7:53 d:drums, j:bass, s:gtr, e:gtr
fuzz.2.4.10d.mp3 8:57 d:drums, j:bass, s:gtr, e:gtr
fuzz.2.4.10e.mp3 2:09 j:drums, d:gtr, s:gtr, e:bass
fuzz.2.4.10f.mp3 8:49 j:drums, d:gtr, s:gtr, e:bass
fuzz.2.4.10g.mp3 10:35 j:drums, d:gtr, s:gtr, e:bass
fuzz.2.4.10h.mp3 5:32 d:drums, j:bass, s:gtr, e:gtr
fuzz.2.4.10i.mp3 19:07 d:drums, j:bass, s:gtr, e:gtr
fuzz.2.4.10j.mp3 6:31 d:bass, j:d-gtr, s:gtr, e:drums
fuzz.2.4.10k.mp3 8:48 d:bass, j:d-gtr, s:gtr, e:drums
fuzz.2.4.10l.mp3 23:42 d:e-gtr, e:d-gtr, s:bass, j:drums

2010 - New Fuzz

January 21, 2010 : New Fuzz! I took advantage of a snow day and mixed these jams. While mixing, Digital Performer crashed and lost a lot of work but I managed to re-do everything. During rendering of the mixes I managed to max out my poor 1GHz Titanium PowerBook. Almost time for an upgrade. I had to move my project to a faster hard drive and disable some features to get this stuff done.

Edit: 2/14/10 Replaced tracks with remixed versions because they were a little wonky due to my drunk mixing job.

Here are the tracks:
fuzz.1.21.10a.mp3 01:14 - j: bass, d:drums, s:guitar, e:guitar
fuzz.1.21.10b.mp3 10:23 - j:bass, d:drums, s:guitar, e:guitar
fuzz.1.21.10c.mp3 08:03 - d:guitar, j:drums, e:bass? s:guitar?
fuzz.1.21.10d.mp3 21:32 - j:drums, d:bass, s:guitar, e:guitar
fuzz.1.21.10e.mp3 09:42 - e:drums, d:bass, s:guitar, j:guitar
fuzz.1.21.10f.mp3 05:11 - e:drums, d:bass, s:guitar, j:guitar
fuzz.1.21.10g.mp3 21:08 - j:bass, d:drums, s:guitar, e:guitar
fuzz.1.21.10h.mp3 23:00 - j:bass, d:drums, s:guitar, e:guitar

The Last Fuzz Jam of 2009 (for real!)

There was another jam from 12/17/2009 on Eric's drive. I just finished mixing these down. I'll post track notes later. Hope you like them!

fuzz.12.17.9a.mp3
fuzz.12.17.9b.mp3
fuzz.12.17.9c.mp3
fuzz.12.17.9d.mp3
fuzz.12.17.9e.mp3
fuzz.12.17.9f.mp3
fuzz.12.17.9g.mp3
fuzz.12.17.9h.mp3
fuzz.12.17.9i.mp3

notes:
a: Jamie Drums, Eric Guitar, Sheldon Guitar, Dan Bass
b: Jamie Drums, Eric Guitar, Sheldon Guitar, Dan Bass
c: Jamie Drums, Eric Guitar, Sheldon Guitar, Dan Bass - first half Eric and Sheldon take a break then all hell breaks loose
d: Dan Drums, Eric Guitar, Sheldon Guitar, Jamie Bass
e: Dan Drums, Eric Guitar, Sheldon Guitar, Jamie Bass
f: Dan Drums, Eric Guitar, Sheldon Guitar, Jamie Bass
g: Dan Drums, Eric Guitar, Sheldon Guitar, Jamie Bass - epic in its epicness
h: Eric Drums, Dan Guitar, Sheldon Guitar, Jamie Bass - knightrider-ish
i: Dan Drums, Eric Guitar, Sheldon Guitar, Jamie Bass - hawaii-5-O-ish

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