localcrew

Nice stuff!

The Epstein Bar Hoppers

Nice tune, sounds good! the trick is finding soft synths that you like. I have a Yamaha 55c for playing drum parts...google it....it looks like a toy but for the price and small footprint it works really well. More professional pads don't come with foot pedals and to my mind how can you play drums without them? It would be nice to have a full kit but I don't have the room for it...or the money to buy it for that matter....

I would be happy to give you any tips you may like for recording etc.

yes, sorry if I am vague- I wrote, sang and played all the instrument parts in these songs--I have about forty tunes almost as mixed and ready to go on a web page if I can get some help making one.....(and about forty more I'm still working on-it's a labour of love as I said on Myspace)....

Thanks, sadly the instruments are not authentic. I have an acoustic, electric and a bass. The drums are played on pads I have that have pedals for kick and hat while all the keys, synths, orchestrations etc are done on my guitar with a midi pickup-kind of interesting trying to play a guitar like a piano let me tell you!

Hi, i have a few new tunes and remixes of the older ones on my page now.

The tunes are all tributes to the Dead except for On the Road which is more of a breeze through the beat scene etc (brief and not in depth but I think catchy) and Memphis Hideaway is more inspired by the Dead scene that a tribute to the band.

I hope you enjoy them.

http://www.myspace.com/dcmuir

Merry Christmas all!

Cool...I don't have any recordings anyway....maybe something we taped ad hoc in the backyard or something....?...Get a connection!

Just uploaded a remix of A Tall Tale....a bit better now.

Just uploaded a remix of The King of Hearts (a song for Jerry of course).

I've just uploaded a slight remix of Highway; the snare drum was driving me nuts so I remixed it a bit....not much of a change I know but there it is.

I have a friend who has some web space so some day-hopefully soonish I will be uploading a couple 'albums' worth of tunes. Of course they're not all Grateful Dead tribute sings but they are still by a Deadhead and hopefully Deadheads will enjoy them....

Good on the security guys-I hope all turned out well!

As for the main story; I guess we gotta be careful folks and hope we don't individually gain as much online info as a published writer...

Definitely sounds tight! Rockin'!

My best friend is Harry's longtime tour tech-driver-soundman; a road crew of one....he visits whenever he's passing through town. I just want to say you should hear when Harry and Michael Kaeshammer tour together....WOW what a sound they get going...AMAZING! (my friend obviously has many soundboards)

Not intending to suggest that Kevin isn't great (my friend raves about him as well) just want to point out that there are some other sonically adventurous stuff to check out some time. Harry also tours with South Side Steve on harp from time to time. That's one of the cool things about Harry- he seems very open to jamming/gigging/touring with other great musicians to change things up and make them interesting while a lot of other singer/songwriters tend to restrict themselves a lot more for either financial or self promotion purposes.

(I copied my own post and pasted it here from the other forum just for the heck of it)

Hey nice....I'm really digging that national Frost.....don't have time to check others right now but will do....good thread!

....right here.....

....what can you do eh?

thanks, i'll try to check it out....I like both the Rheostatics and Vinyl Cafe!

Check this out-it may be a better quality version of the Hey Jude than you have. David Lemieux (archivist for the Dead-do you know he is kind of an Ottawa boy-used to come watch my band Longbottom [i know-funny name]) posted this at the Grateful Dead site.

http://www.dead.net/node/57

PS check out the 75 Blues for Allah stuff-I love that and this seems to be of rare quality!

Yup I had fun at those shows. I remember thinking that the Dead lacked a little of the intensity I had known which dissapointed me a bit at the time. I can see in retrospect that though they did lack a bit intensity they were playing 'better'. Nice version of Hey Jude (and rare) too bad Brent forgot the words.

I remember Alpine Valley one year when he screwed up the words to Blackbird (rare as well) and he laid his head down on the keyboard laughing and flapping his arms-FUNNY!

Man Brent was good-fantastic actually-I've never heard anyone who could bring out the power and characteristics of the B3 quite like him even though others may have had more keyboard fame than him.

Tour started for me in the PARTY days in 1984-they had a few years there where the party was unbelievable and the music was INTENSE-of course looking back it was also awfully ragged with Jerry completely partied out at times. Wild times though!

I don't know about 'this scene' in particular but I would say that in general people are looking for something bigger than themselves.

They are also looking for a connection with this 'other' as well as connection with others. The root of the word religion means to connect (to this source). This is something people yearn for on a primordial level. We hope for a transcendent experience.

It is as has been noted here something that has been removed from our experience over the years to be replaced by events that merely signify or represent the experience such as Church or sporting events.

The most likely place for these transcendent experiences to occur seems to be the rock concert and I would suggest improvisational music is one of the most likely channels as the musicians themselves leave the possibility open in the music for 'other' things to come through.

This is what made the Grateful Dead so enduring and significant as they realized this decades ago and actually crafted their style and songwriting to be (as Joseph Campbell would say) transparent to transcendence. The possibility of things occuring on a psychic and/or spiritual level was VERY high......or you could just enjoy the music....

This is something that most jam bands have lost sight of but who can blame them; it takes a huge leap of faith to accept all this as well as a level of genius to operate on both levels at once coupled with an ego that can let this 'other' energy share the stage with you. Most musicians let the ego take over which closes the door so to speak....we're 'only human' after all....

But on the more down to Earth level I would guess that people in 'this scene' enjoy bands that actually are interested in playing good music and improvising a bit as opposed to bands who are simply trying to find a formula for success..

Well if it's not a good song or doesn't sound right...that's the way things go.

I can understand his feelings though-heck I can hardly get folks to listen to my songs that are a click of the mouse away.

But you're right; musicians have to get over it-you can't expect people to care-for the most part they don't.

That's life.

I love Doc, I would claim him as one of the few guitar players I've tried to emulate. I LOVE DOC WATSON!

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/FastTrackPro-main.html

I was looking at one of these as it has midi input as well.....I stuck with the Creative Labs for my Soundfonts that I am hooked on though....M Audio is better I'm sure though...

Definitely!

I'm not sure how garageband works but with my stuff I find it important to keep the music in line with the measures and tempo so you can quantize the midi data if you find you have drifted off the timing.

I would find a drum pattern that was close enough to the song to keep the tempo until I get a few tracks down and then actually play the drum parts on the Yamaha as I use it as an electronic drum set rather than a drum machine...though it could be used as such. Of course you could edit the drum parts with a keyboard or note by note in the music program to get what you like.

It's very hard to put in a drum loop and add lots of different instrument parts that sync up unless you align it properly with the measures of your music program....eventually some parts will go out of sync and it's harder than you may think to find which part is off (if you have many)....

guitarberman,

I would say that you have some good advice there though I don't think it matters much whether you go the Mac or PC route....I have a PC and many soundmen I know with studios use PCs as well...some use Macs of course but it doesn't really matter much anymore. Macs are usually suggested for people who don't know much about computers and don't want to learn....PCs are more customizable...depends which you prefer...

You'll want a good computer with probably a couple gigs of ram and lots of hard drive space....a dvd burner or something to back stuff up because I can tell you the pain of losing months worth of work is not pleasant...

I would suggest an M Audio soundcard of some sort....you may find one with a built in pre amp for not too much money. I stuck to Creative Labs simply because I have been using certain Soundfonts for years that will only work with their card but I would think M Audio would be a better soundcard in general...lower latency etc...

Thanks much!

I use Sonar Producer 6 with lots of plugins and soft synths. I'm going into a Creative labs X Fi soundcard.....

I have a single 57 mic, a Roland GK3 midi pickup for my guitar to make the synth and keyboard sounds (as I can't play keys sadly-even though I own a player piano-but then it plays itself anyway), a Yamaha DD-55c so I can play drums into the computer as well as a Creative Labs Prodikeys keyboard with touch sensitive keys just because I could buy it here in town for $40....

I would like to see an area for folks to talk about (home) recording and for more to get into it in general. I would highly recommend it to people who like to write songs as a way to easily (relatively) realize those songs that may be in their heads (hearts) or just on paper.