Last night at band practice Christine was teasing Joyita and I about our husband’s reactions to our ipods (a little bit jealous of the attention we pay to them), and to be honest, they are a bit justified in that jealousy. We have to admit that in a raging fire we’d hesitate just for a second at who to save first (I’m only kidding, darling, you know it’s you). But while the world is focused on the ipad I’d like to write this little post professing my undying love for my ipod, and its not the first time either.

Some ipodless friends think they’re not techy enough to use one (they don’t realize how innovative the operating system is, the whole touch thing is SO intuitive that I’m prone thinking – what?? point and click?? How terribly archaic!) or that the cult-like devotion we have for them signals the downfall of civilization (its probably true). I’m often baffled by people who don’t love them, or are given one by their jobs and say they don’t know what to do with them. Okay, its like shitmydadsays “You didn’t invent it, you just bought it”, but I love it. And I’m going to tell you about it. And no, I don’t work for Apple or any of the manufacturers whose apps I’m going to rave about. Keep reading.

Its a great device to have if you’re a musician. I love jamming with it. I haven’t quite figured out how we can make ourselves look interesting playing ipods, but it definitely sounds interesting and is super fun to play. And yes, it is just like a tiny, somewhat awkward to play keyboard, but the sounds are great, there’s no latency, and there’s such a variety of noises to be had at your fingertips. Some of my favorite music making apps are Yonac’s mini-synth, N-log (free!), Grand Pro, BeatMaker and Star 6. I’ve also moved the computer loops that we use live into BeatMaker so I don’t have to haul my laptop and midi keyboard to shows or practice anymore (the less to carry, the better). Then of course, we record all our new songs and vocal practices so we can remember/learn/keep track of our harmonies and parts. And the same for songwriting – its quick and handy to capture the ideas – 4track is another app that comes in handy for that. I can also tune my acoustic with it, and my electric and bass using a 1/4 inch adapter I bought from Perterson Strobe Tuners. I’m waiting for the dock line-out that I bought on ebay to arrive and then I can process my vocals too. I take notes on it, write lyrics and books on it with Awesome Note (it’s awesome) and can make chord charts on it using SketchBook.

Not to mention drawing. I talked about Brushes earlier and how great it is for that, and now that the bigger screened iPad is out I think graphics apps may have some stiff competition (the prospect of drawing on it really makes me want an ipad). Drawing with my finger is way more satisfying than with my $250 wacom tablet, and easier. Plus I can do it anywhere because its always in my pocket.

And of course, social networking everywhere and anywhere. Having the calendar handy so you can immediately respond if someone says “Are you free?’. Listening to music, looking at photos. The Guardian UK’s app is proving that they are way ahead of other newspapers in adapting to new technologies (the Globe and Mail one is good too).

The only thing missing is a camera, seriously. I don’t care about having a phone so much (too much money for the plans!) but I really would love to have Hipstamatic. Christine has taken some lovely photos already, which you may see posted on our new band twitter page via twitteriffic.

I’m done now.

When I write a song the last thing to come is the lyrics. I do the guitar or bass bits first and sing nonsense words & syllables to come up with the melody line. The other day I came up with this song that sounded pretty darn cheerful (Matt said it reminded him of a Spongebob song, which is okay by me, and probably unavoidable since my kids are singing songs from the show all the time), so I thought, what the heck, I’ll write a song about falling in love because it has that kind of sunniness to it. Hey, I’m not ashamed to admit it either – we’ll call this #1 in Lessons Learned from Brendan Benson – its okay to write songs about love.

The funny thing was that I was trucking along, la la la, coming up with some not too corny lyrics, and then because my son was asking me every 15 seconds or so what I was going to name the damn thing, I started thinking it was either going to be called (culling something from the lyrics) The Greatest One of All or Ghostly. But suddenly rereading the lyrics with the title “Ghostly” made me realize that I had just written an entire song about death, not about love. Good thing I didn’t say to Matt “I am using you as inspiration for my song of love” and then come back to him singing about death.

So I guess that in some ways they’re kind of the same thing, and I guess I got a gothy streak. The song is now called Love & Death, and I present it to you here in glorious ipod touch/4track/griffin SmartTalk mic hi-fi – complete with the odd bad note.

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©2009

I’ve been messing around with some digital audio workstations lately in preparation for doing some Onward Voyageur recordings (and mixing, although it looks like we’re moving ahead with that sooner than I thought). I have in the past played around with N-tracks, Cubase, Nuendo, and Sonar on my pc, but since buying a mac I’ve just been making my demos in garage band. I imagine I could record the whole band in it too, but I wanted to see what else was out there.

I tried out the free daw Ardour first, but in spite of following their instructions as closely as possible, the program did crash fairly regularly, and you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to figure out how to load tracks (and I consider myself pretty good at using software). I played with it up until the point where I discovered that all of our backups were short little tracks that I had to manually line up, got frustrated trying to figure out how to add markers, and then when it crashed again I thought it was time to look at something else.

I downloaded a 30 day trial of a program called Reaper, and I have to admit the interface sure is pretty (I like a pretty interface!) and I got the hang of it a little quicker than Ardour. Lining up the backing vocals was easier because I could easily add markers! So I have to learn as much as I can before the trial expires!

And hey, if you’re reading this and have a favorite program that you like to record with, can you tell me what it is? And is there an easier way to import a protools recording when some of the tracks aren’t as long as the whole song?

Last weekend Onward Voyageur was in the studio, and I tried blogging and recording at the same time:

Today is our last day in the studio, where we are trying hard to record 8 songs in 3 days. We are going to finish up all the backups (we have 4 people singing on all the songs, so after getting good beds this is probably the biggest part) plus overdub some keyboards, banjo and trumpet.

One of our biggest wishes would be to have free time to experiment (or affordable time? or our own studio?) but there are always budget, time and babysitting constraints. So, I’ve been mucking around a bit because I want to learn to record us, and the great thing about digital is I can actually take these studio tracks and play around with them on my own computer. After this stint we’re going to try and record one song on our own in the jam space.

11:45 We’ve just finished all the vocals for Myth of Broken Wrist, and Leslie is singing backups for Fall in the Spring. This is the first time in the studio for Leslie, and we’re all getting turns holding Baby Iris, the amazing studio baby.

11:54 Finished Fall in the Spring – pretty quick,eh? We’d actually only had Leslie’s parts to finish up from yesterday. Next up, Landmine. We’ve appointed Joyita supreme dictator of backups, she has final say on all parts, if they’re up to scratch or not. This is what you get for being such a great backup vocalist. Christine always nails her too although she would probably argue that with me.

12:47 Finished Landmine and we’re almost done Eye to the Ground. Joyita always goes last as her voice is “the blender”. This is the song I’d really like to make a video for so we have to get this one right!

12:51 Joyita the one take wonder.

12:54 Christine’s up for Dead & Buried. Sometimes when we really examine our harmonies closely we realize someone is singing the same part as someone else, so its always up to Joyita to come up with the new harmony on the spot.

1:22 Good thing I only have to sing one line (although quite a number of times) cause I got Leisurely Collapse in one take!

1:28 Joyita is jumping up and down.

2:19 What’s up with Starbucks? Their coffee sucks.

2:25 A lot of bands say they will fix it in the mix, with us it’s, we just won’t have it in the mix at all.

3:15 Eve on the clave, Carrie on banjo and JP on trumpet!

Ok, I got a little tired of trying to do two things at the same time so that last line pretty much sums up the rest of the day. Last night we had a listening party and I am SO SO happy with the rough mixes! Can’t wait to mix it.

One of the great things about playing in a band with a school teacher is that she comes to practice with some preprinted charts and sharpened pencils, so you can dutifully take notes for your upcoming recording session, and see all the things that you better get working on. We’re finally going to finish the Onward Voyageur cd that we started almost a year ago, and I have about a week to fix all the lyrics and guitar parts that aren’t quite up to scratch.

Its quite a challenge mind you, as I’ve had a few Duplex! rehearsals for tonight’s show in Veda’s backyard, as well as picking up the drums for my son’s best friend’s band, Youthful Exuberance. Its fun to be the old lady on the drums behind a 12 and 8 year old songwriting team and we worked pretty hard on convincing their Dad to play bass, in spite of his conviction that one should not be playing a gig after one day playing bass – he isn’t taking into account his inherent musicality. Playing drums is fun fun thing. Anyone out there need a drummer whose meter isn’t too bad but never does any fills? (but I don’t own my own drum kit).

And Duplex! sure is fun, because after being a bass player for many many years, I suddenly find I rarely play it anymore. Since Duplex! averages about a gig a year I find I’m losing a lot of flexibility in my hands…is it time to start playing with a pick? And I can’t even begin to tell you how much fun, and difficult, singing harmonies and playing bass is.

Oh, and just for fun, I was messing about with a band photo. What do you think? This is just a first draft.

At last, the new record from the laziest band in show business. More rock songs for small people and their minders! Topics covered: noble gases, sandwich making, photosynthesis, same-sex divorce, dogs in sweaters.

Its taken us 4 years but we’ve finally managed to get it together to put out our second album, Worser. I’m pretty darn happy with it, and not only because I got to do the silkscreened art. Great song contributions by everyone in the band, too. Here’s a song – Orange Popsicle, by Duplex!:

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(I’m going to post my little demo version of it later, so keep an eye out for it!)

One really, really great thing about playing music for kids is you get to do early shows, at say, noon. This works perfectly with my schedule. Oh, and if you’re trawling around on myspace or reverbnation, add us as your friend!

buy the album

Most musicians dream about having their band mentioned in Rolling Stone, for me, its on the Vancouver Canucks website (It’s down at the bottom). I think they should have mentioned how great he is at picking up your doped up husband from the dentist – I might have to complain.