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.

I received this beautiful necklace as a christmas present from drummer Dan who makes the most beautiful jewelry (the photo does not do it justice so look at it in the bigger size by clicking the photo!). He couldn’t decide which piece to give to who, so we each just picked out a wrapped one and oddly enough we all seemed to get the piece that most suited us. On the back is the word Voyageur. I love this necklace so much its become a bit of a talisman – I don’t pay much attention to the way I’m putting it on, but I’ve found that whatever word faces out sums up how I have to navigate throughout my day – Onward for the days when I’m low or blue or puzzled by a friend’s hot and cold, or Voyageur for the days I have to be a little adventurous. It’s also made me realize what a great word onward is. And how much more I love our band, and our band name as a result!

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.

Redbird Batallion in Ardour

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!

such a pretty interface

my pretty guitar - photo by Christine

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.

warning: only other gearheads will be even remotely interested in this post

I experienced a bit of relief the other day when Matt told me that after 13 years together he’d accepted the fact that I’m a gearhead – (with the exception of his amp, all of his guitars (2) have been stolen from his big brother, and he’s never wanted anything else). In my time I have owned:

a westone bass (my first purchase ever, traded in for my second purchase, which came shortly after),
a fender mustang bass (still playing it),
a 1960s hagstrom II bass (stolen from the back of the band van at the east broadway safeway),
a 70s hagstrom HIIBN bass (my favorite ever – had a nice badass bridge and was stolen from our jam space – if you ever see one like it let me know!),
a 1965 Hagstrom III electric (a gift, if you can believe it!),
Fender Mustang electric reissue,
Danelectro DC2 (stolen from our jam space),
Gretsch Synchromatic (what I play now)
Gretsch Americana Acoustic (way out west!!)
a fender champ
an ampeg jet
peavey classic

and I have own half of a Stella parlour guitar which Matt has taken over since buying my Americana, and a 12 string Danelectro that I bought for Matt that also was stolen. Various bass amps, although I have not owned a working bass amp in about 10 years, and have managed to borrow one even when touring.

So, in spite of all my many guitars (over consumption?) I’ve been thinking about some new gear again. I’ve been a bit less than enthusiastic about the peavey that I use to play live, its a great amp but lately I want some of that nice breakup that happens when you crank it, and the peavey is just too clean. The champ is great for practicing and recording but not live, the ampeg is great live but I get shocks from it and the tremolo no longer works (after spending $265 to get it repaired from those thieving bastards at Backline who essentially charged me that amount to fix the handle and the light that comes on when you turn it on, and it took them about 4 months to do it after berating us for buying vintage in the first place). I might use the ampeg without the tremolo (if I can find an honest company to fix the ground), but I sure would like one of these:

and I really want a nice archtop/semi-acoustic. I contemplated this guitar for about 10 seconds:

but seriously, the idea of a guitar made specifically for girls kind of turns me off. I don’t know why, but I guess it’s because there are lots of guitars out there that have necks that my girl hands can wrap around. And can you imagine telling some other guitar player that you really admire that you play a daisy rock (although no offense to the guitar itself, it is kind of pretty) ? Much better to say, I’ve got an Epiphone Casino, or a Harmony Rocket or Meteor, or best of all, a walnut Gretsch with a bigsby:

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.

Its odd how some nights you can go to band practice and your instrument sounds like shit, and then the next week its amazing. A week ago I could barely tolerate the tinny sound of my guitar, even rolling off all the treble didn’t do anything. Last night it was fracking great and I have no idea why. It’s too bad that I’m always forgetting things – I’ve been short one guitar cable since our last gig and the kids scattered my guitar picks all over the living room (but luckily I had the one that Christine gave me last week in my pocket) and worst of all I broke a string and forgot to put a new one on. I am seriously pushing it with how old my strings are, and how sad is it to show up to band practice with a 5-string guitar?

The thing about playing in a band with two songwriters is there’s no shortage of material, and we were working on Christine’s new song in which I was having a grand old time with the delay pedal, rendering my bandmates near-deaf. It took us awhile to navigate our way through 3 segues (Third Segue same as the First!) but by the end of it we’d trimmed it down to 1. I’m pretty excited about it, and I’m keen on getting myself some more fancy effects.

The time has come to try and get the band out there a little more, and I’ve got some BIG plans in store (she said, rubbing her hands together excitedly).

I’m obsessed with hockey and music these days, where all I would like to do is go to stick and puck and then come home and play with garageband. I want to write songs, songs, songs. There was a time when I just wanted to draw all day and now when I get to draw all day (ok, I still love drawing all day) at the back of my mind I want to pick up my guitar. It probably has to do with the fact that the band is on our January break and I don’t have that outlet but that will be coming to and end soon. Seriously though, if I was in charge of everyone in my band’s life, we’d be practicing all the time, writing songs together, doing a recording only project where we would could just focus on singing, and learning to play all the songs I love. So I guess its a good thing that I’m not in charge because they would quickly become my musical slaves.

Last night I got to watch a video of two of our hockey games (one I was not at, unfortunately) and for the first time saw myself playing hockey. It was quite weird. And this is not meant as any sort of criticism of my teammates, who are awesome beyond belief, but I was struck with how boring we looked. That most definitely means me. It was like going back to watching a Canucks game after the World Juniors, like, come on, show a little spirit! I lack hustle, that’s the only way to say it. Is it stamina, or desire, or both? Probably both, because its hard to hustle for an hour. But I think back on all the women I’ve met who’s hockey skills I’ve admired and the common thread was that wanting to get to the puck first. Then the encouraging thought was that sure, my backhandwristshotslapshotsnapshotmohawksstopscrossovers suck but I can always improve my hustle!

Seriously though, I could see why it might be less than interesting to watch us play, and certainly will think twice about it before I invite anyone to come watch. The good thing though is that we have a game today, where I will have the opportunity to work on it.

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.