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The Music Thread

Mowl said:
There's never been a better time to buy second-hand quality instruments. Covid laid a huge percentage of amateur musicians off and they sold off any excess gear just to pay the bills. I hoovered up as many instruments as I could afford (up until about i8 months ago) and decided that my money was worth more being spent on instruments than it was lying in the bank and costing me to keep it there.

Horns, rare drums, guitars, mixing desks, mics, PA systems, etc.

Round them all up and sit on them at home having fun, then selling them on at a decent price after Covid terms were lifted.

I'd rather have a trombone hanging around than six hundred in the bank gathering dust.

Buy it cheap, sell at a solid mark-up, and still both I and the buyer come out on top.

Some instruments were bought from players under the guarantee that they had first nibs on buying it back before I put it on public sale. I got a few nice bits and pieces from guys who were obviously sad to part with them, so I made the deal and we shook on it - when I was letting their item go, I called them first. Made loads of money and loads of new connections too.



Mesmerizing - because it's so fucking timeless that tune.



I'll be shopping for a few new items myself over the next ten days: that album I'm working on is continuing after a three week hiatus due to the vocalist taking off to the states to see his family. Finnish Americans, he works for YLE, the national broadcaster, news department. I may yet squeeze a few possibilities for a few articles of my own based on my experiences in the cardiac unit of the hospital for their online site.

He's so fucking talented it defies belief every time he offers the next idea for a track.

But I have Lionel aboard for this one, and his Afro style of jazz works seamlessly on this gig. Tiny studio, minimal mics, all live tracks with lots of spill between bass and drums, and guitars and vocals in the adjoining room. This little joint:



The kit is also tiny, but I've gone to great lengths to get my sounds just right: a big fat mondo-type kick that has lots of top-end to give it some slap. I also tape a €2 coin under the beater pad to harden the tone even more, then add some low end with the room mics. To super-sensitive ribbon mics at 1100 and 1600, and an SM58 on the kick - that's it: three mics on this little number:



It's a Yamaha kit from the sixties, with a 20x16 kick, a 5X15 snare, a 12x9 rack tom, and a cheap as chips floor time with no label on, but it's crap, not worth twenty bucks, but I still made a huge sound out of it by tuning the bottom head to the kick drum resonant head, that way I can flip some flams across the toms and they sound huge. But the real killer with this little baby are the cymbals. Machine cut and lathed, then hand hammered and tuned perfectly into each other:

Hats: 14''
Crash: 16''
Ride: 20''

I got them with a cheap kit I bought during Covid and didn't even realize at the time what they were, where they came from, and how fucking awesome they sound under the mics. I bought the entire kit for €100, then stripped off all of the cheap fittings and sold them off individually, which paid me back €93.00, so the kit and cymbals really only cost me €7.00. Every studio I taken them to have asked me to please leave them for rent, but I'd really rather not as they're fragile and the bottom hi-hat already had a crack in it. I can't fix it, but I can stop it getting any worse by drilling a tiny hole at the end of the crack. They sound fucking unbelievable, truly awesome. I have loads of Zildjian K's that cost me hundreds for each one, but they don't sound half as good as these Chinese designed semi-professional level cymbals.

Even the tiniest of kits, when mic-ed up properly, can deliver you a monster fat sound, if you take your time and play within the available dynamics of the room, the mics, and how the signal is processed. When I have some decent mixes ready, I'll post one for your critique. To be honest though, the demo sounds are fucking amaze-balls. I find myself wanting to play the entire catalogue over and over some evenings, which is a first for me in a long time.

Actually LOVING the music I'm making, and listening to the tracks as a fan, is a rare turn of events, but one I'm very happy with.
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Looks like you have a cymbal set up on a pool cue to your left hand there Mowl :)
 
Might as well be a pool cue, they're all from Thomann - that cheapo German online music gear company.

All in all you get the quality of sound you pay for, unless you're clocked enough to know that every kit, no matter it's maker, has a sound in it - you simply have to know where to look, and how to tune it into position in the stereo field. Even really shitty drums can and will suit certain compositions, it depends on how the player approaches the song, tunes the kit, and then plays it in harmony with what you hear.

After all, if Ringo could lay down such fat tracks over fifty years ago on a pair of two-track recording units, then anything's possible these days.
 
Jambo, dear: you have NO people.

It's just you and Mork/Collared/Winge-bah's memes.

All the way.
 
More shitty British rock music from Jambo - who loves his 'male role-models' - so long as they're male.

Gay.
 
What age is Billy Idol?

He's been around since the dinosaurs roamed the earth, yet still looks the same as he did in the eighties. His guitarist, Steve Stevens, is another man aging in reverse. This is Stevens doing his parts for the 'One World, One Voice' global project from the eighties. He looks younger today than he did forty years ago.

Timestamped for Stevens's fucking AWESOME firecracker solo skills:



Today? He looks like this:


 
Billy Idol keeps crashing into things on motorcycles so I'd say he makes all sorts of noises when he moves. Back catalogue of work is impressive as far back as Generation X. I saw some live performance at some Home for the Bewildered of the Music Industry back must be 15 years ago and Idol was brilliant in fairness. Good show.
 
Especially for Jamboi. What might have been if he'd just been a little bit braver? Or what might still come to be? Get that plane ticket and get out into the world? Meet some real people, and leave behind all the online scum bums, antisemitic creepy crackers and Alex Jones worshippers etc? Well it's a fantastic track anyway, enjoy.

 
roc_abilly said:
Especially for Jamboi. What might have been if he'd just been a little bit braver? Or what might still come to be? Get that plane ticket and get out into the world? Meet some real people, and leave behind all the online scum bums, antisemitic creepy crackers and Alex Jones worshippers etc? Well it's a fantastic track anyway, enjoy.

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Gay
 
Yes, it is a gay song, Jamboi. Wonderfully and exceedingly so.

But to continue with the train of thought, where do you think you would end up, Jamboi, if you went and bought that ticket.

I think perhaps Vienna? You're always going on about "white" European culture, so where better than the home of Mozart, Schrodinger, Boltzmann, Freud, Beethoven, etc.

Here's another great track for you so.

 
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