Nearing the End

*It's sort of sad that this will likely be my final blog post.*

Tomorrow marks the day that I will be presenting on what I have learned throughout these past 16 weeks. I will also be attending and evaluating Joon Park's presentation, only a few hours before mine. I didn't really think about how tough that was going to be, due to the fact that I have a fair amount of equipment to set up for mine. Oh well, we shall see how that all goes.

Today, Adam Chafee came over to practice at my house, because I am most likely going to be performing in his WISE presentation on Wednesday. He just taught me a song that he wrote, and some of the other members of my band are going to help him as well. They have to learn it on their own, though. It's going to be a little rough, I'm guessing. The style is a lot different than what we're used to playing, so it may prove difficult for them to learn on independently. Luckily, I had him to guide me.

I'm working on the finishing touches of my presentation, and am getting rather nervous for tomorrow in the process. I'm worried that I may end up talking too much, or not enough about any given aspect of my project. I just want to keep calm and stick to the structure that I laid out for myself, though.

One week from today, I will be evaluating Ameena Farley's presentation, and then I can finally say that I am done with WISE. Yikes!!

Today's Session

First of all, I have less than one week until my presentation! Last night, I electronically delivered all of my materials to my evaluators. That was a stressful moment, but I feel so free now, having done so. Even though I'm nearing the end of the process, I don't consider myself "done" learning at all. In fact, today was a very successful day in the way of tracking. Parker Callister came over and we recorded two songs! One was an acoustic track, à la Andy McKee, and the other was a banjo track that was sort of a Lumineers style song, stomping and all. They have been tracked completely, and my only contribution was in stomping, and suggesting leads, etc. They are being mixed, as I type up this blog post. The two songs are fairly short, but really catchy. Parker is just such a good musician, it's hard not to enjoy his stuff. When he's home from college, he plays in his band Kaboosh!. My band and his have played several shows together over the past few years, and I've learned to love his unique music. If I get his permission, I may put one or both of them up on SoundCloud. If not, they will definitely appear in part of presentation, one way or another.

Equipment Rundown 2

This is my effects pedal.

It's a DigiTech RP55. Don't ask me what that means, because I don't know. I use it for pretty much all guitar/bass instrumental tracking. How it works is that you plug your guitar into it, and it outputs into the interface, which goes into the computer. This pedal is how I add effects like distortion, chorus, flanger, phaser, delay, reverb, or what have you. There are originally 99 pre-set effects. Some of them are crazy and I would never use them, and some of them are really cool. The other neat thing about this pedal is that you can edit and save any effect that you want. There are pretty much unlimited options within, and my bandmates and I have spent a lot of time making really good guitar sounds that we are able to use time and again. There are far too many displays and buttons to explain it all, but the two main buttons control the pre-set effect being used (right goes up the number line, left goes down). The arrow buttons control individual effects within a pre-set, which you can make louder or softer, or change the sound of entirely. The screen is a display that shows all of everything you are doing, and all of the little displays are some kinds of effects. It's complicated.

This is my guitar rack.

It's also not actually mine. In fact, none of the instruments pictured belong to me, either. They belong to my bandmates, but we're pretty much like family anyways. Plus we definitely don't have anything against sharing. They stay at my house, so I make good use of them when they aren't being used by their true owners at rehearsals. The instruments pictured (From L to R) include: a red gibson SG (in gig bag), a black Epiphone SG, a plum Mexican-made Fender Stratocaster, a red Epiphone Firebird, and a black Jay Turser Jazz Bass. All of these guitars have been used during my process, and each is used for something different. They each produce a different sound, and some musicians prefer one over another. It all depends. The bass is the only bass we own, however, and gets used for everything. Other guitars that we own and are not pictured are a Takamine Electric-Acoustic, a black Squier Fender Starcaster, a black Squier Fender Bullet Telecaster, and a red Gibson Les Paul custom. We haven't used all of those for recording, but the Electric-Acoustic is definitely a frequenter.

Ithaca Festival

Here's a shot of my band playing Ithaca Festival on Saturday. We played at the Lot 10 stage from 5 to 5:45 pm. There was a very large crowd, chock-full of Ithaca High Schoolers. Officials at the festival told us after our set that we drew the biggest crowd for a musical act yet, so that's exciting. That's without including the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday at Stewart Park, though. As you can probably tell, it was a very sweaty time. I don't want to gross anyone out here, but I lost a lot of fluid. Like a LOT. Either way, I had a blast performing! I helped the live sound engineer set up and tear down for my band, as well as help set up for the next band. He seemed pretty happy to have someone who knew what they were doing assist him, as I'm sure he had had a very stressful time with previous acts. He was a really nice guy.

Equipment Rundown 1

So I thought that I should talk about what I actually do during a session a bit before I demonstrate during my presentation. The following is a list of some of my pieces of recording equipment and what all they do.

This is my amp. 

Well is actually not mine. It's my Mom's old JVC amp/radio/phono that she used when she had a turntable. What's that? What are records? Ew. But it works well, and I can use it to power my newer speakers using some newer technology! I run the L/R (red and white) audio cables from a tri-color cord I took from an old dvd player, and stick the other ends right into my audio interface, so I can do direct playback from my computer. The controls that you see (from L to R) are: the Power button, and underneath, a headphone port. The vertical sliders are mixers that control bass, middle, and treble. The two little buttons control the speakers. The orange light is on when the amp is on. The horizontal slider controls the output volume. The buttons to the right control the setting of the amp. Choices are: AM, FM, AUX, Phono, Tape, etc. I have it on AUX because I have an auxiliary cable plugged in for my speaker output from my computer. The screen shows AM/FM radio frequencies, and the tuner on the right controls the radio. Not pictured is the back of the amp, where all of the cords are. The speakers, audio cables, power cable, and radio antena are the only things attached to the back - not important. 

These are my audio interfaces. 

The top one is an M-Audio Fast Track, and I use it for tracking vocals, guitars/bass, and also for playback. It connects to my computer using a USB cord, which also powers the interface. An instrument is plugged into the interface, and then can be inputted directly into my computer. The controls that you see (from L to R) are: Mic Input, which controls the levels of the mic that is plugged in. The next knob controls the amount of playback volume verses the amount of input volume. This is for when recording, so that you can find a balance where you hear enough of what's already there, (including the metronome, or, "click") as well as what you are currently trying to record. The button in the middle controls mono versus stereo output, which basically means that you are either listening to a balance of everything in both ears, or specific things in specific ears, depending on where they are placed. The next feature is a headphone port, where you can see that I have headphones plugged in. The last knob controls the output volume, which could either be headphone volume, speaker volume, or both, depending on how I want to do playback at any given time. Not pictured is the back, which features the inputs. There is one mic input, one 1/4" input (used for guitar/bass or "line in" inputs, which are auxiliary inputs like pedals and keyboards), a button that lets you switch between guitar and line functions, the audio cables, and the USB cable. 

The bottom one is a Tascam US-800, and I use it purely for tracking drums. The reason why I do this is because it has 6 mic inputs, making it so that I can mic up my drum kit much more effectively than with a 1 mic input. This makes it so that I can do all of the drums in one take, rather than having to only do a portion of the kit in one take, and another portion in another take, and so on. It also connects to my computer using USB, but has a separate power cord. The sticker is from a clothing company that I like called Glamour Kills, whose logo is a flying pig. I don't know. The controls that you see (from L to R) are: 2 different headphone ports for different types/sizes of headphones. The next two knobs control volume of playback. One is labeled Phones, and is purely for headphones. The other is labeled Monitor, and is for output only. The next six knobs are labeled 1-6, and control the mic input of the respective input. The two things on the right are the first two inputs. Not pictured is the back, which features the rest of the inputs. There are 4 more inputs like those on the front, and then two MIDI inputs, used for a special kind of keyboard/synthesizer. There are also audio cable outputs, the USB cable, and the power cable. 

Presentation Participation

Adam Chafee, who is doing a WISE project similar to mine, has asked me to participate in his presentation on June 12th. He was a part of Luke's presentation last night, where he played guitar. He has asked me and a few members of my band to play a song that he wrote with him. I will be playing the drums, and hopefully Max and Joel, or Kristian will be able to play guitar/bass with him. The song that he wrote is up on SoundCloud, so I should be able to learn it in about one practice session, and the other guys too. I think it's really cool that he wants to do something like this for his presentation, and I'm more than willing to help out.

Sample Presentation

Last night was the sample WISE presentation. Luke Mendola gave his presentation to everyone taking WISE, as well as the teachers, some parents, and some others from the community. All in all, I was thoroughly impressed by his presentation. His use of his notes/narrative, live performances/demonstrations, and useful slideshow provided the audience with great insight into the harmonica. You could really tell how into it he was, and it made me more into it. I'm sure that's what WISE is all about, and I hope I get the same experience from the two presentations that I have to evaluate. Some things that Luke did that I definitely want to incorporate into mine are the use of a simple slide show that you just talk in front of, live demonstrations, and referring to your narrative in terms of background, quotes, etc. My presentation is actually likely to be much like Luke's, what with all of the background info and live demonstrations. I left feeling very confident. Luke was definitely ballsy to go out there in front of everyone and do the first one, but his went very very well. Jamming with Adam was definitely a plus, and I'm planning on tracking a live musician as well, so hopefully it will turn out alright.