I’ve been coding a LOT this past week to finish a website I was commissioned to do. I was up until 5 last night coding. But I do want to blog about my musical exploits of the past couple months. A lot has been going on in this area.
First, I joined a band a few months ago called Overshine. I was languishing since I wasn’t playing in anything, looked online, and found a local band that needed (oh joy!) a lead guitarist! Since then, I’ve gotten to know these guys a bit better and played some good music with them. Recently, we recorded a couple of our tunes in a studio. It was expensive, but overall I think a good use of $800 (fortunately most of which I didn’t have to pay). The guy that did our sound engineering has done sound for Stryper, a well-known 80’s Christian metal/hair band, as well as many other bands. He was very friendly and very professional. Our songs sound *great*, much more so than our basement practice sessions.
You can visit our band’s website here. Our two recorded songs are on there (albeit compressed a bit for myspace requirements). Let me know what you think.
We also recently had a semi-professional photographer take pictures of us at practice. We had to pose a lot without looking like we were posing. That kind of thing. She took a lot of pictures, but below are a few of my favorites:
We will be playing some shows in the Fall. Our bassist is having a child any day now, so he’ll be busy and we need to book some gigs. I’ll try to keep y’all posted when our first gig is.
I also recently played in my sister’s wedding (see previous blog post). Here’s a pic from that:
Finally, during the past month I’ve been upgrading/changing my guitar effects around. I just sold my POD XT Live (for more than I bought it for) and changed to a rack-mounted system. My units so far are a Tech 21 PSA-1 preamp, a Rocktron Xpression effects unit, and a DBX 266XL Compressor/Gate (this is the keyboardist’s, I’m borrowing it for now until I can afford my own). So far, I’m happy with the sound. A rack mounted system requires a lot of knowledge and customization to make the best use of it. I’ve spent a few hours tweaking sounds for each individual unit, and I’m far from done. There’s also different ways to route the sound – effect loops or direct – and the order the units are placed in the signal path. I’m learning! My band members said the sound was great last practice, so I’m doing ok so far. Here’s some pics of the new system:
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