Doper musicians: post your music!

Cafe Society
1

The umpteenth iteration of this thread, folks. I’ve heard some really cool music made by Dopers, and now I want to hear more. I myself don’t claim to be some badass musician, but I love (LOVE) to play music, so here goes:

A buddy of mine and I have been working on a cover of Tom Waits’s “Hang On St. Christopher,” from Frank’s Wild Years. Tom’s version is pretty much a straight blues progression, but of course, with Tom Waits and Marc Ribot in the same room, things get weird. Awesome, of course, but unusual.

Now, we can’t get all Tom Waits on this song, so we decided to approach it as a straight blues number…with a few quirks. In particular, since we don’t have a drum set currently available, we totally winged the percussion. In several separate takes, we used a shaker, a tambourine, and hand claps. We also recorded my buddy doing a snare train with drumsticks on a table top, high ride-sounds by whacking beer bottles with drum sticks, and a “bass drum” which was actually me pounding on a briefcase with a wrench.

I’m mostly happy with the outcome. There’s one section I need to fix - the second “solo” where we hung on E, but I thought we were going back into A, and that whole solo section is pretty weak. But that’s an easy fix.

So let me know what you think. Feel free to rip it to shreds if you feel necessary. I can take it.

It’s obviously the first song.

Technical stuff:

  • bass guitar is a G&L L-2000 through a Peavey TNT amp.
  • slide guitar: 1960’s Valco/Supro lap steel through a Traynor YCV40WR.
  • rhythm track: G&L ASAT Special through a Fender Prosonic 210.
  • lead guitar: Fender Hwy 1 strat (modified with a SD Lil 59, and SD Vintage Strats) through a Traynor YCV40WR.
2

I like! I think the percussion works quite well and is far more interesting than a drumset would’ve been. That, along with those sweeping slide guitar glissandos really create a sense of depth. I’m listening on my laptop, so I can’t tell what you did with the panning, but I hope you took advantage of that to further spread out the sound in space. (yeah, I agree with you about the solo section).

Well done!

3

We’re finishing up mixing on our first album (one song to go!). I don’t know if I should post unmastered stuff, and I’m not sure where I could put it for people to hear. Is there someplace I can do that? I guess I can give a sneak preview, if so.

Meanwhile, my band’s myspace page (in my sig), has three mastered songs that are going on the album that we recorded previously.

I’m another one of those “shouldn’t quit his dayjob” types, myself. :o

Ogre, Hang on St. Christopher is a cool song, and I’m a fan of Frank’s Wild Years. Y’all do a pretty good job on it. I’m not good at giving constructive criticism; I tend to think it’s all good and just keep pluggin’.

4

OK, I went ahead and used that Soundclick thingy and put up a couple of songs (the only ones I happen to have on my work computer).

Here’s the url:

http://members.soundclick.com/yell+county

One’s a 60’s garage sludge/70’s glam type thing and the other is sort of Buzzcocks-meets-Motown thing.

It’s OK to laugh… :cool:
ETA: crap, the songs aren’t there yet…must be a lag or something…

5

(And now my contribution)

I moved to Berlin from NY 6 months ago. I came with only an electric guitar and a fairly decent (but simple) effects processor and with that I was trying to figure out how I can put together something I could perform as a solo act. I’ve always been drawn to repetition and minimalism, and improvisation comes fairly naturally to me. (whenever I try to compose, I’m great at starting things, if you get my meaning).

I actually had planned to focus on composing for small ensembles, but in the time between the time I spent on that, I found myself throwing on the delay to the max available (I believe 2 sec.) and using it as a loop station of sorts to jam with and to practice.

At the same time I was answering ads and doing my best to network with other musicians in the local Berlin scene, and everyone understandably wanted to hear samples. So I downloaded audacity (free audio software) and plugged myself directly into the soundcard, figuring I’d just make some crude recordings for other musicians to hear and know my sound.

But the looping improv jams sorta had a mind of their own, and so I went with it, and this is my thing for the moment.

You can hear me here

This is basically one of many similar open improvisations. Interestingly, when they work, they all typically follow a similar shape and last almost exactly an hour (give or take 3 minutes maybe). In order to post it on the myspace page, I broke it up into 4 parts and reduced the quality considerably (I think one of the parts I had to reduce to a bitrate of 64). Also, (I think likely due to a soundcard that just can’t handle it) the levels are way too high, and so there is considerable clipping at some points (especially in part2).

I, of course, wouldn’t expect anyone to give over a full hour of their life to my ADHD musical ramblings, but if you can, perhaps you can sample a minute or 2 of each section since I think they each sorta go in a distinct direction.

Part 1 - funky Em9 jam in 3
Part 2 - first section ethereal new agey stuff, then a mixolydian section in duple meter emerges
Part 3 - continues mixo jam, then descends into a section of atonal noise
Part 4 - I think of this as more the happy, feel-good, triumphant finish section. Very tonal major.

Hope you like it.

6

He hasn’t been active in awhile, but I will submit this for him.

Birdmonster

7

Aw Geez; it could take 24 hours for my songs to show up, what a drag! So much for instant gratification…

8

Good, wholesome American rock!! It sounds great! Really, I could easily hear this stuff on the radio.

And I see you’re playing the Velvet Lounge, which, if memory serves is a place I used to frequent back in my College Park days. (It’s possible I’m confusing it with another ‘Velvet Lounge’ from LI, NY).

9

Does anybody have some recommendations for a good audio hosting site? The soundclick site looks more like a myspace format; I’m looking for something that’s more in line with photobucket or flickr, just for audio instead of pictures. I have one or two recordings I can throw up, but I need a place to put them.

10

Thanks! Velvet Lounge is on U St. in DC, right around the corner from the 9:30 club. They may have had a different location previously, but I’m sure it was in DC.

11

I’m not sure who it was, but a couple of years ago or so a Doper posted a link to a song that I really liked and still play from time to time: Reservoir Gods - ‘Office Cow’.

Can anyone remember who it was and if they are still around?

12

Oh, duh! here’s the page with songs included:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=810153

I promise not to post umpteen thousand more times!

13

Okay, you asked for it - try www.toothpastetv .com (I broke the link just in case someone thinks it isn’t safe for work). I’m the voice of ‘Trevor’, played by Mark McKinney. Recorded a few years back.

14

Ok, I just found the video (waiting for it to load), but that is a really cool website.

15

I started the last one, and recall we got some pretty good examples of musical talent on the dope. Here are a couple of mine. I recently picked back up and am putting the finishing touches on a couple of other songs, and I may put them up if the thread is still going strong when I’m ready.

Panama

Lenny

All guitars by me.

16

I’m going to drop the screen name Beadalin here, just in case she does VCs. It would be great if she dropped by and gave us some links to her husband’s music - he is an outstanding country electric guitarist.

I’ll post some links to some of my stuff tonight. \m/:mad:\m/

17

Here’s a link to one of about 190. They’re mostly collaborations with others. This one was by a guy in Germany and I added the solo and one other rhythm track.

18

Yeah…it’s pretty cool. I find it reminds me of my old roomate who used to listen to some strange, repetive yet oddly hypnotic and interesting music.

:slight_smile:

My band’s CD should be available at some point this year, still pending CD artwork and non-musical stuff. There are a few tracks here and some more here..

Ogre…sounding good, man.

19

I’m very much enjoying the sounds, man. Very textural and ambient. Almost industrial in feel sometimes. Well done.

20

Very rock n roll. I like it a lot. Seems like the vocals might be just a tad too hot in th mix, but then, I’m listening on laptop speakers right now ( :o ). I’ll use headphones later.