Lurking Lesser-Geek Muso

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Plazrael

42 posts

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#243188 30-Nov-2018 00:41

Hey.

I'm a muso, hermit and basically a cripple stuck in front of Windows 7 for years.

I've always come to this site when I couldn't resolve ISP issues.

Joined up last week and my issue was diagnosed quickly, so cheers.

Have a medium spec pc - GA Z270-HD3, 7700k, 16g Ram 2333 and a GTX1060 running Windows 7 Ultimate.

I make a lot of simple music and some crazy rhythms.

I like weird time signatures, 17/16, 47/16 dividing the beat into 5s etc.

Have an ok drum kit, gat and amp, bass and midi keyboard, couple of cheap mixers and drum mics - Budget recording studio - 3 Delta 1010LTs. (2 back ups)

A lot of my tracks end up fairly simple 'cause I have to record and arrange everything myself, which is a slow process when you have Rheumatoid Arthritis.

Anyway I'm gonna try and share a link to download my trax in case anyone's interested in something different, not sure if my account's old enough to allow it so here goes - Have a good one. Copy/paste link, state the obvious...

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oyd_9oUicVGNU1NQq7gCKGv-NsXS6_zf

PeterReader

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#2136915 30-Nov-2018 00:41

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#2136916 30-Nov-2018 00:41

Welcome to Geekzone!

Dratsab

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#2136972 30-Nov-2018 07:49

Nice to have you here. I'll have a listen to some of those tracks at some point after I get home this afternoon - work blocks places like Google Drive...

What DAW software are you using? (I'm imagining Audacity, but am most probably wrong).

There's a few muso's on this site, @blakamin and @BurningBeard being a couple who immediately spring to mind.

I play bass - reasonably well but I'm certainly not talented enough to be a multi-instrumentalist like yourself. For no particular reason I thought I'd throw in a shot of me at a recent gig* at San Fran (Wellington) taken by Reef Reid (great concert photographer!!) of Radar Photography. Fun times :-)

* maybe we need a Geeks In Action thread..?

Plazrael

42 posts

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#2137161 30-Nov-2018 12:53

God I'm already regretting sharing it, I'm guessing I'm not on the same level as a lot of you guys -

I'm mainly a drummer honestly, dabbling in the other instruments.

My band played with Faith No More years ago after we were finalists in the NZ battle of the bands, but that was a while ago. I've only recently started playing guitar again.

Lots of it is probably quite boring and simple, 4/4, but there are a few tracks here and there that I spent a bit more time on with more complicated rhythms.

DAWs - Pro Tools, Reason for the synths and stuff, and Acid Pro every now and then.

Find it easiest to make a quick click track with Reason, export it into Pro Tools, then I can record analogue and not have to worry about syncing any synths later.

The 'Mental Noiz' zip file is probably a good place to start, just a selection, had some good feedback on Reddit for that.

It's more rhythm based being a drummer -

I'm an average bass player, guitarist, keyboardist at best.

And my singing is terrible! You've probably guessed marketing is not one of my strengths.

There are a lot of different genres, Funk, Metal, Dubstep, Jazz, Classical, Hip Hop and just mental noise so hopefully there's one or two you can tolerate.

Every now and then I notice a note that's off which I can't fix cause I've lost the project files for some of them, long story.

Cool pic BTW!

Plazrael

42 posts

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#2137215 30-Nov-2018 13:09

And I just want to add years ago I was slightly religious, but I'm not at all now, so there are a few tracks where the only way I could fix those cheesy 'Spiritual' themes was to turn the lyrics into sarcasm, 'cause I had quite a few mainly guitar based songs that I wanted to record anyway, so take those with a grain of salt.

RunningMan

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#2137277 30-Nov-2018 14:33

Welcome!

blakamin

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#2137494 30-Nov-2018 19:43

Welcome to GZ!

We're pretty laid-back musos tho :D

I'm so laid back these days I'm nearly laying down. I'm a metal-head at heart, but enjoy a bit of everything*... Been a bit slack lately due to... arthritis too... Slowed me down heaps.

*Not really... It can't be pop or autotune or country or EDM or R'n'B... Looks like I don't enjoy everything!

Hatch

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Hatch (affiliate link).

RunningMan

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#2137501 30-Nov-2018 20:05

blakamin:[snip] It can't be pop or autotune or

Hey, don't dis Cher ;-)

Plazrael

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#2137601 1-Dec-2018 00:51

blakamin:

I'm a metal-head at heart,

Yeah me too - Grew up on Morbid Angel, Sepultura, Cynic, So Far, So Good So What (Before Dave became whatever he is now) You can't kill metal - Love Meshuggah. But I have to admit I like a lot of other stuff these days too. Last night I watched Rammstein in Amerika followed by Sade. I like poser music, Animals as Leaders... to a point. Yeah arthritis, hope it's under control, mine isn't - Have to get both my hips replaced and both my knees. Now that I've finally bought a decent Yamaha double kick pedal. Probably have to relearn all over again with my new robot legs, really out of practice anyway, need a fresh start.

BurningBeard

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#2139664 5-Dec-2018 10:28

Geez, I haven't posted here for a long time. But I do still pop in for a quick look from time-to-time.

Thanks to @Dratsab for tagging me and lighting a fire under my behind to get posting again.

@Plazrael, I will check out your tracks tonight or tomorrow at some point. And welcome aboard buddy!

I haven't dabbled much in music lately. Life's just been so busy and I'm pretty lucky in that I work in a creative industry so it's not like I feel like I'm missing out on too much, but I really, really do miss playing live.
I do NOT miss touring.

I've been in a few bands since high school over the last 20 years.

But my most significant ones were quite different roles. The first band, when I left school, I played drums for and did backing vocals (and some song writing). It was a dead end but fun while it lasted. Fizzled out and we got ripped off by our own guitarist/vocalist.

The second band, a few years later, ended up moderately successful. That was the band Tainted.

We somehow managed to build quite a big of pre-first-gig hype back in 2005 via word of mouth in a pre-Facebook world. The turnout at our first show blew my mind.

Gigs from Auckland to Invercargill. An album in the charts (#12 national, #1 independent). People in the crowd actually singing along with my lyrics. Insane.

I don't know how we got that big - it sounded AWFUL. The production was worse than our first demo (recorded live off the floor). I like to think the songs connected with people though, and that our live show was something to talk about.

It just went up and up for about two years before I had to jump off the train.

All that time off work, away from my missus, it became a burden and the fun disappeared. I wasn't getting any money back from it. "The love of it" wasn't getting me through, and I can only take so much leave from my day job as a graphic designer.

Two years later and they opened for Iron Maiden. The following year, Metallica. D'oh!

I've since written one song and started several others - I have this collection of intros that I can never develop further.

So my more recent musical output consists of:

Home recording of covers, namely: Dr Who themes, as you'll see by my signature here. I've done two metal versions and a surf guitar version. I've been using Cubase, just plugging my guitar into the line-in on my PC. I program the bass lines and program the drums. I've also used Adobe Audition which I quite liked, but that might be the fact that it came from Cool Edit Pro back in the day, which I was already quite familiar with.

Working at The Court Theatre. I work in the office as their graphic designer, but a lot of the staff here are also musicians. So every few months we have this big open mic night in our foyer after a show, open the bar and share some songs.

I've been covering all sorts of random stuff. I invented a mashup of Ghost Riders in the Sky with Psycho Killer when I accidentally noticed the chords were pretty much the same. That went down a treat.
So there's been a few duets with other staff too. It's pretty cool to be able to say I covered a Nick Cave song with my manager, and a Clutch cover with our artistic director.

A couple of years ago I got a message from an old buddy in a bit of a flap because the singer of the Korn tribute he's in had to skip a gig. "Can you learn these songs by tomorrow?" Watch me!
So I jumped in to help those guys, along with Jack from 8 Foot Sativa, we shared six songs each. That was an absolute blast. A sold-out show too.

I'll post some snippets in due course.

The Korn tribute night

Tainted back in '06

My very metal Doctor Who theme

Plazrael

42 posts

Geek

#2140000 5-Dec-2018 16:40

Hey I actually already checked out your Doctor Who cover - Wicked.

I'd already showed it to a few people before you posted here.

You've got some good production quality there man.

Suggestion - I know it's been done but how about -

"The Imperial March" from empire strikes back.

I'd give it a go but I just got on my new double kick today and years of neglect combined with rheumatoid arthritis made for a pretty shocking session.

I haven't been playing much lately but now I've got another double kick hopefully I'll be kicking again in a month or two but I think you could rip up the Imperial March anyway. Would be wicked live.

The few covers I've heard of it just weren't brutal enough IMO.