Here's a demo for track #2 off Guess Who's a Mess:

In Your Face (demo)

Usual disclaimers: mix was quick and dirty, I have no talent, etc.

Despite some shows coming up in the next few weeks we decided to try and add some lead synth to the set at the last minute. I had been playing solos on guitar but it doesn't have the same feel.

So the past week and a half has involved me trying to put together a stable PC running Windows XP, Reaper and various VSTis that can reliably run headless (no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse). ASIO drivers are provided by an Edirol UA-1EX as the ASIO4ALL drivers were too clicky and laggy.

The plan is then to cram all that into a 2U rackmount server case and then stuff that into a gig case for an instant on, portable, minimal worries synth machine. It would be great to get a solid state hard drive to minimize the moving parts, but my budget for this is low as balls.

As you can see from the photo on the right and my torn-up bloody hands (not pictured) it's been a struggle to find a combination of working spare parts. I thought I had solved it all a week ago but the motherboard I was using was only USB 1.0 and would intermittently flake out with the M-Audio Axiom 25 I've drafted into service.

Of course I'm currently running the show off a laptop but I felt having it do synth duties as well was too risky. At least this way if the laptop fails we can still put on an OK show. And if the synth machine fails I can still shred out some crappy guitar solos. If both fail, I will just run away from the venue as fast as I can.

I'm coming out of hibernation soon. So here are some places I'll be:

• May 17 - Toronto, ON - Toronto Audio Engineering Society: I'll be speaking on a panel on May 17 from 2pm-4pm. It's called "How You Are Delivering to Your Market", a topic on which I am clearly an expert since I have not delivered anything to my market lately. More info: torontoaes.org
• May 28 - Ottawa, ON - Jonathan Coulton: My pal Jonathan Coulton will be in town and I will be there. There was some talk about doing a song together but I'm not sure what's happening there. We're doing a song together, who knows what it could be!
• May 29 - Kemptville, ON - VegStock: This is an outdoor music festival that happens right around the corner from my house. It'll be the first show with the new band and will be kind of a disaster test.
• June 10 - Montreal, QC: There's a potential show in Montreal for this date but it's not 100% yet.
• June 11 - Ottawa, ON - The Cajun Attic: This will be a show.
• June 12 - Kingston, ON - The Mansion: This will be another show.

I'd like to get to Toronto and maybe a few other places this summer but I am not the greatest booker. If you have any hook-ups let me know.

If you happen to be any of those places, please say hi.

Update: June 10th, 11th and 12th shows are no longer happening!

Update #2: Updated the Jonathan Coulton show to confirm my participation.

I bought a Zoom H4N field recorder a few months ago. I wanted to broaden the sounds I use in my recordings and do some experimental stuff. I don't have a huge field recording passion - I'm not very interested in recording a storm or a train. But I do like recordings of people behaving naturally. It's been fun, the quality is great and listening back to most recordings I feel like I'm in the room again. Which for a lot of situations is more interesting to me than taking a photograph as far as capturing a memory.

So here's a montage of some of the recordings I've done with it since I got it:

Field Recording I [5.4 MB]

• [0:00] Justin (my drummer) has a giant, giant empty room in his basement. This is me trying out the reverb in it.
• [0:05] At a Barn practice I made some jokes about Bryan Adams and then wound up singing Summer of '69.
• [0:25] And then "Run To You" but I couldn't remember any of the lyrics really.
• [0:39] Then, after being exposed to a bunch of ska recently, I suggested the worst combination in the world might be a ska version of Bryan Adams' Everything I Do, I Do It For You. [1:03] And then we improv it.
• [1:28] Total Breakdown in Brad Sucks practice. Next time I'm gonna feed the computer output (vocals and synth) into the H4N. I think that'll sound better.
• [1:55] Rehearsal of I Think You're Alright for a performance a few weeks ago.
• [2:31] As a favor I did sound for a bluegrass show by Yonder Hill. They needed eight microphones but they were very good. This is them doing "Beefsteaks When I'm Hungry, Whiskey When I'm Dry". There is a banjo solo.
• [2:54] My guitarist Ben and his wife performed an intimate Valentine's dinner-music show. This is them covering Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles. On this one I fed the monitor output into one of the H4N inputs so the vocals sound a lot clearer.
• [3:28] At Brad Sucks practice: Ben randomly plays an Irish jig riff, Justin says "dance, leprechaun, dance", and I yell "WHERE'S ME GOLD" in my evil leprechaun voice and then the delay from the microphone makes us all giggle.

It's a sweet little device. Main complaint is I wish it powered up quicker.

I've been asked where my Rock Band tracks are. Why are they not in the store since independent tracks just went live and they looked pretty good in my preview back in November?

I asked and basically: the play-testing process is super slow. We're hoping this'll speed up as interest in the Rock Band Network increases but unfortunately have no idea when they'll be up. Baaaah.

My synth programming knowledge is spotty at best. I usually roll through presets and tweak the knobs a bit and call it a day. So I'm really enjoying this Synthesis Made Simple series over at Waveformless. I couldn't find a post on there with a chronological list of the articles, so I've made one here:

• Welcome to Synthesis Made Simple
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 1 - Overview
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 2 - Oscillators - Meet the Waveforms
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 3 - Oscillators - Combination Style
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 4 - Bring the Noise - Noise Generators
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 5: Intro to Filters
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 6 - Types of Filter
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 7: An Introduction to Modulation
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 8: The Envelope, Please
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 9 - Your Friend the LFO
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 10: Using Modulation Practically
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 11: Putting it All Together
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 12: Where Do You Go From Here?

I own several books by Bobby Owsinski and since I've been putting a live show back together I bought his new book and DVD: How To Make Your Band Sound Great.

I wasn't sure what to expect. The new live show's sounding pretty good I think and I've got a fair amount of experience on stage now but figured it'd be worth checking out.

Good Stuff

The most useful sections in the book for me were his technical descriptions of dynamics and playing "in the pocket". Bobby talks a lot about playing "bigger" rather than louder or faster which has been an issue I've struggled with. For instance I liked this observation about why a lot of musicians feel like the life's been sucked out of their performance if they aren't playing really loud:

The internal dynamics of each individual usually go out the window. Instead of playing crisp yet quiet, with the same attacks and releases the band had at the higher volume level, the attacks and releases get relaxed so the playing becomes less precise. The real trick is learning to actually play with the same intensity at lower levels.

Makes a lot of sense. He suggests plotting out song (and set) dynamics on a 1-10 scale and to make sure the band members agree on what the levels on the scale sound like.

Bad Stuff

But besides a handful of useful tips, the book is geared towards the beginner. Repeated admonitions to tune your instrument, turn off your cell phone, take vocal lessons and be a professional might be useful to some readers but they seemed obvious to me.

The included 60-minute DVD of Bobby coaching a band rehearsing a song is interesting, but could easily have been edited down to around 15 minutes, which would have made it more effective and reduced my exposure to ska considerably. Cuts back and forth between the earlier and later (improved) performances of the song would have been a helpful demonstration.

Conclusion

It's not a bad book, I'd recommend it for a complete beginner. But it made me more aware of questions I had going in that it didn't answer. I'd love to see another book that dealt with situations that are more geared towards laptoppy Internet recording artists who are branching out into live performance like:

• How to deal with a laptop on stage - my first few times out I had issues with only having unbalanced outputs.
• Backing tracks. How many outputs to give the house, how to treat them, how much backing stuff to include.
• How to simulate band dynamics with drum backing tracks or a drum machine.
• Vocal treatment & effects. Especially in small venues I've found running my vocals through a compressor/limiter helps my vocals sound more like the records.
• How to handle crappy sound guys. (Constructing an alibi, body disposal, etc.)

I'm sure it would be a huge, huge money-making hit.

Totally not dead up in here. Stuff I'm working on:

New music

It's being worked on. I had a slow start in the new year but I'm back on track finishing up demos for the new album. See photographic proof:

I'll post stuff as I finish it, which better be soon if I hope to be nearly finished this album this year.

Live show

The live show is coming along nicely and is basically ready to go. It's myself, a laptop, a drummer (Justin) and a guitarist (Ben). I think it's sounding a lot closer to the albums than the last live setup that was more of a garage rock version of the songs (which was fun for me but apparently not what most people wanted to hear). I just got this book today so you know it's serious.

Figuring out what to do with my live show

Did you know I'm not at all popular in my home town of Ottawa? That sounds amazing but it's actually true. Gigs here are generally both empty and demoralizing. So I'd like to actually play for some people and maybe make, rather than lose, money.

Apparently I'd do well in places that are very far from my home but I'm not sure how to get the live show there without losing a ton of money also. And furthermore: money.

Recording a band

There's a band I know (and like) and I'm recording their album. They're pretty different than my stuff so I'm learning a lot. How to record a drum kit, how to record a rhodes piano, how to binge drink, etc, etc. I just bought this book so you know it's serious.

Boring stuff

I've been trying to be better about a lot of areas I'm bad in. Bios, photos, t-shirts, promo and so on, they're tedious and boring processes and I don't want to talk about them. I also bought a car. And an iPhone.  And we have a new foster dog (our fourth!):

His name is Milo. He has no home but he's hanging here until he gets one.

Hey, there's a new Brad Sucks t-shirt. Here's the design:

Designed by Brandon Ortwein, it's $16 and looks best on black or navy blue.

There is nothing about this Spanish lip dub of Dropping out of School that doesn't make me smile:

From Elisa, one of the authors:

We hope you like it! :D I'm sorry, the dubbing itself it's not really that good -_- first of all the audio is not well synchronized and second one is that Spanish people are not that good at English lipdubbing, I guess ^^U haha! But we hope you enjoy it anyway!! :)

Rad.

Over the holidays I worked on getting this office/studio in better shape. I (aka my dad) built the shelf beneath my monitors here:

Which brought everything up to a better height and gave me some storage underneath them. I stuck some rope lights in behind which gives a nice glow. Next step is to put more paintings and stuff up. And maybe some Christmas lights. And more drinks.

Holy mercy, it's 2010. A lot of great things happened for me in 2009 so my hopes for 2010 are unreasonably high. Thanks to everyone for listening, buying my stuff, donating and just being generally supportive. This year I'm going to sketch out a plan for the year to be more systematic in my goal-completion. Small steps leading to a bigger picture, etc. We'll see how that goes - I'm easily distracted. But as I've had more success with music this year I feel a responsibility to not be a lazy-ass.

Good luck to you all in 2010 and thank you again.

Here's my last monthly demo thing of 2009. It's a cover of a Christmas song my friend JB wrote and that I really like. It's not safe for work, was done in a day and a half and here it is: Fuck You, Motherfucker (It's Christmas) (4MB)

Thanks to JB for the background vocals! Oh and here's the original.

Anyway, that about wraps it up for 2009. I've enjoyed doing the monthly songs but I'm looking forward to taking a break. Thanks for listening dudes, have a good holiday.

I'm looking for anyone who might want to take over Brad Sucks Digital Download Store paid installations. I get a lot of requests and don't have time for them anymore. I'd be happy to send them your way if you're into it. Let me know.

This month's demo is actually mostly a song by my pal and guitarist Ben Mullin. He played a demo of it for me and I was like "let me cram my filthy vocals into that and produce it up" and he was like "let go of me".

I Think You're Alright (5 MB)

Here are some clips of Brad Sucks tracks in Rock Band:

Which Brad Sucks songs would you most like to play in Rock Band? We're trying to figure out priority here.

Update: there are a lot of replies in the Facebook post.

Halloween went good. I was battling a cold so my energy levels could have been more awesome. But I still managed to put in some solid plague doctor hours:

The children were either terrified by my very presence or thought I was Spy vs. Spy (modern goth edition I guess). One really young boy said "you're a penguin!" Some yard snaps:

 

I'm about as sleepy as can be.

Hey, what's everyone doing for Halloween? My plague doctor mask's coming along OK:

I haven't decided what university he'll have gone to so the hoodie is temporary. (Waterloo's not a respectable plague doctor university anyway.)

Something I learned last Friday is that I might be allergic to goat milk. I haven't been tested or anything, but I had some goat cheese and here is what some of my skin looked like on day #2:

(That is a giant welty hive.) The rest of my body looked worse but is probably NSFW.

Then I spent the next five days stoned out of my head on benadryl and prednisone. Yes!