[Cantankerous]

it was a jaguar, i think (that blue one) plugged into a little piece of shit 15 volt crate amp with the gain turned all the way up

[MellySingsDoom]

Well, that certainly sounds good. I wanted to do some recording yesterday, but was too tired. Might have a go later on tonight, and see what I come up with. I do all my stuff straight into the computer at present - it sounds pretty good, all in all, the only thing I can't do though is feedback, which is a bit of a shame.

[Cantankerous]

i can't do it straight into the computer because apples don't have midi output

[MellySingsDoom]

That's quite surprising - I thought that of all computers, Apple's would be the most musician-friendly for working with. I use this USB interface called Tone Port, so I stick my guitar through that. Not perfect, but does the job more than well enough for me.

[Cantankerous]

no external soundcard usually means no midi output
i tried it and i was right about that

garageband is good but there's a limited amount of control you have over the outcome of anything you record, for example if you choose to put an echoey effect on a guitar or vocal it will flood the thing with echo which is fine if that's what you want to do, but often times i don't want it to echo so much that you can't hear the bloody notes

[MellySingsDoom]

That's a bit crappy, isn't it? Surely the idea of having "onboard" effects is that you get to choose how much of them you want, not the computer. My favorite bit of trickery is a "ping-pong echo" VST - it sends the "wet" signal bouncing around the stereo field, so it becomes quite "swirly" - great for psychadelic sounding tuneage (or like Loop!).

The second Budisov track on MySpace was started by me recording a "bass" line on guitar, pitching the recording down an octave, and then filtering the results. I was surprised/impressed with what came out of that music-wise.

[Cantankerous]

garageband has a ping pong echo effect, it sounds like. well i don't know how to describe it, really, but you know the beginning of the REM song crush with eyeliner? like that.

you can do quite a bit of trickery in garageband though, you can make an acoustic guitar sound electric and things like that although i don't know exactly how it's done, some sort of amplifier filter i think and you can mess with the reverb and things like that.

[MellySingsDoom]

Oh yes, I know what you mean by "Crush With Eyeliner"....on Loop's "Heaven's End" track, there's loads of great stereo panning.

Your Garageband sounds similar to Ableton Live (the software I use). It's incredible just how easy it is to record stuf now, isn't it? I remember the days of recording stuff on a basic 4-track tape machine (pissing off the neighbours to boot, I was most popular with them ), and always getting a bit frustrated that there was so many things I couldn't do.

When you get back home (and once your hand sorts itself out), I'm sure that you'll be getting well back into recording again. Talking of which, if you're still up for you, I'd love to hear you sing the full version of "Great Gig...". (/end fanboy post )

[Cantankerous]

my hand is fine now actually, i don't know what i made such a big shit about
it just hurt really bad is all, my nail is still cracked and everything but...well here, i'll make you a diagram

 

the top bit is wedged UNDER the bottom bit, so it's like uneven
the top bit is lower than the bottom bit because of being wedged under it where the crack is

but it doesn't hurt at all, i have no band aid or anything on it (right after it happened i had two bandaids and a shit load of medical tape on it to cushion it)

[MellySingsDoom]

I'm glad that your finger seems to be OK now, but that must've hurt like fuck at the time.

[Cantankerous]

here's how bad it hurt: i cried.
i've gotten four tattoos, one of which went all the way up my side, and gotten two lasered off and i didn't cry during any of those.

i'm just pissed because now it looks like my right side is permanently bruised up because green ink is a bitch to laser off

[MellySingsDoom]

Re: Tattoos - yikes, that doesn't sound too nice. Still, at least once the bruising goes, you'll be tattoo free there.

[Cantankerous]

no, i mean the green ink looks like bruises
because it's like impossible to get it all off. oh well. i'll just tell everyone julian beats me for fun.

all the pink ink is gone though, and the black ink

[MellySingsDoom]

Oh crap, I didn't realise you meant that. That must suck bigtime

[Cantankerous]

well not really, it doesn't look particularly gross or anything
at least it looks like green bruises and not like this:

 

[MellySingsDoom]

^^^^Good God, look at that. That's going to replace Porky in my nightmares!

[MellySingsDoom]

Back to music - Cantanky, if you ever get the chance to get your hands on one of these, then do so:

 

This be my Electro-Harmonix Flanger/Filter Matrix, which was manufactured in the late 1970s'. Used by J Masics, Kevin Shields and many others. The flanging sound is great (very natural), and goes from soft washes to almost tremeloed boinging. It's secret weapon is the Filter Matrix, which converts the pedal to filter the guitar signal using the pots. You can get some great guitar sounds just by using this, perhaps a bit on the trebly side, but otherwise very impressive. Admittedly, this wasn't a cheap purchase for me - it was £100/$200, but soundwise it's well worth the investment.

[Cantankerous]

that looks awesome

i'm definitely going to look into that


also, don't forget y'all:

http://www.myspace.com/pinkmoonband

i should have newer shit up soon being that i'm going home and all my equipment and stuff is there, so i'll be going into work-overdrive mode

[Sonic Youth 37]

I also have one of those (although it's a RI with a hardwired cord, exactly like Melly's except mine is silver where the black is and black where the green is. (the new RI has an adapter and different knobs.) Price was $90,used) I agree with Melly, the Filter Matrix is the best part. I actually use that almost exclusively and keep another flanger on my board so I can use the Electric Mistress just as a filter.

[Death & the Maiden]

Audacity is finally working. I should have some music on Myspace soon.