Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Its a start

Tomorrow (or later to today rather) is the day that my Digidesign 003 Rack + arrives. I can't even begin to explain how excited I am about starting my home studio. While I am way more familiar with Digital Performer, I welcome the new ProTools environment. I hope to start recording right away and hopefully have some new material soon. I will post as things start coming together, so all of you eagerly sitting at the edges of your seats (yet another joke about the number of people that read this blog) can hear the odd collection of sounds that bounce around my head all day.

I haven't purchased a mic yet (waiting to get more familiar with Pro Tools before jumping in and starting to record). I recently built a low fi microphone out of an old telephone, so I'm looking forward to playing around with that as well. I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Lots of fun, learning, and hours.

Peter "Flying Soulo" Jones

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Home

So... Europe was great. It was great to meet new people and visit new places and get away from the ordinary for a little while (yeah, that was too many ands in one sentence and I'm going to leave it that way just to bother you). We started our little European tour in Utrecht. Utrecht is a beautiful little city in Holland. We quickly discovered that the primary form of transportation in Holland is bicycle (my kind of people). Brennan and I were smart enough to rent bikes for the week and that was a blast in and of itself (when in Rome... or in this case Utrecht).

We did 2 gigs in Utrecht (we performed more than that, but 2 actual gigs) and they happened to be back to back. As in one right after the other (about 20-30 minutes apart). We have never done that before and it was pretty stressful, but a great experience. Performing in Europe is a completely different experience then gigging in the states. The music that we do is more popular over there (as sad as that is).

We left Utrecht and rode on a train to Germany. We had a guide with us on this leg of the tour, which was fantastic. The first hotel we stayed at was actually closed, but they opened up the hotel for us (and only us). They made us homemade German food (which was incredible) and they drove us to the gig and then back home (we didn't even have to worry about it). I could definately get used to being treated like that. We got to perform for a great crowd. It was an outdoor gig and they stuck around eventhough it started to rain. They just put on their ponchos and pulled open their umbrellas.

The next day, we performed in a different Germane village called Rockenhausen (no. I'm not making that up). It was another outdoor gig, but the venue was at the hotel we were staying at. In fact, I could see the stage from my hotel room. We had a great crowd (some of which were actually dancing) and it was a great night to end our tour on. No rain, great people, fantastic food. I didn't want to come home, but everyone was telling me that I had to.

The flight home was a nightmare. Not that there was anything wrong with the planes or the service, it was just very very very long. I got a cold at some point during the trip, so I was sick on the plane which did not help at all. We made it home safe and sound and now (a couple weeks later) I am writing you all (I say that jokingly because there is no one following this blog and I don't think anyone is actually reading this) to tell you about that one time we were all treated like famous people.

Peter