Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

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MicrowavedGerbil
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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#21 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Wed May 18, 2016 7:11 pm

blackula wrote:Like Mescal I'm all about Stingray and Ampeg. I play a 5 string bass. From 20-27 I was in bands, put out records and toured a lot. We took it as far as we could. Our last tour was opening for Converge and everything fell apart at the end. Now I'm 37 and have 3 kids. I just filled in and played a show for the first time in 5 years for my friend's grindy punk band which was fun and I'm writing songs with some freinds to record and maybe play a few shows. It's hard to schedule things nowadays with work and family. My friend's band I just played a show with practices 10-12 twice a week. It after my kid's bedtime and I can get 6 hours of sleep. These are the silly things I never worried about 10 years ago.
You see i've never toured nor really played a show in my life. I was all about sitting in front of Cubase and just recording riffs left and right. I just liked the idea of recording music. Maybe I want to be a producer who knows. I actually have a child due in 4 weeks. My first and hopefully only child. Im trying my hardest to not have to put my dreams on hold. I really have that drive and talent to make something of myself with my playing... but at the same time i cant really see myself leaving my son and girlfriend behind for months on a full time touring band.. I dont want to give up.. but im torn between family and dreams.

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#22 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Wed May 18, 2016 7:16 pm

kv wrote:I'm curious how did you even find this place? We are so off the map these days

I actually discovered aintnoright.com back in 2006-7 ish. when my interest in Jane's was at it's peak!
I was in school with a friend who liked them as much as me and in computer class we searched them up. That site came up. Xiola went down, I remembered aintnoright.com and looked it up. wasn't a thing anymore.. earlier this year tried again and now its... org? :noclue:

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Mescal
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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#23 Post by Mescal » Wed May 18, 2016 9:45 pm

posted this recently.

Kv didn't like it.

Our drummer left in the meantime

www.vi.be/beatenbyhippies

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#24 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Wed May 18, 2016 9:56 pm

That's not bad at all. Sounds like STP.. The lyrics are just cheesy and straight forward hahaha

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#25 Post by kv » Wed May 18, 2016 10:47 pm

That's pretty much what I said...sorta

Love ya mes :pat:

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#26 Post by Mescal » Thu May 19, 2016 5:01 am

MicrowavedGerbil wrote:That's not bad at all. Sounds like STP.. The lyrics are just cheesy and straight forward hahaha

Yeah well. We're just a bunch of rich, spoilt brats with nothing to complain (ergo sing) about :cool:

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#27 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Thu May 19, 2016 12:27 pm

Mescal wrote:
MicrowavedGerbil wrote:That's not bad at all. Sounds like STP.. The lyrics are just cheesy and straight forward hahaha

Yeah well. We're just a bunch of rich, spoilt brats with nothing to complain (ergo sing) about :cool:

Depression is rich people disease! C'mon there's gotta be something! It's just the way it is.. Just like funny people kill themselves..

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#28 Post by Mescal » Thu May 19, 2016 10:12 pm

MicrowavedGerbil wrote:
Mescal wrote:
MicrowavedGerbil wrote:That's not bad at all. Sounds like STP.. The lyrics are just cheesy and straight forward hahaha

Yeah well. We're just a bunch of rich, spoilt brats with nothing to complain (ergo sing) about :cool:

Depression is rich people disease! C'mon there's gotta be something! It's just the way it is.. Just like funny people kill themselves..
Rich Kid's Depression

Yeah, that might be a cool song title.

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#29 Post by SR » Fri May 20, 2016 9:05 am

Play drums....not aspiring but still suck. :lol: Gretch maple, 5 piece, and a collection of cymbals ranging from paste to meine to zild. One Piccolo snare, one pork pie and one Gretch snare. DW hardware....Cobra kick

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#30 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Fri May 20, 2016 8:39 pm

SR wrote:Play drums....not aspiring but still suck. :lol: Gretch maple, 5 piece, and a collection of cymbals ranging from paste to meine to zild. One Piccolo snare, one pork pie and one Gretch snare. DW hardware....Cobra kick
Did you get a chance to see a drummers life ?

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#31 Post by SR » Thu May 26, 2016 8:44 am

No, I will look into it. :nod:

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#32 Post by cabangbangq » Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:56 pm

I think this topic has been rehased a few times, but I'll get long winded here.

My dad showed me how to play Smoke on the Water on guitar when I was 9 and I kinda took off from there. I became a Jane's Addiction fan after and when my middle school band teacher told me they needed a bass player for the jazz band, I jumped at the opportunity and started to teach myself EA's best basslines instead of learning the actual songs I was supposed to learn in jazz band. In 8th grade, our new teacher left the school after a month and we had a month of substitute teachers. During this time, I started to teach myself drums as our substitute teachers knew little about music and our drummers stopped putting effort into the class. I did a lot of recording between age 15-19 trying to find my bearings as a musician. Some of it is interesting, a lot of it is low grade rip offs of Nine Inch Nails or Jane's songs and it's only really in the last three years that i've been in college at Sarah Lawrence in Yonkers, New York, that I've felt like I've started to make interesting music.

My current gear set up is such:

I play through a 60 watt Orange Crush Combo amp, I have a double humbucker made in Mexico Strat and I run a Dunlop Wah --> Fulltone OCD --> Big Muff Pi --> Boss Compressor --> Ibanez Chorus --> Electro Harmonix Memory Boy. Somewhere I have a Memory Man that I want to sell (hit me up if you're in he New York Area) and a Russian Big Muff that I hope is in storage a friend's parent's house.

Right now I play in a band called Cult Vacation. You can listen to some demos that were recorded while I was in Cuba last semester here: www.cultvacation.bandcamp.com

We've play around New York City at small venues like Shea Stadium in Brooklyn, The Gateway, The Rockshop, The Bowery Electric, and an awesome and dirgey house venue near Fordham called the Meat Shop. Cult Vacation started with my best friend and as it stands right now, we have three guitar players, a bass player, and a drummer who also plays guitar in another Fordham band called Sister James. I'm enjoying playing in Cult Vacation, but we do have some issues that make me wanna chase my solo stuff more. What I like most about Cult Vacation is also our biggest downfall—all of our members write our own songs and we try and play them together as a band with different vocalists for each song. This can be a lot of fun, but there is an uneven balance within our songwriting. Our oldest guitar player writes vaguely surfy garage rock songs (although he did accidentally write a great Jeff Buckley song which has become a staple of our live set), my best friend and other guitar player writes songs that get stuck in your head even though they have a fair amount of chromaticism and the occasional odd and dissonant chord, our bass player loves Weezer and pop-punk, and I still visit this site, so that should give you a decent idea of what my biggest influences are. Beyond the difference between all of our styles, our other two guitar players aren't good at coming up with their own parts for songs that they didn't write. This is fine if I can teach them a part that I had in mind, but too often, their parts change from show to show and neither of them are good enough guitar players to be improvising.

I get the feeling that as my last year of college comes around and the possibility of me staying in New York without a high paying job becomes more and more impossible, I'm probably gonna start playing my solo stuff more and trying to form a band for that. The issue I run into there is that my ideal band would consist of two or three guitar players (myself doing guitar and vocals), one of the guitar players would flip between guitars and synth, I'd want a bassist, a drummer, and someone controlling drum samples and loops, not unlike EA's Polar Bear. I want to make psychedelic music that rocks hard but I also want to make pretty music and I also want my music to be something you could dance your ass off to at a club. I have my ideas for how to make this and I'd like to think that my recordings demonstrate this, but translating this into something coherent live is much more difficult.

I have recorded three albums on my own since I got to college.

https://waxpoetic.bandcamp.com/album/viejos -- this album consists largely of little instrumental experiments I did on my laptop using an acoustic guitar and trying to write songs by starting with drum parts first. A friend sings on Cleveland (recorded there at his mom's house in spring break) and he also plays violin on Yes. I think my favorite tracks there are 81 MPH, Land's End, and Don't Think

https://waxpoetic.bandcamp.com/album/wax-poetic -- I spent about a year working on this in Mexico, San Francisco, and New York from the summer before my sophomore year until the last day of the spring semester of 2015. I'd say this was the first time I felt like I'd found a sound that I was excited about. For most of high school, I was doing derivative rip offs of other bands and here I feel like I was starting to try new things, experimentation with drum machines because I didn't have a drumset I could record with, learning how to layer tracks, a lot of attention to mixing. My favorite tracks here are: Out of Time, Cada Vez, and Emerald Eyes (a shameless homage to Porno for Pyros/Jane's)

https://waxpoetic.bandcamp.com/album/dos -- This is my most recent work. I recorded all of this when I was studying abroad in Cuba during the fall of 2015. I had with me only my laptop and an acoustic guitar so this whole album was a huge learning experience about how to manipulate sound. This led to a lot of bizarre guitar sounds, using synths rather than a real bass, and relying almost exclusively on creating MIDI drum tracks. I'd say I'm most proud of this album for its diversity of different sounds. My favorite tracks here are: Chameleon and Darlin (both of which get played with Cult Vacation) and then Stop and Crush because they both are way different from the more pysch rock influenced music I've made in the past.

With regards to goals, I suppose my big one is to be able to make music into a viable way to sustain myself. I'd be happy to do so with Cult Vacation, although I have my doubts about the ambitions of the other guys in the band and whether or not our songwriting will be able to maintain an equal level (most of the other guys have 3-5 songs to pull from, I have at least 20 that I would willingly play with a band, provided they learned the damn songs). What I imagine is most likely is that upon graduation, Cult Vacation gets pulled to different parts of the world unless we can all find ways to stick around in New York City. Even if Cult Vacation can continue after graduation, I do want to start playing my solo material with a band. As much as I love the guys in Cult Vacation, the level of musicianship is pretty uneven there. Although my best friend in the band has written some of my favorite songs within the band, he is to guitar playing what Meg White is to drumming and so the songs that I wrote that I want to play with Cult Vacation are often over his head. He can't actually play some of the parts and as such, I think I need a solo band to do what I want to do with some of the music I have that doesn't fit with Cult Vacation. What I image is that a solo band I would have would have a Nine Inch Nails type of set up with regards to instrumentation. I'd love to make it happen in New York, but I'll try and make it wherever I end up after graduating.

If anyone on the board likes what I'm playing and has any interest in collaboration either online or in person (provided we are close by in New York), do hit me up. I'd also love to hear more of the music everyone is making here, as far as I saw there is only one person who actually posted a link to their music.

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#33 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Thu Jun 02, 2016 12:53 am

I'm deffinatley going to be checking out your music when i have the time. I totally understand your situation about the whole finding what sound works for you. With an intense amount of influences and different styles to each it can be overwhelming. I was a very young dude when i began my first recordings but they were always half assed due to lazy musicians i incorperated myself with. That also was an issue with my entire amateur career. It pushed me to try a solo career. I'm not much of a solo artist.. I love the idea of a band. Even though i can certainly be a control freak when it comes to leading a band.. but that is in the past. I'm mainly into post-hardcore/emotiv rock. I also love experimental stuff like incubus. My main issue now is family.. My first son is due the 19th of this month. My life long dream was to be a full time musicians, now i'm wondering how i would ever balance both worlds if those dreams become reality. I love music but i also love my family. I don't want to give up by any means.. but maybe my duty in music doesn't nessicarily have to be in a band. Good luck to the both of us!

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#34 Post by cabangbangq » Thu Jun 02, 2016 3:43 pm

MicrowavedGerbil wrote:I'm deffinatley going to be checking out your music when i have the time. I totally understand your situation about the whole finding what sound works for you. With an intense amount of influences and different styles to each it can be overwhelming. I was a very young dude when i began my first recordings but they were always half assed due to lazy musicians i incorperated myself with. That also was an issue with my entire amateur career. It pushed me to try a solo career. I'm not much of a solo artist.. I love the idea of a band. Even though i can certainly be a control freak when it comes to leading a band.. but that is in the past. I'm mainly into post-hardcore/emotiv rock. I also love experimental stuff like incubus. My main issue now is family.. My first son is due the 19th of this month. My life long dream was to be a full time musicians, now i'm wondering how i would ever balance both worlds if those dreams become reality. I love music but i also love my family. I don't want to give up by any means.. but maybe my duty in music doesn't nessicarily have to be in a band. Good luck to the both of us!
I find nowadays that the control freak issue is more of a problem for me than is getting my influences and my sounds into something coherent. I feel that I've become pretty adequate at arrangements and I've learned how to mesh my desire for electronic/hip-hop/industrial rhythms over more traditional rock, but the issue is materializing it within a band. I hate the idea of playing by myself—I actually would much prefer having a full band set up with good musicians, I would just want them to understand that I make the final decisions on my songs, much like Trent Reznor or Billy Corgan, although hopefully not as insufferable as either of those two.

I've always loved the idea of a band, but I think that the only way I could effectively be in a band and not feel dissatisfied is to be a bass player for somebody else's songs. I think it's an easier way to have a big voice without feeling the urgency to contribute to or control every other instrument.

Congratulations on the child! I imagine your priorities have changed a lot in the last few months, maybe you'll raise yourself a little musician.

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#35 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Fri Jun 03, 2016 2:02 am

As a guitarist i obviously like my riffs and want them to be the final product but of course that isn't ever the case. My brother always had me rearange to the point where i just said "fuck it" and started from scratch. So what i began to do was just record my own riffs on Cubase both lead and rythm, mix them and make them mp3's that way i'd just say "Hey look, it's already recorded ya fucks!". It's hard to be in a band man, It is. Your best bet would be just recording an album and having musicians join you while learning your material. Be like Billy Corgan dude.. Shit i would. Idk how the music scene in new york is though.
Probably isn't as HORRENDOUS!

I still have issues imcorperating my influences. I'd love help.. or a musical breakthrough. I'd like to make music that makes people happy and dance. Other times i want to be dark.. then again i want to be jimi page...

Thanks man! I'm excited to be a father. Music will be on hold for now.. at least my goals for music will be. as long as i get my football sundays off to spend time with my kid, i think i'll be okay for now.

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#36 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Sun Jun 05, 2016 1:47 am

I only skimmed through a few just now and let me tell you the Jane's Addiction influences really pop in almost all the songs i heard. I'm planning on giving the album a proper listen sometime this week. I hear a lot of Jane's, The Smashing Pumpkins and Pink floyd in your playing! BTW, Cada ves is sung in spanish.. Did you study in Mexico? What is your ethnicity?

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#37 Post by Cowchips1997 » Sun Jun 05, 2016 1:29 pm

Cabangbangq - I like Stop and Crush. My son tried to locate on Spotify, but no luck. Is Bandcamp only link?

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#38 Post by cabangbangq » Mon Jun 06, 2016 2:19 pm

MicrowavedGerbil wrote:I only skimmed through a few just now and let me tell you the Jane's Addiction influences really pop in almost all the songs i heard. I'm planning on giving the album a proper listen sometime this week. I hear a lot of Jane's, The Smashing Pumpkins and Pink floyd in your playing! BTW, Cada ves is sung in spanish.. Did you study in Mexico? What is your ethnicity?
Interesting you pick out Floyd as something you hear because I've really only listened to the Dark Side of the Moon maybe 5 times in my life? Beyond that I have some passing knowledge of Meddle and very little else with regards to Floyd. But I can't deny the Jane's and Smashing Pumpkins influence, I think my chord work is more Navarro and my tone more Corgan.

Good ear on Cada Vez! I was born in Mexico and came up to the US when I was 2 months old. My mom's family lives in Xalapa in the state of Veracruz and so I visited every summer and some winters for most of my life. In my freshman year of college both of my parents moved down to Mexico and although they are now separated, they both live in Xalapa. My spanish is pretty proficient. I have trouble with some slang and some more structural things in terms of gender and tenses but I speak well enough that I was able to study in Cuba in the fall of 2015 without issue.

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#39 Post by cabangbangq » Mon Jun 06, 2016 2:20 pm

Cowchips1997 wrote:Cabangbangq - I like Stop and Crush. My son tried to locate on Spotify, but no luck. Is Bandcamp only link?
Bandcamp is the only link so far, I also have a soundcloud that has some more things, many of which are outtakes and experiments.

soundcloud.com/vacation-2

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#40 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:06 am

Sorry for the posting drought here it was my baby shower weekened and unexpectedly my son decided to be born two weeks early.. healthy of course. Home now and finally getting the taste of the mind numbing , bone-aching sleep deprivation.

Anyway, i myself wasn't a PF fan either.. theyre boring to me actually. Your music does get a kick of corgan and navarro's playing style. I always said it would be very interesting to hear what a would have been jane's post ritual album would sound like if someone was asked to compose one. you'd probably get the job done!

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#41 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Sat Jun 18, 2016 12:11 am

Make your shit available for streaming dude.. youtube at least.

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#42 Post by Ganondorf » Tue Jun 21, 2016 4:53 pm

i didn't even see this thread prior to inventing the thread i started about making music

"Just a bunch of hipsters who think playing drop g with bass strings on their guitars 2 beats per minute and calling it "B3at Down" makes them great" made me smile
" i myself wasn't a PF fan either.. theyre boring to me actually" irritated me

guitar... i play one of those. it's fun. i like Guitar Rig 5 for effects.. in case you were wondering.

i make rock and roll in an EDM environment. that's more than fun.

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#43 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Tue Jun 21, 2016 10:39 pm

Ganondorf wrote:i didn't even see this thread prior to inventing the thread i started about making music

"Just a bunch of hipsters who think playing drop g with bass strings on their guitars 2 beats per minute and calling it "B3at Down" makes them great" made me smile
" i myself wasn't a PF fan either.. theyre boring to me actually" irritated me

guitar... i play one of those. it's fun. i like Guitar Rig 5 for effects.. in case you were wondering.

i make rock and roll in an EDM environment. that's more than fun.

Well to be fair i havent given them much a chance. I love Zeppelin, I guess it's you like either or.
And i fucking love Zelda. Nice avatar.. "The wind... it is blowing" ;)

Ganondorf

Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#44 Post by Ganondorf » Tue Jun 21, 2016 11:57 pm

Pink Floyd? come on man :crazy:

The Wall is the best album ever created, for example......



both bands. not either or. i've never heard anyone say that about those two. i mean go ahead, but........ :crazy:

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Re: Aspiring musicians (Let's talk music/Gear/Goals).

#45 Post by MicrowavedGerbil » Wed Jun 22, 2016 12:02 pm

Ganondorf wrote:Pink Floyd? come on man :crazy:

The Wall is the best album ever created, for example......



both bands. not either or. i've never heard anyone say that about those two. i mean go ahead, but........ :crazy:

Zeppelin and Floyd were like Metallica or Megadeth.. in my experience. I meet many older fans of either or. There was even a case in UK where a dude stabbed a Floyd fan over Zeppelin lol.
To be honest, There hasn't been a guitar riff that ever stood out for me. I went into their music with the impression that david gilmour was an iconic player.idk recomend me something. I'd check it.

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