Back to the Music... sort of!

well, if you've followed the other blog I was running at andy-boards-in-canada.blogspot.com you'll know typing is a royal pain in the arse with only my left hand :)

I've fractured my radius snowboarding!

Actually, it's not totally SNAFUd, thank god. The gloves I bought just before I left saved my wrist from needing any work done on it other than a cast. And the good news is I had a rehearsal with the JC Band in Oxford yesterday evening, and it went off OK. No slap, obviously, but my fingerstyle is still up to about 70% of what it should be, so I'm going to be able to keep my end up (so to speak) for the three weeks or so until my cast comes off, at which point I'll go ballistic getting my right hand limber.... as...

We've got a gig in a 700 capacity club in Oxford in about 6 weeks!

The rehearsals are going to ramp up to the full 2 a week ( for me ) with another one for the rest of the guys, and we are now up to an 8 piece, with keyboards and a second backing vox/tenor sax player!

Think I'll have to dig out my rusty sax writing skills from the days of the apostles of funk... hope I can remember what I did!

I'll keep you posted. I managed to play hard enough yesterday to get a fine blister on my right middle finger!

The studio lurches into life!!!

Yay! I've finally completed arranging and plugging in the workstation. The PC is back up, but I haven't started truly hooking the desk up to it yet. I'll need some more cables to sync the clocks of the soundcard and the desk via digital connections. I have a feeling I might be able to get the groups coming through as well, but that remains to be seen...

also not tried the MMC Midi Machine Control stuff yet.

But, I did do a bit of work on Pete's vocal track from the Citrus Waltz sessions the four of us had a few months back: I think the mic must have been fading in and out (possibly thanks to my slightly cranky old spirit folio desk) so I had to run through pete's entire vocal performance boosting gain with a ramp in / ramp out filter to smooth in my work!

Probably took about 25 minutes of intense concentration for the 2:30 duration of the track, but well worth it. You can actually hear Pete all the way through now!

I even started trying to fatten out Smurf's guitar. Must install a load more VST effect plugins - in particular, I need an aural exciter from somewhere....

At least the studio is coming together. Unlike my MP3 portable HDD, which is about to die - panic offloading to the server in the house, etc - I've purchased a replacement which I'll be loading with the lot as soon as it's ready to go.

And in other news...
The Oxford Funk Carter Project now has a keyboard player!!! Jake says he's got the services of a good keyboard player from a local covers act, and knowing the guys Jake has picked out so far, he must be good. When I get back the whole thing's going to kick off, gigs and everything. I'm looking forward to it!

Current listening pleasure:
Would you believe I'm listening to Tay FM over the web? Talk about your blast from the past! I used to listen to them a lot driving to Perth Music College from St Andrews in the mornings... still got the best adverts I've heard, so much better than the terrible po-faced crap on 2-Ten FM here in Berkshire...