02-11-09 – Zombie Pyjama Party / Kerrang still likes YAWA!
Hey there guys! I’ve been pretty swamped lately, hence the lack of last week’s blog. I’ll try to catch up this week!
It’s entailed…
- Finishing the 7 day Song Trance Tutorial (15 freakin’ videos!)
- Starting on a multi-part video tutorial explaining how to record distorted guitar
- Some issues with friends
- Playing a YAWA gig in front of a Kerrang DJ in Walsall!
- A costly YAWA gig in High Wycombe
- A pyjama-tastic gig in Barrow
- Recording and mixing the new YAWA tune “Zero Gravity”
- Keeping up with my Primeloops blogging
- A bunch of commissioned tutorials
- Having a tutorial accepted onto Audiotuts.com
- Hitting the 1000 visitors in a day mark on boyinaband.com
- Producing Kieran’s new 12 Story Fall song
- Selling and Sending off a bunch of YAWA merch
- Getting and Playing Brutal Legend
- Hitting 1500 subscribers on YouTube
Dis is 4 da Trance Heads
Man, my 7 day songs are usually intense experiences, especially combined with attempting to keep up a normal social life, gigging with YAWA and… uh… sleeping and eating, but this was something else.
Trance music contains so much more than other genres of music, being very textured and the synth effects are pretty complex at times, so instead of 7 videos for 7 days it was over twice that with 15 videos in the end.
It’s good in a way – I’ve proved to myself that I’m capable of maintaining this work schedule. In fact, I calculated that if I post a new video every day from now until my birthday, I’ll be in the top 100 gurus on youtube. That’s assuming a lot of things, but it’s nice to do a bit of planning!
Man, I hate guitar tone…
Well, I don’t hate it when it’s on professional recordings, but it’s just about the hardest thing to make sound good – making a distorted guitar the perfect mix between powerful, clear and actually feeling like a part of the song is a nightmare. So I decided to do some research and put it in the form of videos.
Kieran has provided assistance in the form of playing the guitar parts that I test the tone with, and I’ve taken to green screening him into inappropriate places while he plays, so check the videos out for education and entertainment! Edutainment is the future!
Issues.
Things have been pretty awkward even for my standards lately. I’m not longer going to be mentioning names when something is slightly edgy in my blogs unless I have permission to do so.
A lot of my values have been questioned lately. I’ve been told that I don’t work hard enough, which I find hilarious and I’ve been told my priorities aren’t straight, which I also find hilarious. I’ve been told these things by people before – the irony being it’s from people that I think exactly the same thing about.
I don’t want to say too much about this, since it’s pretty much over now, but to conclude – I’d much prefer to work hard and achieve something than to self indulge and achieve nothing. People need to learn to motivate themselves instead of complaining when the motivated people around them take a break.
And I need to learn to ignore people more effectively.
Luke likes us!
We headed down to Walsall to play at the Wharf 10 bar as a part of this Kerrang-hosted gig, with DJ Luke Wilkins emceeing and deejaying the night.
We played our set and he loved it – he said some amazing things, some of my favourites being “People didn’t know what punk rock was when it started and this is just like that – you guys are going to be massive” and “The general public aren’t ready for this yet”, he couldn’t say enough nice things about us.
We also hung out with some guys from a band “muscle mobile” who actually played with us in Kettering not too long ago – in fact, the “guy in a hat” from our July Video Blog was the guitarist. So that was a nice surprise! They’re really nice guys and insanely talented. Especially that drummer, who sings and plays like a freakin’ pro.
Ouch ><
High Wycombe was painful for many reasons
- The hour and a half traffic jam on the way there
- The initial low attendance
- Kieran’s amp breaking mid-Starcadia
- Kieran’s string breaking
- Zak’s snare breaking
- Keeping the crowd entertained for 5 minutes while people tried to figure out what was wrong with Kieran’s amp before finally giving up and having to end the set.
However it wasn’t a waste – we met some of our hardcore fans, made some new fans, sold some T-shirts and CDs and played “Watch Me Fly” live for the first time – Kieran said he didn’t find it as difficult as he initially thought which was cool!
Barrow
Man, getting a whole rave rap rock band to dress in pyjamas and white their face up so they look like zombies? Yes, Zak’s brilliant ideas strike again.
We had a lot of fun in Barrow – loading in to the pub and setting up on the unexpectedly awesome stage, we quickly soundchecked, grabbed chinese food and chilled upstairs. By the time we got ready, the first band, Jusure (the sound guy from the Kendal gig a while back is the frontman) started we’d just finished making ourselves even whiter than we already are, then after moshing for Jusure, took to the stage ourself and got the rave going. A bunch of people who came for us were dancing, but the rest of the pub seemed to enjoy it too, which was cool!
Afterwards, I felt a migraine approaching, so I went to bed (we were invited to stay the night upstairs). On the way, Hitler gave me some orange juice (He’s a really nice guy if you’re not Jewish). I got in bed and went to sleep.
3 Hours later, I was woken up by several drunk idiots being generally loud and doing what seemed like their best to make someone’s migraine worse. This continued for 2 hours, and at their request, I won’t mention names, but they’re inconsiderate idiots and I have a renewed hatred for what alcohol does to people. Sounds like they had a fun night though, so it doesn’t really matter about my migraine.
That incident aside, it was a fun night. We woke up, went into town to grab food and departed at about 4pm. We arrived back in Telford at 10pm after what was meant to be a 3 hour journey was doubled thanks to irritating traffic jams. Fair play to the van’s driver.
Zero Gravity
This song is MASSIVE. We’ve named the genre “God Stomp” because it sounds like just that – a god stomping on cities, possibly with orbs of power in his hands. If you’ve played Katamari – that god.
I’ve also recently learned how to make things sound miles more professional, so I’ve used that on the track. It’s a lot brighter and feels louder now, which is awesome.
More stuff!
Let’s bosh through the rest of the list
- Keeping up with my Primeloops blogging – I’ve aSTIIIILLL been doing my twice weekly articles on their website, which are now available on my blog too!
- A bunch of commissioned tutorials – I’ve been pretty busy with these, that Electro Pop tutorial on youtube was one of them 
- Having a tutorial accepted onto Audiotuts.com -
http://audio.tutsplus.com/tutorials/production/how-to-make-a-trance-lead-synth-in-reason-4/
- Hitting the 1000 visitors in a day mark on boyinaband.com – YESSS! I’ve actually just passed the 1100 mark as well today, the site is growing fast! I remember when I hit the 100 visitor mark how happy I was. Things are finally approaching a professional level.
- Producing Kieran’s new 12 Story Fall song – It’s called “Blue and Silver”. I made the electronics for it and helped him learn how to record his own acoustic guitar and vocals. Check it out on his myspace – myspace.com/12storyfallmusic
- Selling and Sending off a bunch of YAWA merch
We’ve had sales from America to Japan lately, it’s awesome! People like the EP!
- Getting and Playing Brutal Legend
Jack black wins. This is a seriously fun, original and stylised game and it’s so refreshing.
- Hitting 1500 subscribers on YouTube
Score! Another milestone! I’m gaining subscribers at a rate of 10-15 a day as well, which is awesome!
Next week on Dave’s Blog
If I manage to blog next week, chances are it’ll entail:
- Gigging in Shrewsbury
- A bunch more tutorials
- Something to do with the tons of emails that have piled up while I’ve been busy with all the stuff above
- Possibly getting the game “Dragon Age” if Amazon isn’t lying about the release date! 
No blogly question for this week, you can think for yourself!