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Category Archives: Music
Stoked: New Drumset
October 31, 2006 – 6:03 pm
In an effort to better the sound of our worship services on Sunday mornings, my boss deemed it necessary to replace the electronic drums I’ve been playing for the last three years with a live set, to which I said, “Finally!”
After a few hours at Guitar Center, we came away with this Pacific MX Series Fusion Maple Set, with the Emerald Green-to-Black Satin Fade. I was sold on these as soon as I tried a Birch set next to a Maple set. The maple, as I learned, is louder, boomier (to use the made up parlance of musicians everywhere), and fills a room better than birch. It also helped that the maple set came with DW heads instead of the Pacific heads (even though Pacific Drums are made by DW, there are still different levels of heads – and I usually try to stay fairly level-headed, even if my head is in the clouds…)
We also came away with:
- a Pacific Hardware Set (DW Kick Pedal, hihat stand, cymbal stand, snare stand)
- 1 Zildjian A Custom 17″ Crash
- 1 Zildjian A Custom Mastersound 14″ Hihats
- 1 Shure Beta 52
- 3 Sennheiser E604s
I’m very pleased and can hardly wait to get the set together, tuned, and played. Course, I have to wait about a month or more before that happens, but right now I’m content just looking at their Emerald Beauty (which will be the first single released off my solo album).
Go On…Open Pandora's Box
October 24, 2006 – 12:51 pm
First, go to Pandora and register. It’s a web-based music player through which you can create your own stations based on your favorite artists. While playing the songs, you can rate the music, thus allowing Pandora to learn your musical tastes and play more music it thinks you’ll like. It’s fairly addictive.
Once registered, go to OpenPandora and download the desktop client. It adds some quite nice functionality, like a mini-player and the unnecessary use of a browser to listen to the music. You can even look up lyrics. It’s great.
The San Angelo Gig
October 13, 2006 – 11:30 pm
For the sake of my cousin, an SRV lovin’ and talented lead guitarist in his own right, I rode three hours to San Angelo with him to play as part of his band at a citywide, all-church event. Originally it was meant to be a youth event; somehow it transpired to this citywide event with a somewhat much older demographic.
We’d practiced together one time about a week prior to this gig. I was also worried about the couple of original songs they wanted to do that I’d never heard. We arrived at the church with plenty of time to soundcheck and setup, but we did neither. I spent an hour or so typing our words for the screens in the front of the church.
When we actually get up to play our music, it was 10pm, and maybe 30 to 40 people were still at the church. We begin playing, only the lead singer’s guitar wasn’t working due to sound system problems or bad cables or divine intervention. He begins preaching and prophesying over the song we’d begun playing behind him, taking it slow so he could be heard but building to crescendoes at certain times to emphasize the points he was making (although my monitor wasn’t working so I never really heard what he said). We wound up playing 2 or 3 “songs” for two nonstop hours.
It was a very freeing musical moment in that everything I’ve been playing in the last year or more has been so structured. The looseness and creativity required of the music was very cathartic. So, all the worry about playing the songs well faded to nothing because we didn’t play them.
We also got done at midnight, then ate at Applebee’s at 1am, and returned to our bassist’s home a little before 2am.
Derek Webb in Concert at Stubb’s
September 28, 2006 – 10:08 pm
I saw Derek Webb for the first time last night at Stubb’s in downtown Austin. I’d seen him before, but only as part of Caedmon’s Call. I remember thinking even then that he should go solo, with no disrespect to Caedmon’s. His songs ring true in my ears and call me to a higher level of living.
The show, although attended by 30 people or so, was great, even despite the hard cement floors, the three hours of standing, and the late midnight ending for a Wednesday night show.
My friend Stevie made the good observation that it takes a talented individual to hold the attention of anyone for two hours with just a voice and an acoustic guitar, which Derek did quite well.
My favorite moments of the show might have been the two times he talked extensively between songs. He went on a short rant, of sorts, about getting his music out to everyone for free because he wants to initiate a conversation. He said he’s
“not in the record business. I’m in the music business. The record business wants me to sell you little round plastic discs. I want to make relationships.”
That was heartening to hear.
They, being Derek and his wife Sandra McCracken, sold their CDs for $10 each in order to clear out their merch before heading back to Tennessee. Derek, who’s released his newest album for free over the internet without DRM, has plans to release all of his albums for free. He even told us that if we could find 9 other people at the show, each with a dollar, that everyone should chip in, buy one of his albums, and then make 9 copies.
Course, he told us this after I’d bought two albums and a DVD. Oh well. I’ve already offered to make copies for my friends.
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