Claypool Music News

Make Noise Studios reconfig

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:58:00 +0000

Yesterday I completely dismantled Make Noise Studios. The lovely and talented Hollis helped me clean everything from top to bottom and reassemble the studio in a different configuration. I've optimized the position of the gear for improved and streamlined workflow and carefully isolated the signal and electrical cables. With my switch from hardware to software-based looping, I've picked up some floor space, too. In this picture my line of amps is off just to the left.

Time to begin recording Breathe.

Clayphonic Street Team in Charleston

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:00:00 +0000

Mark Burdette of Charleston, WV proudly sports his Clayphonic Records^TM long sleeve t-shirt! Who says spiked hair, shades, and Claywear don't go together? Mark pulls off the look in his "new favorite" shirt.

And you can look this great, too! Pick up on your own Clayphonic Records^TM short- or long-sleeve t-shirt in our swag store and be cool, like Mark!

HomeGrown Music Series

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:04:00 +0000

Guitar Circle of Chicago performed Sunday evening at the HomeGrown Music Series in Chicago. The performance space is the Kimball Avenue Church, a lovely and intimate room. GCoC was the first of three acts at the weekly concert series.

We performed as a quintet this outing with me, Adrian Fortis, Collin Landinguin, Tom McCarthy, and John Novak. We had a one week notice to prepare for the gig and this particular GCoC configuration had neither rehearsed nor performed together. No problem, time to prepare and get down to it! We met as a quartet for rehearsal on Saturday to determine and rehearse the potential repertoire for the event, then as a quintet Sunday afternoon to finalize our set list and polish it up.

Our set for the evening consisted of:

Sun Music
Eye Of The Needle
Askesis
The Growing Circle
Mediterranean Sundance
The Third Relation
A Lotus On Irish Streams
Asturias
Thrak
Trapiche

Those familiar with the Guitar Craft repertoire recognize this set has some challenging numbers. In addition A Lotus On Irish Streams and Mediterranean Sundance are new to our repertoire.

Following a 6:00 pm sound check, the team hit the stage at 6:30 pm. Our biggest concern was the lack of monitors; the sound in the room was wonderful, but we had to deal with the natural reverb of the hard walls and trouble hearing ourselves and each other. Nevertheless, we marshaled on and performed well, with a small wart here and there, which I'm sure the audience never heard. Except for Thrak, which underwent an absolute and utter derailment. Collin wisely called for a do-over which we executed nicely. The performance was full of energy and the audience was quite enthusiastic and responsive, always a wonderful situation. To my ears the applause after the second take of Thrak had a little extra oomph to it! As a side note, I saw Lyle Lovett and His Large Band do the same thing at a show this summer and the audience had the same reaction, an appreciation for the recovery.

It's always a pleasure to perform with Guitar Circle of Chicago, a wonderful team of musicians and great people. I am looking forward to the next chapter in our evolution.

September 20, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:09:00 +0000

A website year in review

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:32:00 +0000

It occurred to me earlier that the new and improved version of this website went live on September 17, 2008 making today the one year anniversary. One of the changes with the new site was the inclusion of analytic tools which allow me to review stats about how the site is being accessed and from where. The information is fascinating and insightful. So let's do a quick year in review for the site.

The website had 5,982 unique visits and 21,796 page views. The average visitor viewed 3.64 pages and stayed on the site for 2:12. The visitors were from 81 different countries from each of the six inhabited continents. The site was accessed by its URL 24% of the time, via search engines 45% of the time, from my various social media outposts 18% of the time, from discussion forums 10% of the time, and from links on artist, media, and instrument manufacturer sites 3% of the time. The most frequently visited areas of the site are the homepage and the blog, followed by the gear pages.

So, what can I learn from this? Lots more, I'm sure, than I understand in the moment, but three strategies appear to have worked - search engine optimization, social network outposts, and discussion forums have contributed to the website traffic nicely.

Okay, enough of that stuff, back to making music.

Write in the afternoon, demo in the evening

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:32:00 +0000

This evening I created a demo of a piece of music I wrote this afternoon with my hollowneck guitar. The goal was to memorialize the song before it evaporated during the long work week that lies ahead.

In keeping with the premise behind Breathe, I kept the instrumentation sparse for the demo, using just my 2003 Industrial Guitars lap steel in E and my 2009 Warr Guitars Artist 8. I ran both instruments through the POD X3 Pro with my favorite JC-120 model. The tone of the lap steel was exquisite, crisp and clean and present. And the Warr, 'nuff said.

The arrangement will most likely change when I record the song for the album. During today's writing session I approached the hollowneck as "the small orchestra" and I may be inclined to distribute the arrangement between lap steel, electric guitar, fretless guitar, and Warr Guitar. Plenty of time to worry about that later. For now I'm delighted with the piece as its taking shape and glad to have captured it in Pro Tools.

From the perspective of technique, my recent noodling with the hollowneck has been designed to bring another perspective to my lap steel playing. I've been enamored with playing open strings, often as drones, on either side of the neck and using the bar to play chords or melodies on a subset of the strings. Most of my work on lap steel has been non-traditional, as One Feather Shy listeners will attest, but this latest obsession is opening up new avenues for exploration. Good stuff.

The B.O.A.R.D.

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 03:20:00 +0000

Just as I was beginning to sustain energy towards recording Breathe I was thrown a curveball that needed hitting. My thirty year high school reunion was scheduled for the weekend of August 7th and 8th and an "all-star band" was being assembled to perform a couple of sets of music from the era. And when I say all-star, I'm not exaggerating. The team consisted of outstanding players from our hometown class who have continued to hone their musical craft as pros and semi-pros with long-term demonstrated excellence and a love of music; Chris Amick (guitar), Jeff Anderson (bass/vocals), John Boggess (sound/vocals/bass), Lee Hines (drums), Laura Sypolt (vocals/keys), and Tim Sypolt (vocals/keys/guitar). I had to sign on and prepare to work with these outstanding musicians from a distance as the local team rehearsed at Shindog Studios in WV.

The band was christened The B.O.A.R.D. Our high school mascot being the Red Dragons, the band's name is an acronym for Band Of Aging Red Dragons, both accurate and fun.

Two one-hour sets were selected and sent my way for personal rehearsal. Selections included:

Foot Stompin' Music
Sweet Emotion
Taking Care of Business
Long Train Runnin'
Stormy Monday
One of These Nights
Stop Dragging My Heart Around
Rock and Roll All Night
La Grange
Just The Way You Are
You Really Got Me
Listen To The Music
Wonderful Tonight
Hard To Handle
Honky Tonk Woman
Rhiannon
Fly Like An Eagle
Walk This Way
Tush
Freebird

Yeah, we're talking some nostalgic groovers here!

I decided to keep it simple, take just one guitar (my 2001 American Deluxe Strat) and a handful of tasty effects (Dunlop GCB-80 volume pedal, Boss CS-2 Compressor, Ibanez TS-9 Tube Screamer with aNaLoG.MaN Silver Mod, Boss DS-1 with aNaLoG.MaN Pro Midrange Mod, and Boss DD-3 Digital Delay with aNaLoG.MaN High Cut Mod). I called the good Dr. Boggess and arranged to borrow an amp and a backup guitar; Jeff's latest Partscaster, by the way, is another outstanding guitar. I traded several emails with the team and we decided who would take what parts on what songs, but always knowing the situation would be wonderfully fluid. We met up for a final full rehearsal on Thursday, August 6th, at Shindog Studios for a run-through of each set and final tweaking. The rehearsal went very well, the band sounded good, we added Shout to the list, and we were ready to go.

We kicked off our first set at 8:00 pm on Friday night with a nice crowd of our classmates and others at The Barge in Charleston, WV. We smoked it nicely right from the beginning, with an occasional wart but no train wrecks and lot of energy. As we were wrapping up the first set with You Really Got Me, someone stepped behind me on stage, dropped off a sax case, and asked if we'd be taking a break soon. I relayed this was the last song of the set as I turned and saw fellow SAHS alum and Charleston sax legend Doug Payne. He replied he'd like to do a couple of songs with us in the second set - no problem there as Doug is a monster player. We fired the second set up at 10:00 pm with Doug joining us for three numbers; as I suspected would happen, Doug tore it up helped us take the energy to the next level. We finished strong with the crowd on their feet dancing feverishly to Shout.

What a privilege it was to play with these wonderful musicians and lovely people for our classmates of 30 years ago - and a host of other audience members who dropped by and joined in the festivities. The evening was over too soon; as we broke down and loaded up I couldn't help but thinking how much fun it would be to do it again. Who knows, perhaps it will happen...

More drone work this evening

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:28:00 +0000

Following a busy day of work and a busy evening with family fun, I fired up Make Noise Studios this evening for more drone work. The instrument of choice was again the 2001 American Deluxe Strat and the studio setup remained unchanged.

I recorded two separate pieces, each consisting of six layers. I'm happy with the evening's work and very pleased with this creative approach. A significant goal of this project is to savor the space between the notes, resist the temptation to over-orchestrate and over play, and let the music Breathe. The four drones recorded over the past two days are consistent with that goal. I'll ultimately shape the pieces in Pro Tools and re-record parts as required, as well as add new instrumentation as appropriate.

I also had some fun today with the Intua BeatMaker iPhone app. It's is an amazing piece of software that allows for sample manipulation and sequencing on the iPhone with the ability to generate CD quality output. Powerful, portable, and fun. More exploration to come...

I ran into Brad Zwieg of Studio Z last night at the Elvis Costello concert. Astute readers will recall that Brad mixed and mastered One Feather Shy. Plans are to have Brad do the same for Breathe; how's that for a ringing endorsement of his work? It was good to catch up for a few moments and I look forward to working with Brad in the near future.

By the way, Elvis and The Impostors smoked it! Elvis showed up to play guitar, and play guitar he did; he is certainly not afraid to turn it up to 10 and stomp on a fuzz box. It was a great show for an appreciative crowd.

Drones in D minor

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:53:00 +0000

And finally I'm back in the friendly confines of Make Noise Studios! Today's work was creating two different guitar drones, each in D minor. The first piece consisted of five layers and the second was constructed of six layers. I am very pleased with the results and delighted to be working on Breathe!

For the technical stuff, today's guitar of choice was the 2001 American Deluxe Strat straight into the POD X3 Pro with a JC-120 model, one of my favorites. I recorded into Ableton Live running SooperLooper controlled by a MIDI Moose and Boss FV-500L via a MIDI Solutions Pedal Controller. I used the SoundToys EchoBoy and Crystallizer delays in line and recorded with the effects. The signal chain has an instance of EchoBoy set as a short delay, Crystallizer as a reverse echo, and another instance of Echoboy with a longer delay.

Given the time challenges and constraints under which I've found myself this year I don't want to plan too far ahead. My intention is to sustain focus on Breathe in whatever time chunks I can manage. The music is bubbling up and demanding to get out!

I sent some audio tracks to Lee Fletcher yesterday. We'll keep the objective under wraps for the time being, more as it develops.

Stefan and I are going to see Elvis Costello this evening! We're both looking forward to the concert.

Now playing on vinyl: Robert Fripp, Exposure

Al Peery's beautiful Breathe imagery

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Sat, 09 May 2009 01:59:00 +0000

I received this stunning photograph from Al Peery today for the Breathe project. Al took the picture in Kanawha State Forest and provided this description - "This shot was 3 separate images bracketed at 3 different exposure settings, then blended using a program called Photomatix Pro that creates HDR (high digital range) images. Pulls shadow detail from the high exposures and highlight detail from low exposures."

Thanks to Al for his visual contribution to my "hey, want to participate in Breathe?" program. I described Breathe and how you can participate in my Dec 27, 2008 blog post. If you have images you'd like to submit, drop me an email, contact me at one of my social network outposts, or comment on this blog.

Greg Kleffner's beautiful Breathe imagery

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:57:00 +0000

Greg Kleffner was kind enough to supply these gorgeous pictures for the Breathe project. Greg and John Andrus are avid ice fishermen and "like to capture the sunset over the frozen lake" during their adventures. These particular photographs were taken this winter in Minnesota.

Thanks to Greg for his visual contribution to my "hey, want to participate in Breathe?" program. I described Breathe and how you can participate in my Dec 27, 2008 blog post. If you have images you'd like to submit, drop me an email, contact me at one of my social network outposts, or comment on this blog.

BB and LC

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Sun, 03 May 2009 05:58:00 +0000

Bryan Beller joined his lovely and talented wife Kira Small for an intimate show at the Hotel Metro in Milwaukee this evening. I caught up with Bryan for a few minutes before and after the show and Hollis snapped this quick photo.

Clayphonic Street Team in Milwaukee

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 04:32:00 +0000

Hollis and I met the extended Andrus family for a pre-concert bite and sip before heading off to see Kansas tonight. Imagine my delight to see number one Andrus daughter Cassie proudly sporting her Clayphonic Records^TM t-shirt! And at her first concert! Like all fashion conscious young folk, Cassie insisted her dad outfit her to represent, and represent she did. You look great Cassie!

And you can look great, too! Pick up on your own Clayphonic Records^TM short- or long-sleeve t-shirt in our swag store and be cool, like Cassie!

One Feather Shy framed artwork

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 19:09:00 +0000

We had the artwork and CD from One Feather Shy framed at a local shop. It is displayed lovingly in the friendly confines of Make Noise Studios. I snapped this pic with my iPhone before leaving home on Thursday.

Stefan and I are off to explore Montreal, find sustenance, and enjoy night two of the Marillion Weekend.

Balance, Breathe, GCoC, Concerts

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Dateline: CoachUSA, somewhere between Brewtown and O'Hare. I've long held the belief that work/life balance doesn't occur on a daily basis, but rather happens over longer cycles. During some stretches work hums along and activities outside of the workplace are at center stage. At other times, though, work requires a greater commitment of time and energy, with little regard for 5:00 pm or the modern day concept of the five day work week. I'm in one of those stretches now and it's good. The downside, of course, is work on Breathe has taken a backseat for a bit while I've been in a heavy travel cycle and working late and on the weekends. This cycle will ultimately complete, I'll have my evenings and weekends back, and I'll be in the studio soon.

This explains, of course, why I haven't been posting lately; no tangible progress has been made in terms of recording. It doesn't mean, however, that Breathe isn't continuing to morph and mature, it's just all happening in my mind. My vision of what I'm trying to accomplish on this project is coming into greater focus. I'm anxious to begin realizing that vision.

In other news, Guitar Circle of Chicago is ramping up for a fresh period of activity. Our aim is to get our collective chops together, perform several live shows over the coming months, and record and release a collection of our original material. It's an exciting time for the Circle as we move forward with two adjustments. First, our primary work will now be as a quartet and that requires an adjustment to how we approach the repertoire. Second, while our primary focus will continue as an NST-acoustic guitar ensemble, we're looking to experiment with instrumentation more than we've historically done; I will be tapping on some pieces based on the successful experiment at our Angola show. We're also looking for opportunities to bring additional musicians into our performances, including percussion.

I am delighted to enter this next phase of activity with the team. It means, of course, a significant investment of time on technique and repertoire. Although it may appear on the surface this will conflict with my work on Breathe, I am at my musical best when I am immersed in my Guitar Craft studies. Bring it on!

I have a killer concert schedule lined up for April, beginning tonight:

04/02/09 - David Fiuczynski's KiF in Burlington
04/03/09 - Marillion in Montreal
04/04/09 - Marillion in Montreal
04/05/09 - Marillion in Montreal
04/11/09 - Kansas in Milwaukee
04/14/09 - Wilco in Milwaukee
04/15/09 - Bryan Beller in Chicago
04/17/09 - Adrian Belew in Milwaukee
04/18/09 - Jeff Beck in Milwaukee

Most excellent!

Clayphonic Street Team in Vermont

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:24:00 +0000

Monster guitarist, hiker, and all around good guy Aaron Cowan, aka Joe Riffanucci, rocks the crowd with a killer stinkface while sporting his bitchin' charcoal grey Clayphonic Records^TM t-shirt. Pick up on your own Clayphonic Records^TM short- or long-sleeve t-shirt in our swag store and you can look this cool, too! Can't help you with the beard though.

And get out there and support local live music while you're at it, okay? Okay!

A pair of Warr Guitars

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:28:00 +0000

A pair of Warr Guitars, my 2009 Warr Artist 8 and 2001 Warr Artist 10.

Warr Artist 8 is in the house!

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:44:00 +0000

My new Warr Artist 8 arrived today, packed beautifully in its way cool A&S flight case. This is a game changer for me, the embodiment of several years of learning exactly what I need in a tapping instrument. The guitar is an eight string model, tuned in 4ths from B below bass E, and is monophonic with active electronics and 3-band EQ. The strings are relatively light, gauged .105 .080 .060 .035 .025 .016 .012 .010. It's a long-scale guitar that goes low, not a bass that goes high. And it does go low. The body is mahogany with a thin walnut laminate and a quilted maple top. The five laminate bolt-on neck has maple mains, two strips of mahogany, and a middle strip of walnut. The fingerboard is pau ferro. Warr Guitar inspired by Paul Reed Smith.

The guitar plays and sounds magnificent. I got lost in 90 minutes or so of improvised looping this evening, working with a variety of tones and styles. I simply couldn't be more pleased.

I'll have the proper picture and description up on the gear page in a couple of days.

Forward progress

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:20:00 +0000

I entered the studio this morning and was stricken with a bit of an intestinal bug just before lunch. Not a big deal and it seems to have worked its way from my system. Nothing helps one stay focused on the creative act, though, like putting down a guitar and hustling to the toilet. Still I made progress shaping several songs for Breathe.

I believe I've worked out the fundamental song structure for Winter Breath, the short piece based on the improv Frankenstrat 050103. I really need to keep this song open and airy, simple and clean. I'll let it rest a bit and return in a few days to see if I have it where it needs to be.

One of the LCGE sketches in play was originally called Baritone Stomp Loop, a sister loop to Baritone Stomp Loop 2 which eventually morphed into Bigfoot. I began working with the loop, first by relearning its component parts, then by writing a couple of additional guitar parts to go with it. I created an interesting descending chord passage and a pair of lines with oblique bends. The first line has a whole-step bend on the second string while the second line has a half-step bend on the 3rd string. The two guitar parts work together wonderfully well and raise the question as to whether or not they will stay with the loop that inspired them or if that loop will be jettisoned. I'll let this one rest a couple of days, too, but I'm thrilled with the direction of the tracks I captured today.

I'm fascinated with what Fernando Kabusacki calls miniatures. I'm not sure if this is a generally accepted musical term or one Fernando coined. My interpretation of the concept is the distillation or simplification of a song, essentially capturing the theme of an ensemble piece and performing it with minimal instrumentation. Bryan Beller used the method with stunning results on View, as well. I'm working with this approach on Breathe with the goal of having four short miniatures, each realized on solo fretless guitar, distributed throughout the running order of the album. I expect some of the pieces proper on Breathe to be candidates for the shrink ray, but have also co-opted five pieces from One Feather Shy; Baritone Drift, Evening Bells, Sand Sculpture, Thank You Dan Savio, and When Dads Fly Away. I created the Pro Tools sessions for each miniature, pulled in the appropriate session and audio data, and took an initial stab at the conceptual points of miniaturization. I'll record each of these and will re-purpose what doesn't get used on the album.

The ball is moved a little further down the field.

Tips to manipulate, filter, and mangle IV

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 23:16:00 +0000

Back in Tips to manipulate, filter, and mangle II, Paul R. Potts wrote about a device called "The Gonkulator". Being the sport he is, Paul has put together a short demonstration video to provide all of us with a closer look at this strange device. Many thanks to Paul for sharing.

Be sure to check out out Pauls' blog Geek Versus Guitar and visit thepottshouse.org for the full Paul R. Potts treatment.

Wanna get in on this action? Post your tip via a comment on this blog, send me an email, or drop me a note on any of my social network outposts.

I need a time machine

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:28:00 +0000

The last two weeks have been lost in terms of recording, much to my chagrine. Last weekend I knocked out a variety of necessary non-music tasks, and spent some quality time with the family. This weekend I've been fighting a devil bug deluxe, mostly asleep in bed. Not exactly what I hoped to be doing.

This evening I managed to perk up enough to adjust the truss rods on the white and red fretless guitars, check the action on my 12-string touch guitar, upgrade the POD X3 and X3 Pro, upgrade POD Farm, upgrade the MoogerFooger Analogy Delay plug-in, and ClayLoop a bit to test everything. And then the energy knob twisted back to off.

Progress is being made on every front except recording so all is not lost. More on the other stuff soon. I need to get cracking on the recording, though, and that is the priority.

Will Cruttenden's beautiful Breathe imagery

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:30:00 +0000

I was delighted to find these photos in my inbox this evening. Will Cruttenden, fellow 8-string Warr guitarist and centrozoon lovefield commentary teammate from Oxford, UK, sent these images my way. From his email, "Some of my photographs that make me think of Breathe. All taken close to where I live." Stunning imagery...

Hey, be sure to stop by Blog of Will, I happen to know he's getting really, really close to announcing the title of his upcoming album!

Thanks to Will for his visual contribution to my "hey, want to participate in Breathe?" program. I described Breathe and how you can participate in my Dec 27, 2008 blog post. If you have images you'd like to submit, drop me an email, contact me at one of my social network outposts, or comment on this blog.

Structuring Inhale and more

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 04:11:00 +0000

This afternoon I worked on Inhale, a new song that has existed to this point only in my head, nyet demo'ed. My goal was to move quickly to capture the major parts of the song and confirm the arrangement. I used my 2001 American Deluxe Strat to record the chords, a funky rhythmic motif, the bass line, and a lap steel swell. Mission accomplished, the arrangement is locked and I'm ready for final recording. In addition to recording the parts with the appropriate instrumentation, I'll add two more tracks, an eBow fretless guitar and some mangled backdrop guitar.

I also set up a Pro Tools session for Winter Breath, a piece based on a guitar synth improvisation called Frankenstrat 050103. I'm delighted with the theme of the improv, but will work with the music freely as I morph the song into final form.

And, I wrote and distributed the January edition of my newsletter this evening. If you'd like to be on the mailing list pop over to the contact page and sign up.

Make Noise Studios

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:53:00 +0000

I took this picture of my workspace at Make Noise Studios this evening with my iPhone. The GR-33 is missing in the lower left corner and the mixer is cut off in the right, but you get the idea. I'll be spending a lot of time here working on Breathe.

And so it begins

noreply@blogger.com (Loren) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:05:00 +0000

This afternoon I began work proper on Breathe. Although not a note was recorded, the work was important. I reconfigured the studio, removing all extraneous cables and devices, optimized the signal paths, and routed audio cables away from power sources. I auditioned the demo tracks in consideration for the project and rejected three. I consolidated copies of all remaining demo tracks into the Breathe work folder. I tested mBox 2 IO and buffer settings to finalize my approach for this project; due to the significantly increased horsepower of my MacBook Pro versus my old Powerbook G4, I'll be working quite differently than I did on One Feather Shy. I auditioned several soft synths alone and in combination with various plug-ins. I set up the backup drive and backed up the work folder. And I determined the pieces I'll be working on in the next few sessions.

And so it begins.