The Rest Home for Building the Will to Victory

 It's the 21st. This is the nonsense I've been doing since the 13th. 

 

 This is much more experimental nonsense. Mostly playing with textures and a little with dynamics. I'm still trying to "master while mixing" using emulations of Pultec EQ's and then being very lazy with slapping Ozone on there, tweaking the levels, maybe inserting SSL and/or Fairchild emulations on the mix buss. Many of the individual tracks have LA-2A emulations on them just for whatever that does. On many of these tracks I commit the sin of putting reverb on the master bus. I know, right? But you know, some days that just works.

Last Voyage of the No Ship

The Pleasure for the Empire record The Last Voyage of the No Ship is now on CD. And, of course, on Bandcamp.
 
This is probably as good a time as any to remind you about the previous Pleasure for the Empire album, The Oceans of Ganymede.
 

The Barbarian Queen

The Barbarian Queen started with that bass-line and then I just kept adding stuff to it. The bass is my custom "fish" bass, going through the profile of my custom Deluxe-front-end/Champ-back-end amp on my Kemper but with a lot of compression. And then through Lindell preamp. And then more compression. And then more compression. I'm amused by my flute part on it.

The Oceans of Ganymede MP3's

This record is now available to buy as .mp3's:

Notes

These are my notes on the present mix and edit of Crimson Widow of a Ruined God.

• I think it needs some rhythm guitar or single notes on an organ or electric piano underneath some of the guitar leads in order to thicken it up in a couple of places.
• And there needs to be some sort of melodic thing happening in the "A" section: that could be acoustic guitar, electric guitar, voice, or something else.
• Hmm... maybe cut out 16 bars at about minute 16 when the bass sound changes in order to get us into the next funky section earlier.
• And then maybe a Hammond solo in that funky section.
• The coda needs to be cut down to under a minute.

I honestly think it's one of the best things I've been involved in.
This whole album is me and Marc Schmied.

Pleasure Two

I don't know what the best quote of the night was. It could have been Marc's:

"So. You named the band without talking to any of us first?"

Or it could have been Mike Kessell's:

"It's like being in a band will all next-level stuff and great musicians but they give you a Rockband controller to play instead of drums."

Either way, even though both were at my expense I am still amused.

Marc played his 4-string. I was on the Les Paul. Mike was on the Rock Band controller Yamaha electronic kit.
Marc also had this brilliant idea of playing this huge and dirgy version of The Sound of Silence. My playing on this is simply terrible but it's interesting how much Simon and Garfunkel end up sounding like Neil Young just by adding some distorted guitar.
In order to get us away from that whole "guitar panned to center, bass panned to center" thing I did a little panning with a send going to a reverb that's on the other side. With bass I went for some different sounds including sending to an amp simulator which was mixed back in (sometimes panning it, sometimes not) just to widen things out a bit.

I'm worried about running out of Guillaume Seignac paintings. I really wish I knew more about this model, she's in a bunch of his work and she's always very interesting.

There is a lot a lot a lot of compression on these tracks. Like too much. I have LA-2A emulations and then heavy limiters and multiband limiters and... well you get the idea. Too much. But I wanted everything to be very loud.
We're still working on our musical vocabulary. That said we seem to have an instant vocabulary. Yeah, I keep yelling "play more fills" toward the percussion section, but a very melodic bass with my guitar style works quite well. Our vocabulary... it seems to involve playing 9ths somehow. It also involves me not having the foggiest idea of what I'm doing. So there's that.
I also like how 35 Million Miles From Earth ends up being a suite. And The Dance of the Turquoise Mouse ended up pretty good, especially seeing how it was just a last-minute thing which we play after it got kinda late and we didn't want to be too noisy.
Gwendolyn Wormsign is perhaps my favorite because of the way the the bass goes 100% counterpoint to my riff. Which leads into that very trollopy melody toward the end. I feel that should be the music on some very hip talk show. 

High Priestess of a Dead God

Last Wednesday Marc Schmied, Mike Kessell, and I played in Jersey City.
Marc went through the Peavey Vypyer as a "bass amp" and I played through the Kemper. I liked the Peavey better than my amp-emulation pedals for the bass when I was experimenting with it. The "clean" Plexi and Twin sounds seemed to be the best.
I'm playing my Les Paul throughout. Drums are Abbey Road Late '60's.
Later I put in a bit of Hammond organ on some things.

There's a lot a lot a lot of compression on these tracks. Mostly an emulation of the LA-2A, but also some of Samplitude's brilliant M/S compression just to give the whole thing a bit of "finish" to it.
More more more...

Become a Pleasure Fan

I created a band page on Facebook for Pleasure for the Empire. I know, as an actual band we haven't rehearsed together yet but we do exist. You should become a fan.

It seems like every day we need to corpse a skull around here. Luckily there are tutorials on that.

Have you noticed that band rehearsal space in New York City is really freakin' expensive?

Pleasure for the Empire on Facebook

I dare you to click on leekspin. I could (have) watched that thing for... much longer than I should.

Am experimenting with Twitterfeed in order to auto-post from this blog on Twitter. Because the world needs that apparently.

There are Blender tutorials on UV unwrapping.

And no, I have no idea what kind of animal that is.

Moar Muzik

So I'm watching the end title credit sequence to the movie Orphan (don't ask) and I think "Ooh. That's a nice bass line. I will steal it and have a real bass player play it (Ethan) with my fake band (Pleasure for the Empire)." Then I think "But how will I ever remember it?"
I figure there has to be an online notation program. And there is. Noteflight.

And no, I wouldn't notate it that way myself. I wouldn't put two dotted figures in a row just because it's somewhat annoying to read. I would have used sixteenth notes and ties instead. Wow. I used to know this stuff. Unlike riding a bicycle, you can really forget how to sight read. Not that I could ever sight read score anyway...



Update: oh, the score doesn't show up in Google Reader. So you probably have to open a new window if you're using a news reader.

Pleasure

My new fake band, Pleasure for the Empire, was named by a random band-name-generator. So I figure that the music we play should all be written by random generators. Or at least the lyrics should.

Here's a virtual "Yes" lyric generator. It created this (after I gave it words like "glass paper weight" and "Boerum Hill"):

Softly lying mind
Under graceful glass paper weight
Glass paper weight ascending meeting
To enjoy close to Boerum Hill
Joyfully around Boerum Hill
Me should not be arriving brightly
Clear certain glass paper weight
Open certain stage
For Boerum Hill under wonderous glass paper weight
All of us
Moon hearing ascending
Angel never shall be happy
Up heaven while warm glass paper weight
Lovingly making sky
Slow happy glass paper weight

Yeah, that sounds like half an album's worth. Now what about the other half?

Oh look, another lyric generator (you have to register).

Sat alone bleeding into the sun

Verse One:
The blue daytime of the cloud occluded air
Do you dream I would be there
Golden witch whose kisses turn to ashes in my mouth
That's not how things were supposed to be

Chorus:
Sat alone bleeding into the sun
You were always the perfect one
Her hair blotting out the daytime light
So I took what's mine by eternal right.

Verse Two:
Eyes like knives, skin like armor
And that's what you've done too
A hollow shell of a man, shall never love again
I told you, I loved you, now thats all down the drain

Chorus Two:
Sat alone bleeding into the sun
I wish you would've grabbed the gun
Her hair blotting out the daytime light
I know that we could make it right

Chorus to Fade

And musically where do we model ourselves? I've always found that I use too many influences so I'm trying to simplify. I've been thinking for the coming Pleasures for the Empire is that we be a art-rock outfit from, say, 1968. Now I'm thinking we should think in terms of pop music like Santana's Evil Ways. Not Latin percussion, more like Cream's rhythm section perhaps, but with plenty of Hammond organ. At least that's what I'm thinking right now...