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I am sitting here at work looking at this blank blog entry wondering what to write first. I am back in Armidale from my summer holiday down in Taree. Much needs to be written about, so I’ll try to address it all in order.

The Bring David Hicks Home Gig in some regards was the best executed performance by myself, alongside Becky, Iain and BJ, since moving back to Armidale. I don’t have any gig photos, but here’s some rehearsal ones:


In the opposing regards, it only confirmed the finality of my efforts playing live in Armidale – having virtually no audience with the logistics and equipment strain being significant factors deterring me from pursuing live projects at all in 2007. This is a shame, as I enjoy playing music with these people and like their company. Maybe I can somehow divert their energy into recording?

In detail, the night was unforgettable and in many ways fun. In the afternoon’s preparation Armidale experienced a violent hailstorm that left the town covered in unseasonable settled ice and shredded the plants.

Perhaps this deterred the publicans from venturing out of their homes to check out some rather new-ish open minded music? At any rate it was really good to have Jamie (who was back from Alice Springs) and Simon turn up and listen to the ambient-Arabic-funk-hiphop avalanche. The band started up the set despite the fact the Club was almost empty, save for a bunch of manly men playing pool in the other room. Weaving between improvised material and songs that have been taking shape with Iain for a while now the actual performance part was fun. I even attempted improvised vocals – doing much more confidently than my disastrous gig back in 2005 doing my solo material. I would go as far as to suggest my vocals are now finally getting on what you would call ‘a good track’.

At the half way mark we got up Bruce (locally well known Green-advocate) to give a little speech about human rights and the David Hicks situation. Once of the ‘men’ came over to agree with Bruce at the top of his drunk lungs, interrupting him as if the 600W PA meant nothing. This assenting but annoyingly drunk character kept hovering around us for the rest of the performance, at one point attempting to grab my vocal mic and doing some of his own yodeling. He seemed well natured enough to accept my glare and behave. On the night went, playing only to Jamie and Simon, until the barkeep, Jessie, made it clear that he wanted to pack up and go home because no one was buying drinks. Iain insisted on two more songs, as BJ had finally turned up to deliver rhymes for the revolution. Some excellent playing ensured, only prolonging the long pack-up of the excessive amount of equipment. That part wasn’t fun. Friends made it easy.

Getting home to Taree the next day was a relief. Everything has been tied up, arranged or ended – I could peacefully wait for the calender year to end. That pretty much describes the quality of my last three weeks – gentle, uncluttered and developmental. I set up my little temporary studio upstairs, looking out on a nice view.

Some of my equipment was long overdue maintenance and alterations. Dad and I saw to the problem solving tasks, some of which had a mysterious nature. My monitor amplifier has bizarre patterns of signal loss on one channel. After going down long deductive roads of trying to replace sensitive op-amp chips (as you do) the problem was a simple as a filter coil of wire not being connected at one end. Problem solved, but the other side seem to have an unwonted bass growl. Embarrassingly, this turned out to be a simple loose screw on the bass cone! Goodness knows how long that had been going on, affecting my mix. My embarrassment was compounded when I discovered I was using the Delta’s bass management slightly in the wrong way unnecessarily adding to the left channel bass! With these three issues properly sorted I may now have a chance at accurately mixing and mastering the subsonic frequencies correctly. It shows you how long winded and windy the learning process can be!

Later on, I made the trip south to Sydney for a day. I had a really nice lunch catching up with Clinton (the El Supremo Music Appreciator) and had a good ramble about the state of affairs. It would be nice to have lunch with Clinton once a week, but unfortunately Armidale is a long way from Sydney. I then headed up to Narabeen to meet Simon to undertake my real purpose of the trip: to test microphone equipment. Simon is the proud owner of a Rode K2 microphone and a SPL Goldmike 9844 preamp. The combination of a good microphone and a good preamp can make all the difference in beautifully capturing a vocal (or instrument) performance that will sit sonically ‘right’ in the mix of a song. Famous pop singers have their preferred combinations depending on how their singing voice works. The aim for Simon and myself was to determine if the K2 and Goldmike were up to the task of my voice. If the two items were up to the task, then an advantage is that they are less expensive than some preamp and famous ‘high end’ vocal microphones like the U87.

In short, after a little testing, I found I loved the feel of the combo. The K2 is round and crispy while the Goldmike took care of providing both a clear clean sound with the necessary warmth to make the recording sound like it was actually really sung right back at me. After going back home the purchase was made.

I’m still waiting on the Goldmike preamp: but once I have that it will squarely be up to me to finally get all these vocals recorded. There will be no more excuses like ‘my equipment is flawed’ – time to do it!

Other small highlights from my break was spending time with Warwick, back from his round the world travels, and recording some little musical demos with him. Riki showed up and proved that he is alive. Mum and I did some fabulous star gazing, both up in the mountains with clear skies and with some software that allows you to fly all over the galaxy much faster than the speed of light (really, who needs narcotics?). Even a little music editing flowed, including a massive conversion of, wait for it, Corporate Whore Part II… I simply have too many songs to finish!

…Let alone doing covers as well. Guess -

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 at 11:54 pm and is filed under Collaborations, Iain MacKay, Live, Music Production, mr_mark_dollin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.