The line check is done. The sound check is done too. We had some issues with the new PA so we switched back to the old one. Also, I forgot my ear plugs.
30 minutes (approximately) to show time.
Category: Generic
Stuff
Why does it feel like I bring more and more stuff every time?
Restrung
New string on both guitars. Packing up for the gig now.
Game On
Dig That Crazy Spicket
The water level is high, but i need some sunshine for these pics. Oh well.
Make That Four Days
You know what? After four days of practicing, my fingertips are hurting. I guess I am having a little bit of a callous issue. I didn’t think that would be a problem, but here we are.
I said I was going to run through some of our more challenging songs. I didn’t. I just noodled for about half an hour and then tried to play along with a few Jeff Beck songs. I still had most of Rock My Plimsoul in my head, and I can still nail that perfect solo in I’ve Been Drinking (it’s really simple but it’s one of my favorite solos on any instrument ever).
I’ve played the SG the last two nights, after playing the Les Paul the previous two nights. Part of me is thinking that maybe the SG might be the go to guitar for at least the first set tomorrow. I’ve never played it at a gig before. Maybe it will have it’s debut. We’ll see.
It is a little dusty though.
Time to Get Ready
Today is a good day. I got a bonus from work today. That’s good. I got my tax documents from work too. By the time this posts my taxes might even already be filed because my wife is amazing. That’s also good. I just spent my lunch break working on a time sensitive issue and I figured it out with a minimum of stress. That’s good too.
The RPM Challenge starts in less than nine hours. That’s good, but I highly doubt I’ll be awake at midnight to celebrate. We have a gig tomorrow night. That’s good as well. I’m not nearly as stressed as I was for the last gig and that is doubly good.
There are some things that royally suck but I am not letting them bring me down. The triumph of authoritarianism over democracy is progressing in the US Senate right now as the republican party makes a farce out of the constitutionally mandated impeachment process. That royally sucks. I am beginning to think that secession is a viable option. Brexit takes place today. Midnight Brussels time, 11:00PM London time, That’s 6:00PM Boston time, I think. That royally sucks too.
I’m weighing the good against the incredibly bad and choosing to ignore the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, the bad is infinitely more important than the good. Today I am deciding that the good will outweigh the bad even though that is amazingly, shockingly naive. Screw it, I’m going to Disney in a couple of weeks.
For now though, I have to start planning my packing for the gig tomorrow. I need my Les Paul and my SG, my Bassbreaker 18/30 and my Vox MV50 with the 12″ cab, my full pedal board, the handful of new cables I bought (bright orange so you can see them from space), a couple of backup pedals (looking at you, Keeley D&M Drive) and power cables for each one, the microphones, stands, and cables I took home from the rehearsal room recently, the little pick/slide holding microphone stand attachment, and a new glass slide. Then I’ll go to Mike’s house and get the rest of the mics, stands, and cables, my gig bag with all my emergency stuff in it, and the little stand I sit my amp on when we play. Oh yeah, and I have to change the strings on both guitars! Can’t forget about that!
Sunday after the gig I’ll put the amp and the pedal board (and the associated cables) back into my room where they currently sit (see the pic from last night), Setup a mic, stand, and cable on that amp and on the Bassbreaker 15 that is not leaving my room for the gig, then plug those into the 16 channel USB interface that I also took home from the rehearsal room recently. I will plug the USB cable into my MacBook and make sure I can get both mic signals into GarageBand. Once that’s done, I’ll be ready to record guitar parts in stereo. When I record the acoustic guitar or a vocal or a saxophone I can just swing up one of the mic’s that will be on a guitar speaker and use that. I also dug out my little acoustic guitar pickup that I got a few years ago and still haven’t taken out of the package. I can use that to record as well. I’ll keep the laptop and my iPad and my iPhone good and charged so if an idea comes to me I can play it into one version of GarageBand or another. Once that’s all taken care of I just have to… you know… write a shit load of songs. Yikes.
This year is a leap year so we get a whole extra day for the RPM shenanigans. So really it’s no problem at all this year.
Yikes indeed!
But it’s still a good day.
Now It’s Three Days
Yesterday I said I had practiced three days in a row but it was only two. Tonight it’s three days in a row. I didn’t play through either of the sets, I just played scales and bad blues scale riffs for 30-40 minutes or so. I did play through an amp and I did use my pedal board.
Actually I played through two amps at once because I am crazy like that.
If I get the chance tomorrow I’ll probably pick and chose a few songs from the set list that are a little more challenging and run through those. Tonight I poked around with some pedal settings. The analog delay is set for a slap back, the reverb has a new setting that seems to be working. I set up a decent boost level. Things like that.
Oh and I played the shit out of the ol’ blues scale.
Cat
HTML Restrictions Suck
Well that’s no fun.
Back in the old days when I was writing on Blogger I could embed all sorts of fun stuff into my posts. Anything you can put together inside of an HTML tag was fair game. I used to put all sorts of goofy mp3 players and countdown clocks. With both a gig coming and RPM about to start I thought it would be wacky to find some countdown clock websites that generate HTML code and put ’em onto a blog post.
I looked at three or four. No dice. They all use an HTML tag that wordpress.com blocks.
Aw, fiddlesticks.
Two days and about 4.5 hours until the gig.
One day and 7.5 hours until RPM.
That would have been so much cooler if it was a countdown clock. Bummer.
Oh well, have a flyer (again).
