REverberations - Bands

Tonite: Jersey Kerb!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:16:33 -0500

It's all on again tonight at Tailors, Mary Street Surry Hills from 6:30pm. The pub rock covers band I'm in Jersey Kerb are back after a long break with a stack of new tunes and of course some old favourites you'll be belting out after a few schooners.

See you there later tonight.

After a year off, job relocations, house relocations... we have finally found some time to get back together and start practicing.

Wow!!! We finally worked out what the password to update the site was....

Our first gig back is this coming Friday
2 July 2010
at Tailors on Central
85 Mary Street, Surry Hills
from 6:30pm

We would love to see you all there...

Honeymakers Gig This Thursday

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 11 May 2010 16:31:20 -0500

The big band I play with has a gig on this Thursday:

The Honeymakers is a group of 16 musicians, including a female singer, who enjoy playing Funk, Latin, Dance, Jazz and Popular tunes.

We will be playing music for you at
Venue: PETERSHAM Bowling Club
77 Brighton Street Petersham
(02) 9569 4639 or www.thepbc.org.au
Date: Thursday 13 May
Times: 6.30pm to 10pm
Food: The Green Bowl Bistro offers great food
Cost: Free!! Although the bands will accept donations!

Kids are welcome
Why not book a bare-foot bowling session! See the clubs web site for details

End of the Road

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:34:26 -0600

Due to our organisation moving buildings early next year, my band Jersey Kerb faces an uncertain future.

We use the present location for rehearsals and storing equipment, but there will be very little chance of this happening at the new location.

This means that tomorrow night's gig is likely the last for quite some time, until we work out how we might possibly pull together something in the new year with the organisation centred around North Sydney instead of Surry Hills.

So tomorrow night, come along and see what the last four years have culminated in:

6pm, Tailors on Central, Mary Street Surry Hills.

Free Entry.

Things

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 09:15:32 -0500

Well, you can probably guess from the slackness in blogging I'm showing here that life has been busy. The most obvious reason is of course the baby who is showing all signs of being healthy, and arriving early December. The midwife thinks possibly earlier, but we'd rather it not because she is away until the end of November.

There's modern cloth nappies galore here now, and buckets for dirty ones, plus of course clothes, wraps, furniture, car seat, pram, you name it. I've heard it described as the biggest consumer spend a couple goes through (after housing), and it's truly scary what some companies tell you that you 'need' to have.

We've been to birthing and parenting classes and spent countless hours reading stuff online so apparently we now know all, true experts in the field. Except it will of course have no bearing on the reality of actually having a child to look after 24 hours a day.

It was interesting to compare out situation to others in the class though - we're much better off and more prepared than several others, so that gives us a bit of hope.

Trying to organise a couple of short holidays before the due date too.

Some other quick point-form news:

Rain. Yay.
I did the Spring Cycle and home again, personal best time. Then we slept most of the afternoon.
We have a new home phone, this one is VoIP from MyNetFone. Pretty amazing deal, recommended.
Renovations are all done, except we need some new blinds now. Thanks to our parents for helping out with bits and pieces.
The car had it's one year (and first!) service, no problems found. We also have some fuel containers to stop us trekking out to Marrickville all the time. It's going to get a lot less use now that Liz has finished work.
Had a fair few gigs with both bands recently, two of which have been the best gigs we've done with the respective bands. There's few more before the end of the year (and my free time!).

JK with Brass!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:28:50 -0500

For the non-Facebook-enabled, here's a quick invite to Jersey Kerb this Friday 6pm, at Tailors on Central, 84-86 Mary St Surry Hills.

We've brought the brass section back by popular demand, and I've spend days scoring parts for them, so I hope there's plenty of people to listen to it all!

All welcome, no cover charge.

Catchup Blogging

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:10:44 -0500

Firstly, Jersey Kerb are playing tonight! Same place - Tailors on Central. Kicking off 6pm.

Had a gig last weekend with The Honeymakers too at Marrickville, which was going pretty well considering I was sight-reading the bass parts, until we lost power half way through the last set! And, as is usual for this type of gig, they seem to underestimate the band and don't do any advertising, so there's not many people around, but at the end they all come up and say "wow, we should put some signs up and tell people next time!" Watch out, there mightn't be a next time if you don't get organised.

At home, we're squished into the back half of the house as I've ripped up all the carpet, and we've had people in sanding and oiling the floor boards. The mix-matching dirty carpet is now all gone, and in its place some great looking natural timbers, topped with natural oils. Sleeping in the dining room is a small price to pay, and we can move back in probably tomorrow.

The ugly room (at the front) is also getting floor boards put down, probably next week. The flooring guy is just making sure that we're getting plantation, not old growth, timber.

It's been good being able to work from home while this is happening, saving loss of another week's pay.

Got some baby furniture off eBay which I am going out to pick up tomorrow. We got a matching set of cot (which changes to junior bed and then a couch), wardrobe and chest-of-drawers with a change table on top. It's been a good way to get things - not new, saving on packaging and materials. Plus it's all also sustainable timber.

The baby itself keeps on growing, kicking now and then. Liz had some pains at work the other day but was able to go straight up and get the all clear - a nice perk of her workplace. It still hasn't really sunk in, not sure when it ever will. Just about the 2nd of December, I'm guessing.

Happy Birthday To ME!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 19:35:08 -0500

It's been a great day so far, life is very very good!

I'm posting this from Storey Grange B&B, which is a gorgeous little place. Look, here's a photo to prove it! We're having a few days up here in the mountains to get out of Sydney one a little pre-baby escape.

Not to put down any of the presents that people were kind enough to give me, but none of them could compare with the ultrasound on Friday. The news is 100% positive, and the experience was so amazing that we have to share a bit of it with you - see just how lazy the baby is here. That's crazy, hidden inside my wife. Wow.

The gig after that went off pretty well too, once we had warmed up a bit. By far the biggest challenge we face there is that we aren't allowed a sound check (it scares the regulars away apparently), and hence have to mix through the beginning of our set. And I mix. Between playing bass, sax, flute, and guitar.

But hey, the buzz of the ultrasound was still better. And yes, we did find out what gender the baby is, but that will remain our little secret for a while :)

Jersey Kerb: Newer Stuff!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 10:58:01 -0500

As noted on the currently spartan Jersey Kerb page, we've got another gig this Friday, at Tailors on Central 6pm.

You might find a bit more info at our MySpace page.

Would be great to see y'all! We've got a whole pile of new songs since we last saw most of you there, so if you think you've heard it all before, you're wrong...

Beats at the Bowlo

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 15:01:54 -0500

The Honeymakers are playing Beecroft Bowling & Recreation Club, 128 Copeland Rd Beecroft (corner of Copeland & Beecroft Rds) this Sunday, 2pm.

Come and chill in the retro surrounds and cheap beers that only a bowlo can provide.

Sorry World

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 10:14:22 -0500

Yes, the rumours are true. I do infact have a MySpace.

I know, I know. MySpace is a hive of scum and villany, and since I've joined the spam has been pretty crazy. However, it's where lots of Sydney musos appear to be so I've started up shop there on that basis.

The blog will remain here, as will the vast majority of the content, as I can genuinely control how it all works, rather than relying on the ugly slow brokenness that is MySpace.

But I am trying to get some of my previously produced music available online - I had a listen to some things I did about ten years ago that are no longer available on the web, plus there's some more recent stuff I'm recording now, all of which I think may interest at least some of my audience.

Cole Clark Acoustic

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 05 May 2007 14:42:23 -0500

Despite learning on Dad's, I've never really had my own acoustic guitar, and I've always wanted something for the campfire and other no-power-available moments when music is still required.

For whatever strange reason, a guitar shop has recently opened up in Penshurst - the second shop of Village Guitar. I had been meaning for a long time to drop in there, as I walk past most days (when not cycling) but never when they are actually open.

When I finally did, I was attracted to the Cole Clark guitars. These are made in Melbourne from sustainable timbers, and get pretty amazing reviews all over the place. Lots of famous artists play them, and after picking up one and having a bash I could see why.

So, when I noticed they were having a 25% off sale the following week, I ran out of excuses not to buy one. The particular model I selected, a Fat Lady 2 AC that was on display, turned out to have a small but annoying manufacturing defect in the form of a buzz, but the guys in the shop and Cole Clark were very helpful in getting this fixed, and last night with Jersey Kerb, the guitar made a stunning debut.

The thing that has always annoyed me about electric-acoustic guitars is that the electric sound is crap. Really crap. I told this to the guys in the guitar shop, and they instantly told me to try the Cole Clark guitars. They all have at least two pickups in the body of the guitar, and you can option them up to three. Balancing the sound between them, you can get some genuinely great acoustic sounds which have left everyone who has heard it very impressed.

Jersey Kerb: New Stuff!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:43:20 -0500

It's been a while since I've advertised band gigs here, but if you're after a fun night out with some good sing-along tunes, come check us out next Friday 4th May, 6:30pm at Tailors on Central.
We've got heaps of new material this time around, so even if you think you've heard it all before, you're wrong!
Hope to see a few familiar faces there.

One-man bands

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 23:32:23 -0500

This story at SMH reminded me that I haven't posted anything about the conversion of the room off our kitchen from a "random storage of boxes" room. Into something far better. A music room.

Behold!

I'm still working my way through most of the technology, but the guts are in place and it's now at the point where I can't blame lack of anything for my lack of musical output recently.

Long-time readers (I've had a web presence since 1997 or so - guess I should have an anniversary or something but I don't know exact dates) may recall I used to have a music page available, with all sorts of information on bands I was in, MIDI files I'd created, my instruments and influences, fun stuff like that. Perhaps I'll get around to resurrecting that if my output increases, although it seems that all the cool kids are on MySpace these days.

Catchup Blogging

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:46:44 -0600

OK, News time. It's been a while.
I've uploaded some photos to my Flickr account which have titles showing a pictorial version of what we've been doing recently.
There's some from Adelaide (1 2 3 4), some from our recent weekend back up to the Hunter Valley to celebrate our wedding anniversary (yep, it's been over a year now...) (1 2), and even an ugly product of our veggie patch.

Margaret's house has been on the market for a while and is now sold, she's looking for a place to buy and has a few in mind. She may be moving in with us during the change-over period.

So we've re-organised the house a bit. We've now got a separate (small) room devoted to music. It's good to have everything out and in the one place, and I've been inspired to do some recording, helped out with a computer audio interface I found cheap on eBay. Still trying to decide what software I want to use with it though.

The junk that used to be in that room has now sort-of migrated to the spare room, but it could be consolidated to make room for Margaret should the need arise.

Around the house, I've been cleaning out gutters and getting things organised in preparation for the arrival of our water tanks. The fact that it's been raining a lot recently has been annoying us, thinking of the wastage. It looks like we'd have to vote capital-L Liberal to get the government to do something about water recycling, so becoming as detached as possible from it all is appealing.

Put some of the wine from our Hunter trip (came back with three cases!) under the house in a sort-of cellar arrangement. The conditions are good but it's hard to get to. Should be good for medium-long-term storage though.

We headed off to the Whiskey Experience again a few days ago - a great fun evening which we figure is just to raise brand awareness. Not that many people around us were aware of things around themselves by the end of proceedings!

One of Liz's birthday celebrations this year was a trip to the Löwenbräu Keller, something I haven't done for years and an evening we thoroughly enjoyed. The band there seems to do the same show every night, but it's very entertaining. Plus we get to drink great beer and practice our German.

... Which is good, because Sebastian Schnelle (whom we stayed with at least three times in Europe 2002-3 and caught up with again early last year) is back in the country to do his PhD in Brisbane. He and his girlfriend Jana flew into Sydney last week and we caught up a few times. She's still in learn-English mode, so we had a few conversations with me speaking German and her English, and my lack of skill there seemed to give her more confidence.

Oh, and I buggered my knee badly about a month ago, which is the worst it's ever been. I've had plenty of days working from home and far less cycling. I have a specialist appointment next week, so hopefully I can get something done about it.

Another Jersey Kerb gig happened last Friday - the first with Jono playing keyboards and me back on bass after Ed left for England. We played pretty well I thought, but the crowd was both thin and lacking energy. I think we have a job for our manager to get us sorted in a new venue or with some more aggressive advertising. Still great fun though.

Surely that's enough topic-hopping for now. Congratulations if you made it this far!

Kersey Jerb are in the Finals!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 19:00:21 -0600

The Finals of 2006 and Ed being a band member, that is.

Tomorrow night is gonna be huge, lots of new songs, lots of crowd expected, and of course goodbyes to both Ed and Jenny who are both leaving work for good. We've even organised brass and strings for the occasion - something never before seen with the band.

So come one, come all - details as always on the site.

A different type of gig!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 16:14:40 -0600

Regular readers may have noticed that you didn't get this month's Jersey Kerb spam encouraging you to come to our gig. We've had a month off due to various issues, but next month promises to be a big one as it's Ed's last gig.

But fear not! To fill the gap I have a gig with my other band The Honeymakers. This is a big band / swing band / stage band (never quite settled on one of those terms that I'm happy with) playing all sorts of stuff. I joined when we returned from our first Europe trip and in the mean time have somehow found myself becoming the musical director - sort of like a conductor.

Those who know her (from our wedding perhaps, where this band played) might also enjoy the fact that Jane is singing lots of songs with the band too.

I'll let the promo blurb give you the details:

The Honeymakers is a group of about 16 musicians who enjoy playing music. We have played at many clubs and functions in the past few years. Our repertoire includes Jazz, Swing, Latin, Dance and Popular.

Why not come along to our next gig and enjoy a relaxed afternoon of music!

Details of our next gig are:

DATE: Sunday 5 November

TIME: 2.00pm to 5.00pm

VENUE: Beecroft Bowling & Recreation Club Ltd, 128 Copeland Rd Beecroft 2119 (corner of Copeland & Beecroft Rds)

COST: FREE!!

REFRESHMENTS: An excellent range of food and drinks at very reasonable prices

Come see a busted Ed

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:16:17 -0500

Jersey Kerb Live!

Jersey Kerb rock covers band are playing this Friday night at Tailor's on Central, Mary Street, Surry Hills and need your support!

We play a range of pop/rock covers from 60s through to current and it's always a good fun dancin' singin' time. Line-up is changed slightly for this gig with Ed having broken his wrist and hence his bass-playing skills are a little diminished. Fear not! We have that covered.

So grab a few friends and organise a night-out in town. Kick-off around 6:30 so you hardcore clubbers can even head somewhere else afterwards.

Hope to see you there!

JK Does Classic Rock

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 11:21:34 -0500

This Friday, one week early for this month only, Jersey Kerb will be playing at Taylors on Central starting at 6pm.

Bring your dancing feet, drinking arms and singing and/or screaming voices.

All welcome, no cover charge.

Alternative Music - Taylors!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 09:57:12 -0500

So if you were planning on going to Soup Plus but now can't, or even if you were going to have a night in, head on over instead to this month's Jersey Kerb gig tomorrow night!
I'll be there, making some noise on a variety of instruments.

Not much jazz though I'm afraid.

Regular Gig

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:33:23 -0500

The other lads in my work band Jersey Kerb have been hard at work in my absence, and secured us a regular gig on the last Friday of every month!

The first of those is this week, and we'd love to see anyone who's interested come along. No cover charge, check the rest of the details on the site linked above.

Guitarist Martyn has put lots of content up on that site, including set lists and photos from previous gigs.

Band Reviewed

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 09:02:00 -0600

Had a great time at the gig on Friday night - there's some photos over at Flickr (mouse-over the pictures!).
Thanks everyone who came, including Bean who reviewed us.
We scored another gig for St. Pat's day next month, which counts me out. However the rest of the band should kick on and I hope to join them again once we return.

Also music-related, I'm recording on Joel's new album tomorrow night, along with a couple of other horn players I've tracked down. I did this a while back also but the slacker hasn't released it yet :)

Happy Missing Tim Day!

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 09:37:23 -0600

Eight Sydney hospitals, one police station, several parents, two band members from last night's rehearsal and other assorted friends have been on a hunt for me this morning.
Liz came home from work about 7:10am to find me not there. She rang my phone but couldn't get through. Parents were called over, friends last contacted last night were rung for information (I was last seen about 10pm) and many many voicemails were left on my two mobile numbers. She drove down to SES to see whether I was there for the Australia Day celebrations as we usually do, but they hadn't seen me.
Dad asked her to see whether anything was missing. My laptop wasn't, but a count of my instruments found a missing flute. Not noticed missing were a music stand, four microphones, a large brown bag of cables and two microphone stands.

You see, I had gone to a gig. An Australia Day citizenship ceremony gig at Hurstville. I had told Liz I was going to do this a few days ago, but in her night-duty-clouded brain it didn't get filed correctly. Oh, and answering your phone in the middle of a performance is not really the done thing, so I had switched my phone off as soon as I got there.

My apologies and thanks to all those who were woken up early this morning and helped Liz out. It's very nice to know I'd be missed if I weren't around. Next time I'll have to tell her AND write notes for everything!

So Happy Missing Tim Day, 26th January. We'll be sure to celebrate it each year :)

PS: My lift had picked me up at 7:08. We probably drove past each other.

Band Gig

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 14:20:24 -0600

Yep, my work band Jersey Kerb is doing another gig on February 3rd in Surry Hills.
All welcome, full details are on the web site. This will be my last with the band before we leave travelling.

Infrequent posting: B-

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:20:00 -0600

Bean has prompted me into action by noting that my blog has interesting content but I don't post often. I appreciate the first part and couldn't agree more with the second.
Except for one major problem - I do too much stuff. Here's a short listing of some of the things I've done since last posting:

Had a gig with Jersey Kerb down the coast. Great fun, not many people turned up due to awful weather but can't have been all bad as we got about four gig offers as well as a semi-permanent spot offered. Not sure what will come of that but we have another gig in a month or so where I have changed instruments and will now be playing keyboards/sax/flute/bass. Oh dear.
Got our good car serviced and bid the old one farewell. It was interesting to note that the amount we got for it is what we typically withdraw once a week or so to use as spending money. Better than the wreckers, it went to our mechanic's apprentice who is going to make it betterer and hence not get to work wet from riding his bike. An improvement!
Didn't care much about the Melbourne Cup.
Went ring shopping where Liz ordered the wedding band to match her engagement ring and I selected mine. Both should be ready in a week or so.
Had coffee with the folks and their folks at Short Black café at Penshurst - our local café and good enough to win the Leader Small Business Awards. Pretty noisy for a family get-together inside though. Outside means the heat plus eating other people's nicotine.
Went in yet again to James Squire Brewhouse for Jane's birthday beers. The food was still great, the service excellent and the prices, well, let's not talk about those. Governor King is a great beer brewed on site.
Mowed the lawn a few times - have to do it every week! Remind me never to fertilize it again...
Had three-day weekends. Very good to get house work done, but after the blitz of a week Mon-Thurs I typically don't want to touch computers all weekend, hence no blogging there.
Went searching with SES for a lost/abducted little girl out at Lurnea past Liverpool. Drove trucks around and did land searches operating with the Police. Quite a good experience but no trace of the girl.
Walked from Circular Quay to Town Hall as part of the SES 50th Anniversary Parade. There were more people out clapping and whatever than I was expecting, and it was good to be part of such a big thing.
Had dinner at Kelly's place Saturday night, meeting up with old friends and watching other people try tuna tacos. Couldn't quite drum up the enthusiasm myself, sticking to the more reliable bean variety.
Walked all the way to Como and back for morning tea with Liz, Jono and Penny on Sunday, after they came over to watch the first leg of the Socceroos world cup qualifiers vs. Uruguay. Well, Jono and I did - the girls went back to sleep. What a rip off that penalty was.

We have tickets to the next qualifier tomorrow night out at Telstra Stadium, which should totally rock. Don't have any green/gold gear to wear though, and apparently it's quite expensive. Might just wander around the city and buy some tacky tourist version.
We're off to the Hunter this weekend to hopefully talk with the wedding cake, hair, photography and flower people. No, not the same person, although that would make life much easier.

No Coles in Oatley

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 23:26:21 -0500

Played with the Georges River Concert Band at the No Coles in Oatley protest on Sunday. There's a picture of us here.
Was quite a good gig, I don't play in concert bands very often now so enjoy it when I get the chance. Liz was still sleeping due to nightwork so missed out.
As for the reason we played, well check the protest site for details, but suffice to say that Oatley is a pretty unique little suburb, has a supermarket already, and doesn't fit well at all with lots of semi-trailers delivering food to a supermarket that the vast majority of residents don't want.
The reasonably impressive (strong words from me) Hurstville Council is siding with the residents, but the Land and Environment court continues to overrule and allow the developers free reign.

Flickr

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 21:55:18 -0500

I'm playing around with Flickr, an online photo-sharing site.
All of my photos are stored in iPhoto, and there's a great plugin you can load into it to give it the ability to upload photos to Flickr from right within iPhoto itself.
So, it happens that about an hour after I had finished a gig with The Honeymakers today, I uploaded a couple of pictures and within five minutes other people somewhere had viewed them. You can find photos based on "tags", so for example I tagged these photos as "jazz", "music", "saxophone", etc. Anyone who searches for these keywords will find my photos, along with those of anyone else who has used the same tags.
Also, if you scroll down this page and look on the left you'll see the latest three photos I have put up on Flickr, without having to leave this page.
If you already track my RSS feed, you may also like to add this one, which will give you an entry every time I upload a photo.

What's been happening?

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 12:18:25 -0500

Life has had plenty in store for us both recently, so I'll work backwards a little and see what I have to blog about.
Last night I had a gig with The Honeymakers at Kirabilli in support of Josephite Community Aid. We were there because we did their fundrasing dinner last year, and were "purchased" at auction by a kind supporter, who donated us back to the function this year to play again. We put ourselves up for auction again, and were bought by the same person. This time he has something different in store for us though.
Liz and I took a few days off this week to tutor music at the Sydney Regional Band Camp for 100 kids years 5-7, down at Fitzroy Falls Conference Centre (in fact I was last there and wrote about it in 2002). This was great fun, if rather cold (it snowed about 10km away at Moss Vale), but both the tutors and kids, who are all at the top of their respective schools' band programs, all got a lot out of it. I took my recording gear down and was able to play back to the kids all their hard work at the end of the week, which got a good reception.
We have had to do a bit of running around to get our car registered, nothing out of the ordinary but still more hassle than it really should be. I guess I should talk to someone at the RTA about that :)
The decision about the first modification to our house has been made, and we have put a deposit on and are awaiting delivery of a new BBQ. It should be quite a beast, in built and hooked up to the gas mains. We really enjoy BBQing but the hassle of the head beads which take a long time to warm up and an even longer time to cool down just isn't worth it.
Yet another dog has come and gone - Bailey was taken back to the Sydney Dogs Home while we were away down south, and when we returned to pick her up, we were told she had been sold! That's a good thing, of course. No matter anyway, because they already had another one ready and waiting for us - Layla. She's a six or so year old Rottweiler, huge and very affectionate. Not house-trained, which we have to spend some time working on...

Jersey Kerb

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 25 May 2005 11:17:57 -0500

One of the reasons I haven't had a lot of time to blog recently is that I found myself comitting to yet another band - Jersey Kerb. This one is a rock covers band with a bunch of blokes from work.
We had about a dozen rehearsals before we found ourselves at our "World Premiere" gig last Thursday 19th. This was at Taylors, a pub behind work. I wanted to see how it went before inviting lots more people, but based on feedback after the gig it all went down really well. I had a great time, plodding along on bass and honking on sax occasionally - quite a change from my regular musical fare.
We're having a hiatus for three months or so now as our lead singer is heading overseas for a while, so it may get back together again in time for the christmas gig season - we certainly had plenty of offers of gigs.

I'm still here

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Wed, 11 May 2005 12:16:11 -0500

If you want to find out whether people read your blog, stop writing it. I've lost count of how many people have asked me when I am going to blog again. I guess I'll take that as a compliment.
Stumbling across this site where you can create a customised map of the world highlighting certain countries, I went on to update my "Me" page showing where I've been and also the main Europe 2002-3 page with a Europe map showing where we went.
On that topic, it's now pretty much decided that after the wedding on 18th Feb 2006, we will head over to Europe for 2-3 months to sort of fill in the gaps of bits and pieces we missed out on last time.
Some other random news in point-form:

Some pictures of the "real" Penshurst in Kent, England. That castle is nice and all, but ours is more homely :)
The linux conference and associated week in Canberra was fun. I decided not to blog about it because there was plenty of other people doing that. Liz had a good time walking around Canberra but had pretty much done it to death by the end of the week. Both good pubs in the city were also sampled.
We have a new dog Max, a male German Sheppard. He's a bit of fun and is finally starting to settle down a bit. Doesn't eat much which is a bit concerning.
Work is busy busy busy, and music is taking up pretty much the rest of my free time. I guess that's one of the reasons why we still have plenty of boxes needing unpacking.

That's enough for this post, I'll try and do it a bit more regularly. Maybe.

Bands + Apple iLife = Bliss

webmaster@reverb.com.au (reverb) — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 22:44:06 -0600

Purely by coincidence and perhaps the fact that I lug my powerbook with me everywhere I go, I've ended up doing lots of digital media production with Apple's most excellent iLife suite of applications.
Firstly, the big band that I play sax in, the Honeymakers, is in the process of recording a demo CD to send to prospective clients. The brief was to get something on CD, of whatever quality, and to send it out with a disclaimer of sorts about our non-professional status, the small amount of time spent rehearsing and the tiny budget available for recording.
I turned up to rehersal one week and the band director asked me if I could record the band on the powerbook. "Sure", I answered, "what sort of gear do we have?" Very little, the answer came, and we were starting right then. In fact the first cut of some tracks has been recorded using the internal mic on the laptop as that's all we had to start with. Solos have been over-dubbed with better mics on individual tracks, but the vast majority of the band has been recorded purely with one mic.
And the software magic that made all this possible? Garageband. It totally rocks and is oh so cheap. The effects and things available with a mere click of the trackpad are brilliant, and overdubbing solos is so simple - just whack some headphones into the headphone jack, hit record and play along. One of the other guys in the band actually recorded his tracks at his place and gave me a CD full of the results which I can just drag and drop back into the projects. Sweet.
We've done solos and the vocals with better mics, but being able to pack up the "recording studio" by unplugging a couple of cables and closing the lid just blew everyone away.
I'll post a link to the resulting mp3s as soon as I've finished mixing them down - possibly tomorrow.

Garageband also rocks my world with the other band I'm playing in at the moment - a RTA-affiliated rock band where I'm playing mainly bass guitar. I just couldn't resist making myself a little cable which runs out from my bass amp's effects send to the laptop input, then back from the output to the amp's receive line.
Using this setup, I can now run what for years has been the holy grail of guitarists every where - real-time effects processing in software. I just click on setting for each song, which sets the reverb, compression, distortion, amp simulation, etc. to be however I want it, and there's my tone, running out the amp with no delay.
The guitarists in the band who turn up with ten or so effects boxes and associated batteries and cabling each are very jealous.
I remember reading somewhere that Mac OS X's audio stack has latency low enough to be able to do this, but the equivalent part of Windows would never be able to achieve the same feat without some serious re-writing on Microsoft's part.

At rehersals for this band the other day, someone had the bright idea of filming the entire thing for archive/humiliation/burning. At the end of the process, I noticed it had all been done on a DV (digital) camera. One firewire cable between that camera and the trusty powerbook later, I had a pile of clips sitting in iMovie. A bit of drag and drop later, and I have a DVD ready to burn with titles, credits and all the really bad stuff relegated to the digital trash can.

This really is a lifestyle computer. Apple should be paying me to say this stuff :)