I've been doing everything from my phone. I have a decent computer, but I gotta post while I'm on the run most of the time. I compose while waiting at stop lights, waiting for boss to get out of the bathroom, waiting for boss to arrive from gym, hanging out with bosses cat, between performance breaks with my band, on the way to big band rehearsal... blah blah blah I'm probably no different than most of us.
I just wanted to start with my phone addiction. I assumed it should be that easy. It sounds easier on the computer. Thankfully steemit is not like Twitter where we are expected to post multiple times throughout the day. I can probably give myself a break. Make Steemit a desktop task... mostly. Thanks for the advice about those plugins.
That's great! Make it work however you can.
What kind of band are you in?
Yes 👍 I shall push forward 🎃
I perform bass and harmonies most of the time with a steel drum band called Steel Parade. We are usually a trio and we play island music like soca, Calypso, reggae, Beatles, Jimmy Buffet, and Brazilian styles also. We do fun steel drum twists of popular songs. I've talked about it a little bit in some of my previous posts, but I'm holding back. I already do lots of marketing for the band on Facebook and other social media platforms. Our drummer is the person that turned me on to Steemit. He's on here somewhere, but I can't find him. 🐢 Lol it's weird. He was grumpy last time I asked.
That's great! I'll have to check it out.
I'm also in a small band that I formed with some other graduate students in my department. One of my first Steemit posts was about it. I'm always interested when I find out other users on here are in bands. We have a steel drum band in the town I live in. I guess you'd call them more of an ensemble since there are about 30 people in the group. They play at street festivals and things, and it's always very entertaining.
Good luck finding your drummer! haha
"Sand Between Your Toes" Nice whistling!!!!!!!!!!!!
It awesome to see what you've accomplished. Sounds good on my speakers too. What did you use to record? I'm only using my iPhone these days. Technology changes so fast.
BTW, lol, your drummer kinda looks like mine. Dudes with beards.
Thanks for checking out our stuff!
The whistling happened because we were going to write lyrics so I whistled along with the chords during practice one night to get ideas for a melody, and we had a small audience that night, who said we should just keep the whistling. We performed it for some more people, and the overwhelming feedback was to keep it. So it stayed. haha I like it now, and it's fun to whistle along.
Our recording setup is pretty haphazard. We have a Yamaha 12 channel mixer that everything runs into. Keyboard, drum mics, guitars, keytar, bass, and vocals. Then the two channels out go into a two channel USB recording device, which I record into Audacity. Since it's only two channels, we have to mix everything live, which can be a pain since it requires us to completely do the take over if we want to redo it.
Since we live in a college town, it looks like we might be able to record legitimately via a student I know who is doing audio tech as a minor in his studies. Fingers crossed you'll be seeing an album from us pretty soon. We're excited.
Our drummer is excellent. He is looking to finish his PhD in the next year though, so we may be losing him. That'll be a sad day.
Thanks so much again for checking out our band! I really appreciate it!
Hey, that's an awesome way to record. Mix it live and then track it. That's how it was done in the old days. Doing that forces musicians to play within their skill level and it forces them to be very aware of the finesse they put into their instrument. It really healthy to record.
I've hear good thing about Audacity. I've only used Garage Band on iPhone. Before that I was using desktop software like Digital performer, logic, and pro tools. I once worked in a local recording studio. I took clients as a sub for my friend and I had some clients of my own. Eventually I got tired of the type of clientele I was introduced to. Now I record myself as much as possible in the simplest way possible.
Technology has changed a lot and I find it very easy to get a nice sound with the majority of the digital equipment that's out there.
I guess playing something over and over again does take up a lot of time, but I believe in the benefits of healthy repetition.
We practice every Monday, and we record our practices so we can return to them and listen to things we liked and disliked. It has also helped us focus on specific problem spots and things like that.
Thankfully, the recording studio on campus that we have access to is only for non-commercial purposes, so we won't be able to sell our album, but we're still super excited to have an album produced even though we just got started two years ago.
I didn't think about how musicians in the past had to rely on the live mix for recordings. I'm sure there have always been elements that could be tweaked, but it usually doesn't take us that long to get a recording right.
Maybe you can give Audacity a shot. It's pretty simple, and it works great for what we use it for. Digital equipment is very nice, especially since we're all graduate students so we don't have a lot of money to throw at recording equipment, haha. Thanks for your thoughts.
That steel drum band your describing sounds like a beautiful steel drum band. Have you heard of Panorama? https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Trinidad+Carnival+Panorama&FORM=RESTAB
My band is more like a power trio with steel drum as the front man. We actually do what ever size band our clients can afford, but the trio is our main band configuration. We like to make people dace too!Hey @ethandsmith fellow bass player! Sorry for the delayed response! I started to read about your band and got distracted.
Your band sounds fun. I like the idea of put a quick band together, make songs, record the songs, call it what it is yet make it complete, make a CD available and sell it or gift it. Sounds like fun.
I'll have to check out Panorama. Your band sounds like a lot of fun, too. I'm glad you got distracted reading about our band! That's no problem at all.
I look forward to hearing more from you!