Whether you’re checking out inaugural address videos online at work, playing hooky to stay home front of the tube, unemployed and in front of the tube anyway or shaking your fist while thinking about how you can move to a more conservative country, this inauguration day for Barack Obama has significance for most Americans and many people around the world.
Just in time for the big day, the music video directors “Gold”–the duo of Richard Farmer and Sinuhe Xavier, who won MTV Video Music Awards for his Gnarls Barkley “Run” video–have released this stop-motion animated video for Adam Freeland’s remix of Daft Punk in tribute to President Obama. Fans of Robot Chicken and universal health care may get a kick out of it; meanwhile, McCain voters who think “The King of Queens” and “Touched by an Angel” are great entertainment will probably want to barf in their Cheerios.
My bandmates and I just got back from a two-week tour of the Midwest and East Coast, and because we’re still doing most everything DIY (except for some help from our booking agent, who is fantastic), it required months of saving up, planning and making Excel spreadsheets. We went through every single detail over and over and still came out $500 over budget in the end. But even when you’re playing to 15 people on a Monday night in a city where you’ve never played before (Cincinnati, in our case), there’s nothing more fun than touring. That said, if we didn’t like our songs, hadn’t practiced a ton and weren’t totally prepared, it wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable; even when you’re well-rehearsed, something always goes wrong.
Here are a few things I learned on the road that may help you musicians out there who are planning on touring soon:
1. You must read Tour:Smart: And Break the Band by Martin Atkins.
2. A Rand McNally 2009 Road Atlas Large Scale map book in combination with a PDA running Google Maps is very helpful. But we still got lost…a lot. It’s best to bite the bullet and buy or rent a GPS system that can tell you which way southwest is on whichever street, rather than having to guess. Either that, or add a compass to the mix.
3. Be polite and introduce yourself to every band you meet on the road (more of this in the Editor’s Note in the Dec. 2008 issue of Remix).
4. If you are the band treasurer, lie to your bandmates about how much you have in the band bank account. If they don’t think the band fund is flush, they won’t be begging for the band to pay for Jameson shots.
5. Don’t use any band money to pay for alcohol.
6. Don’t drink any alcohol before you play a show. I know this can be hard, but we made that rule about halfway into the tour, and it made a world of difference. You already know that it’s bad idea to drink and drive because your reaction time is much slower when you drink and then get behind the wheel. The same goes for playing an instrument. Forget hitting all your cues if you’ve had ten beers before you hit the stage. If you’re a complete virtuoso who has never missed a note in your life, then you may have one beer before you play. If you’re pretty consistent as a musician, then bring your first beer of the night onstage with you. Me, I just drink water until the show is done. I drink beer and then I end up belching into the microphone, which is not pretty. Plus, I forget lyrics and biff guitar chords. No can do.
7. Remember to have fun. Things can go wrong on the road, and they will. If you stay calm and remember that you’re having fun, it’ll be easier to solve problems (like your van dying halfway between Minneapolis and Chicago).
8. Read all the parking signs, and then read them again. And if you buy a ticket to park in a lot, especially to park your RV in overnight, make sure you know when the ticket expires. In Chicago, they’ll also nail you for parking in “multiple spots” because your stupid RV sticks out, even though no one is parked around you.
9. If in an RV, stay at campsites wherever possible, and try to book in advance. Campsites are great ’cause you can hook up the RV to electrical outlets and a water line, dump waste into a special hole in the ground (gross) and take a real shower. If you’re in a van and don’t have a friend’s house to stay at, you can always find a cheap motel (or what I lovingly call The Crime Scene Inn). But someone should probably sleep in the van every night, unless you’re a girl. That’s the benefit of being the one girl in a band full of smelly dudes.
10. If you’re RVing it, you can buy pots and pans and cooking utensils at thrift stores and then give them away at the end of your route. Cooking on the road saves a lot of money.
11. If you see an animal in the middle of the road, and you’re driving in a giant RV, I’m afraid you have to hit it. It makes me sick to my stomach to say this (I refuse to kill bugs, let alone animals). But you can’t swerve in a 30-foot RV, and you probably can’t in a 12-passenger van, either.
12. Play your best show at every show, even when you’re just playing to the other bands, the bartender and the sound guy. The bar owner might buy a CD and ask you to come back on a more popular night (like a Wednesday as opposed to a Monday), and the other band you’re playing with may just break out, become superfamous and take you on tour with them.
13. Bring replacement cables and adapters, and prepare to go to a music store at least twice in a two-week trip (and not for fun).
14. If you’re in Kentucky, do try moonshine, but make sure the guy giving it to you isn’t blind because it may have been the moonshine that made him that way.
15. Do not give people an opportunity to steal your gear. Do not leave it in sight and unattended.
16. Take naps whenever you can. It’s easy to get sick on the road. You need to sleep to keep the flu/colds at bay.
Anyone else have some good touring advice you want to share? Feel free to comment….
I know we mainly cover the production angle in Remix, and that mainly pertains to all things regarding recording instruments, sampling, DAWs, software, etc. But I’m guessing a fair amount of you produce singers or do some singing yourselves. I’ve been singing since before I could put a sentence together, but it wasn’t until last year that I actually starting working with a vocal coach. I guess you could say I just had “raw talent.” I’ve been recording, playing live and touring for a long time, but I was never trained. I felt like I had to be trained to play the saxophone (back in my middle school and high school days), and I took guitar lessons, but I never feel the need to take vocal lessons. That was until I hit a wall with a particular part I was trying to sing while in the studio. My friend Dusty DiMercurio (who works for Digidesign) turned me on to The Voice Studio (www.thevoicestudio.org) in San Francisco, and I started training with a supercool instructor, Heather Pierce, who is also the frontwoman for a awesome band called Karmacoda (www.karmacoda.com).
Suddenly, I realized I’d been singing all wrong. Okay, not all wrong, but not all right, either. I was working my voice and vocal chords too hard, and I was losing my voice more than I should. If you see pictures of me singing, I often have my mouth really wide open. It looks like I’m really going for it…because I am. I tend to write vocal parts that run the gamut of my range, and I really push myself to run all over the place on the scale. It’s not histrionic in the R&B sense (hitting 25 different notes on one word), but I don’t make my job particularly easy, either.
I started to learn about something called “Speech-Level Singing.” Basically, it’s about singing like you talk. It’s more natural sounding, and it makes it a hell of a lot easier to hit the notes.
When I sing live, I think I’m fairly solid, but I miss the mark (even if by a little) sometimes. I want to improve the odds of making the mark. Speech-Level Singing helps with that, and it also helps with endurance when you’re singing night after night and improves the consistency of tone, agility, flexibility and range.
There are three parts to your voice: chest voice, mix voice and head voice. Between each part, there is what’s called a bridge. According to the Voice Studio, that is “where the resonance shifts from one area of the body to another.” With this technique, you can learn how to make those transitions flow better by narrowing the vowels and not widening your mouth too much. You produce the sound more easily, and it sounds better, too. For example, there’s a line in one of my songs that goes up over my mix-voice bridge into the head voice and back down again. The line is, “Something pulls me back inside.” Heather has me sing it with a different accent to narrow the vowels, so I can get up over the bridge (which is the A flat above C) and back down with less trouble and effort. Now I’m less freaked out every time that part of the song comes up. When I practice the part, it now sounds a little like, “Sew-ew-um-thin pools meh beck insoid.” And when I hit “thin,” the highest note, I drop my jaw a little to accommodate the sound. Now I’m not singing with my mouth as horizontal but more vertical. I think it’s fascinating. I’m smoothing out my voice, making things easier on myself and becoming a better singer. Now, why didn’t I do that ten years ago?
Richie Hawtin is always so far ahead of the DJing technology curve, it just may be futile to try to catch up. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be inspired by his innovation to do your own thing. In this video on ResidentAdvisor.net, Hawtin explains his current live setup using Native Instruments Traktor with four virtual decks and an Allen & Heath Xone mixer/MIDI controller (as well as an extra computer just for effects).
If you still think that it’s cheating for laptop DJs to use a software’s auto beat sync, allow Hawtin about 10 minutes of your time to justify himself for offloading that task to his computer helpers. As always, his endeavors are quite impressive.
Last week I mentioned that I got the Shure PSM 200 in-ear monitors and would report back about how I liked them. I have to admit I was scared. After more than seven years of sticking my head in the monitor wedges onstage, I didn’t know how I’d react to using in-ears. More importantly, I didn’t know whether I’d even get them to work or if they’d blow up my ear drums or if I wouldn’t be able handle the mix inside my brain.
I can report that they are indeed awesome. Two of my bandmates and I went to the practice studio a couple hours before practice to figure it out. What’s the joke about musicians screwing in a lightbulb?
How many guitarists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Seven: one to do it and six to watch and say, “Aww, I could’ve done that!”
Anyway, it only took one guitarist to figure out the routing stuff with the Mackie 1604 mixer, and then we plugged it all in and had it working with time to spare before band practice. The cool thing is that the earphones have limiters built in so your ears really won’t blow up. And while it takes some getting used to, it’s really nice to hear every word you sing, even when weird synth frequencies try to battle it out with certain notes you’re singing. For now, I’m just singing with one ear in, one out, but I think that’s mainly because we don’t have the other instruments routed through the earphone mix yet. But I actually dig going with one in-ear and one monitor. Pretty awesome. More to come about touring preparations….
Check out this sweet video from Current TV on label Ghostly International (home to artists such as Matthew Dear, Dabrye, Kill Memory Crash, Solvent and Tycho), which includes an interview with Ghostly founder Sam Valenti IV. The video, called “Ghosts of Techno,” covers how the label started, the concept and its intent to bring music and compelling visual artists together. Click HERE to see the video.
In every issue of Remix, I write the “Editor’s Note,” sometimes regarding my personal experiences as a touring musician. In the August issue, I wrote about preparing for unexpected events onstage. Check it out here:
If you’re like me, you’re constantly buying new gear to 1) replace the live gear that keeps breaking and 2) to improve your stage setup. There’s always a cord or power adapter that dies at inopportune times. And sometimes you have to bite the bullet and buy something that you know (or at least hope) will improve your live show by at least five percent. To that end, I recently bought some Shure PSM 200 in-ear monitor systems for me and my band’s drummer. I’m nervous to step up to the plate but also excited. I’ll report back about that once we’ve had a chance to test that out. All I know is that my band is playing at the Treasure Island Festival coming up, so we need to be more prepared than for any other show we’ve ever played in the last seven years. But hey, no pressure…. Heh.
If you read my “Editor’s Note” column about the sudden screw-ups that inevitably happen onstage (particularly with a complicated setup), you know about our keyboardist’s “spaceship.” That dude had so many cables running from keyboards to laptop to mixer to the drum module to his brain…it was ridiculous. We played a show not long ago where we had a minute-long meltdown with his system. We couldn’t hear the audio from his laptop, which was running Ableton Live sessions with some samples from our latest album. We love Live, but our keyboardist (Ryan is his name), made the decision to simplify his setup to avoid future mishaps. He went back to his old Roland Fantom keyboard and used Redmatica’s awesome AutoSampler (http://www.redmatica.com) to trigger the samples live with the Fantom. So far, it’s been great. It goes to show you should never be afraid to change things up and streamline your live show. I’ll report back after we get the in-ears going. And now it’s time to buy ATA cases for when we fly to Minneapolis for our Oct. tour. Can’t wait to sleep in an RV and eat fast food for two weeks!
Bravo to Björk for recently posting this correction on her Website (see below). There aren’t as many female engineers, producers and string arrangers out there as there are men, but damn it, it certainly doesn’t help our cause when the press is crediting men for the work done by a woman. As long as Björk is writing, producing, arranging strings, editing vocals, getting jiggy with Pro Tools and asking her manager for a Dr. Pepper in that adorable Icelandic accent while she’s on the phone with us, we will put her on the cover of Remix. We always learn from Björk, and not just because she’s an incredibly talented vocalist and songwriter. The girl can engineer and produce with the best of the dudes. See her post below, and then check out one of these two cover stories from Remix.
i saw in the last issue of iceland’s newspaper in english : “grapevine” , that valgeir sigurðsson was credited for having written all the instrumentals for my album vespertine. could i please offer a correction :
i have noticed last 7 years that mr. sigurðsson has often been credited for either writing or producing that album . i´d like to say that he didn´t write it or produce . he was a computer programmer for a third of it and a recording engineer for a third . The other two thirds were done by other engineers and programmers .
here is the creditlist to show you the correct crediting of vespertine .
i don´t understand where that misunderstanding has come from
could be one of four options :
1 :the pop critics of this world have not totally yet worked out the difference between engineering , programming , writing and producing electronic music . visually this appears very similar . a man/woman sitting in front of a computer . not as different as for example a drummer , a brass arranger and an engineer . but these are 3 completely different jobs which journalists must start to see the difference
2: it could be that this is some degree of sexism . m.i.a. had to deal with this with the respected website pitchfork.com where they assumed that diplo had produced all of her kala album without reading any credit list or nothing , it just had to be , it couldn´t have been m.i.a. herself ! it feel like still today after all these years people cannot imagine that woman can write , arrange or produce electronic music . i have had this experience many many times that the work i do on the computer gets credited to whatever male was in 10 meter radius during the job . people seem to accept that women can sing and play whatever instrument they are seen playing .but they cannot program , arrange , produce , edit or write electronic music .
3 : i´ll admit that one thing could confuse things : people have to use their ears and actually read the creditlist to get this information . all the music i have made : like for example string arrangements , synthbasslines or programming of electronic patterns , i never play myself live because i want to give 100% of myself into the singing i either ask the computers to play it or i get other musicians to play it . this could confuse things .
4: one thing that could have kept this misunderstanding alive is that neither me nor valgeir sigurðsson have bothered to correct it
but i am doing it now
i hope this correction will be a positive input into more discussion about this
Man, this bit of news, sent by Kidz in the Hall’s publicity firm, is messed up. We hope you’re okay Double O.
“Double 0 of Kidz In The Hall badly assaulted by security after performance; Management issues statement”
Double O from the hip hop group Kidz In The Hall was assaulted by several bouncers early Saturday morning, July 26, while inside a nightclub in Tempe, AZ following a Kidz In The Hall performance. Group member and friend Naledge, who did not witness the assault on Double O, was arrested outside of the club. Naledge’s attempt to get medical assistance for Double O was misconstrued as a hinderence to the investigation. Reports that no injuries were sustained are false as Double O was taken to the hospital with multiple injuries from the excessive force used by club security. On Sunday morning Double O underwent surgery for one of his injuries. He is still in the hospital, but in stable condition.
In the last 2 years, Kidz In The Hall have traveled to over 10 countries, have done 200+ shows and never before been involved in any altercation, big or small, with club or concert security, or police officers.
I’ll admit that Remix has somewhat overlooked the Australian band and remix/DJ team Cut Copy so far, but that’s going to change. When I went to Sydney and Melbourne in 2005, you couldn’t tell that anything musically was going on beyond a few crunchy Outback jam-bands whose edge was incorporating digeridoo. Now the Southeast corner of Oz is blowing up the international dance-rock scene, what with the Midnight Juggernauts, Van She, Miami Horror and others.
A common theme among much of this scene seems to be a disregard for the boundaries between playing as a live band, remixing peers and associates with dirty electro-rock sonic bombs and DJing, preferring to all three with equal zeal.
As for Cut Copy particularly, they seem to have updated the New Order disco-pop formula with a daring dash of early-to-mid ’90s rave music, which has yet to hit the standard 20-year mark for acceptable hipster revival. Then again, culture is accelerated these days, and maybe this is why “nu-rave” has never really felt that “nu” to me at all. Good songs, however, will never get old, so check out these Cut Copy videos and upcoming tour dates with fellow Aussie synth rockers The Presets.
CUT COPY AND THE PRESETS, JOINT HEADLINE TOUR 2008
SAT 9/13 - Monolith Festival - Denver, CO
MON 9/15 – The Record Bar - Kansas City, MO
TUES 9/16 - Fine Line Music Cafe- Minneaplis, MN
WED 9/17 - Metro - Chicago, IL
FRI 9/19 Sound Academy - Toronto, Ontario
SAT 9/20 - Club Soda - Montreal, Quebec
SUN 9/21 - Webster Hall - New York City, NY
MON 9/22 - Webster Hall - New York City, NY
TUE 9/23 - Paradise - Boston, MA
THURS 9/25 – The Trocadero Theater - Philadelphia, PA
