Eric 🇨🇦

Good piece about the Fender debacle. #music #guitar #gearsquad https://yamahamusicians.com/fender-the-money-behind-the-letters/

Coffee break with Ollie cat on my lap. #cats #catsofmastodon

Ollie cat’s having a lazy Sunday. #cats #catsofmastodon

Picked up a Korg Volca Drum unit. Messing around in the basement on a Saturday night. #music #synth

Basement session tonight. Working on the new 12-bar shuffle blues thing. Recorded a few test tracks with the new PJ bass. Short scale is nice to play. The Mustang has the same punch as the p-bass, with some tonal flexibility, having both precision and jazz pickups. So far, I’m liking it. Played a few test harp tracks too. #music #gearsquad #bass #guitar

Did a straight across bass guitar swap today. The old coffee shop music gear buy, sell, trade meetup location. Turns out the fellow I met is a local bass player with a few basses. He bought this 2021 Firemist Gold Fender Mustang short scale bass new at Tom Lee but never played it much. The bass plays well. Action is set up way lower than my old blue p-bass. Much lighter too. Has an alder body and my old bass was poplar. Look forward to recording some stuff soon. #music #gearsquad #guitar #bass

I made a thing. Plywood box with laminate countertop material. Plugs a hole at the end of a small bathtub in a tiny home.

Hiking today. North side of Cobble Hill Mountain.

More hiking today. Cobble Hill Mountain, south side. Vancouver Island.

Got musician burnout. So I’m just messing around these days. Bought a synth several years ago, so playing around with it and learning how to do really simple stuff like loading free presets and learning step sequencing. Don’t really have a clue what I’m doing. Bit of a challenge for my analogue old school brain. But having some kind of weird fun.

Coffee time and Ollie cat on my lap.

New string night. Putting some custom light 11-52 Elixir Nanoweb strings on the little Takamine EF-407. It’s been a while. Was sounding a bit dull. Nice and bright now. When I bought the Tak, I had Old Town Strings in Victoria shape and install a new bone saddle. Action and set up is incredible with no fret buzz. The guitar plays like an electric.

Basement session tonight. Tracked some Danelectro baritone. #music #gearsquad #recording

Totally dig Jack White’s sound system setup on Stephen Colbert’s new community cable tv gig. Awesome show.

Picked up a couple midi cables yesterday and been DAW test tracking some synth in both audio in and midi in. I can see the degree of flexibility with midi tracking, especially with quantizing. Tried that and it’s pretty darn cool. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m more of an old school analogue audio waveform kinda person, so may just stick with that for recording. I’m totally new to messing around with synthesizers, so any ideas or tips about recording synth would be greatly appreciated. With compositions do you use midi tracks or audio? I’m kind of daunted about the concept of editing or tweaking actual midi tracks. #music #synth #synthesizer

Went to the Victoria Highland Games today. Good fun.

Basement session tonight. Printed lyrics and recorded a couple test vocal tracks on my new 12-bar blues shuffle thing. It’s gonna work. Never quite know until a few run throughs to get the vibe. Harmonica will be good. It’s a great track for blowing harp. #music #recording #songwriting

Basement session tonight. Been tracking harmonica on my new blues tune for a couple evenings. Got some good takes. Using the B-flat Hohner Special 20 through Apex 327 harp mic into MXR Timmy. Got the masking tape over the mic volume knob to keep it from moving around. Lol. High tech fix. #music #gearsquad #recording #blues

Evenings of basement sessions. Lots of practicing guitar and harp. Recording a bunch of random ideas. Nice to just let loose and enjoy inconclusive creativity. Leaning towards recording another blues tune soon. #music

More hiking today. Cobble Hill mountain, south side. Vancouver Island, BC.

Beautiful warm sunny day. Took the VW camper van down to Cowichan Bay, hung out and made some tea and coffee. Went for a walk. Found these cool little blue flowers growing in a small clump on the side of a trail. Looked them up and they’re called “glory of the snow.”

Holy crap, they’re back like it’s the early 1970’s. Jagger’s voice is amazing. And the riffs. Wow. #music #TheRollingStones https://youtu.be/FHaEFarmZx8?si=RptX8pXuqWQ_auD9

Another basement session tonight. Finally got the key figured out for the shuffle blues tune I’m working on. Using the Danelectro baritone. I’ve steadily gone down the scale for the harp and my vocal. Started with an F harp, then D and now down to A. It works. #music

Stephen Colbert unleashed. Not wasting any time! https://youtu.be/jJTXB5uT_C4?si=7XKn0SvC0QuiBaVv

Just changed our water filter. Water well on our rural property and lots of iron. Every couple of months kinda thing.

Contemplating a new studio vocal recording mic exclusively for singing. I’ve got an SM58 and mostly use an old Apex 550 FET condenser mic for vocals. I’m looking at the Universal Audio SD-1 dynamic mic. Anyone tried this mic before? I’ve watched a whack of vid reviews and it sounds pretty good. My budget is around $350 CAD. #music #gearsquad

Wailer windstorm last night. Decent sized fir dropped across our driveway. Looks like root rot. Donned my old fallers’ pants and bucked up the top portion with the baby Stihl. Woohoo! Another year’s firewood supply. Gotta get out the big Husky for the rest of the tree.

Jumpin’ jesus, synthesizers are powerful little beasts. Doing some step sequencing. Trying to figure out some weird grooves. Gotta pick up some midi cables tomorrow. So far, I’m just inputting synth audio via TRS into the interface and DAW. I checked and my interface has midi in/out on the back. Don’t have a clue what I’m doing so I’ll see what midi signals are all about. I think I better watch some vid tutorials.

I may trade my 2000 Midnight Blue Fender precision bass tomorrow. Going to look at a Fender Mustang bass. See what happens. I’ll be sad to see it go, but I’m into moving to a short scale. My p-bass has a rosewood board and the Mustang has pau ferro. Never had a pau ferro fretboard before. Tried one and definitely harder than rosewood. Interesting.

Got my new tune pretty much done. Six tracks. Gibson Melody Maker SG through Strymon Iridium, Danelectro 59 through EHX B9 organ machine, Fender p-bass, harmonica, my vocal track and MT power drum kit plugin. Song’s called ‘Just Like Indiana Jones.’ Got kinda tired of working on it so just did a few vocal takes and managed to comp something together. Here’s the raw uncut version. Not sure if lyrics will stay the same. I may play around with it some more. I tracked a few alternate lyrics. #music #songwriting #gearsquad #recording #guitar

More fun from the Victoria Highland Games today.

Evening basement session. Comped the harp tracks on my blues tune tonight. Mixing time. Getting closer. Light at the end of the tunnel.

Putting down vocal tracks in the basement tonight on the new song. Did 4 full takes and got some good stuff. A few more tomorrow night. Did a couple test harmonica tracks too. It’s slowly coming together. #music #recording

Wrote and recorded this tune in the basement around the time of the last No Kings protests. End the authoritarianism and oppression. #music https://youtu.be/zgLh6wltQPA?si=QU4tAqLfhzsxkYYa

Got the riffs sussed for a new shuffle blues tune. Key is a bit high for my vocal so may use the Danelectro baritone. Gotta drop the harp key down too. Work in progress. #music

OMG, this has masto vibes all over it. A great stab at AI music crap. And from Quebec. These guys are good. Gotta watch the KEXP vid too. #music https://youtu.be/zO8bt94-ybg?si=9T7tU4jxyx9-caxA

Basement session last night. Comped vocals on the new blues shuffle tune. It’s coming together. Tracking harmonica next. #music

Harrison Ford’s incredible ASU speech from a couple days ago. Worth watching. https://youtu.be/NK5Y4YD0mOA?si=qmEQ4AM8RdgTw9Pu