Stormcellar Band Home Page

You know I try and try and nothing seem to happen and then all of a sudden...

WOOT! Big Ups to Mr Wizard and Bill as FINALLY I got the 5D project started.

Ah! I speculate that you may ask/think, WTF is the 5D project.

I'm glad you did/didn't ask. Ok, so obviously some of this is rhetorical but I have Google Stats and know you actually exist, so there.

Unless it's me logging in from remote.

Could be.

While Defiance has been in mixing, the guys have been writing this chill guitar stuff and I got all inspired about building an Audio Visual piece where the sounds were built from the Guitars out.

On Hired Guns, we started with the room sound at the drums. For this, its the guitars.

PLUS! I wanted the 'actual' take video'd, in situ, and the guitar tracks themselves to contain elements of the atmosphere from the location.

After weeks of trying to coordinate stuff, I got an unexpected clear weather day and we hit it.

BIG thankyous to our mates at rentacam for helping us out with some choice Nerd Gear. Oh lord, Rosie can tell you I have gone totally gear fanboy.Still, we did some good work yesterday.

I've been location scouting, here was location A...I don't even - but great huh?

The whole idea of the project is to record the guitars in location, so we picked a few locations and tried them.

For each song, a different location. For Bill's song 'Pirouette' we started at an Aqueduct, but finished on a pier. 

For Bill, we ran the XY pair on the zoom, + a 57 pointed at the soundboard straight down the cetre of the X-Y pair, then the two shotgun condensers unexpectedy built into the Camera, which were amazingly bloody good for a tiny little camera mic. Like wow. 

Later, in the wee small hours, Mr Wizard and I hit the City Streets of Sydney to record the base guitar for his song 'Sail Away'

Now for the Sound Nerd in you, check this out: this is the little condenser harmonica mic I picked up in Kansas City

Using a ZOOM 4 chan recorder we rented, we ran:

- X-Y Condenser on the Zoom

- Direct line from the guitar (OMG NO preamp needed on the Zoom, get out of town!)

- This teeny little condenser on the head.

- The cam mic's

Atmos was awful. Trains cabs drunks buses pedestrian cross walks you name it.

But - as we have the direct line in, we're cool, we can mix all the atmos back.

If this doesn't work, we'll try again.

BTW How good is the zoom to take a line froma solid body electric guitar with no preamp and get clean, great signal. I'm stoked. Totally awesome device.

Whilst we were working, we wound up with a crowd :-)

I've got the gear on loan for the weekend so Imma do a bunch of stuff.

I have to say, the modern gear is awesome. The camera? Awesome. The recorder? Awesome.

Two blokes can now carry the equipment to do a whole shoot, plus a guitar and a seat :-)

Now when will you be able to see the stuff?

When I get it finished! More stuff! Do more stuff!

Speaking of which.

PROPS TO EBvideo from Fiverr - Fiver Video Victory

It's been a big 24 hours.

The 2nd last of my Fiverr clips came in and the footage is great. EB rocks. I got some editing to do now, but I reckon we'll have a clip for Chalk Angels shortly.

...and lastly but not leastly.

Defiance Mixing Finished.

Wow.

AJ sent the last two cuts today. done. Finito. No Mas.

It still needs art, credits, final mastering, song order, DDP creation, pressing, so it'll still take a bit to come out, but a digital version could be online in as little as a week.

But that's up to us and I dont have time to work that out, I got a camera on loan and it's a gorgeous, gorgeous Sydney day.

OH! Almost forgot, Congratulations to the lads for finishing a 9th album.

And starting on a 10th.

Heh.

#selfpropelledartists.

Ye Gods. (and a note in memory of Murray Ball, who added that one to my lexicon many years ago).

I think you reach the point of diminishing returns in a mix when you start going back the mix before you had your latest bright idea.

We're there.

Eli's Hard Rock backing vocals made into...er..Hard Rock...but some of the other ideas...well...let's just say that they did not meet with universal approval.

An unnamed Guitarist made some suggestions on 'Bongo' mixing in one of the songs, leading to BONGO FURY!

No not the Zappa one...

Let's just say that the Rhythm Section expressed a very Dutch opinion.

Yeah we're done.

I think we call this mix. The sole missing item is the space in How it feels to win. We'll sort something, and there you have it. Album 9. 

Uh oh, I feel a 10th-year-9th-album-moment-of-reflection coming on...noooo...not sentimentalism! Nooo!

Awwwwww.....so cute.

Pic not related. 

The work itself is a joy. 

Ahhh...

See I told you I was making an effort to have some Chill Vibes here.

It's been a rough time, off screen, for a few of the guys. That's how it is for everyone, at some point. Mostly. I'm pretty sure.

But we take a lot of comfort from doing what we do, and the company we keep.

Defiance is a cracker of an album and a fitting way to conclude 4 years worth of work in the Mid West Triptych. 

It's good to finish a project...

..but even more fun to start on the next one!

Yeah that's right. I might have failed multiple times during the last month to get the first recording for the 5D project, but I have continued to regroup, reset, reschedule and try again.

We like making stuff. I'll be posting up here as we keep trying :-)

Firstly, shout outs to Al at WQLN in Pennsylvania, Russell at KVMR in Nevada City for spinning our stuff! Cheers!

By the way, dear mates from the states, why do you constantly use the same names for cities and states as other cities and states?? It's very confusing and once caused me to book the wrong hotel room. Stop that immediately and start using rational Australian suburb names like wooloomooloo.

And Coogee.

And Burrumbuttock.

heh..

or Goonoo Goonoo - I think we've been there

Anyway...Mixing Continues in Indy.

AJ returned from chasing Mythical Turkeys and reacted with some bemusement to finding mixes containing Eli's added Rock Backing Vocals in his inbox.

I believe the first response was ' whaaa?'

I like it. It may not make it into the mix, but I like it. 

That said, we're now into FINAL MIXING.

I mean, FINAL FINAL MIXING.

In our Pirate Ship of a band, each Pirate has cast their ballot on Song Order, Mixes & Fixes and now it's just about done.

Except for art.

And pressing.

And distribution.

and promotion.

#selfpropelledartist. 

We have a bunch of really interesting things to do over the next few months, and it's all pretty stress free.

You know, right now, that taking a moment out of the absolutely 24/7 coverage of Crazy, is vital to your wellbeing.

Your friends in the stormcellar will be doing very chill things, and talking about them here, for the next while, on purpose.

Fixing the world is hard. Maybe it starts with helping yourself to a little downtime. Go watch that video below with all the cloud pics....ahhh.

Big ups to Jenny Teator for covering 'Even in a lifetime', she's got great pipes. Jenny's from St Louis MO and is game enough to try one of our songs.

Several of the Fiverr challenges have been 'oh dear' - no harm no foul guys, seriously, for $5 I wasn't expecting Harry Potter CGI, and we still have some horses running, so we'll see.

But meanwhile, here's the first one that's worked.

Way to go Jenny. 

Steve J. suggested we use some of our travel photos with some nice relaxing music, so I took the opportunity to gather 1500+ images from the last 4 years of taking photos out the windy.

I then set it to Everywhere Feels Like Home Part 1 - Main theme, Part 3 - Horsefiddle theme and BONUS!!

The 'String' version, where it's all the strings, guitar, double bass, cello, drums and horsefiddle.

What's fascinating about this video to me is that these are the actual pictures from what we've been doing over these last four years. this is the environment we find ourselves in, from Kansas to Cumnock :-)