Stormcellar Band Home Page

After a few quiet weekends, so begins the summer in the cellar as we start playing pretty much every weekend fro the next...er..until we stop. or look at the calendar.

What the heck, there's a bunch of shows coming up, starting this Saturday night at the RHB. It's always a good night there.

We'll also be doing some video stuff and we'll need a few volunteers and their phone cams (glutton for punishment me) to come and film us, so either volunteer on the night or we'll come up and ask and you'll be able to get right in the middle of it. Yeah.

Let your inner director out!

Here's my favourite moment of an actor working with a director.

ARGH!!

Big thanks to Alan, Bro, Karla, Cam and various mates who helped me to shoot a video yesterday.

Sad to say that I killed half the footage.

Yep, once again we recorded on the phone camera (hey I blew all my money on props at Propco) and I deleted the files from the phone before double triple checking that the transfer to the PC had worked properly. Just cos it didnt report an error during the cut and paste doesn't mean it worked, so I merrily thought, sweet it's done and deleted the files to make space.

(sigh)

So that's my fault, however, I have a few gripes:

- transferring large files from the iphone to the PC sucks and doesn't work under native Xp (yeah I'm old school)  so you have to use a 3rd party product as a file browser.-

-The fact that these massive tech behemoths cant work out their @^&# in order to make things easier for the end user makes me GRR.

- This 'Walled garden' @^&# makes me GRR, thats why it's hard, cos they choose NOT to play nice to try, and lock in customers, yeah yah tell me its just opposing tehcnical visions and I still call bull@*#*

- Yes its a phone, whaddya expect, but it's a clunky crappy way to have to deal with videos longer than 1 minute of continuous footage, so if you're at an event and wind up with 10 minutes of something and 8 gig if footage, rots of ruck.

Good procedure removes problems - double check that your files are secure. I am lucky that I took the morning's footage off to another machine so I have only lost the two sscenes after lunch. Only. ARGH.

BY THE WAY avoid these scam 'recover your files' programs, in my case, they couldn't have recovered them and if I had shelled out the $70 I'd be doubly unhappy. Mostly what they do is so low level that with a little googling you could sort it, if it was sort-able.

The last way for me to recover my footage is to Jailbreak, SSH in, create an image of the disk, move it to another machine and then scan it for video files without the headers.

Which is fine except my home PC is a little locked down and doesn't like to talk to strangers.

Rod for my own back, yes? Yes. Remember, what would Jesus do? Jesus doesn't lose his files cos Jesus Saves.

So, Apple Vs PC ARGH Files transfer and Double Check.

ARGH!!!!

POOP!

There's a great quote, 'he writes so well, I feel like putting the quill back in the goose'. I could google it and attribute, but , meh.

I am in the rare and fortunate position of being able to listen to an unreleased song by the Righteous Prannies and I am immediately humbled by the astounding ability of these cats, and to reorder and rephrase another favoured old quote, I cant play half as well, at a quarter the speed.

Yikes.

Sadly i'm not able to share it yet, but theres work on a videoclip which will be headed for youtube and then I'll be able to link it and you'll be all like 'whoah, dude;' and I'll be like 'Yo, like, right'

There's talk of a Prannies album too...

Ah! I just remembered, I have footage of them playing the song live! Right.

They've just done a studio version, so if you like this, wait for the proper version!

Prannies Yo!

Howdy Folks.

We have two recent recordings that are pending mastering and release, Twice Shy Girl and Travelling Song. We have 4 more songs ready to record and we're looking at the options for recording them.

At last check, we have a mind to back into a studio and do 3 songs in 2 days and 1 day for a mix. Practical, simple, reasonable. Then find a different way to record the next one.

Of course, such obvious ease is an anathema to me. Why do it the easy way?

Well,  there's the expense of studio time, but cost isn't entirely the deciding factor. Not that I can tell you what the deciding factor is, it's generally a sense of wellbeing that comes upon me when things are in order. Spidey Sense, for want of a better term.

I prefer to think that I am tuning into some underlying cosmic carrier wave of Rightness - or - my subconscious brain is way ahead of me and lets me know when ive chosen appropriately by filling my head with happy neurotransmitters.

Aaaahhhh..

Then again, perhaps I am drinking too much Black Tea (that stuff will get you riled up!)

Leaving aside such metaphysical concerns, the whole idea of the Curious Assembly was to try Different things, not Easy or Logical things. 

Mind you, we've tried most of the ways of recording so far and there aren't too many more avenues of useful distinction.

To recap for new visitors (hi there)

Curious Asssembly Singles So Far:

Sweet Adeline - Analogue 2 inch, multitracked, recorded in layers (house of hits)

Onward Traveller - on a frickin ipad with an external mic, mono, live, acoustic. (in my backyard)

Dirty Work - Layered, Multitrack, Digital (Goose Studios)

Travelling Song - Live, layered, multitracked, digital (protools) (At Linear Studios)

Twice Shy Girl - Live, Multitracked, Digital (Damien Gerard Studios)