Stormcellar Band Home Page

Successful testing today

Thanks to Bec and Jonesy for testing out the streaming.

I had some ghosts in the machine. The realtek Drivers went haywire when I was using the 24/192 interface from the yamaha desk.

Oh BTW Yamaha, well done. Excellent value and I didnt even know it had USB main mix output. Wow. Cool.

Mr Wizard is keen on decent sound.

Over the last month I have tested remote playing together (nope), sound setup (ok got it sorted) and today was the first Video session.

We're on schedule for our target of...whenever we get this done :-)

This week, weather permitting, we'll do more live testing.

Friends Of The Band will be called upon to test, as we check further.

This was fiddly today. I made a few errors and had to figure some stuff out. Testing. Love it. I get suspicious when things go too right oo easily :-)

After 3 hours we had sound, vision, vision back from Jonesy and Audio too for complete interactivity and Mr Wizard got a brand new song.

Heh.

Gotta say when it all finally worked it was quite satisfying.

Next!

The dao of lyrics, streaming tests and songwriting sessions

Happy Apocalypse.

Sadly I cannot yet report the complete collapse of civil society and as such I guess we'd better get on with things huh?

Toilet paper abounds, science prevails and we look to New Zealand for world leadership.

This Bodes Well.

Social Isolation songwriting continues.

It's a muscle. Use it.

Also: Time. We have it.

Nice.

Cup of tea.

Also: Gear working.

Streaming tests

Would have gone live yesterday. Will likely do some more testing in the coming week.

Big ups to our mates who are out there pioneering.

Salon Project Proceeding

First glimmers of some movement on that since before the Pandemic started.

Nice.

See what happens next. Moving at its own pace.

Cards Against Lyric Writing

Yesterday I took all the fragments, ideas and observations from the last 6 months, cut'em up and put them in a bag.

Next, it'll be Dig Into Bag, play Cards Against Lyricism.

Stay Safe, Stay Home, Stay Tuned!

Of Sunshine, seeds and soundlessness

Gentle sussuration of a lone car.

the occasional, very occasional now, burst of airplane thunder.

The clear blue skies over Petersham.

The sense that every blessed day is Sunday, is a Christmas, is a slow morning lawnmower in suburbia.

People take to the streets looking for the exercise loophole.

They spend time looking at themselves, unable to access the distraction of the old world.

Some find peace.

Some find a spare bottle.

I plant seeds when I can

watering them with attention

seeing what grows

hoping, not prodding

wishing to not wait

not wise enough to be patient

yet patient while I spend my time arguing with my desire to be impatient

the world has stalled

and we never rushed it on

except collectively

and now we don't;

it's a form of magic

My teachers keep painting signposts

they reinforce the way

which can be seen

and if not seen than felt

if not heard then dreamt

and if none, simply is.

The world sleeps too, finally, fitfully

as it needed to

the great reset

the time out

the naughty corner

the crown of fools

and fools crown'd

We wait to awake from a shared dream

in an age of separation of minds

separate of selves

we are again together

in the same experience

as we have always been

and pretended we weren't

Finally got the radio streaming sorted

Ok that took me a bit and it's still not right.

Presenting Stormcellar Radio, a random playlist of all our stuf + other random stuff.

More stuff to come.

Boy that took some digging. Simple solution eventualy but it took me a while to work it out.

Click on the radio link wherever youc an see it on the screen somewhere

Don't write so close to me

Social distancing songwriting today.

Nice day for it

Testing Continues

The audio stuff worked out ok today. Not too loud.Worked well for guide track recording.

Listening to some guide stuff now.

Streaming Development

Tech testing still ongoing.

One more go at rehearsal for duo is next.

Then tech testing with outdoor stuff (hope the weather holds)

So...we have Sound OK, worked out lag time sucks. Next is combining outside wifi to stream access with a (yuck) webcam but at least good enough sound.

No rush. It's a slow apocalypse.

Song Writing Stuff

Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it aint. We've never shied away from 'full and frank' discussion.

There's a saying in the band, the tensions are what make it dynamic.

Working on 'Devils Preacher' is taking a while, which is great. It deserves as good a job as we can muster, and I haven't been too happy with my part so far.

The job isn't getting it to perfection. The job is getting it to the point where you can get it right.

Different Batches

As promised, I am laying out a little more internal thinking than usual.

Song batches at the moment are loosely grouped into:

1. Clarkesdale

2. Salon Project

3. Everything Else

Who does the grouping? Ah well. Um. Yeah.

Ok. So here's the logic.

I reckon everything that was written in/during/around the US tour is fair game for batch 1.

Salon has already kicked off with Crossfire and I have four or five candidates.

Of course that involves working with our mates and assembling people is inadvisable at present. Hmm...

In the everything else category is...everything else.

With Mr Wizard in seclusion for weeks, there's a new crop from him.

We touched on four tunes today in development. Based on that logic it's going to take us another weeks worth of sessions to go through the backlog from pre-tour, then the stuff from the tour, then the new crop brought on by isolation and too much time on the hands of a guitarist.

When we get to the next layer of development and i get the tech sorted, we might open up one of the later sessions.

Stay safe, stay well, stay home where possible.

Streaming fails so far

With thanks to everyone for giving it a shot.

Lag time is a factor for remote interaction

Sender to listener and back again is a round trip, it's gotta go through processing and sending.

Plus, the speed of light is fast but it's not 'instant' Only apparently instant over short distances.

Multiply those small fractions of a second for information to travel, by multiple sources spread out over Sydney, add it all up and... it spooks the musicians.

We've tried remote songwriting (possible but need more gear) and we've tried remote rehearsal, and have not sorted it.

We have another couple of tests to do to see if we can't shave off a millisecond here or there.

Stormcellar Band Home Page

More Articles ...