Vale Rick Miller, Secretary of the Sydney Blues Society

Stormcellar Band Website
Stormcellar Band Website

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!
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!
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
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.