It's been a while

I've just noticed how long it's been since I did anything here. Bad Alan! I have a few things that I will (hopefully) put up in the next few days.

Looping some Funk'n Jam

New Mix Layout

I was feeling a bit constrained by my old layout. I couldn't do stereo in the mix (only in the rp-150 feeding the notebook) and I couldn't separate out how much reverb etc each channel got. As a result, I've moved things around a bit s per the picture. This has given me a lot more flexibility. I've changed the settings on the RP-150 so that it is no longer doing EQ (mixing what it output back into the mix sounded like speaking through a pipe). What it is doing is some reverb and Chorus. I've got the Mike adding a goodly amount of that effect in through the Aux send and just a little to the guitar. I've also played a little with the stereo field. Overall the sound I am getting out of the guiter is one hell of a lot crisper and I'm also pretty happy with what it's doing to my vocal

Video for Goodbye Heaven

Just for chuckles I had a play with Windows Movie Maker to video myself playing this live using the audio equipment I've blogged about earlier.

I like to dedicate this song to anyone who has ever had o move on from a place that they've grown attached to. A place that is full of fond and precious memories. What you've go to come to realise is that the memories are not embedded in the woodwork or in the land. They will live forever in your heart, soul and mind.

More equipment

I should also mention that a few weeks back I picked up a Behringer Multicom Pro-XL four channel compressor that I'm using now too.

New Guitar

Those of you who have been listening to me on Second Life or following my facebook/twitter would know that last week I finally had enough of the problems I was having with the electrics in the Vantage so I went and bought a new guitar.

The guitar in question is the one pictured, a Tanglewood TRD-VSE. It was a close call with a Washburn in the shop that I didn't actually look at the model of.

I have to say that I absolutely love the sound that I'm getting out of it and it feels lovely to play. I am finding it amazing the extra energy I am feeling while I am playing a nice guitar, and I am passing that energy on to the listeners when I play, so it's all good.

Australia Day Pass the Mike

On the evening before Australia day I got a message from Lacey that she wanted to get a few Australian Second Life performers together to play at her place (in Second Life) with a definitely Australian Theme.

So it ended up with four of us doing a "pass the mike" for four hours! The participants were:

• Jaggpro McCann (Rob Fisher),
• OhMy Kidd (Matthew Davies),
• The Lohners (Shan and Byron), and
• Me Tpenta Vanalten (Alan Hargreaves)

I have to say I have not had so much fun performing in a long time (and I generally have fun performing). The format that we went for was simply three songs and then pass the stream to the next performer (well I did one set with two, but "The Band Played Waltzing Mathilda" runs about 8 minutes). For the most part we played a lot of Australian music, I did a few I wouldn't normally (what is Australia Day without Slim Dusty's "Pub with no Beer" ?).

Apparently for the four hours we had about 30 people listening constantly. We all had a fantastic time. I love this format!