Waiting for my Roland AC-33

5 Days to go till we head off for a four month music adventure and house sitting project. The plan is to do some busking to try out our material & see if we can pay for some groceries. We are going out to see if we can connect with people who like our style of music without being hit over the head with it. On the strength of the performance of a pretty good street performer at Maleny a while ago I have ordered a Roland AC-33 battery amp with built in looper. It's coming from Tasmania and it is second hand one & I hope it turns up in time because Tassie is a long way from where I am in Central Queensland. Our first grand daughter arrived on March 3 after a week of emotional roller coaster ride with pre-eclampsia. Mum and bub are doing great a few days after the event. Since we won't be sticking around to enjoy the new baby as much as we would like Len and I have decided to put together a compilation of our laid back material to help baby sleep and at least stay connected on a musical level. Life is an adventure.

Coming and Going

Back home again and soon to be heading off for a four month music creation retreat in the hills above the Sunshine Coast. During our last ten day break we managed to get Sonar expanded up an running at a basic level and record some midi from my Godin Freeway guitar to GR55 into sonar and view it  as notation which is what I am shooting for. Installed Sound Forge 10 Pro and BFD Eco which took a while to get working. Worked on the improving the tracking on the mid guitar by altering the settings and have come a long way forward in that area. Still triggering some stray notes so some fine tuning is required but it is coming together. Have been having a great time with the guitar modelling side of things and I am finding some really useful tones. The Zoom Q3 HD had a good workout and came through with flying colours. A dead cat wind sock is totally essential for any outside recording since even a light wind creates enough noise through the built in mics to make a track unusable. We had issues with the dog spotting the dead cat while we were recording and wanting to go into attack mode. Currently we are preparing for our four month musical adventure and we are sorting out our recording systems and software and trying to get everything as compact as possible. On our way home we stopped to listen to a busker at Maleny using a Roland AC-33 acoustic battery amplifier. He was looping some guitar progressions and then playing sax over the top. Sounded great so we decided we will do some busking to pay our way during our songwriting period. Picked up a second hand AC-33 on ebay last night so we have half our busking system. The next decision is whether to get another AC-33 or go for the Roland Cube Street to complete the system. We are unpacking from our last short trip and preparing to move home and set up a songwriting and recording system about 500ks away. Life is good but busy.

Still house sitting at Conondale, the road is cut by a flooded creek both sides of the property so we're not going anywhere. We have done some video recording with the Zoom Q3HD and results have been pretty good so far. I sure beats having a separate camera & audio recorder for ease of use. Haven't put anything new on youtube yet but we'll get there eventually. My current challenge is to get my Roland GR55 to record into SonarX1 so I can create tab & notation. So far I have managed to enter notes into Finale Notepad but not in real time. Watching a few vids on youtube has helped me get my Godin Freeway tracking a bit better so the synth sounds are no longer horrific from all the stray notes that were being triggered. Todays mission is to watch a few more Sonar training vids so I can get into some serious creativity happening. The pressure is off as far as getting something finished in the next couple of days as we have just lined up a four month house sit in a place which is very private, hard to find & with a great view. That gives me time to get some of the software under control so the music can start to flow again. Yesterday I managed to get the sound output from BFD Eco drummer working, It required a download of ASIO4ALL to work on my laptop. My midi guitar is tracking much better than it was so now for some midi recording.

Its been such a long time since my last post. 19 months of it has been spent as a 12hr a day construction worker. That really put my music on the backburner. But I have collected some gear that I am now going to have the time to put to work as I take a few months to concentrate on the important things in life, health, music, and family. We now have two Roland AC60 amplifiers for our live work, which really makes life easy. I have bought some new software so a bit of a learning period is on the books. I now have Cakewalk Sonar Expanded, Sound Forge Pro 10, Reaper, BFD Eco Drummer,  Nomad factory Studio Bundle. The new stereo recorder is a Zoom H4n which I love, yesterday I did our first recording with the Zoom Q3HD and that is a giant step up from my old system which used mini DVD's that took over an hour just to load into the computer. We did about 20 gigs last year and most were recorded to the Zoom H2n and about 70% of the gigs were filmed on video, but none of it was edited or posted due time limitations caused by work. I guess I'll have to a bit of a listen and sort over the next few months to see if there is anything worthwhile. Where we are at with our music, is putting it all together so that we are happy with our recording. We are also going through the copyright process and then comes, getting it out there so that we can find our audience wherever they are in whatever country and whatever age group.  Our youtube channel rootube808 has over 23000 views and we have six subscribers and some very rewarding comments. As I am writing we are on the third day of a 10 day house sit in the conondale valley and we are here to play guitar, write songs, and record audio and video, and did I mention feed the chooks, put away the baby chicks and the old rooster at night. Feed the guinea pigs and move their cage around, walk Jasper the border collie and keep the goanas and scrub turkeys away from the eggs. The old rooster is now blind and we have to rattle his feed dish so he can find it to eat. He needs fussing over because he always was a gentleman. Whenever the chooks were being fed in the past he always hung back from the food making sure the hens had a good feed first. I checked out one of the new roosters this morning and he pecks everything in sight including the baby chicks so he can have all the food to himself. He needs to learn some manners. Time to restring my acoustic so I'm off.