hieronymous

Was going to post about some music I put up at soundcloud but couldn't figure out how to get the widgets to appear! I did it before - I got frustrated because I couldn't do it NOW! So I didn't post. But there is quite a bit of more recent stuff now, including stuff from the first couple of years of hieronymous (2002-2004), as well as stuff from our recording session at Robot Envy recording studio.

This brings up another important point - this year (2012) marks the tenth anniversary of hieronymous!!! These past ten years have been a lot of fun musically - it could never have happened without Greg DeGuglielmo - that's for sure! Also, the availability of laptop recording played a big part - I was able to record together with Greg at Oxbow Studios or later at TJROX AUDIO and the aforementioned Robot Envy. Then I could take the tracks and manipulate them to my heart's content! Sometimes I used what we recorded as-is, just overdubbed on top; other times, I only kept the drum track and created something new on top of it.

So, this being the tenth anniversary, I would love to set up a couple of performances, maybe one back in the Boston area, one out here. We'll have to wait and see!

August was a very eventful month for hieronymous! Longtime hieronymous drummer Greg DeGuglielmo flew out for a couple of weeks, so we had a couple of rehearsal/jams, then went in to the studio. I was able to record parts of the rehearsals - used a single mic on the drums, recorded the bass and bass pedals direct. It sounded surprisingly good - if I do say so myself! Two of the tracks that I mixed feature a new (to me) pedal - the GR2 (shore for "Groove Regulator") by a Seattle company called 3Leaf. They were both played on a bass that I haven't used much - a six-string Ibanez. After I bought it I found I didn't like the sound much, plus it got supplanted by my Alembic five-string. But I realized that the pickups sound great set flat, so I've been playing it quite a bit. Both tracks were improvised by Greg & myself, on the spot, with no discussion. Our usual modus operandi! Here they are (these have been up on SoundCloud for a while):

Inaugural Jelly by hieronymous seven

esbe olosei by hieronymous seven

We also spent a day at Robot Envy Studios in Berkeley (the same place we recorded at last year). I've got plenty in the can, but for now here's a teaser (this one is pretty much brand new!):

Kha-Tess Part 1 by hieronymous seven

This one was also recorded with the Ibanez and the GR2, but the sweep switch accidentally got set to "up" instead of "down" so it has a different sound. Again, improvised live in the studio, though later on I overdubbed some Micromoog synth at my home studio, "Round House Studios." (In case the SoundCloud widgets don't appear, you can always go to http://soundcloud.com/hieronymous-seven!)


There is plenty more to come, so stay tuned! We also had a special guest on some tracks - I'll post some of that when it gets mixed!

A quick post for this weekend's track: the tune is called Next to Last - the drum track is from a drum & bass improvisation back in 2005 recorded at Oxbow Studios (in its original location), but I didn't like the bass part I played so I overdubbed everything and created a new song! Greg DeGuglielmo is on drums as always - the fact that a song suggested itself from the jam is a testament to the musicality of Greg's drumming.

This track has lots of Moog synth, this time a Moog Rogue. The bass at the beginning and end is a Tune 8-string - my very first 8-string, which I have since sold. The bass in the middle (the part with the bass solos and under the synth solo) is a Fender Japan Mustang Bass reissue (also sold).

I only have a few pictures of the Tune - I wish I had taken more! Not sure why I took so many weird angles, but it was a long time ago...

I began recording my own music in 2002. I had just spent 8-9 months back in Massachusetts getting my house ready to sell after my parents passed away, and during that time formed a band called "Zodiac Mambo" with Greg DeGuglielmo on drums, my old partner from Jiggle the Handle Gary Backstrom on guitar and Max Creek keyboardist Mark Mercier. Everyone sang, we did some old classics as well as some new songs. I even sat in with Jiggle (formerly Jiggle the Handle) for some of their post-breakup shows at Harper's Ferry. Through these various connections I was introduced to Damon Burke who had a studio in Wayland called Oxbow Studios. I spent a couple of days in there with Greg and Gary and viola! my own music!

A big part of all this was the ability to use ProTools on my snazzy new Mac to manipulate the recordings, as well as make new ones. I soon moved to Japan for grad school, and in the old days this would have meant no more music until I found another studio, but armed with an M-Box interface and ProTools on my snazzy new PowerBook G4 I could now take my music with me!

The next hurdle for me was figuring out how to share my music with others, especially from so far away. I had to learn about webspace and uploading, but earthlink.net and a cute program called Fetch got me up and running. Unfortunately, the webspace I had available through earthlink was limited - I could only post one song at a time! After some digging I became aware of music hosting sites like audiostreet.net and music.download.com (I'm not posting a link because they changed and I got erased! In fact they aren't even around anymore as far as I can tell). A while later along comes myspace - annoying but they had a special section for musicians which was good enough for the time being. Of course, it seems like facebook wiped them out - much easier to use.

But it's nice to have a dedicated music hosting site, and I think I have found it in SoundCloud. Easy to use and cool waveform widgets! It was kind of lonely for a while, but I started a group for Alembic players so I feel like I am having more interaction with other musicians.

It's hard to believe that I have been making music as hieronymous for almost ten years - the 10th anniversary will be next year! Might have to set up some shows, maybe even have a contest! In the meantime, enjoy the music!

Apparently, scientists don't know how cats purr. It's also unclear why - of course, if you are a cat lover then you know that they purr when they are content, but they can also purr when they are excited or even when they are about to die.

I'm not sure why my bass was purring at this session either - I think it was excited to be jamming with Greg DeGuglielmo! This is a track from the Robot Envy sessions in August 2010, so it's relatively recent. In fact, Greg and I will be going back into the same studio in a couple of weeks! Anyway, here is the track:

King Cat Jam

Here is a shot from the rehearsals of the bass that is purring:



This is my 2003 Alembic Stanley Clarke Signature - although it is nominally the "Signature Standard," it is actually pretty customized - the original owner who had it built had special woods used: flame walnut for the top, bubinga for the back - plus, I had the electronic upgraded to "Anniversary" (as close as you can get to Series without being Series electronics, for those of you in the know) and had it restrung EADGC. It was originally BEADG, but the low B string combined with the short scale didn't really work - in fact, it's probably why the original owner sold it, and it is my understanding that it also why Alembic will no longer built short scales with a low B! It works great with the high C string though!

One more thing - the name of the track - this is actually the fadeout to a classic blues tune, but I'm not sure about copyright issues so I haven't released the entire track yet - haven't even recorded the vocals actually. But the bass sounds to me like purring, and "King Cat" was Greg's nickname for my cat Sadie (one would think she would be "Queen Cat" but I don't question Greg's logic unless pressed) who passed away last year, so this jam is a tribute to her as well - it's her in the picture on SoundCloud. Here she is guarding the bass:

Remastered another old track: over there

I recorded this one while I was living in Kyoto, Japan, and it features the bass that is pictured in my userpic. It's a late-'60s Gibson Melody Maker Bass - this was Gibson's budget line, but it has the same "mudbucker" pickup found in their other instruments like the EB-2 and EB-3. The original color was "Pelham Blue" which invariably transforms into the green you see now:



I used a bunch of different pedals on the various parts. I think the first bass that you hear is through the Fulltone Bass-Drive. Actually, the next bass that comes in (maybe it could be called the "melody part"?) is the same pedal but with the drive cranked so it sounds like a fuzz. The first bass solo is through a Hao Rust Ride (which I later sold). The longer, mellower bass solo is through a Black Cat Bass Octave Fuzz, which is a clone of the Maestro Bass Brassmaster (who thinks of these names?). I ended up re-recording the clean bass under the second solo - the original was too indistinct, so I used a Fender Japan Mustang Bass reissue.

This track grew out of an experiment with using drum loops from Garage Band. Somehow it developed into a song! Not sure how the name came about, but it was probably related to a picture of a stone sculpture I took in Kyoto, which has since become one of my main images for hieronymous:



So it is kind of a special song for me.

I just posted a soundclip to my soundcloud page called triple doubleneck. It was recorded with my 1975 Alembic Series I doubleneck, which I acquired in 2006. This is a very historic instrument - I have heard from someone with the company that it was the first doubleneck that was ever built, even earlier than the near-mythical "John Judge" doubleneck.

The doubleneck has - you guessed it - two necks: a six-string bass on top, and fretless four-string on the bottom. As far as I have been able to figure out, the six-string used to be tuned like a Fender Bass VI - in other words, like a guitar, but an octave lower. Another way to put it is that the bottom four strings are the same as a regular bass guitar (EADG) with high B & E strings. At some point, a previous owner had it restrung more as a baritone, A-A, so in between a bass and a guitar. The six-string neck is 30" scale, like a short scale bass. I keep meaning to have Alembic re-work the guitar back to regular Bass VI tuning - I can't really come to grips with the A-A tuning.

The fretless neck is 34" scale, so regular long scale. The fretboard is blank, but it has markers on the edge of the fretboard at each fret. One interesting feature of this bass are the "bird" tailpieces - definitely not standard issue! I wonder if it might be the first "pistol grip" upper horn...

The reason the track is called "triple doubleneck" is because when I first recorded it, I posted it in two sections - I called the first "single doubleneck" since it was just the fretless by itself, then called part two "double doubleneck" - when I put it all together, the answer of what to call it seemed obvious!

In making this post, I remembered that I posted about it several years ago (before this journal became exclusively about music) - click here for more details and pictures!

I've had an idea on and off to try and post some music each Friday, but it hasn't happened. Friday seems like a nice day to post something new (or at least relatively new), but with everything that's going on in "real life" it's just too much. I have some ideas, but often the idea never materializes into reality. It's hard enough to get some time to just listen to music, let alone create something new. Today turned into a "listening day" - drove into San Francisco and managed to get to Amoeba on Haight Street. They often have more than the Berkeley store, so not only was my wife able to find stuff she was looking for, but I was also able to pick up the recent King's X live DVD/CD set, but also a couple of Soft Machine releases - a live DVD from 1970 that is amazing so far (only able to view the first 20 minutes or so) and a live CD re-release from the late '70s. We also went to Tyler Florence's store in Mill Valley to look for a birthday present for a friend (can't tell you who until after it's done!). Here's a shot on the way from San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge:



So I'm tired, as much as I would like to record some music, I think I spent most of my energy listening to music, so it's gonna have to wait until later, plus I have a cat in my lap...

I got so excited to have new strings on my 4001 that I recorded a short sketch! I call it, "a free one". I actually have a bunch of stuff posted at soundcloud - take a few minutes to check some of it out.

Not much to report - just cleaned up my Rickenbacker 4001 - it was kind of grungy after my last recording session at Robot Envy Studios in Berkeley last August with Greg DeGuglielmo. The strings were completely dead and so dirty that it was hard to slide my fingers along them! Not necessarily a bad sound with the dead strings, but to me the Ric begs for bright new roundwounds a la Geddy Lee or Chris Squire.

Here are a couple of rare pictures - rare because I rarely take off all strings at once:





(I like the composition of this photo with the color of the bass ("Autumnglo") and the color of the wall in my house)

Also listening to Soft Machine's fourth album, ironically entitled Fourth (though it looks like 4 on the album cover). Been meaning to write a post about the Softs - held off from listening to them for many years, not sure why, but really got into them the past few years. After the third album (Third of course!) they were purely instrumental, veering very close to jazz but of course electric, and yet not "fusion." Anyway, that's a tale for a later time!