So a pretty exciting musical weekend for me this past Fri and Sat. Friday night at North Bar I opened for the local Chicago funk band KongFuzi with about 30 minutes of my BEATBoX SAX stuff. I played some of my original tunes, some 80s covers, and a couple of Christmas tunes with a beatbox twist. I also had a new friend of mine, Bryant Smith, sit in on trombone for a couple of tunes. He's done a good deal with traditional voice beatboxing, and so I've been encouraging him to try some of those techniques on the trombone. This of course is much easier said than done, but I'm really excited about some of the sounds he was starting to create in only 10 minutes of trying it out I'm really looking forward to experimenting much more with him in this style. Maybe some duo street performing coming soon (weather permitting)?
Saturday was a really long, but really good day. I left the house at 9am and didn't get back until 2:30am the next morning. What'd I do all day? Basically three things: teaching, rehearsing, recording. In the morning I taught a few private lessons in Wheaton, IL. After lunch I got with Hayden Ashley, Nate Mark, and Kevin Campbell at the Music Garage, a huge rehearsal space bands can rent out. This is the group of musicians with whom I now co-host the weekly Space Jams at North Bar on Tuesdays (9pm every week). We picked a few tunes to talk through and rehearse that we would then record that night for a demo album. With it we hope to seek out other gigs or residencies (playing weekly or monthly at a club or restaurant).
So that evening we went to SoundScape Studios, where for the next 6 hours we would set up our gear, record some tunes, snack on Teddy Grahams, listen to playbacks, rerecord some tunes, sit around talking about documentaries, listen some more, record vocals onto our Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds cover, etc. Here are a couple of pics:
So yeah, despite the process taking a bit longer than we maybe first thought, I think we were all pretty pleased with the end result. We'll probably be posting these tracks somewhere soon, so definitely keep an eye out for that.
Oh, and a pretty funny thing happened as we were wrapping up after 1am. I went out to the nearby bus stop to text in the bus number in order to see the estimated arrival times. I entered in the bus number and hit 'send'. After waiting a little while I retried the text again. Finally this message appeared at the bottom of my phone:
What?! Wow, the Chicago bus system has gotten a little harsh with their notifications!
But then I noticed to whom I actually sent the text. No, not to the CTA, but to my trombone friend Bryant...at 1:06am. But hey, he's a gigging musician so that's like dinner time for him, right?
(By the way, in case you were wondering, Bryant, the bus did come. Ha!)
Saturday was a really long, but really good day. I left the house at 9am and didn't get back until 2:30am the next morning. What'd I do all day? Basically three things: teaching, rehearsing, recording. In the morning I taught a few private lessons in Wheaton, IL. After lunch I got with Hayden Ashley, Nate Mark, and Kevin Campbell at the Music Garage, a huge rehearsal space bands can rent out. This is the group of musicians with whom I now co-host the weekly Space Jams at North Bar on Tuesdays (9pm every week). We picked a few tunes to talk through and rehearse that we would then record that night for a demo album. With it we hope to seek out other gigs or residencies (playing weekly or monthly at a club or restaurant).
So that evening we went to SoundScape Studios, where for the next 6 hours we would set up our gear, record some tunes, snack on Teddy Grahams, listen to playbacks, rerecord some tunes, sit around talking about documentaries, listen some more, record vocals onto our Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds cover, etc. Here are a couple of pics:
So yeah, despite the process taking a bit longer than we maybe first thought, I think we were all pretty pleased with the end result. We'll probably be posting these tracks somewhere soon, so definitely keep an eye out for that.
Oh, and a pretty funny thing happened as we were wrapping up after 1am. I went out to the nearby bus stop to text in the bus number in order to see the estimated arrival times. I entered in the bus number and hit 'send'. After waiting a little while I retried the text again. Finally this message appeared at the bottom of my phone:
What?! Wow, the Chicago bus system has gotten a little harsh with their notifications!
But then I noticed to whom I actually sent the text. No, not to the CTA, but to my trombone friend Bryant...at 1:06am. But hey, he's a gigging musician so that's like dinner time for him, right?
(By the way, in case you were wondering, Bryant, the bus did come. Ha!)