Pasquale Spending time lately with a small Roland AC-33 and RC-50 looper. Finding chords jamming over the top- working out ideas. Its fast and fun...
Very little set up time - just plug and play. Sometimes its the simple things that make it all work!
Mornings like this are the images of songs...
Pasquale I had the chance to meet friends at the annual FZB (Feuerzangenbowle) celebration. The group has been meeting in the desert for the past ten years. This year it was held at Swansea, AZ - now a ghost town. It was a copper mining camp back in 1907 - the BLM has taken good care of the area and set up camping locations. The views were impressive at sunset. We had the chance to hike to the top of the highest peak ( Clares peak) what a view! It was F'n cold at night - really cold... Everyone hung out around the campfire at night until they were tired. There were a select few of us who stayed up into the wee hours of the morning, watching the moon rise above the mountains, marveling at the open sky and a million stars, sharing stories and laughing, music and yeah drinks!
This video is from one of the nights, when our host cooked up the (FZB) flaming drink - that warmed everyone on this cold desert night. I played the Taylor guitar along with a Roland battery power amp and looper. I jammed well into the morning hours. This video was shot hand held by my good friend Chris Marzonie, with his Canon 7D camera. See more of Chris's fantastic photography here - www.chrismarzonie.com
Enjoy this unedited - shot from the hip - awesome cool video...
Pasquale After a year of jamming on open tunings and working out new chord structures and patterns, I am firing up Logic Pro and getting busy recording tracks. I am going to start backwards and lay down acoustic guitar parts first, then work on percussion, drumming and keyboard tracks. Then if I need to, re-record the basic guitar parts if they don't sound strong enough. I sometime like to work this way as its more creative and less technology and more creative. Compared to many of the other music creation apps out there, Logic Pro is very intuitive and fun to work with.
I also have many past tracks and audio samples from previous work that occasionally I like to slip into the process. On set pf tracks in particular was something recorded 12 years ago in my past stuido "Mister E" The tracks were recorded by my Friend and music/tech genius Steev Dinkins at HolyZoo he was working on tracks with his drummer KennyPardo and I asked to sit in with my 12 string and see what happens. Kenny was amazing and put down some awesome trakcs. 12 years later I found those hidden files, listened and thought? "Hey this is good stuff..."
... Yeah, time to create new music.
Pasquale I have always had wanderlust... from an early age of 12, when I hitchhiked to my first concert festival in Watkins Glen NY and saw many really famous superstars from that era. Since then I have always traveled from here to there and back again. The backroads are the most interesting, this is where you will find everything from Americana Diners, Retro Kitsch, small towns and ghost towns - to the Coconut Man (more on him in future blogs)
;)
My road trip back from Sedona was filled with highway obstacles, back roads, desert sunsets and camping by the Colorado River at the border where Arizona meets California.
Everything comes together when that fat old sun sets into the west and night time arrives. As the camp fire light and smell of the river moving by, make for a superb backdrop for endless solo guitar playing, writing and working out new material.
...I have always had wanderlust.
