Happy Jack

I don't know why anyone is interested in this ... he hasn't even bothered to label the control knobs. 🤨

Damn! Rumbled ...

The three I'm working on first are the ones that will support our first release, timed to coincide with a radio broadcast on 6th December. Until then, it would be a bit premature to publish. Rest assured, they're coming towards you down the cliff like a landslide ...

So here we are, 10 days later. I now have a new PC with a spec broadly similar to that mentioned many pages ago, and a paid-up version of Reaper 6.0. I've barely left my study (also known as 'the upstairs landing') for the past week, I ache all over, my beer consumption has soared, and I'm going cross-eyed. But I have now edited video. Feel free to share my joy.

Basically it comes down to mic'ing up the drumkit and that's just one logistical exercise too far for us! It would also ramp up the pressure on us quite considerably at each and every gig, most of which will of course produce no moments that will turn out to have been worth all the extra effort. There comes a point where you have to remind yourself that you're not Francis Ford Coppola ... this is a rockabilly band playing the Dog & Duck. 😎

I'm sure you're right but I just haven't got that far. Whatever I do with applying FX (such as the Zoom function) the FX instantly applies to that entire track rather than to just the portion I want affected. Very frustrating at first, but it has led me to be a bit more creative. I now zoom in on the guitarist for the entire song and save that track as GitKam, repeat for each of BassKam and DrumKam, and then I can crossfade between the five cameras quite freely. The tricky bit is having to decide in advance which shots I want from each of the virtual cameras, so that I can discard the unwanted bits before I load everything up for the main edit. That way, instead of loading up 5 x 1.6Gb, I can load up 2 x 1.6Gb and perhaps 3 x 500Mb.

I've pretty much lost the last three days of my life doing a self-imposed crash course in Reaper v.6 and I'm pretty impressed. I don't make as much use of hard edits as you do (I tend to crossfade everything even if the fade only lasts a tenth of a second) and the video that I have used as source is from only two cameras. That means that I've had to create several virtual cameras by using digital zooms within the source video. When shooting in low light, that does rather mean that the quality goes a bit stinky poo! Your use of multiple cameras seems to have sorted that issue very neatly. I particularly like the positioning of DrumKam. How many tracks did you end up using in Reaper? I've also found that I have to be quite canny in preparing my materials. For my first attempt I (eventually) loaded up FIVE 3-minute videos, being the two source videos plus three virtual cameras, each of 1.6Gb. So it crashed of course. My new editing PC has 16Gb of RAM and a GeForce 1660 Super graphics card that can handle 6Gb. I'd love to share some of my output (gosh, I'm so proud of myself!) but there are reasons why I can't share it here until after a radio program on 6th December.

I'm guessing it's now a 3-string to suit players with bigger hands?

The real issues will be, how are the handles attached and what sort of Tolex has Alex used. 🤨

I do hope you'll be sure to remove any traces of magnesium or nitric acid before you start work ...

Didn't make reserve with a bid at £360, relisted without change.

So Lennon and McCartney's scouser accent doesn't make the grade for this topic?

I have to say, the first thing that popped into my head was ... that will be one heavy bass!

What language was he speaking? Didn't sound like Japanese (to my untutored ear) and was so littered with isolated English words (Jazz, control, humbuckere, etc.) that it was hard to work out what was going on.

This Listing Is At The Wrong Gig

Too tired to post when I got home last night, but it was a cracking gig to a full (for a given value of 'full') house of genuine music fans ... my second post-Covid gig at that pub and they were two of the best I can remember. Landlord reckons he won't now be able to re-open until after Xmas and he thinks the same will be true of a lot of places. I hope he's wrong, but he's very well plugged-in to the Herts. music pub scene and I suspect he knows what he's talking about.

Erm ... a covert what exactly?

June 2021 is beginning to look dodgy too. Have you considered 2025?

At least it will make a good yarn.

Start with the chords, always the chords. Once you know the chord sequence, many basslines simply fall into place.

Well if the whole country goes back into bloody Lockdown on Wednesday, then all optimism will be sadly misplaced.

I gigged last Sunday, I'm gigging tonight, and I've just landed another gig for Tuesday. What's more, two of these three are actually paid gigs!

Fair enough. I emailed them yesterday. Let's see what - if anything - comes back.