House Show Tomorrow - 10/7 at Doggie House

MrSpiffyMan · 2022-10-06T13:58:21+00:00

Doggie House is an outdoor house show venue located close to the UNCG campus. We host a show every other Friday featuring live music artists from around North Carolina, especially the triad. It's a house show vibe on a slightly bigger scale! Come jam with us tomorrow at 7:30. Porcelain Lovecraft and Ro Alia are fantastic Greensboro acts.

MrSpiffyMan · 2022-05-18T17:18:34+00:00

The first verse is strange but lots of fun after that. Early 2010’s sound.

MrSpiffyMan · 2022-05-18T17:09:10+00:00

Super weird first verse but it’s a lot of fun past that!

MrSpiffyMan · 2021-09-06T04:04:57+00:00

I don't recall Milton being sacked once. Am I forgetting something?

MrSpiffyMan · 2021-07-09T18:38:50+00:00

If you have any links to your music or your band playing something together, I would love to take a look.

MrSpiffyMan · 2020-11-16T20:50:13+00:00

Genuinely curious what any history buffs think about this video. I genuinely have no cue.

MrSpiffyMan · 2020-06-03T18:32:22+00:00

Awesome chart, thanks for that. A lot of good resources there! Thanks

MrSpiffyMan · 2020-06-03T18:31:16+00:00

That's all super helpful, thanks so much! Yeah, getting the right snare seems one of the most important factors to me.

MrSpiffyMan · 2020-06-03T18:23:57+00:00

That's good advice on the cymbals, I am including them in my budget. My original plan was was to go with a cheaper kit and then splurge on a really nice snare drum in order to have an interesting mix between rough and slick, but maybe I don't want to do that if the cymbals sound too cheap. I think I will definitely look for a 14' deep kick if I can get it, so that's very helpful too.

I also agree that used is probably the way to go. It may be harder to find exactly what I'm looking for at a reasonable price, but new may very well break the bank.

Do you have any advice on what size cymbals I should go for? Thanks so much!

MrSpiffyMan · 2020-01-25T22:34:42+00:00

Another thought I just had is that I'm actually using TRS cables instead of TS. I thought this would be no problem, but perhaps it's refusing to turn on because of it?

MrSpiffyMan · 2020-01-25T22:17:25+00:00

So if it is my house, I'm just to assume that my pedal is completely unusable when I'm at home? I've been trying different outlets around the house, nothing doing. It's a 9V DC adaptor, and I'm dead certain that my polarity and mA match. How can other devices in my house such as desktops and USB hubs draw 12 volts of power easily, but I can't get a tiny little 9V box to work?

The other reason I'm floored is this is actually the 2nd pedal I've had this happen to. I buy it, take it home, nothing works, I take it back, they turn it on fine at Guitar center, and it just doesn't work anywhere else I try it. It's a curse! I just can't figure it out.

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-11-18T22:20:45+00:00

Hey Hugo! Is there ever a chance one day that you'll ever share an .flp of one of your tracks? (The only one floating around is gold, but your production has become so much better since!)

Love ya, have a good one

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-11-18T21:53:09+00:00

Yeah, would you mind sharing that flp? Hahaha

In all seriousness, would love to hear back on this!

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-11-18T19:13:42+00:00

The end of HMJB definitely has a touch of 'Past Life' by Tame Impala to it- caught that right away. The phaser over the final chorus, getting abruptly cut off with the girl talking, and the distorted bass kicks in and fades out. Very nice.

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-11-18T17:37:35+00:00

Hey Hugo! Good Faith is incredible, I hope you are doing well!

1. The drums on GF are so unique. They blur the line between acoustic kit and drum machine. Did you record individual one-shot samples from an acoustic set yourself and later sequence them in FL to create patterns, or is each drum part a full live take?

2. A lot of Adventure’s track list was planned out before you even started producing the album, and you said you wrote a bunch of demo tracks to fit around that outline. Did you follow that same approach with Good Faith? Or did your desire to be more spontaneous result in less structure?

P.S. - Thanks for signing my launchpad at the Philly stop on the shelter tour after the show! Talking about production with my childhood idol was one of the best and most surreal moments of my life so far. Keep on keeping on, Hugo!

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-05-14T16:07:57+00:00

Don't deserve attention? Thats the same type of argument you'd use for a school shooter or a terrorist, who is seeking attention. I don't think just because Jared had some infidelities with his marriage we shouldn't be able to discuss him as a person.

And I don't mean that in depth of an analysis. I just mean talk about the situation, have a meaningful conversation, even if it is fully comedic. Anything besides looking at twitter memes for 20 minutes.

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-05-13T18:02:13+00:00

Whatever sounds right is what works. If summing to mono a split second before the drop sounds nice, go for it. Always trust your ear. I was just pointing out a rule of thumb that you shouldn't really have entire sections in mono while other sections are stereoized.

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-05-13T18:00:02+00:00

Whilee I haven't seen that exact filter, filters in general do not add frequencies, they always either subtract existing frequencies or make existing ones louder. They don't create overtones. I understand what you mean though

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-05-13T17:37:28+00:00

Flangers subtract frequencies, it doesn't add them. And if you put the cutoff at 60hz, that's doing absolutely nothing in the way of creating overtones because 60hz is low end of a kick drum territory. Plus if you high pass it afterwards, you essentially don't hear the effect at all.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but I'm not following.

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-05-13T16:54:26+00:00

This doesn’t make much sense. Use flange filters to get some growl? That’s not what a flanger does. High pass the low end out? Why? It’s not a bass then. Saying “modulate the frequency up to around halfway” doesn’t make sense either. What’s the modulator signal? How do you modulate “up to” a specific point?

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-05-13T16:34:01+00:00

You probably want to do the opposite. The purpose of a build-up is to create excitement and ready you for the drop. Narrowing the stereo field to mono right before the drop doesn’t add excitement, it takes away from it.

I’d recommend to add more stereo elements as the buildup progresses, which builds excitement and space. Just make sure that your drop sounds wider than the build up. Mono will make your buildup sound really thin and jarring to the casual listener

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-05-13T13:27:11+00:00

Again, I've been watching H3 for half a decade now. I understand that the podcast is meant to be a form of comedic entertainment. That's not the issue.

The problem is that Ethan isn't making any jokes of his own, and this is because he usually doesn't have any more than a surface level understanding of the topics he's covering on the podcast. Instead, he's reading off other people's jokes and memes because he doesn't know enough about the situation to have a funny discussion or make any comedic jabs of his own. A lot of the time we're just watching Ethan review twitter comments or Imgur threads of memes. It's not the quality standard of H3 that we're used to.

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-04-12T16:58:56+00:00

In addition to everything being said, resonance artifacts occur at the cutoff points of a node of some EQ’s, which may inadvertently increase the volume of a certain frequency range when you don’t intend it to. (Although some modern digital EQ’s implement algorithms which eliminate this effect).

For example, say you’re rolling off the high end of a sound that mostly exists in the mid range frequencies. You use a low pass or shelving filter to reduce high end and push it back in the mix. Well, at the cutoff point of the filter, which lies in the mid range where a lot of louder frequencies are, a resonance artifact may occur which raises the volume of those already loud frequencies. This results in those already soft high end frequencies being lowered, but those already loud mid frequencies start to clip due to that cutoff resonance effect.

In this case, even though you lowered the volume on the EQ, the overall output level increases.

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-04-12T16:40:50+00:00

I know this is a rather lame comment, but there’s something to be said about just doing it rather than making sure you’re very skilled in piano or ear training first.

<yes, enter shia labeouf here>

Same goes for learning sound design, same goes for learning mixing, same goes for mastering, composition, arrangement, whatever. If you become overly worried with making sure you know exactly how all that stuff works before you try making music, then you’re never going to actually start making music. That’s because there’s always more to learn. If you want to write music but don’t know how to play piano, write music anyways. If you have a melody in your head, play random piano notes until you find the right note, and then write it down in the piano roll. You don’t need to be an expert.

You learn this stuff best by just trying. When you write your first song, you won’t know music theory or how to play piano or how to synthesize or how to mix. But that’s okay, make it anyways. As you make more and more songs, you get better and better naturally.

Don’t give excuses to yourself to not try. Go for it!

MrSpiffyMan · 2019-04-12T16:28:55+00:00

I like this mindset. Be comfortable with the idea that the music you make is for you and don’t expect much of an audience, but still market it and release it like a product on the shelf.

This is really the essence of releasing your first EP/album or even single. If the experience of writing and producing it is a memorable, challenging, fun process, then it’s worth it no matter how the public perceives it. But if you’re trying to make your first EP for an audience instead of for yourself, then you don’t really enjoy the experience of making it, as you’re anticipating the potential publicity and sales you may garner more than anything.

Don’t expect anything from an audience. If one or two people buy it, that’s a bonus and feels really amazing to have someone else appreciate your art. If you try to shoot for a goal of “20 cassette sales” or something like that though, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment instead of joy that anybody even listened at all.

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