Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 11:51 pm Post subject:
In the making: t.o.t.s. “TROTW”. Post 8:
So a lot's been going on this past week...
Big Apple Underground - Winter Wasteland Compilation:
Martin Atkins is back in NYC next week doing a lecture for Tour Smart and I was asked to help promote the event and possibly help out with the night. I offered to run the merch table in exchange for the ability to hand out t.o.t.s. promo stuff along with all merch sold. So, I needed something last minute to give away so I decided to create a last minute promo compilation. The compilation is a quick assembly of acts I'm directly involved with to some degree or another... t.o.t.s., The Qualia, Hate in the Box and Mr. 1234. Two tracks were supplied by each act. Got the news about the lecture at 10:00 PM Sunday, by 2:00 AM Monday morning the comp was ready for production and a website supporting the compilation was thrown together. There will only be 100 copies of the compilation made and they will be free to anyone at Martin's Seminar on Monday, December 10th @ 5:00PM. The seminar will be held at Lit Lounge @ 93 2nd Avenue, NYC. For more info on the "Big Apple Underground: Winter Wasteland Compilation" check out:
http://www.bigappleunderground.darksonus.com
The Ghost of Adrenalinn Past:
After seeing the Adrenalinn pedal in action during our many Qualia practices in the past few weeks I decided I needed one for t.o.t.s. and so I wrote to a random post on the San Francisco Craigslist. When I got a reply from the seller it turns out we knew each other from 11 some years ago. His band Family Auto Group had opened for the pre-t.o.t.s. band "Blood in Vain" at a show I produced back in 1996 and we had performed together again later for an experimental one-off called "Elohim" in '97. After chatting a bit we've decided to start shooting some material back and forth. I have no idea what the end results are going to sound like but aside from playing in 3 bands right now, working on the new CD and a new soundtrack... why wouldn't I start up a new project? This is precisely why we need a good manager... I apparently have massive ADD or something. Oh and the pedal is on the way .
Clowns of Xmas Future:
Just finished production on Blights new film this weekend, a bizarre rendition of A Christmas Carol... with a cast of clowns! The shoot ran about 16 hours this past Saturday and will probably occupy a good deal of time in post. Blight directed the film and will be handling all of the CGI, compositing and editing for the project. I did all the live sound and will be composing the score this week. Other past t.o.t.s. contributors were in on the fun... Elias (BiFF JUGGERNAUT films) was on the set cast as one of the clowns, Rainbow Blight (Hate in the Box) handled all the make-up chores and also appeared briefly on screen, Jerrod (director of the recent film Marathon that featured t.o.t.s. music) handled all the AD work and turned in a great performance and Kalin was behind the camera once again... you've seen Kalin's handy work on the recent t.o.t.s. photos. The guy is awesome. Anyway... you'll be hearing a lot about this film as post-production continues.
That's about it for now... that and I'm pretty sure I've figured out an excellent way to restructure the entire recording industry. I'm writing notes on that as we speak. It'll probably end up as an article on DarkSonus sooner or later. I've already got some programming pals o' mine working on a potential interface to test out the idea.
rock!
-chvad
COSTS:
Total Album costs so far: $2297.00
add $35.00 for my 1/4 of the compilation cost.
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2007 10:58 pm Post subject:
In the making: t.o.t.s. “TROTW”. Post 9:
Got a little side-tracked from the new t.o.t.s. disc for a bit with Blight's "A Clown Carol". I *just* finished the original score for this short... I think I started it just a day or so after the shoot. The entire score was composed using RGC Audio's SFZ+ VST in SONAR 4 using only free soundfonts from various sources on the net.
I think with our genre something like sonicbids is less usefull then say if you were a rock band. I highly doubt most industrial/ebm promoters use it or most industrial bands. I think its also overpriced to join and try out if your not a band that plays out allot and would just use it for a tour every few years to promote an album.
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 10:39 pm Post subject:
You have a really valid point. I am going to try and promote heavily "outside the scene" for the next release though and that's one of the reasons I thought I'd hold onto it for awhile. The new CD covers a lot of ground in other genres and I'm hoping I might be able to garnish some appeal in other areas. In the end people may look at it and just say "industrial" and there's nothing wrong with that but I'd like to give it a shot and see what's up. Especially billing us slightly differently when approaching clubs and playing with different types of acts. I don't know how we'll get by the whole "crazy clown/straitjacket guy" thing with promoters but I'll deal with that then . _________________ totsland.net / chvad.com / 8bitaudio.net / thequalia.com / invisiblerecords.com / wtiirecords.com
HARD: Moog LP, Etherwave, SCI Six-Trak, Roland RS-09, Crumar Performer, Kawai K5000s, Kawai K1r, Yamaha TX81z, Korg EX-8000, µwaveXTK, Ion, K-Station, KS4, Jomox Airbase 99
SOFT: Guru, M-Tron, VSM, Abysynth, FM8, Massive, Pro53, V-Station
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 12:08 am Post subject:
on 8-Bit? Er? On my 8-Bit audio site?
Yeah yeah... IM ALWAYS BEHIND SCHEDULE!!!!! I should just shut my fucking hole when it comes to dates!!! Lesson #1: I cannot EVER create in a timely fashion. I have TRIED AND TRIED but the shit only comes when it wants to. Man.. I want this thing finished so bad IT HURTS! _________________ totsland.net / chvad.com / 8bitaudio.net / thequalia.com / invisiblerecords.com / wtiirecords.com
HARD: Moog LP, Etherwave, SCI Six-Trak, Roland RS-09, Crumar Performer, Kawai K5000s, Kawai K1r, Yamaha TX81z, Korg EX-8000, µwaveXTK, Ion, K-Station, KS4, Jomox Airbase 99
SOFT: Guru, M-Tron, VSM, Abysynth, FM8, Massive, Pro53, V-Station
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 12:25 pm Post subject:
In the making: t.o.t.s. “TROTW”. Post 10:
So it's been a bit since the last update... I'm not even sure where to begin. We've made some great progress on the "The Return of the Wetlands" but as usual there is still more to go and again, as usual I've managed to occupy my time with way too much stuff. As the album currently stands, there are 4 completely wrapped tracks, another two that should be done as of this weekend and a group of others in various stages of development.
Time time time... working on bringing The Qualia to the stage has been long and challenging so far and has also occupied a great deal of time. Also.. to make matters even more dense, the other band I play in "Mr. 1234" has resumed practice again after a brief hiatus. Working in both bands in addition to t.o.t.s. is both a good and bad thing. Good in that I am always engaged differently... bad in that time is extremely critical now more than ever due to there being less of it available. I am also working on yet another soundtrack for another indie horror short... the good news is that these tracks will be rearranged into material for "The Return of the Wetlands".... that's pretty exciting for me because I've been wanting to do some material like this for a while and haven't had the need to push myself to try it out. It works REALLY well in my opinion and the couple of tracks this soundtrack has inspired for t.o.t.s. are pretty fucking cool.
To make matters even more dense, I am now writing equipment reviews for a magazine in NYC, LA and SF called "The Deli". Great that I will be able to acquire more gear to work with and I will be able to supply DarkSonus with a steady stream of reviews which is cool. ALSO... I have started to design a new product that will be useful for musicians of all kinds. I have had a couple of development meetings with a few engineers that are interested in helping me develop the item. I don't know how realistic it is right now to assume it will actually be made but I'm trying. Aside from that, I agreed to build a new website for my friend and AMAZING horror comic artist Jeff Zornow. Id' do it anyway because he's a cool guy but we're working this out in trade for some art for "The Return of the Wetlands"... I now know no matter how bad the CD will be, the art will be EPIC people. This guy is bad ass.
About doing stuff aside of t.o.t.s. and how it affects (or how i BELIEVE it affects) t.o.t.s.: It's always been my belief that being omni-present is the best way to deal with promotion. Even though my playing with other bands like The Qualia and Mr. 1234 doesn't directly push t.o.t.s. anywhere or get the album done faster, it will ultimately place ME in more locations at once... eventually. The more places I am, the more places t.o.t.s. is.. in terms of exposure, contacts and overall "viewability". The other bands successes by proxy become my own in an indirect fashion. Same with working on film projects, soundtracks, reviews, etc etc etc.. My writing an article for Martin got me an invite to write for another magazine that now gets me more exposure and access to more equipment.... so how does that NOT affect t.o.t.s.? Maybe having all of this going on alongside the album writing process isn't the best timing but beggars can't be choosers... being omni-present ain't easy.
Anyway... aside from all this shit, this past week I've been noodling with a bizarre t-shirt idea inspired by a nightmare my girlfriend had last week that I am now going to use an excuse to test out a new company for manufacturing t-shirts. If they look cool I may use them for a new batch of reasonably priced t.o.t.s. merch. Similar to the Cafe Press business model of "made to order" products but with what I consider to be a potentially superior product and far superior prices. They are called www.spreadshirt.com and I'd recommend any other bands to check them out... this is the first shirt design:
It can be ordered HERE.
GEAR GEAR GEAR...
In the past month or so I have gotten rid of my Yamaha CS6x in trade for a Novation XIOSynth, purchased a new volume pedal, a new reverb, a new pedal case, another Edirol controller that sucked and thus it was returned, bought a Chroma Polaris, some new power distribution cables, Mic signal splitter... maybe some other shit but I can't remember right now.
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 4:37 pm Post subject:
hell yes!
It a shirt design he did for Fright-rags.com
He also did a super cool creepshow shirt and return of the living dead shirt as well. What's cool is.. every month Jeff gets more and more cool gigs... lots of comics on the shelves... he's is SO on the edge of blowing up right now. It's cool to know someone becoming truly successful in their field. _________________ totsland.net / chvad.com / 8bitaudio.net / thequalia.com / invisiblerecords.com / wtiirecords.com
HARD: Moog LP, Etherwave, SCI Six-Trak, Roland RS-09, Crumar Performer, Kawai K5000s, Kawai K1r, Yamaha TX81z, Korg EX-8000, µwaveXTK, Ion, K-Station, KS4, Jomox Airbase 99
SOFT: Guru, M-Tron, VSM, Abysynth, FM8, Massive, Pro53, V-Station
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 11:01 pm Post subject:
In the making: t.o.t.s. “TROTW”. Post 11:
HAHAHAHHHAHAA!!!!! Finished a new track today.. "Whatever Happened to Carson". I'm fucking jazzed about this song. Everything worked out perfectly on it. This fucker has been a sword in my side for a while. A lot of guitars and a lot of ebow action... and that was the problem. i needed some new stuffs to make the tone of the geetar perfect and the tech21 reverb worked like a charm.
Still a lot of work left to go but there's a shit load of tracks waiting to get mixed so... baby steps and all.. the CD is coming along nicely.
Finished the mix with a bad case of SHINGLES BTW. Shit hurts... More on that HERE.
That's it.. now it's off to get my character up to level 60 in Mass Effect!
Gear list:
Added a BYOC wah to the mix ($100.00)
Previous total: 3005.00
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 6:26 pm Post subject:
In the making: t.o.t.s. “TROTW”. Post 12:
Mobile tech and t.o.t.s....
So while the CD is still being slaved over I decided to take a break from it this weekend to work on new tech for t.o.t.s.. Basically, I've been looking for ways to integrate news distribution for t.o.t.s. and thanks to a wicked new service www.utterz.com I'm one HUGE step closer. This is seriously cool. With one transmission either from a computer or phone I can send audio, video, still images and text to a number of resources I frequently update including wordpress, flickr, youtube, myspace, yahoo groups, livejournal, facebook, twitter and more. I'd love to just have one source of info distro to cater towards but it's a HUGE assumption to make that anyone, even a fan, would like to go out of their way to get info on your project. That being said I believe that a sound promotional strategy in ANY medium is to be as omni-present as humanly possible. This certainly helps. This ALSO has the great benefit of being timely as it's integrated intimately with mobile tech. If you are on the road, you can easily keep a steady flow of band/art related content happening from where you are without any extra gear... just a phone. Show updates... news to the fans, cancellations, cool pics from the stage.. WHATEVER. I'm WAY excited about using this on the next tour.
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 5:11 pm Post subject:
In the making: t.o.t.s. “TROTW”. Post 13:
Mistakes not to make while recording... and the benefits of listening to your brother.
So for the past 18 months we've been recording the new t.o.t.s. album. I don't like to play live or practice while I'm recording... it's hard enough for me to focus on recording t.o.t.s. and playing with two other acts to have it all happening at once. That's me though... and it was a totally fucked decision. Turns out the rest of the band HAS wanted to play and practice while working on the recording... my brother in particular expressed this to me and honestly, I felt like a real asshole. As a result, we've moved into record/practice mode right now and I have to admit, I couldn't be happier. The current line up of Blight, Lars, Ericah and myself is EPIC. Without ANY reservations I can safely say that this is the absolute strongest lineup that t.o.t.s. has ever had. This hasn't been really evident to me up until now.. we usually record in pairs or individually so all four of us aren't ever present while in the studio recording (another mistake but with a decent chunk of material left to record this will be changed). Anyway... the practice sessions have been amazing. The combination of personality types in the same room working on these songs has taken them all to new heights, old tracks and new. There's no way I could possibly convey my enthusiasm adequately in this post, but I promise promise PROMISE you, you will see it on the stage and on the new release (whenever we're done!).
A follow up on the mobile blogging dealio I mentioned in the previous post... I built a new site www.chvad.com that is loosely based around the ideas mentioned above. It's structured around utterz, wordpress, blip and flickr. The site isn't really band related... more of a personal site for me and updated via mobile almost 90% of the time. Experiences, images, videos, whatever.. sometimes art related sometimes just shit with friends. It's got information about all the other stuff I'm into and will eventually get a little more filled up and organized. I'm slowly noodling with it so we'll see what happens.
Lights lights lights...
I am considering moving my current lighting platform over to a PC based solution to consolidate what we have to deal with live a little better. I've always been into lighting but this could potentially be a pretty costly endeavor so I'm moving slow...
In other non-t.o.t.s. news:
We've finally found a drummer for The Qualia (Chvad on synths) and we've bumped up the practice time a lot for this act so The Qualia should be performing live pretty soon in NYC and surrounding areas. More on this and shows dates when they happen...
Mr. 1234 (formally The 1234, Chvad on guitar) has booked a couple of private shows to test out our new lineup. Of the three acts, Mr. 1234 will probably be the first out of the gate to resume playing live.
When the doors open it's going to be a floodgate of live shows around the east coast for all three acts.
That's it for now.. I'm sure there's lots of other shit to mentioned but there's always another post.
Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 2346 Location: Brooklyn, NY.
Posted: Tue Jul 01, 2008 7:01 pm Post subject:
i guess that's just how I function... it can suck at times but I can generally manage it ok. So long as I can watch an episode of Justice League every once and while I should be cool. I was a bit of a freak at practice last night though... totally exhausted. I had a 25 mile bike ride just before practice.... BAD idea.
BTW.. Im in Chicago July 22nd through the 27th! On work related trip but I should have some time to hang! _________________ totsland.net / chvad.com / 8bitaudio.net / thequalia.com / invisiblerecords.com / wtiirecords.com
HARD: Moog LP, Etherwave, SCI Six-Trak, Roland RS-09, Crumar Performer, Kawai K5000s, Kawai K1r, Yamaha TX81z, Korg EX-8000, µwaveXTK, Ion, K-Station, KS4, Jomox Airbase 99
SOFT: Guru, M-Tron, VSM, Abysynth, FM8, Massive, Pro53, V-Station
All times are GMT - 5 Hours Goto page Previous1, 2
Page 2 of 2
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
.
