Tag: jamulus

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Photo of several people, including David Johansen on the left, at the 2005 Mermaid Parade in Coney Island. One person is holding a toy, devil's pitchfork aloft, another is holding a large cardboard cutout of a key with the words "Coney Island" written on it.
David Johansen (left) as Mermaid King 2005

David Johansen died on Friday. There are much better pictures of Mr. Johansen out there, but I only have this one that I took. He was the Mermaid King at the 2005 Mermaid Parade. I first knew Johansen as Buster Poindexter, likely from his stint on SNL. It would be a couple more years before I was introduced to the New York Dolls. Rest in peace, David.

Something else died on Friday. Our President and Vice President berated an ally in full display of the media for not saying thank you. What a couple of assholes. Zelenskyy remained composed, which just made them all the more upset. One of the members of the White House’s hand-picked press pool joined in by mockingly questioning the Ukrainian President’s attire. It was a sorry display. At least everyone knows where this administration stands now, if they didn’t already. Timothy Snyder’s post, The War Trump Chooses, is a good analysis of this.

We didn’t really have quorum for our Jamulus jam this Friday without a singer, but we forged ahead anyway. Perhaps it goes without saying, but not having vocals makes it much harder to remember where the changes are. It was a good time nonetheless. I think I’m learning to project more when I sing, because my wife shut the door to “the studio” during this session. This also says a lot about the quality of my singing.

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Posting better mix for our cover of Joe Jackson’s Look Sharp! This was from a 2024 Jamulus session and remixed by my friend Todd Evans. Contrast this with my original mix here. Yes, I have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to mixing.

Look Sharp! (Joe Jackson cover) recorded from a Jamulus session on 22 Nov, 2024. Remixed by Todd Evans.

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We recorded our jam again this week since last week’s didn’t take advantage of the our multi-client Jamulus setup to separate our vocal and instrument tracks. I think it sounds better, although, one might be hard pressed to tell the difference unless they are doing the mixing.

Speaking of mixing, I think I need some guidance. This week, I bumped up the bass per request (hopefully not too much), but I’m at a loss on what to do with the vocals. I’m going to ship one of the songs off to a friend with a degree in audio engineering and a ton of experience. After he finishes laughing at my attempts to mix this, perhaps he can give some direction.

Unfortunately, there is more noise in this week’s recording. I think it’s coming from network delays. I’d like to verify that this is the case to understand if there is anything we can do to minimize it.

Here’s a taste of the session. I only flubbed a couple times. FYI, you can also check out the remix of this same track. It’s much better!

Look Sharp! (Joe Jackson cover) recorded from a Jamulus session on 22 Nov, 2024.

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We recorded the Friday jam this week, very exciting. In comparing a couple of the songs from the last recording, I did notice some improvement. Not bad for a bunch of guys that don’t practice enough. Here’s a select track from that session.

Rock n Roll Ruby (Warren Smith cover) recorded from a Jamulus session on 15 Nov, 2024.

In spite of our effort to separate the instrument and vocal tracks by running multiple Jamulus clients, we ended up with vocals on one of the guitar tracks. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice until working on the mix. It was just a setting in Jamulus we’d missed. Lesson learned: Take a minute at the beginning of the session to ensure you’re recording what you think you are.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the recording. There are a spots with garbling and noise from somewhere in the network, which is to be expected. There isn’t much audio engineering here aside the volume levels and some panning. There is some compression and reverb added the vocals. And, I tried to highlight the guitar solos. Early reviews are that there wasn’t enough bass in the mix. I didn’t want it to sound like the bass guy mixed it, perhaps I overcompensated.

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The block party is a summer tradition. Ours was on Saturday. While there was no bouncy castle, a staple of the Brooklyn block party, there were several other festivities. We just hung out on the stoop for a while and enjoyed chatting with the neighbors. We talked about lobbying for some more music programming at our end of the block next year. Maybe even a live show! I was also trying to recruit a couple people for the Friday jam sessions. I didn’t get a firm “yes” from anyone, but they didn’t say no–I’ll continue to work on them…

Speaking of the jams, this week’s wasn’t bad. We hammered through the playlist I sent out earlier in the week. The playlist keeps us on track and I hope that by rotating our growing repertoire through it that we don’t get bored by playing the same things too much or rusty by not playing some songs enough. I’m also loving the two client setup on with Jamulus. Just need to get our guitar/vocalist to do the same.

Bitter & Esters, Brooklyn’s homebrewing center of gravity at 700 Washington Avenue will be closing in October. While I don’t brew often, when I do, the ingredients and supplies come from these guys. They will be missed by many.

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