Women More Ravenous for Music Sites | Nielsen Wire

Women More Ravenous for Music Sites | Nielsen Wire.

Music To My Ears – Advertising Amplifies Sales | Nielsen Wire

Music To My Ears – Advertising Amplifies Sales | Nielsen Wire.

Clash of the Cover Songs: The ‘Hallelujah’ Edition – Spinner Canada

Please, nobody ever cover this song again. K?

Clash of the Cover Songs: The ‘Hallelujah’ Edition – Spinner Canada.

DIY Music: A wicked tour promo from a publicist

I get a MILLION emails from publicists every day, asking me to cover their band’s upcoming Toronto show, interview them, blah blah blah. Usually I ignore them (unless it’s something I’d cover anyway) and usually they’re just emails or phone messages.

But, I just got this from a publicist in the states and it totally worked. It helps that he’s also a smokin’ hot Canadian actor… but truly, great idea.

Busy Busy Busy Little Bees

Phil and I are… Our CD release is November 13 so I am to busy to blog right now, but will again soon.

xo

p.s. and apparently too busy to proofread my own posts. TOO! I meant too, not to! What kind of effing journalist am I?!

DIY MUSIC: A toilet bowl mandolin… now I’ve seen everything!! (And I’m totally going to make one.)

This is probably the coolest DIY instrument site I know of, even though it’s actually an Argentina comedy musical troupe’s website and has few instructions on how to build these wacky instruments.

But, browse through the instruments on the Les Luthiers website at  http://www.lesluthiers.com/frame_instrumentos.htm (navigation is all in Spanish but it’s on the left side.)

My favourite project-to-be is the toilet bowl mandolin.

Les Luthiers toilet bowl mandolin

I don’t understand Spanish at all so I put it through the Google translator and this is what it sketchily returned:

The instrument can easily guess the kind of object that formed the basis for its construction. Indeed, this is a common table “toilet” that you stick a peg on mandolin, a bridge with microafinadores and 8 metal strings which cover an area of one octave. Lacking tastiera strings can be struck only “air” which limits their tessitura of those 8 only notes. It has been used in two books: Introduction to the Martial Arts and Loas to the bathroom. His interpreter is Carlos Lopez Puccio.

I think I get the gist of it…

ILYT ADVENTURES: When the S and the P wanna kick with me in the recording studio… or at least the S is kickin’ it with my gap teeth. Did Salt N Pepa have this problem?

Did you know that people with a gap between their two front teeth — like me and, ahem, Madonna – have a bit of a disability when recording vocals? Neither did I!

I guess it makes sense, but I just never thought about it and I guess other engineers I’ve worked with just haven’t been ballsy enough to say “Stacey… there’s no foam shield in the world that can stop the hissing from between them buck teeth of yours.”

But, there IS a quick fix! While recording in the studio at 6 Nassau in Kensington a little while ago, our producer Sandro pulled a MacGyver and sent Phil on a convenience store mission for some plain ol’ chewing gum.

While many people dread the P’s and the popping sounds they tend to make, it’s the S’s that get me all riled up. The problem is simple: there’s air sucking and blowing through that little space and it creates a little whistle. While it’s not always noticeable in person (except when saying she sells sea shells by the sea shore), it is very noticeable on recordings.

Sssso, if you’re sssick of ssswitching microphones and filters and foam pieces in sssearch of a hissslesss sssound, here’s an awesome quick fix!

DIRECTIONS:

1. Take one stick of chewing gum.
2. Rip off a tiny piece, about a quarter of the stick.
3. Chew it.
4. With your fingers, stick the little chewed piece right in the slot between your teeth.
5. Mould it right against your teeth so it doesn’t get in the way of your lips in the front, or your tongue in the back.
6. Try singing a little tune and see if it’s too hard to sing with it, it slips out of place, or you can still hear the hissing.  Add more gum, or less, depending on what you need.
7. Once you’ve got that perfect combo, roll tape and start singing! I made it through about 6 takes of songs with one piece, so it can last a while before it disintegrates between your teeth. And yes, that did happen. Yum.

Gap-toothed singers of the world unite!

Phil recording in the studio

SM

DIY Music: More Musical Sawbservations: Two Shows, Two Saw Sounds, One Night.

Last week I played two very different saw shows in the same night and it led to some interesting sawbservations.

The first show was with Calamity Royale at one of Toronto’s most magical music venues, The Music Gallery. It’s actually a working church that can be booked for shows and it’s really quite stunning. We played with the amazing Willow Rutherford and Montreal’s Music for Money (whose lead singer is actually a human drum machine and it’s mind-blowing).

Anyway, our band consisted of a cello, double bass, horns, Calamity on piano and my saw. Without drums, and with the obvious acoustics in the church, we just used a condenser instrument microphone clipped onto the saw — which should have been completely enough. However, I learned that as much as a saw sound is meant to carry in a space (which is why it doesn’t work well with contact mics… you to pick up the sound from the air and not just the vibrations of the object) it still could have used the duo setup with vocal mic. Some people mentioned it was a bit quiet.

Then, I rushed to The Tranzac for a late-night set with The Lipliners, which is where I usually have the hardest time amping the saw. The Lipliners is basically a mini-orchestra with tons of people on stage and lots of loud instruments in a small room.

As I’ve mentioned before, amplifying the musical saw in a large/loud band setting is a real challenge because: Having to crank the sensitivity of the mic(s) allows for a lot of bleed-in from louder and neighbouring instruments, especially the drums (sit behind the drums if you can) and, it’s always a challenge to hear yourself in the monitors.

But, The Lipliners’ super sound man Colin had an idea for the second set. He suggested we plug the clup-on mic directly into a bass amp (still no vocal mic) and then he sacrificed a good chunk of the sound in the monitor for room sound. (It’s also important to note that just because your band can’t hear you, it doesn’t mean the crowd can’t hear you. Get the sound man or a friend to go back and give you a subtle hand signal if you’re getting self-conscious.)

The result was wicked. The saw could REALLY be heard, so much so that I actually got a bit self-conscious and started worrying about overplaying or being obnoxious (mostly because knowing I was missing a lot of monitor sound made me have to be extra careful with how loud I was giving ‘er.) But, everyone commented that it sounded awesome and Ronley said she could finally actually hear it.

So, who would have thought — surprised by a night of sawbservations again! I love this instrument. It definitely keeps you on your toes!!

And, speaking of really bad yet awesome rap…

Check out these guys.

WTF Music: Why You Shouldn’t Date Musicians

I’m suffering from a bit of an awkward heart today and once again swearing off musicians (but we all know how long that lasts) so while joking around, I typed into Google “Why you shouldn’t date musicians.”  (As if I don’t already know, but y’know.)

This adorable 2005 article by Damian from OK Go came up first (below) and it gave me a good laugh, so I thought I’d share it. So cute!! Even though he’s a musician, I’d date him just for this article

Why You Shouldn’t Date a Musician