After a lot of planning, promotion, practice and worry, the show in Ottawa last night went pretty good I think. It was the first real club gig with the new band and I was surprisingly happy with the sound.

The crowd was energetic and fun, if not as large as I had hoped from the amount of frigging time I put in promoting it. Lots of people sang along with my songs and knew the words and I guess that might be the best feeling in the world.

I still feel scared having a laptop on stage. I wish I had a better solution but I don't. I love computers and am good with them but that also makes me aware of how easily they can fail. When girls are dancing on stage all I can think about is "I hope they don't accidentally yank out my firewire cable." So, not exactly a carefree experience.

But it was good. Total success basically by all goals I set for it. And I'm looking forward to Toronto next Saturday. And then more shows?

All I've been doing lately is trying to promote my upcoming shows (July 31 Ottawa! August 7 Toronto!) Previously I've been lazy about show promotion due to insecurity and shame but desperation has once again won out.

I'm pretty sensitive and protective towards people who subscribe to my mailing list. I don't want to piss them off with bullshit updates or waste their time. This is mostly an issue when I have an occasional show - nobody cares if there's a show far away from them that they can't attend and it's annoying to get those emails. So I built this mappy email signup thing which you can see on my live page.

I've built up a good number of email addresses in there and they're targeted nicely. Anyone in there has specifically entered their email address and selected their location. That's about as opt-in as it gets in this world. "Please contact me if Brad Sucks is in this area, no fooling."

So while I went about contacting folks I tracked the event detail clickthroughs with a url shortener and the results were disappointing:

CAMPAIGN	CLICKTHROUGH RATE
Listmessenger Ottawa	8%
Listmessenger Toronto	16%
MailChimp Ottawa	10%
MailChimp Toronto	3%
Eventful Ottawa	0%
Eventful Toronto	0%
TOTAL	5%

Listmessenger

First I sent email the way I usually do -- I use Listmessenger from my server. I've had suspicions for some time that my mail was not getting to most people on the mailing list but I didn't have anything super important going on so I didn't stress about it.

The clickthrough rate for Ottawa was 8% and 16% for Toronto. From what I can see that's not a bad rate for your average semi-spammy email list. But again - this one is as targeted as it gets. Why isn't it much, much higher?

Eventful

I have a decent number of demands over on Eventful. I've bitched before that they don't give me access to my demanders' email addresses (and was laughed at by the CEO for the suggestion I should have them if Eventful gets access to them). I sent out mail to my fans in areas in and around Ottawa and Toronto. For Ottawa and Toronto both I received zero clickthroughs. For Toronto I got 1.

I'm pretty shocked at that. What's the deal? Did the emails bounce? Are the addresses invalid? Are the Eventful emails getting marked as spam? I have no way to know. You fire your message to people who have demanded you in the area and that's that. Hope for the best.

Anyway I've put the Eventful widget up places (including my live page) thinking it couldn't hurt but I think I'm done with that. No point gathering fans through a service if I can't reach them.

MailChimp

Frustrated with these results I signed up for MailChimp. It's a pay mailing list service that's been highly recommended to me and they appear to have a great reputation. My best guess was that ISPs were maybe shitcanning my emails? Anyway, I bought some credits and sent out apologetic new versions of the emails to the same lists (removing anyone who replied that I knew had received the emails).

This time Ottawa got a clickthrough rate of 10% and Toronto got 3%. So it got me some extra eyeballs but it wasn't a huge improvement.

In the end

 

Out of all the fans in and around Toronto and Ottawa who voluntarily gave me their locations I have been able to contact only 5%. Awful.

Of course I feel bad for selfish reasons - I want these shows to go well, I want lots of people to come out, I want them to be a success. I've rented the club in Toronto and I'd like to not lose money. And psychologically a lot is riding on them for me. These will likely determine if I go ahead with some tour plans next year.

But I also feel like I'm letting these folks down. They've specifically asked me to tell them if I'm playing near them, which is such a nice thing for them to ask. I've promised to tell them when I'm in town and now I feel like I'm not able to hold up my end of the deal. That sucks and I have no idea what to do about it.

Venue: Cafe Dekcuf
City: Ottawa, ON
When: July 31, 8pm
Cover: $10

Event listings:

Facebook
MySpace
Eventful
Upcoming
last.fm

I happened across Bobby Owsinski's blog when he replied to my review of one of his books. Lately he's been posting links to a lot of isolated parts of songs with his comments on them, which is really interesting if you're a recording nerd. Here are a few of my favorites:

• "Enter Sandman" Isolated Vocal
• "Ticket To Ride" Isolated Vocals
• Foo Fighters "Everlong" Isolated Drums And Vocals
• Michael Jackson's "Beat It" - Isolated Drums
• "Won't Get Fooled Again" - Lessons From The Isolated Guitar

And here are links to the categories themselves:

• Isolated vocals
• Isolated guitar track
• Isolated drums

I hope he keeps it up. Also: I find the amount of reverb on older vocal recordings to be crazy!

Venue: The Tranzac Club
City: Toronto, ON
When: August 7, 7pm
Cost: $12

Event listings:

Facebook
MySpace
Eventful
Upcoming
last.fm

Trying to remember to blog things when I go out in to the really real world:

On May 17th I was on a panel at the Toronto Audio Engineering Society. I'm never sure about these things - I always feel like I'm just a mouthy imposter on panels but it was fun regardless. I tried to go to a 'taco bar' and it was closed. :( The panel was recorded and is up on torontoaes.org somewhere. Oh and I met Phil who was on the panel with me and now we hang out all the time and are buds. Here he is dancing:

On May 27th I was on a phone-in panel for the Open Your World forum talking about Creative Commons. One thing I like about panels is that when they go well there's a lot of interaction. On the phone that does not really happen. I wanted to debate with Daniel James as he seemed to be saying making easier to use music tools is a bad thing, but the phone made it weird. But I got to be on there with Curt Smith from Tears for Fears and am now lying to everyone and saying him and I hang out all the time and are buds.

On May 28th I was a (special!) guest at Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm's concert in Ottawa. We played SOS by ABBA (my and TheHipCola's cover of which can be found here). Paul and Storm particularly took it to another level with their accompaniment -- and the melodica/acoustic guitar/kaossilator/tamborine solo we came up with moments before the show got big laughs. The audience was so polite it made me nervous I would disappoint them with my life choices.

(Photo credit: WTL)

Then. on May 29th I did the first Brad Sucks show with the new band (Ben on acoustic & electric guitar, Justin on drums, myself on electric and two computers and keys) at the Dandelion Festival/VegStock. Here's me and a bit of Justin (drummer) and also the laptop (laptop) in the paper:

With only a 15 minute turbo setup/sound check I've come to believe it was a success even though there were some hiccups. I feel decent about the sound and will have some shows to announce soon. But I would like to have longer sound checks from here on out, please god please.

On May 30th I purchased Red Dead Redemption and spent the next few days drinking and completing it. It was very fun but Jesus Christ, lay off the cutscenes there Rock Star Games. I mean I have to watch a poorly paced ten minute cutscene and then I have to ride my horse next to a guy for another ten minutes while I listen to dialog? NO. YOUR SIMPLE PLOT DOES NOT REQUIRE THAT.

And this week it's all been trying to book shows and working on music.

On Saturday (June 12th) I'll be backstage at WestFest trying to resist annoying Sloan.

Long ago I received an email from a nice young Spanish lady named Elisa who asked if her and her friends could use my song Dropping out of School for a lipdub (aka lipsync) video contest for Citroen. I said yes because I say yes to everything. They did this video:

Which I thought was so awesome. Then I got word that they won the contest! And they won a cruise across the Mediterranean Sea! To which I was invited since I technically participated in the project. But Citroen did not offer to fly me over there so I declined because I am not rich. Then the awesome group of Spanish folks asked me for a photo of myself so they could take it to the award ceremony. And they've sent me a bunch of photos:

Here's me and Elisa (I think) hanging out by a car. Hey car, what up. Hey Elisa. Thanks for holding me.

I'm always awkward at social functions and this one manages to be no different.

Is that dude trying to pick my nose?

Hanging out by the snack trays is why I don't fit into those tiny jeans anymore.

We're going on a cruise! I'm going to get so drunk. On the Mediterranean!

Not sure what I had for dinner but it's pretty clear I've been ditched. That centerpiece is interesting.

The regular t-shirt store only has the products I design in it. So it's annoying to make one of every product with every design. So for the next month I'm trying out this make your own merch thing:

Select from the three Brad Sucks designs and alter their colors -- add your own designs and text, select any product they'll fit on. Let me know what you think.

This video got me all nostalgic and thinking about the audio devices I've had over the years:

It's hard to remember the order of all these but here's what I can piece together:

• PC Speaker on my 4/8mhz (turbo) LANPAR IBM PC - It was nearly intolerable to listen to but I still enjoyed it, I thought it was amazing and I found music like the Monkey Island theme (in the video above) and Leisure Suit Larry's theme very catchy.
• Covox Sound Master - This was only supported by a few games and was probably the first time I was burned by buying new hardware that wound up gaining no popular support.
• CMS Game Blaster - I had this instead of an Adlib card. The Game Blaster had less support than the Adlib but technically sounded better. I wouldn't say I got 'burned' but I definitely should have gotten an Adlib instead.
• Sound Blaster - The Sound Blaster was supported by nearly all games, which was great. This was the my first "painless" experience with PC audio. (Not sure if this came before or after the Gravis Ultrasound.)
• Gravis Ultrasound - I was into game development at the time and got a free one of these from Gravis's developer program which was awesome. I seem to remember upgrading the onboard RAM but I have no idea why I would do that. The Gravis had OK support but wasn't as universal as the Sound Blaster I believe. It could play MODs and S3Ms (could the Sound Blaster? I can't remember), which was fantastic.
• Sound Blaster AWE64 - I was trying to "get serious" about music production. I got a RAM upgrade for the AWE64 so it could load larger Soundfonts. I never really used Soundfonts much.
• Various onboard sound devices - Computers became powerful enough I didn't need specialized hardware for games and MOD/S3M trackers.
• Echo Darla (20 bit) - this was my first "pro" sound card, with low latency drivers and so on. It was expensive and it was such a bastard. It conflicted with nearly everything in every system I ever put it into. When it worked it was great, when it didn't I was in a world of IRQ conflicts and buffer sizes and beta ASIO drivers and random crashes and bullshit. I still have it in a box and when I look at it my eye twitches.
• M-Audio Delta 66 - This is what I'm using now on my desktop/recording machine. I should have bought the Delta 44 instead since it was $50 cheaper and I never use the Digital I/O. But it's been rock solid and I've had no problems. I think about upgrading sometimes but I can't think of any reason to.

Also additional mobile devices:

• Edirol UA-1EX - This is a little USB gizmo that works pretty good, low-latency ASIO performance to any device I've tried. I bought it thinking maybe I'd use it for live performance but it seemed a bit un-pro. Now I use it on my live synth computer plugged into a DI and it's been working well.
• M-Audio FireWire 410 - I bought this for live performance and it was way too erratic. It would click, crash and sometimes just not be recognized by the computer. I went through several different FireWire cards and eventually gave up.
• MOTU Ultralite mk3 - More FireWire awfulness initially - had to buy a FireWire card for my laptop with a Texas Instruments chipset. Then a weird German adapter to keep the card from wiggling around in the slot. Now it's been rock solid stable - as long as you keep the wifi on the laptop disabled or else it emits an intermittent high pitched sound.

Man, that list makes me frustrated just looking at it.

Here's a demo for track #2 off Guess Who's a Mess:

In Your Face (demo)

Usual disclaimers: mix was quick and dirty, I have no talent, etc.

Despite some shows coming up in the next few weeks we decided to try and add some lead synth to the set at the last minute. I had been playing solos on guitar but it doesn't have the same feel.

So the past week and a half has involved me trying to put together a stable PC running Windows XP, Reaper and various VSTis that can reliably run headless (no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse). ASIO drivers are provided by an Edirol UA-1EX as the ASIO4ALL drivers were too clicky and laggy.

The plan is then to cram all that into a 2U rackmount server case and then stuff that into a gig case for an instant on, portable, minimal worries synth machine. It would be great to get a solid state hard drive to minimize the moving parts, but my budget for this is low as balls.

As you can see from the photo on the right and my torn-up bloody hands (not pictured) it's been a struggle to find a combination of working spare parts. I thought I had solved it all a week ago but the motherboard I was using was only USB 1.0 and would intermittently flake out with the M-Audio Axiom 25 I've drafted into service.

Of course I'm currently running the show off a laptop but I felt having it do synth duties as well was too risky. At least this way if the laptop fails we can still put on an OK show. And if the synth machine fails I can still shred out some crappy guitar solos. If both fail, I will just run away from the venue as fast as I can.

I'm coming out of hibernation soon. So here are some places I'll be:

• May 17 - Toronto, ON - Toronto Audio Engineering Society: I'll be speaking on a panel on May 17 from 2pm-4pm. It's called "How You Are Delivering to Your Market", a topic on which I am clearly an expert since I have not delivered anything to my market lately. More info: torontoaes.org
• May 28 - Ottawa, ON - Jonathan Coulton: My pal Jonathan Coulton will be in town and I will be there. There was some talk about doing a song together but I'm not sure what's happening there. We're doing a song together, who knows what it could be!
• May 29 - Kemptville, ON - VegStock: This is an outdoor music festival that happens right around the corner from my house. It'll be the first show with the new band and will be kind of a disaster test.
• June 10 - Montreal, QC: There's a potential show in Montreal for this date but it's not 100% yet.
• June 11 - Ottawa, ON - The Cajun Attic: This will be a show.
• June 12 - Kingston, ON - The Mansion: This will be another show.

I'd like to get to Toronto and maybe a few other places this summer but I am not the greatest booker. If you have any hook-ups let me know.

If you happen to be any of those places, please say hi.

Update: June 10th, 11th and 12th shows are no longer happening!

Update #2: Updated the Jonathan Coulton show to confirm my participation.

I bought a Zoom H4N field recorder a few months ago. I wanted to broaden the sounds I use in my recordings and do some experimental stuff. I don't have a huge field recording passion - I'm not very interested in recording a storm or a train. But I do like recordings of people behaving naturally. It's been fun, the quality is great and listening back to most recordings I feel like I'm in the room again. Which for a lot of situations is more interesting to me than taking a photograph as far as capturing a memory.

So here's a montage of some of the recordings I've done with it since I got it:

Field Recording I [5.4 MB]

• [0:00] Justin (my drummer) has a giant, giant empty room in his basement. This is me trying out the reverb in it.
• [0:05] At a Barn practice I made some jokes about Bryan Adams and then wound up singing Summer of '69.
• [0:25] And then "Run To You" but I couldn't remember any of the lyrics really.
• [0:39] Then, after being exposed to a bunch of ska recently, I suggested the worst combination in the world might be a ska version of Bryan Adams' Everything I Do, I Do It For You. [1:03] And then we improv it.
• [1:28] Total Breakdown in Brad Sucks practice. Next time I'm gonna feed the computer output (vocals and synth) into the H4N. I think that'll sound better.
• [1:55] Rehearsal of I Think You're Alright for a performance a few weeks ago.
• [2:31] As a favor I did sound for a bluegrass show by Yonder Hill. They needed eight microphones but they were very good. This is them doing "Beefsteaks When I'm Hungry, Whiskey When I'm Dry". There is a banjo solo.
• [2:54] My guitarist Ben and his wife performed an intimate Valentine's dinner-music show. This is them covering Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles. On this one I fed the monitor output into one of the H4N inputs so the vocals sound a lot clearer.
• [3:28] At Brad Sucks practice: Ben randomly plays an Irish jig riff, Justin says "dance, leprechaun, dance", and I yell "WHERE'S ME GOLD" in my evil leprechaun voice and then the delay from the microphone makes us all giggle.

It's a sweet little device. Main complaint is I wish it powered up quicker.

I've been asked where my Rock Band tracks are. Why are they not in the store since independent tracks just went live and they looked pretty good in my preview back in November?

I asked and basically: the play-testing process is super slow. We're hoping this'll speed up as interest in the Rock Band Network increases but unfortunately have no idea when they'll be up. Baaaah.

My synth programming knowledge is spotty at best. I usually roll through presets and tweak the knobs a bit and call it a day. So I'm really enjoying this Synthesis Made Simple series over at Waveformless. I couldn't find a post on there with a chronological list of the articles, so I've made one here:

• Welcome to Synthesis Made Simple
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 1 - Overview
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 2 - Oscillators - Meet the Waveforms
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 3 - Oscillators - Combination Style
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 4 - Bring the Noise - Noise Generators
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 5: Intro to Filters
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 6 - Types of Filter
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 7: An Introduction to Modulation
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 8: The Envelope, Please
• Synthesis Made Simple: Part 9 - Your Friend the LFO
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 10: Using Modulation Practically
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 11: Putting it All Together
• Synthesis Made Simple Part 12: Where Do You Go From Here?

I own several books by Bobby Owsinski and since I've been putting a live show back together I bought his new book and DVD: How To Make Your Band Sound Great.

I wasn't sure what to expect. The new live show's sounding pretty good I think and I've got a fair amount of experience on stage now but figured it'd be worth checking out.

Good Stuff

The most useful sections in the book for me were his technical descriptions of dynamics and playing "in the pocket". Bobby talks a lot about playing "bigger" rather than louder or faster which has been an issue I've struggled with. For instance I liked this observation about why a lot of musicians feel like the life's been sucked out of their performance if they aren't playing really loud:

The internal dynamics of each individual usually go out the window. Instead of playing crisp yet quiet, with the same attacks and releases the band had at the higher volume level, the attacks and releases get relaxed so the playing becomes less precise. The real trick is learning to actually play with the same intensity at lower levels.

Makes a lot of sense. He suggests plotting out song (and set) dynamics on a 1-10 scale and to make sure the band members agree on what the levels on the scale sound like.

Bad Stuff

But besides a handful of useful tips, the book is geared towards the beginner. Repeated admonitions to tune your instrument, turn off your cell phone, take vocal lessons and be a professional might be useful to some readers but they seemed obvious to me.

The included 60-minute DVD of Bobby coaching a band rehearsing a song is interesting, but could easily have been edited down to around 15 minutes, which would have made it more effective and reduced my exposure to ska considerably. Cuts back and forth between the earlier and later (improved) performances of the song would have been a helpful demonstration.

Conclusion

It's not a bad book, I'd recommend it for a complete beginner. But it made me more aware of questions I had going in that it didn't answer. I'd love to see another book that dealt with situations that are more geared towards laptoppy Internet recording artists who are branching out into live performance like:

• How to deal with a laptop on stage - my first few times out I had issues with only having unbalanced outputs.
• Backing tracks. How many outputs to give the house, how to treat them, how much backing stuff to include.
• How to simulate band dynamics with drum backing tracks or a drum machine.
• Vocal treatment & effects. Especially in small venues I've found running my vocals through a compressor/limiter helps my vocals sound more like the records.
• How to handle crappy sound guys. (Constructing an alibi, body disposal, etc.)

I'm sure it would be a huge, huge money-making hit.

Totally not dead up in here. Stuff I'm working on:

New music

It's being worked on. I had a slow start in the new year but I'm back on track finishing up demos for the new album. See photographic proof:

I'll post stuff as I finish it, which better be soon if I hope to be nearly finished this album this year.

Live show

The live show is coming along nicely and is basically ready to go. It's myself, a laptop, a drummer (Justin) and a guitarist (Ben). I think it's sounding a lot closer to the albums than the last live setup that was more of a garage rock version of the songs (which was fun for me but apparently not what most people wanted to hear). I just got this book today so you know it's serious.

Figuring out what to do with my live show

Did you know I'm not at all popular in my home town of Ottawa? That sounds amazing but it's actually true. Gigs here are generally both empty and demoralizing. So I'd like to actually play for some people and maybe make, rather than lose, money.

Apparently I'd do well in places that are very far from my home but I'm not sure how to get the live show there without losing a ton of money also. And furthermore: money.

Recording a band

There's a band I know (and like) and I'm recording their album. They're pretty different than my stuff so I'm learning a lot. How to record a drum kit, how to record a rhodes piano, how to binge drink, etc, etc. I just bought this book so you know it's serious.

Boring stuff

I've been trying to be better about a lot of areas I'm bad in. Bios, photos, t-shirts, promo and so on, they're tedious and boring processes and I don't want to talk about them. I also bought a car. And an iPhone.  And we have a new foster dog (our fourth!):

His name is Milo. He has no home but he's hanging here until he gets one.

Hey, there's a new Brad Sucks t-shirt. Here's the design:

Designed by Brandon Ortwein, it's $16 and looks best on black or navy blue.

There is nothing about this Spanish lip dub of Dropping out of School that doesn't make me smile:

From Elisa, one of the authors:

We hope you like it! :D I'm sorry, the dubbing itself it's not really that good -_- first of all the audio is not well synchronized and second one is that Spanish people are not that good at English lipdubbing, I guess ^^U haha! But we hope you enjoy it anyway!! :)

Rad.

So Brad Sucks should be coming out of live show retirement this year. There's an interesting show I've been offered but I need to gauge interest + probably sell tickets in advance to make it happen. Here are the potential details:

• The show would be at Beau's All Natural Brewing Company in Vankleek Hill, Ontario.
• There would be a round trip bus from Montreal or Ottawa (depending on which city has more interest.)
• Cost would be $30, which is your cover and a brewery tour.
• It'd be in the spring or early summer.

Anyway, please let me know if it's something you'd attend. Thanks!