Burnt Fingers Session

Date: 13/10/2007
Location: Dance Studio

Sorry! Its been too long since I’ve blogged the Douglas Furs action. We’ve been practicing! I promise. And we even recorded. It’s been 6 months since our last recording session and we were itching to get back in the saddle. Its just a shame it wasn’t as good as I hoped. Don’t get me wrong, the session went well (I haven’t listened to the results yet though) but it wasn’t as smooth as our previous session.

So I’ll be spending this weekend cutting up tracks to throw into iTunes and probably upload to Virb or somewhere. I’ll be sure to let you all know where to find them.
DF Out

Phew! Its hot at Robannas

Date: 7/8/2007
Location: Room 7, Robannas

After one hell of a hiatus, we finally got back together for a rehersal. It took a while since Rich Bitch seems to be out of order at the moment (why can’t we find out whats going on?! Oh yeah, too lazy).

Anyway, we tried out Robannas in town (which is NOT next to Sound Control, despite somone’s instructions). Anyway, we made it there, hiked our gear up the mountain of stairs and got our room (you pay at the end..intriguing). The room left a lot to be desired. It was small, which wouldn’t have been such an issue had the sun not been blinding us and making the room unbearably hot. So much so that we were all sweating like pigs. The gear wasn’t much good either. The bass amp and head were a bit dated, and didn’t seem to do a lot, plus the volume was all over the place. The guitar stuff was much nicer. The PA for the vocals?! A joke. The system was older than my amp, half the switches and dials were missing and the sound was just awful.

Anyway, we made do (even me without a tuner…probably was a bit off) and played our way through the usual songs. To be honest, our playing was rubbish. The vocals were rubbish. The room was too hot, we were all exhausted. It wasn’t pretty

But it was good to get back together and play. We’ll be trying out Madhouse next time, at least until Rich Bitch gets its act in order and we can get back there.

In the mean time, be sure to check out our virb page and have a listen to our songs, add us as friends, check out the photos and watch us playing Birclock live.

Whats that clicking?

I figured it was a good time to do a general whats going on post.
This weekend my gf has gone to a work do so I’m left all alone for the rest of sunday and monday till she gets back. So what do I do? Well I’m currently blogging, been looking at some guitar tabs trying to learn some songs and just get better at playing.
Of course I’m doing this on katie’s Macbook. Why not mine? Because my poor powerbook is suffering again. On friday it started acting really slowly. I thought maybe the swapfiles were just too huge so rebooted, and then it was all downhill. It took forever to boot and was really REALLY slow to respond. I’ve tried a few things to see whats going on, but can’t figure it out. I ran FSCK to see how the disk was holding up, and it seems fine, but it is making these clicking noises all the time. I am just worried that it got wet on thursday and is suffering because of it.

What was thursday? It was the fruit of my hours spent editing video and finding the right music (copyright free of course) for this work thing in the morning, where we had to present “6 star” at our office and i had some clips of people at work to sort out. So I had my laptop with me at the hotel on thursday for the morning, and then we had a surprise event in the afternoon, which turned out to be a fun scavenger/treasure/photo/quiz trail around Birmingham. The biggest worry now is when I ran from Paradise Forum to the ICC/Symphany hall to hunt for answers and of course since the weather has been so crap, it was raining in a biblical sense. So I was running around with my laptop on my back, and I think it might be suffering because of it.

I’ve also had a stressful week at work, making these stupid packs for MR (my consultant). I’ve got about another 8 hours of solid work to do on them, and have already spent about 2 solid days, and wasted mountains of paper, due to changes in the documents being used.
This really isn’t what I want to do with my life. Its a waste of anything good I can do, and its making me miserable. At the moment I can’t leave. Well I can but I need to stick around till I find something else, or at least get my bonus in September. Then I’m out of there and hopefully the financial services for good. Its a soul sucking industry to work in, and when working with soul sucking people, who are completely two faced, and lazy to do their own job, it makes it so much worse. I want to get into IT, or perhaps even the music industry. Of course I wanna continue with the band, but if I could turn it into a way to make money for a living, then great. But for now, its a side plan.

And speaking of the band, we’re still on hiatus while moving happens. I need to speak to James and see how things are going on. I really wanna get back to things. I miss rocking out with loud music. I have been listening to the new Paramore album Riot! recently, and some other rocky stuff, and really want to get some heavy loud sing along songs. And on that side, I’ve got another song writing book. I lost my last one, which means I lost the songs I wrote. One wasn’t great, but I liked the second one, and can’t remember enough to rewrite it. So I think I’ll try some new ones.
And of course, if my laptop was functioning, I would try to record some music for it too.

Now gonna go get some lunch, eat up some left overs, and then going to see a Mac Genius to get a diagnostic and perhaps pick up a new laptop that I really can’t afford.

Go rock things loudly!

Gigs and Failed Gigs

As you will have seen on the previous post, the Douglas Furs played their first live gig to a crowd of dozens at the Bear Tavern in Bearwood on 22 May 2007.

After being the first ones there, we got on the list, went to enjoy some food while being nervous, we were told we were 3rd on the bill.
After sitting through a guy on an acoustic guitar, and a guy playing Gary Moore with his massive pedal, we took to the stage. Our set list went as Russia, Sequoia, Birdclock, and finished on Dog in a Garden.
It seems like the cowbell alone got a lot more cheers than some of the songs, which is a shame, but I’d put it down to not knowing the songs.
As said before, you can check out the photos on Flickr, or the video on Revver.

After the half-success of the first gig, we planned to return on 12 June. Unfortunately, I had a call from James to let me know that the gig was cancelled. The whole night was. Apparently there was some trouble with fighting, and the night got permanently cancelled.

And as you would have it, the Douglas Furs take a short break. The other guys are in moving season and houses are scarce, so practice and gigs have been put on hold until July.

Hopefully, we’ll be back with a bang, with a new song in tow (and one less song thanks to a missing notebook). We may even get back to record again.

So until more happens, keep listening!

The Long Winters – Behind The Scenes

Via Kung Fu Grippe

Band Recording: 6 April 2007

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now, and finally decided to.

On 6 April 2007 (mark this in your DF journal) we stepped into the recording (dance) studio and did our first ever recording. Wanna know how hi-tech it was? We used mini-discs.

The way Rich Bitch works, they have a professional recording studio, where you can pay about £400 for 10 hours of studio time to get proper recordings. Or, you can hire the Dance studio for the standard price (£12.50ph) and record for free to your own minidiscs. So thats what we did. We booked our normal 2 hour slot  and went in armed with a few discs. You can ask the technicians to come and set your levels right and then start the recording. So we got the man in, did a run through of Russia, and let him adjust the sliders and dial and switches that make us sound just like U2. There is even a Bono slider for the vocals. Weird.

Anyway, we pretty much just went through the set a few times over, took a few takes to get it right but we did each song about 10 times so we came out with a good few trials.  The session went quite well. It was cool to play on a stage, with a full rig, and monitors, and the room was really cool too. Very hip (or whatever is the cool word the kids are using)

Anyway, recording was the easy part. Since we recorded to minidisc, the trouble next we getting it from MD to my laptop (I took charge of this fun task). I did some searching and found the only way was to do it through a line -in port and a 3.5mm mini-jack. So that meant recording in realtime. So I set the thing to record, hit play on the MD player, and buggered off for a while.

A bit later, I had 3 .wav files recorded in Audicity, that I could play with. I brought them into Logic Express and just used the cut tool to snip around takes of songs, then dragged them to a track for each song. This meant I could easily export all versions of one song in one go.

After tediously listening to the whole thing (almost 2 hours) I had split the tracks. They were then exported to wav files, and i used a open source program called Max to convert them to MP3’s, and finally, imported into iTunes and set the ID3 tags. Phew!

The only problems with all this is, the recording level was low so the songs are all really quiet (at least the raw tracks), and its all as one track, in mono, so can’t do any adjustment of each instrument. To be honest, I thought the bass should’ve been louder, and I didn’t like the sound much, and the guitars were a bit loud. So some tweaking needed.

Anyway, some of those tracks are now up on Virb, and if you really want, you can have the raw wav files, and can do some editing of your own. A challenge for any amateur music producers. See what you can do. email us at douglasfurs at googlemail dot com for info.

Birmingham, Birmingcheese and then a Birmingbap

On Friday I went with Katie to see the Barenaked Ladies at the Birmingham Academy and it was an amazing show. The doors opened really early when the support, Boothby Graffoe (Musician/Comic) came on at about 8, and the doors opened at 6pm. Eitherway, it was a long wait, but Boothby was good. He did a mix of jokes, and music, but it was all musically joined. There are a few videos on Youtube so worth watching them. Ed, Kevin, and Jim from BNL came on too and played (with Ed on drums) for a song or two.

So he left, then BNL came on stage and opened with One Week, probably the most well known song in the UK after its single release a good few years ago. Without recounting the whole set list, they played a good mix of songs from all their albums, the 2 Barenaked Ladies Are Me/Men albums, Stunt, Maroon, Gordon, Everything to Everyone, Born on a Pirate Ship, and Maybe You Should Drive. We also got a few special songs, namely Feliz Good Friday (it being Good Friday) sung by Tyler. It was a lovely seasonal song, and its probably on the internet somewhere by now. We also got, what could only be a song written that day, a track by Ed and Steve about Birmingham (where the post title came from). It was funky, makes you wanna dance, and laugh, as Ed exclaimed at the price of Agent Provocateur, and Steve complains about the litter in Birmingham, and declares he carries a shiv made from a spoon.

They saw fit to do two encores, and finished off with Alternative Girlfriend. One of the great things they do is personalise the show to the fans and the city. The song certainly did that. They’re all really friendly, and there was a great atmosphere in the room, together with an immense amount of heat. One of the things which I’ve never heard anyone else do, is offer the whole gig for sale in audio on a USB drive. They’ve already sold their most recent double album via USB on their website, which gets you all the tracks in MP3, without DRM, and some great bonus features (live tracks, and some extra songs). So we got one (to go with my T-Shirt and Katie’s mug), so we can listen to the show anytime (which is so great), and also the support from Boothby.

If they’re ever in your city, its worth going to see them. Also check out the Bathroom Sessions on Revver, and their website.

Technorati Tags: bnl, barenaked ladies, boothby graffoe,

Summer time is here again

Summer has hit the UK and the ice cream vans are out. Here’s a few pre-rehersal shots of the treats we enjoyed.

You may ask why there are less pics of me. Well I tend to take them, and can avoid them.

Practice update coming soon…