tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24202610849245108062024-02-08T14:31:28.181-05:00Deep Thoughts - Richie CastellanoNew York based musician, producer and songwriter Richie Castellano discusses music, being on the road as a current member of Blue Öyster Cult, "The Tiger's Fang" film series and many other things of a nerdly nature.Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-80183393454233632812016-03-30T13:08:00.001-04:002016-03-30T13:08:11.352-04:00Why Batman V Superman is really a battle of Fans V Critics. Spoiler: The fans won.<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last night I recorded an episode for my podcast, Band
Geek. My wife and I were joined by 4 of
our friends in my home studio. Our
mission: to give our review of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. I knew most of us liked the movie in general,
but I was expecting there to be a good deal of debate. We were down there for 3 hours! However, this 3 hours wasn't spent arguing
casting choices, or discussing what the movie was missing. Instead, we went through every major plot
point and screamed at each other like little girls in excitement. Just the mere re-telling of the events of
this movie gave us all goose bumps and nerd boners. We were all tired, we wanted to wrap things
up, but we couldn't. We were having too much fun re-living the experience of
being in that theater.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Back in April of 2015, my buddy Ray told us that they'd be
showing the new trailer for Batman V Superman (BvS) in an IMAX theater 45
minutes away in <st1:place w:st="on">New Jersey</st1:place>.
So my friends and I piled in a car and drove out there to watch 1 minute of
film on a giant screen. Were there better ways to spend our time? Sure, but
this was a lot of fun. To reward us for our geekdom, director Zack Snyder
appeared on screen and informed us that everyone in attendance would be
rewarded with FREE advanced IMAX screening tickets. What a great way to treat
your fans!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When the movie was released last week, Zack made good on his
promise. My friends and I, joined by several other mega fans wearing their
Batman, Superman, or Wonder Woman merch assembled in the IMAX theater 3 days
before the movie was released. We were
collectively blown away. The look on everyone's
face was that of supreme satisfaction, like they just ate a giant Thanksgiving dinner. As we sat there in our seats, unable to move,
we all agreed, "they finally got it right.
Marvel people are going to shit all over this."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Before I really go into it, let me explain how I feel about
Marvel movies, specifically Marvel studios movies. I really like them. My favorites include The Avengers, Guardians
of the Galaxy, Winter Soldier, and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Iron</st1:city>
<st1:state w:st="on">Man.</st1:state></st1:place> I don't really want to discuss Marvel movies
in this post, but since everyone else feels compelled to draw comparisons, I
can't avoid it. Marvel studios movies
are great. They're filled with visual
spectacles, lighthearted fun moments, characters cracking jokes at each other
and of course Scarlett Johansson in a skin-tight suit flipping her body around
thugs as she kung fus the crap out of them. I enjoy all of it. Marvel's universe building technique has
proven incredibly effective, with every movie revealing a small piece of the
big picture. I totally dig all of it.
However, while watching the Avengers together on screen, at no point did
I ever think, "This is exactly what DC should be doing." Sure I wanted to see the Justice League
assembled on screen, but I didn't want them to do anything lighthearted, and
this is at the core of the split between <st1:city w:st="on">Hollywood</st1:city>
and the fans.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you haven't heard by now, BvS has received some of the
worst possible reviews from critics and even nerd culture ambassadors like
Kevin Smith aren't thrilled with it.
However, this movie is tremendously successful at the box office and it
hasn't even been out for longer than a week. How did this happen?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I started seeing all the negativity emerge, I couldn't
believe it. Did these people see the same movie I saw? How could anyone give this a 28%? When I
started reading what these people were saying I started to doubt my own
opinions. It really soured my whole
experience. I left that theater flying high, but when the reviews came out the
next day I was completely deflated. But
then I went to twitter and searched #BatmanVSuperman. What I saw restored my hope. Sure, there were
plenty of people with Thor profile pictures who clearly hadn't seen the movie
yet tweeting about how awful it was, but the amazing thing was the amount of
fans who gathered around this movie and defended it from the onslaught. Fans V Critics was on. Sure, critics have their platforms in
newspapers and popular websites, but fans have money, and using our money,
we've already won this battle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Poor critical performance can hurt a franchise, but like
Superman, Zack Snyder's franchise is bulletproof. While the critics are using
their snarky reviews to tear down Man of Steel and BvS, Warner Brothers is
going ahead with TEN more DC Universe movies. That's right...TEN! Will they all be panned by critics and Marvel
fanboys? Probably. Will they all make
bank? Probably.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Fans V Critics is really a matter of how nerd culture is
perceived by <st1:place w:st="on">Hollywood</st1:place>.
When I say <st1:city w:st="on">Hollywood</st1:city>,
I don't mean only filmmakers, but the entire industry including executives,
media publications and critics. Nerd
culture is hot right now. Video games
are a huge industry, Star Wars is back in full force, one of the most popular sitcoms
is the Big Bang Theory, and I can watch a different superhero show every night
of the week. <st1:city w:st="on">Hollywood</st1:city> has found serious money in the pockets
of nerds. They've also managed to make
some our favorite things mainstream.
People who don't get any of the deeper references can still enjoy an
episode of Big Bang Theory, or get a few chuckles out of Guardians of the
Galaxy. I think all of this is
great. And no, I don't think my favorite
indie band has "Sold Out." As
far as I'm concerned, the more content in this genre, the better.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So if everyone is going nuts for nerd content, why are we
getting a backlash on BvS?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I read a DC comic, specifically Batman, I'm not
transported to a bright and shiny place where lighthearted humor is
strategically placed between large action sequences. I'm in the shit. Batman: The Animated Series actor Kevin
Conroy's voice is in my head conveying that the weight of this bleak and
hopeless world is on the shoulders of a man with no meta human abilities. He's
cruel, he's brutal and we love it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile Superman has all of these wonderful abilities, but
he's still tortured. He can't save
everyone, people are afraid of what he can do, and he'll never have a normal
life with the woman he loves. In recent versions of the comic he becomes so
alienated that he simply walks through <st1:country-region w:st="on">America</st1:country-region> looking for meaning in what
he does. Bleak... and we love it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">No disrespect to Lynda Carter, but Wonder Woman is not
American in the comics. She doesn't have the accent of a person born in <st1:state w:st="on">Arizona</st1:state>. She's from a hidden island which presumably
exists somewhere in the <st1:place w:st="on">Mediterranean</st1:place>. She has fought Gods and she has fought men.
She is a warrior. She punches first and asks questions later. We love it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is the disconnect that we're seeing with BvS. While the
non-nerd population thinks all comics fans are reading funny papers, we're actually
reading serious stories. We enjoy the mass appeal of the Avengers and Guardians
of the Galaxy, but when we turn off the movies we re-read our copies of The
Killing Joke, The Dark Knight Returns, Kingdom Come, Identity Crisis,
Flashpoint, etc. None of this is
lighthearted reading. In fact, it's borderline depressing...but we love it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Seeing how popular the Marvel Studios movies are, I think a
lot of us assumed we'd never get to see the "real" versions of these
DC characters on the big screen. I don't
think we expected Batman to dance around at a crime scene while listening to
"Come and Get Your Love," but we always knew we'd be getting some
watered down version of the characters. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We were wrong.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With BvS, Zack Snyder showed that he is one of us. He reads these dark comics and agrees, this
is what these characters should be.
Could he have done a lighter version? Sure, but instead he gave the fans
exactly what they wanted.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ben Affleck is perfection as both Bruce Wayne and Batman. I
feel like I have to thank Zack Snyder for proving most of us wrong in this
department. Watching Ben Affleck move across the screen in his hulking frame
and incredible costumes makes me feel like I'm playing the Arkham video games
and that's a very good thing. There's a
complaint about Batman killing in this movie.
I admit that this seemed to be an odd choice, but it's not a new
choice. Even though Batman has a famous
"no-killing policy," the death toll has been piling up since 1989's
Batman movie. Watch it again and tell me
no one dies when he fires machine guns into a parade from the seat of the
bat-wing. In the Nolan trilogy, Batman
even talks about his no killing policy, but then kills dozens off people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While they don't come out and say "Batman kills"
in this movie, they do address that in his older years he's become increasingly
cruel after 20 years in <st1:place w:st="on">Gotham</st1:place> and has been
pushed over the edge by the catastrophe in Metropolis. I can nerd-splain away all these issues,
saying maybe these people are just unconscious and that batman uses rubber
bullets in his vehicular weapons, but it's really not a huge point worth
harping on.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Let's talk about one of the biggest attractions of this
movie, Wonder Woman! While I was one of the people who thought Gal Gadot might
have been a bit too slender to play Wonder Woman. That thought did not once
cross my mind while watching this movie.
She owned the part. I LOVE the
accent. That's how it always should have
been. I can't wait to see her upcoming
solo film.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jeremy Irons was a really cool choice for Alfred. There's a shift going on in the comics and in
the <st1:place w:st="on">Gotham</st1:place> TV show making Alfred a bit more of
a bad-ass and I'm way on board for this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Henry Cavill remains to be my favorite Superman. I realize he's very different from some of
the classic interpretations but luckily we have 4 Christopher Reeves movies and
4 seasons of Lois & Clark to revisit for that version if you're feeling
nostalgic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Jessie Eisenberg delivered an unorthodox Lex Luthor
performance. I probably would have
preferred something closer to the Clancy Brown version of the character, but I
found this younger internet-era version to work really well for the movie.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Amy Addams remains to be the one casting choice I'm not
totally into. I think she's a terrific
actress, and she's fine in this movie, but it just seems like an odd
choice. I guess I just always want Teri
Hatcher to be <st1:street w:st="on">Lois Lane</st1:street>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't want to go too much into the entire cast, but I also
enjoyed the performances of Laurence Fishburne, <st1:street w:st="on">Diane Lane</st1:street> and Holly Hunter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One major complaint of this movie was its length and
pacing. I agree to a point, but as a
lover of classic Japanese films, this was nothing new to me. One of my favorite films, Samurai Rebellion,
is 90% talking. The main character gets pushed and pushed to his limits until
the last 10 minutes of the movie where he unleashes a bloody assault on all of
his enemies. I felt BvS had a similar
framework, but I would have preferred a few more action sequences to break
things up.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Speaking of action sequences, this is by far the best superhero
action I've ever seen on screen. The two
standouts for me are the rescue scene which is straight out of the Arkham video
games and the DC trinity scene which had the entire theater applauding. After watching this movie, it's hard to not
want a grappling gun of your own.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another complaint is the use of dream sequences. While I
didn't necessarily love these parts, I think it's foolish to judge them at this
point. I have a feeling these scenes are
going to connect to future movies in a significant way, especially the "Am
I too soon?" dream.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Being a musician I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the
score. Hans Zimmer and Junkie XL have
delivered a fittingly epic musical accompaniment to this movie. I bought the soundtrack right away and have
been listening to it non-stop. My
favorites are "The Red Capes are Coming" and "The Wonder Woman
Theme." It's in 7/8! Awesome!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One term I'm seeing quite a bit is that this movie has a
"lack of fun." I find this
sentiment particularly irksome. The
characters in this movie are not having fun.
It's a serious story where people do seriously twisted and psychotic
acts. Again, this isn't Guardians of the
Galaxy and it absolutely should not be.
Batman's world is broken. In the
comics, people do horrendously awful things, and I'm not just talking about
obscure comics, I mean the big ones. For
example: In Killing Joke, the Joker beats a young woman with crowbar and
paralyzes her for life. This is not fun
to read, it's horrifying, but this is a hugely successful comic book. A lighthearted, fun movie taking place in this
world does a disservice to the source material and to the fans who love
it. Even though there are many brutal
moments in this movie, it doesn't mean I was appalled or depressed while
watching it. I was having....(wait for
it)....FUN. Why? Because someone cared
enough to bring the demented world of DC comics to life without filtering it or
watering it down. I was in awe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another thing to consider is that Zack Snyder had an awful
lot of setup to do in this movie and I think he handled it rather well. Especially the way he reveals the other
Meta-Humans. Again, people were cheering
at the screen. I think it's a safe bet
to assume that once the Justice League is established, these characters will
get a littler more chummy and perhaps we'll see some lighter and friendly
banter between them. But for where we
are in the overall story, BvS is exactly what it needs to be. This universe is dark and hopeless and the
only way to fix it is for its heroes to unite.
I can't wait!</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Richie Castellano is a professional musician and
producer. He also reads comics, builds
lightsabers and hosts a riotcast show called Band Geek. When he's not being a geek he plays guitar
and keyboards in Blue Oyster Cult.</span></i></div>
Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-46529602149844767542015-09-21T10:49:00.000-04:002015-09-21T10:49:21.547-04:00Star Wars: The Force AwakensNo, not Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, just "The Force Awakens."<br />
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Once again, I find myself in the minority of Star Wars fans. I'm super stoked about a new movie coming out, but I find Disney's marketing campaign to be really tacky. (Although on a sub-conscious level, maybe I'm just pissed at them for cancelling Tron 3.)<br />
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As I've stated many times before, I don't hate the prequels at all. No, they didn't recapture what it felt like to see Star Wars as a 5 year old boy, but I thought they stood just fine on their own. In fact, I like some of the stuff in the prequels better than the some of the stuff in the originals (blasphemy!!)<br />
<br />
In case you were wondering, here is MY ranking of all 6 currently available Star Wars movies:<br /><br />
<ol>
<li>Revenge of the Sith</li>
<li>Empire Strikes Back</li>
<li>A New Hope</li>
<li>Attack of the Clones</li>
<li>Return of the Jedi</li>
<li>Phantom Menace</li>
</ol>
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Feel free to flame me for this in the comments. No I don't hate Return of the Jedi, I just like the other ones more. Personal preference. And, even though I know Phantom Menace has a ton of problems, I love Qui Gon and Darth Maul, so I'll still watch it just to see those two awesome characters go at it.</div>
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The Force Awakens is projected to earn 2 BILLION dollars! That's really incredible that in 2015 a franchise started in the 70s is still so relevant. Yes, Disney is really pouring it on with the promotional material and the toys. They definitely know what they're doing. But the thing that I find annoying is how they're not-so-subtly distancing themselves from the prequels. If you don't know what I mean, check out this video:<br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/CTNJ51ghzdY">Star Wars: The Force Awakens - Comic-Con 2015 Reel</a></div>
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"Real Sets. Practical Effects" Blah Blah Blah. To my overly sensitive ears, this is a blatant attack on the prequels. The more I hear about this movie, the more I get aggravated by this theme.<br /><br /><span style="color: red;">SPOILERS</span></div>
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<span style="color: #e06666;">So I read somewhere that this black wearing, red lightsaber wielding guy, Kylo Ren, isn't a sith in this movie. Why not? Because Sith is a prequel word. <br /><br />JJ Abrams said no mention of midichlorians will be made. Because midichlorian is a prequel word.</span><br /><br />Even the lack of an episode number shows the blatant distancing of this movie from the Lucas movies. It just annoys me. </div>
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There are several other fans that feel the same way as me. I've read several other blog posts echoing my sentiments.</div>
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<a href="http://www.thecantinacast.net/2015/05/14/hate-casual-awakening-the-prequel-shadethrower/">hate-casual-awakening-the-prequel-shadethrower</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.latinpost.com/articles/70314/20150806/star-wars-episode-7-force-awakens-spoilers-analysis-why-marginalizing.htm">star-wars-episode-7-force-awakens-spoilers-analysis-why-marginalizing</a></div>
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Even though this weird marketing tactic is irritating me I'm still excited for the Force Awakens. I guess there is some validity to Disney's pandering to the cry-baby prequel haters. They're trying to win back the incredibly small percentage of people who actually will consider skipping The Force Awakens because of their prequel hatred. All of the prequel lovers will go see The Force Awakens regardless of how much Disney insults our taste.<br /><br />On December 18th, I will going into the theater to see The Force Awakens with an open mind.<br /><br />With that being said, here are my list of demands:</div>
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1. Luke MUST be the main character of this film.<br /><br />2. We MUST see Luke do awesome "prequel-worthy" Jedi feats and not the lame original trilogy stunts.</div>
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3. Yoda MUST appear as a blue glowie to advise Luke,</div>
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4. Liam Neesons MUST appear as a blue glowie to advise Yoda.</div>
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5. George Lucas MUST appear as a blue glowie to advise JJ Abrams.</div>
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6. We MUST see 58 year old Carrie Fisher in a metal bikini.</div>
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7. Leia MUST use the force.</div>
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8. JJ MUST explain why having those incredibly dumb looking crossguards on that dumb looking lightsaber is neccessary</div>
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9. Han Solo MUST survive through this movie. </div>
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10. Boba Fett is dead and will remain that way,</div>
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11. Lando</div>
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Like I said, I'm going into this movie with an open mind. But if all of my simple demands are not met, this will go below Phantom Menace on my list.</div>
Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-59398426335687056662015-07-27T11:05:00.001-04:002015-07-27T11:05:57.184-04:00Grant Morrison's Wonder Woman comments<div>
Nerd Post:</div>
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I have a tremendous amount of respect for Grant Morrison. I don't always love everything he does, but there's no denying his genius. He has a way of presenting classic characters in new and interesting perspectives. Some of these characters are over 70 years old, so evolution is a necessity. However, his recent comments about Zack Snyder version of Wonder Woman really annoyed me.</div>
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According to Mr. Morrison, the warrior princess iteration of the Wonder Woman character is not what the original creator, William Moulton Marston envisioned for his character. This may be true, but who cares?!? This character is 73 years old. Of course it's going to go through several interpretations. If Wonder Woman stayed exactly the same this whole time, people would lose interest.</div>
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Based on a nearly 4 minute trailer in which Gal Gadot appears as Wonder Woman for a total of 1 and a half seconds, Grant Morrison has decided that this version of the character is going to be too much of a stretch from the original creator's vision. If you don't believe me, go back and watch the trailer again:</div>
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<a href="https://youtu.be/0WWzgGyAH6Y">https://youtu.be/0WWzgGyAH6Y</a></div>
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She appears in the costume for less than 2 seconds!</div>
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Now, I don't know if Mr. Morrison has access to more info than the general public, but if this is the basis for his hypothesis, then it's pretty silly.</div>
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But even if he is correct in assuming that this version of the character will be all about busting skulls and kicking ass, is that so bad? Wonder Woman was sucking wind for a very long time until New 52 creators, Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang made a few tweaks and saved her from obscurity. Their interpretation is probably the best thing to happen to the character since the animated Justice League series. If you like Wonder Woman, and haven't read their run, I highly recommend it.</div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">SPOILER ALERT*****</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #cc0000;">In this New 52 Version, they play up the Greek Mythology end of things with Wonder Woman being a demigod. It's revealed that the whole "you were formed from clay" story is a lie. Her mother, Hippolyta, was impregnated by Zeus, and desperately wanted to keep it a secret, so she concocted this clay story. When Diana (Wonder Woman) finds out about this, she is forced to deal with her half brothers and sisters on mount Olympus as she is drawn into their petty power plays. This is a particularly bloody and violent interpretation of the character, and I think that played no small part in the series' success. At one point she even becomes the God of War, and it's awesome!</span><br /><br />So, Grant Morrison, who's made a career of looking at characters from different angles, thinks this version is too far from the original creation. Again, I love Grant Morrison. I've bought a lot of his work, but I 'm calling shenanigans on this.<br /><br />Grant Morrison is coming out with his own Wonder Woman book. I'm very excited to read it and I'm sure it will be awesome. His version of the character is supposed to be in line with the original version. I think that his comments about the Zack Snyder version of the character (of which we've only seen 1.5 seconds) are nothing more than a promotional tactic. Every comics blog posted about him, and here I am writing about them, so obviously the guy knows what he's doing. So even though Grant Morrison may be the greatest comics genius of our time, he's not above using cheap promotional tactics to sell books. In fact, this was my big problem with his recent Multiversity series. It felt like a sales pitch to me.<br /><br />Things that don't evolve eventually become extinct. Look at how many different interpretations of Batman there are. This constant re-interpretation is what makes the character relevant year after year. Because we live in a time where everything is preserved, you can stick with your favorite version! If you hate Christian Bale, you can pull up the Michael Keaton version on Netflix! Think Keaton is too dark? Well, the Adam West episodes have all been digitally restored! Is Adam West too corny? Well, then pickup the animated series and experience Kevin Conroy's performance. We have options!<br /><br />Zach Snyder is carrying the torch on this characters. He is re-imagining them for new generation. As anazing as the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman was, you can't have that kind of character in a serious comic book movie in 2015. The character has to evolve. Look what happened when Bryan Singer tried to re-do the Christopher Reeves Superman in 2006. It was a horrible bomb. The character has to evolve.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If you prefer Lynda Carter to Gal Gadot, or Christopher Reeves to Henry Cavil or Michael Keaton to Ben Affleck, then guess what? All of those videos are easily accessible. Knock yourself out. They're all great. There's also a possibility that we will see more traditional interpretations of these characters on the big screen in the future. But for now, Zack Snyder's version is what these characters need to keep them alive in 2016 and beyond.</div>
Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-68323783624329788542015-04-22T14:03:00.000-04:002015-04-22T14:03:13.036-04:00What A Great Time To Be A FanboyLast week was a great geek-week. We got a new Star Wars trailer, a Batman V Superman Teaser, and a Battlefront 3 Trailer. I'm super excited about all of the comic book, sci fi and fantasy games and movies on the horizon. I'm even excited to go see Fantastic Four, which doesn't look promising based on the trailers, but it's a comic book movie and I'll happily pay my $15 to go enjoy it.<br /><br />I'm also eagerly awaiting Avengers 2 which comes out soon. I really like all those Marvel Studios movies. The movie I'm most excited about, though, is Batman V Superman. I'm a big fan of Zack Snyder's style and I definitely lean toward DC in my fanboy tendencies. I think seeing the 3 biggest superheroes of all time share the screen will be an epic event. If Snyder puts the same love into BvS as he did in making a panel by panel recreation of Watchmen, this will be truly incredible.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I know some people didn't care for Man of Steel, but I loved it. I also though Bryan Singer painted Superman films into a corner with his sub-par take on the character. Zack Snyder played the only hand he could, which was to distance himself from Christopher Reeves and Bryan Singer as much as possible. The result was a dark, violent and sort of tragic movie with heaping portions of Superman whoop-ass. I absolutely loved the Russel Crowe sequences on Krypton. I thought Michael Shannon's off-beat Zod was great, and the epic battle at the end was incredible. To the people who complain about the collateral damage in that movie, I say this....It's a movie!!! I want to see stuff get blown up! And I have a feeling that there will be repercussions for Superman's recklessness in the movies to follow, so don't get your panties in a bunch just yet. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm also hearing a lot of people say that BvS is going to suck...after only seeing a teaser. This is really silly. Why would you want a movie to suck when you know you're going to pay to see it? From what I've seen so far, I'm very satisfied. It looks like Snyder is really bringing Frank Miller's Dark Knight into the real world. Affleck looks totally jacked in that batsuit. And his anti-Superman suit looks like it walked right off the pages of Miller's Dark Knight Returns. I even went to that special IMAX trailer screening just to see 4 seconds of extra footage....and it was awesome.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
On the TV end of things, Arrow and Flash continue to crush. I'm really enjoying their shared universe. Gotham is still finding its footing. I'm not 100% in yet, but I'm finding more things to like about it. I'm even enjoying some Marvel shows. Agent Carter was an excellent mini-series which I highly recommend. I'm also a few episodes into Daredevil which is also really good.<br /><br />Basically, were at the point where you can watch new superhero content every night of the week. How cool is that?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I haven't had much time for gaming lately with my work/podcast schedule, but I continue to sneak in Artemis sessions with my friends. That game is really amazing and if you're a Star Trek fan, you owe it to yourself to get 5 friends together and try it. It's cheap, fun and excellent. It can be a little glitchy at times since it's designed to work on many different devices, but the occasional restarts are a small price to pay for the amount of joy this game creates.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
My wife is back into Diablo III. She's playing with my friends and I maintain that that's the best multiplayer console game ever. It's so easy to jump in and out of games with your friends which is so important. I think every game should be like that.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm looking forward to Arkham Knight and Battlefront 3 as I mentioned earlier. I'm really hoping Battlefront 3 offers that persistent ground to space transition that was rumored in the early development stages. We'll see.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Meanwhile there are a couple of crowd-funded games that have caught my attention. Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen both look like tons of fun. I haven't had the chance to play them yet, but I have been watching other people play on twitch. Twitch is a great streaming service for spectating video games. It sounds like a silly concept, but I really like it. It's a great way to really see what a game is like before spending any money on it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So now that the geek stuff is out of the way, I have a busy musical schedule coming. After a month off, Blue Oyster Cult is back on the road with plenty of shows coming up. I'm also doing a solo show opening for Eddie Money on May 31st at the St. George Theater in Staten Island. NY. I'm very excited about that.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We also have some great stuff coming up on my Band Geek podcast. If you haven't seen our ridiculous Michael McDonald video, please check that out here: <a href="https://youtu.be/Fu5XXkn6exo">https://youtu.be/Fu5XXkn6exo</a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
To subscribe to Band Geek, go to <a href="http://www.riotcast%2Ccom/bandgeek">www.riotcast,com/bandgeek</a></div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
-Richie</div>
Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-71399936387757248562015-03-11T16:23:00.001-04:002015-03-11T16:23:19.030-04:00Copyright ThoughtsHere are my thoughts on the Robin Thicke thing. <br />
<br />
The way I was taught copyright law, you're only violating copyright if you use the same words or melody. That's really all you can own in a song. In the case of Sam Smith and Tom Petty, it's clear cut copyright infringement. This example is not, because the melodies of the Robin Thicke song and the Marvin Gaye song are totally different.<br />
<br />
However, I think this case goes beyond a simple copyright dispute. From my understanding, you are also allowed to own the contents of a recording. This is why it is illegal to use samples of other people's records in your music without their permission.<br />
<br />
But again, this is not the case here. Blurred Lines doesn't use any samples from Got To Give It Up.<br />
<br />
So what is the deal here? If according to copyright law, you can only own words and melody, then that leaves all the other musical contributions in a song up for grabs. This is because the copyright law is an outdated law written at the birth of published music. Since sheet music only contained words and melody, the right to copy that sheet music only protected words and melody.<br />
<br />
So even though Blurred Lines doesn't copy melody or lyrics, when many people hear it, they immediately think "this sounds like Got To Give It Up." This poses an interesting problem. Should production, arrangement and accompaniment ideas be something you can own? As someone who does both these things for a living, I'd say yes. But this is a tough thing to judge.<br />
<br />
For example, Stacy's Mom copies a production genre. So should that be illegal? I don't think so. In that case, Stacey's Mom sounds like a Cars song, but not a specific cars song. It's not overtly using the same groove, or chord progressions, but it's definitely trying to sound like a song the Cars would record.<br />
<br />
Blurred Lines, copies a specific song so I think they're asking for trouble. <br />
<br />
I don't think Robin Thicke did anything wrong under the Copyright laws as I understand them. But I do think it's time to revisit these laws and create more specific language regarding what artists, writers and producers can own.<br />
<br />
Pop and R&B have become the wild west of rip off artists, and I think it's time to start dropping the hammer on some of the more blatant offenses.Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-9057120339997229582014-06-05T17:24:00.003-04:002014-06-05T17:24:28.680-04:00Band GeekWhat is Band Geek?<br /><br />It's me!<br />
<br />
I'm a Geek and I play in a Band. So...Band Geek. But, seriously, Band Geek is the name of my Podcast. I've been listening to Podcasts of all kinds for a few years now, and I decided to give it a try. <br />
<br />
This Podcast is basically what happens when I hang out with my friends. We talk about games, movies and comics, and then play music. I also teach some of the songs we play.<br />
<br />
To my knowledge, this is the first Podcast with a house band. We take requests from Facebook and Twitter and play them live on the show. This is sort of like what I used to do at the Red Lion when I was playing gigs there.<br />
<br />
The Band Geek podcast is available at www.riotcast.com<br />
<br />
It's also up on the iOS podcast app.<br />
<br />
Give it a listen, hit us up on facebook and twitter.<br />
<br />
Thanks!<br />
-RichieRichie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-21895859922361923992014-03-07T14:08:00.000-05:002014-03-07T14:08:44.663-05:00Artemis on the road!I was reading a bunch of blogs today and then I thought...wait...I have a blog too! <br />
<br />
So here I am. Not sure if anyone reads this considering I do most of my posting on Facebook, but I have a blog, it's here, it works, so I should fill it with words.<br />
<br />
Right now I'm in a hotel in Wendover, NV. We got in last night. Our show is tonight with Foghat. Last night, was amazing. I organized a game of Artemis in my hotel room. It was incredibly fun.<br />
<br />
I'm a little obsessed with Artemis at the moment. It's probably the best multiplayer sci fi game ever made. It's simple and kinda lo-fi by some of today's standards, but the game is so incredibly good that you barely notice that you spent most of the time looking at graphs and blips.<br />
<br />
I was going to refrain from describing the game on my blog, but I love talking about this game, so why not.<br />
<br />
It's a starship bridge simulator. You can connect up to 36 computers or mobile devices to a single router or you can play online. I haven't tried online play yet. To be honest I think this game is best played by people in the same room.<br />
<br />
You can have 6 stations on each ship. Captain, gunner, pilot, communications, engineer, science. There's a main viewer which gives you the space graphics that we all know and love from Star Trek. The captain gives orders and the rest of the crew has to carry out those orders on their respective control panels. It's easy to play, but has enough nuance that you can get really strategic with it.<br />
<br />
So last night we played a game with Eric, Jules, Andy, and Jimbo from Foghat. It was really fun. A great time was had by all.<br />
<br />
Go here for more info<br />
<br />
http://www.artemis.eochu.com<br />
<br />
<br />Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-10576828857572170962013-09-14T03:00:00.002-04:002013-09-14T03:00:42.424-04:00Just Checking InHello blog subscribers. I don't have anything to promote today, so I'll just say hey!<br />
<br />
I'm having a really busy month. I've been playing a bunch of West Coast gigs with BOC and doing a lot of work in my home studio. I get a lot of calls and e-mails from people wanting me to contribute to their recordings. I love doing this kind of work. I can work from home, it's very creative and fun. Since I'm working from home, the turnaround time is usually very quick.<br />
<br />
I have a lot of ideas in my head for future projects, but I've put them all on hold. I'm getting married next month and there's a lot of things to be done for the wedding, so that takes priority right now.<br />
<br />
I can tell you a few of the cool things I'm in the middle of at the moment. We're nearly done filming Tiger's Fang 10. This has been the most challenging one yet because it was our first time using a green screen and we made about every noob mistake possible. Steve and I have been painstakingly going through every frame of these shots. Not fun. The movie is looking really good and it's really really funny.<br />
<br />
I'm working on an awesome project with some of my students. I can't say much yet, except that I'm totally blown away by their talent. This one is going to be jaw dropping!<br />
<br />
I've been working on a lot of new music for myself and my friends. I have a collection of songs that I'm planning to release as digital singles. They're all done, I just have to polish them up a bit. I've also been contributing parts to original music for some of my more well known buddies. Can't say anything about those projects yet.<br />
<br />
On the subject of MorningStarlett, we've been kind of stagnant. Not by choice though. There just aren't many places for a band like us to play. The nice thing though, is that the CD did pretty well for an unknown band release. I've been reading reviews from all over the world and people really love this album. I'm very proud of the MorningStarlett CD and it makes me feel great that there are people who really appreciate it.<br />
<br />
Now onto the important stuff. This has been an amazing video game month for me. I got the new Tomb Raider. I just finished it. What an incredible game! Beautiful, exciting, fun...it was right up my alley. I loved it!<br />
<br />
I'm doing the Riddler stuff in Arkham City. That game is simply incredible. It's perfect. Sometimes when I need to unwind, I just put that game on and patrol Gotham. It's so amazing that I can play it without even touching any of the missions and still enjoy it.<br /><br />I just picked up Diablo 3. While the gameplay and the graphics are pretty basic, the multiplayer features make that game great. Being able to jump in and out of games with your friends whether they're in your living room, or at their own houses makes this a real winner. It's like a fantasy party game. Very cool.<br /><br />I'm also back into comics. Yes, my nasty habit is back. I'm currently reading the DC new 52 stuff. I was resistant at first, but a few story lines piqued my interest. I'm not current on everything but I've been reading Batman, Detective Comics, Wonder Woman, Huntress/Powergirl, and Justice League. It's great stuff to read on the plane when they make you turn your phone off!<br /><br />-RichieRichie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-11270254961043479292013-08-08T00:01:00.000-04:002013-08-08T00:01:01.291-04:00New Fly-Out Rig!<div class="MsoNormal">
I just built a new super compact and totally awesome
sounding guitar rig for fly out dates where I can only bring a limited amount
of gear. If I had my way, I'd bring my Engl
Stack and my big rack o' TC gear to every gig, but on fly out dates, that's
simply not possible. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I got tired of being at the mercy of backline companies'
amps. Usually they're ok, but you do get
some poorly maintenanced stinkers every once in a while. I didn't want to chance it anymore, so that
inspired this new rig. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Here are all the gory and geeky details:</div>
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<br /></div>
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1) My signal obviously starts with the guitar. I use various <b>Ernie Ball Music Man guitars</b>, all equipped with <b>DiMarzio pickups</b>. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2) This goes into an <b>Audio
Technica AEW-411</b>0 wireless system.
This is a really great sounding and reliable wireless. It's probably the oldest piece in my entire
rig. It's almost 10 years old and still
works great. How many pieces of
electronic gear can you say that about? </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
3) The output of the wireless goes into a <b>TC Electronic Poly Tune</b>. This is the coolest tuner ever. You can check the tuning of all 6 strings at
once. This makes it really easy to tune
during very short song breaks.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
4) From the tuner, we go into the input of a <b>Line 6 Pod HD-500. </b>That's right, a POD! I used to be a tube amp purist. So why did I
start using a Pod? As I said before, the
unpredictable nature of backline tube amps, made it nearly impossible to get a
consistent sound. Also, since we started
using in-ear monitors, we've been able to keep the stage volume way down. This made it easier to make this
transition. It took me a long period of
tweaking, but I finally got the Pod sounding just right. The HD models in there are very nice. The effects are also cool, but they too
require a whole lot of tweaking. I
basically use 4 sounds:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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A) Clean
Fender Twin Reverb with Chorus, Delay and Reverb</div>
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</div>
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B) Slightly
overdriven Dr. Z amp with Tube Screamer, Tremolo and Delay</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
C) Crunchy
Marshal JCM-800 with Chorus and Flanger</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
D) Engl
Fireball with 2 Delays set to different rhythms and mix levels.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Within each of these presets I have the ability to turn the
individual effects on and off as if the were stomp boxes. I also have the expression pedal set up to
control the Delay mix level. At first I
was using the Pod going direct, but I wasn't thrilled with these results. So, I ended up disabling the cabinet
simulation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
5) The Pod's mono output goes into a <b>BBE Sonic Stomp</b> pedal. One
unexpected side effect of turning the cabinet simulation off and only using the
Pod as a preamp was the loss of the low end.
Don't get me wrong, the tone was great, but that super low end depth
that you get from a real amp, was just not there. This pedal was the perfect solution to these
missing freqencies.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
6) From there the signal goes into a <b>Matrix Guitar Amplification G-1000 Stereo Power Amp. </b> This is a solid state 1000 watt power amp that
only weighs 6 pounds!!! It's stereo, so
I run it in mono mode. I could run my
rig in stereo if I wanted, but I find that my being mono is more effective in
this particular band. Buck has a really
nice stereo spread on his sound, and I don't want to get in the way of that. Since I wasn't really loving the sound of the
Pod going to direct into my ears, this was a perfect solution. I got the air moving and I got to have a
little bit of stage volume. This power amp isn't as loud as you'd think, but it
does give you a pretty respectable stage volume and it's totally fine if you're
using in-ears. I kind of wish the amp
had a depth and presence control like other power amps, but the BBE pedal fills
that void nicely. </div>
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<br /></div>
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7) The power amp goes into a <b>Marshall 1960 Cabinet</b>. This is the only piece of rental gear I
use. These are usually consistent enough
where my sound won't change much from gig to gig. This gets miked up and then sent to the
PA. I'd say the most important step in
getting a good guitar sound through a PA is microphone placement. Poor placement can totally wreck your sound,
no matter how great your gear is. I
place the microphone myself using my in ears to monitor the sound.</div>
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<br /></div>
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So that's my new rig.
It's really small and I'm really enjoying it.</div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Richie</div>
Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-67614613319452492332013-01-08T16:59:00.000-05:002013-01-08T16:59:08.608-05:00The Abbey Road Video<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, I've
lost my damn mind and decided to do another one of these split-screen videos. I
have to say that the Bohemian Rhapsody video was more successful than I could
have ever imaged while making it. I'm so
honored that so many people have decided to watch it and share it with their
friends. A lot of people have subscribed
to my YouTube channel and have been asking me to do another video, so here it
is!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<a href="http://youtu.be/nxds-5YSWw8">http://youtu.be/nxds-5YSWw8</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ok, Bohemian
Rhapsody is my favorite song of all time, so to me, doing that was a
no-brainer. Having been fascinated with
that song for most of my life, I pretty much knew the entire thing before I
went to record it. This time, I had to pick something that was not only equally
epic and fun, but also something that was just as meaningful to me. Before I get into the technical mumbo jumbo,
here's a little back story about my relationship with these songs. (If you just want to get to the tech stuff,
scroll down to WARNING: TECH TALK)</div>
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<br /></div>
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Since I was
a kid, movies have had such a strong influence on me. When I saw "La Bamba"
in 1987, that made me decide to start taking guitar lessons. Luckily for me, I
was really into the music of the 1950's which meant that I could have an entire
repertoire of music with only 4 or 5 chords under my belt. The Ritchie Valens
music served as a gateway to the early American rockers like Little Richard,
Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis. I was very content just listening to
this music and nothing else. That was until I saw the movie "Ferris
Beuler's Day Off." There's a parade scene in that movie where Matthew
Broderick mimes the Beatles' version of "Twist And Shout." That blew me away. It was still 3 chord rock but it was so much heavier
than what I was listening to. I knew my
Uncle Phil had all of the Beatles albums in his collection so I asked him if he
could make me a cassette of that song. So next time I visited him, he gave me a
cassette. On that cassette he put: Twist
and Shout, She Loves You, and I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Since I was a 50's nut, these songs weren't
much of a stretch. However, he also put the entire "Rubber Soul"
album on that same cassette. When I listened to that album, it changed my
life. Instantly, my favorite band was
the Beatles. I took it upon myself to learn every mundane detail about the
Beatles' history and music. My wardrobe consisted of mostly Beatles T-shirts,
which were very hard to come by at that time. If you could imagine a time when
it wasn't cool to like the Beatles, this was it. None of the other kids understood the
Beatles. (Just a quick side note: In
1995 when the Beatles Anthology was released, all of the sudden it became cool
to like Beatles. Figures.) My Beatles
fanaticism got so intense that I even begged my dad to get me a John Lennon 325
Rickenbacker (which I use in this video.)</div>
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Once I got
to High School, the Beatles became standard repertoire in most of my music
classes. I was lucky enough to go to <st1:placename w:st="on">Curtis</st1:placename>
<st1:placename w:st="on">High School</st1:placename> which is the unofficial
music <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placetype w:st="on">high school</st1:placetype>
of <st1:placename w:st="on">Staten Island</st1:placename></st1:place>. Our
teacher, Lou Mannarino, was also a Beatles nut so he would work a lot of Beatles
songs into the curriculum. During my time at Curtis, we got to opportunity to
play at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Lincoln</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> with our school Symphony. This was a very exciting time. The coolest
thing about it was that we were going be doing Golden Slumbers/Carry That
Weight/The End as the finale song.
Playing it live was one thing, but getting to play it live with a full
orchestra was mind blowing! With
rehearsals for our <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Lincoln</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> concert underway,
we were all in Beatles-mode. We found
out that Paul McCartney was going to be on the Oprah show and we managed to get
tickets. During a commercial break I yelled out to Sir Paul and asked him if he
would play with us at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Lincoln</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place>. He gave a big grin and said,
"sure!" Now we were all going
nuts! We were on cloud 9. This was like
a dream come true. The news was covering the story and it was a big deal.
Sadly, Paul's wife Linda passed away shortly after that taping and he wasn't
able to attend our concert.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The concert
was a huge success. It was kind of bittersweet since Paul wasn't there, but it
was still amazing. We all knew that we were part of something special.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Later on in
college, I had a cover band called Hit Me With It. One day we decided that we wanted to do all
of <st1:street w:st="on">Abbey Road</st1:street>
live. I think we had a gig on a Friday in <st1:place w:st="on">Staten Island</st1:place>
and we wanted to have it ready for that gig. So on Thursday, we went to our
drummer's house in <st1:place w:st="on">Westchester</st1:place> and we
rehearsed the entire album. That was all we did, one day. That night we walked
into a bar in <st1:place w:st="on">Westchester</st1:place>. We noticed they
didn't have any band playing that night.
We asked if we could play and they let us. We set up and did the whole
album live as a kind of dress rehearsal. It was a lot of fun. The next night,
we did our <st1:place w:st="on">Staten Island</st1:place> show and that was
also great. In fact, I posted the whole show on my YouTube channel if you want
to check it out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These are
songs that keep popping up at times in my life.
They remind me of good times and great moments. They are really special to me so that was a
big part of why I chose to do them for this video.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><u>WARNING: TECH TALK</u><o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ok, so I
picked this medley to do. Apart from the
sentimental reasons, there are also technical reasons. First, this song is epic and very similar to
Bohemian Rhapsody in structure. (I actually think that Bohemian Rhapsody is
probably Queen's version of the <st1:street w:st="on">Abbey
Road</st1:street> medley, but I'm sure there are plenty of
people who would disagree.) Second, I wanted an excuse to play with some
instruments I've never tried before. And lastly I knew it was something I was
going to be able to sing without killing myself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before I
get into the nitty gritty. I want to give credit where credit is due. I did not invent this genre of video. There is an extremely talented guy who did an
amazing split-screen video of Chick Corea's "Got A Match." He
inspired me to do my split-screen video. I highly recommend watching this
video: http://youtu.be/Otbe5c2OIxI</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first
thing I did was tempo mapping. I brought
the original song into Pro Tools and mapped out all of the tempo changes. There
were a lot of them. This song was not recorded to a click and the tempo
fluctuates about anywhere from 2 to 10 BPM from measure to measure. I initially
tried to record this to a steady click, but the song just doesn't work that
way. I used to think that songs with moving tempos were no good, but after
listening to a lot of classic songs more carefully, I realized that many
classic songs couldn't exist with a fixed tempo.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After
mapping out the tempo, I tackled the piano. I spent a good amount of time on
this. It just wasn't sounding right. Something was missing. I was either playing
too much or too little. After a quick internet search, I came across a YouTube
video posted by YouTube user, rasboi, contaning the multi-tracks of the <st1:street w:st="on">Abbey Road</st1:street>
sessions. Needless to say, this was
extremely helpful and once I was able to hear the piano isolated, I could
figure it out and the part just fell into place. For the piano I'm using the Mini Grand plug
in that comes with Pro Tools.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The drums
were next on my list. This was the next of several roadblocks I would encounter
along the way. I called my friend, Damian Scro, and he talked me through the
parts. He explained that Ringo is a lefty, so a lot of his fills move in the
opposite direction of a righty drummer.
This complicated things for me since my drum skills are not that great. I
found this drum part to be much harder than Bohemian Rhapsody. Bohemian
Rhapsody was more structured. In this, there's a lot of jamming. I didn't want
to wimp out too much on this drum part, so once again, I decided it was best to
transcribe the whole thing onto paper. This was really helpful. After many
attempts, I finally got a good take of the drum part. I was heartbroken when I
went back to check the video footage I recorded during this take and found that
it was out of focus. I was so happy with the take that I decided to leave it as
is. In the video, you'll notice the drum screen looks weird when compared to
the others. This is because I did my best to sharpen it and make it look
semi-presentable. I'm happy to say, that
I will not be using this camera anymore after this project.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The drums
were recorded using a Roland TD-6 kit with a Alesis Surge cymbals. I used this kit as a MIDI controller and
recorded that <st1:place w:st="on">MIDI</st1:place> data into Pro Tools. After
that, I sent that data to FXpansion's BFD2 plug in. To get that <st1:street w:st="on">Abbey Road</st1:street> tea towel sound, I used very little
ambience on the kit. The room mics were
all muted. I also used BFD2's dampening
function to get the drums to sound as close to the record as I could.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You'll notice
there are 2 drum screens. The second screen is a simple kick snare overdub. You
can hear it on the original record hard panned to the right. For that I used Sample Tank.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next was
the bass track. This was probably the easiest thing to record. I used a
Rickenbacker 4001s from the 70s that my uncle and I restored. There is a long story about the restoration
of this particular bass, but I will save that for a future post. The bass has flat wound strings on it which
are crucial to getting that Beatles bass tone.
I plugged that straight into an SSL preamp and used Native Instruments
Guitar Rig 4 plug in. I used their SVT
model. I used a pick which is also a crucial part of getting the Beatles bass
tone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once the
rhythm section was done, I was at a crossroads. Should I just use samples for
the orchestra, or should I attempt to actually play all these instruments? Well, in a moment of insanity, I decided to
give the real thing a try. I was able to borrow a trumpet, trombone, violin and
cello from friends and family. My plan
was to play each part 3 to 6 times to get that nice natural orchestral
chorusing. Then I would blend it all
with a nice reverb and it should sound like a real orchestra, right? WRONG!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I started
with the violin. I was so bad at the
violin that I couldn't stop myself from laughing during takes. After 3 hours of playing violin, I managed to
finish 8 bars of half notes. That's 16
notes in 3 hours. They all sounded scratchy and horrendous. I started to record a double of my 16 note
triumph to find that 2 wrongs did not make a right. The double track sounded
like bad squared. I just could not get a
useable tone from this instrument.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was ready
to give up, but then I did some more online research and came across a very
helpful YouTube video posted by theonlinepianotutor. In her first lesson she
teaches how to hold the bow. At first I though that it was stupid, but then I
followed her directions as closely as I could and BAM....TONE! Granted, it wasn't a good tone, but it was
useable. I was able to produce long
tones without the notes getting scratchy and that was a good start.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Recording
the violin part was a long an painstaking process involving many many takes, a
lot of editing and pitch correction. I
am playing the parts you hear on the video, but I'm getting a lot of help from
studio magic. After I saw how long it took to record ONE violin part, I
realized there was no way I would be able to double this 6 times. I moved right onto to violin 2. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will
admit that as I went through the string parts, it did get a little easier. I
also started to find easier ways to finger things so I wouldn't have to do too
much string crossing. I was able to get
a nice tone from the lower strings so I avoid the high strings at all costs.
Over the next 3 days I finished the entire string quartet. I gotta say cello
was my favorite because the note spacing is closer to what I'm used to. I felt
like I was smashing my fingers together to get half steps to happen on the
violin.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once the
string quartet was assembled, it sounded OK.
Not great though. Only having 4
string instruments with no doubling was not giving me the lush sound I was
hearing on the original recording. It
sounded kind of thin and harsh. I did
like the sound of real bowing. The
samples never get that right. I decided to layer my real strings with some
samples from the Miroslav Philharmonik plug in. When I got the attack from my
real strings blended with the sustain of the samples, it was a really great
sound. It was a sound I couldn't have achieved
with real strings or samples alone. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was
finally satisfied with the string sound.
After a lot of coaxing and some help from layered samples, it sounded
good. Now it was time to learn how to play trumpet. Trumpet is a cruel instrument. It was completely alien to me. Being a guitar player, the string instruments
made sense to me. Brass is a different
animal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If I was
giddy from the sound of cats dying produced by my violin playing, then I was
downright hysterical from the sound of elephants farting produced by my brass
playing. I did some more online research
and found a few more helpful videos on how to play brass. (Please note, I do
not recommend learning this way. I
received formal private music lessons for a very long time when I was learning
guitar.) </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I
liked about the brass is that if you could hear the note in your head, and you
knew what valves to press, you could kinda sorta get the note out. I found a
good trumpet note chart online and I got to work. I got better as I went along. My attacks and release were a bit sloppy, but
I was able to hold out notes that were in tune.
I though I had trumpet licked until I got to the high parts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To play
high notes on the trumpet, you need to make your lips as small as possible and
push as much air through that tiny opening as possible. The high notes killed me. My whole face was
in pain. I was lightheaded and had to take frequent breaks. It wasn't going well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally,
something clicked and I just figured out how to do it. I basically let pro
tools roll while I played the parts over and over again. When I actually hit
the notes, I would use that particular segment and slide that into place. It's a crummy solution, but it was either
that, or no high notes. In the end, I actually
enjoyed the trumpet more than I anticipated.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Next I
moved onto the trombone. I took a brief
crash course online and found a decent slide position chart, compared to the
trumpet high notes, this was a walk in the park. I really enjoyed the simplicity of the
trombone's design. It's a fun
instrument. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wasn't
able to get my hands on a french horn, tuba or a bow for my upright bass, so I
had to use samples for those parts,
They're pretty low in the mix anyway.
They mostly act as a pad for filling in the gaps.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At this
point, I was relieved the orchestra parts were done, but due to the nature of
how I recorded those parts, there was no useable video footage. This was a problem I would have to solve
later.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now the fun
part began. Guitars! For all the guitars
with the exception of the Leslie part, I used the following setup. The guitar straight into an Engl Steve Morse head. The head was fed into an Engl 4x12 cabinet
equipped with Clestion V-60s. This
cabinet was placed in my bathroom and was miked up with a dynamic microphone
slightly off axis. The microphone went into the SSL preamp and then into pro
tools. The Engl head is very versatile and the EQ works like a studio EQ. I was able to get pretty close to the tones
on the record. EQ and compression during
the mix also got me a lot closer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the Leslie
guitar, I once again used Guitar Rig 4.
I used their AC-30 model into their Leslie emulator. It worked pretty well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For guitars
I used a custom Ernie Ball Music Man Axis, an Ernie Ball Music Man Silhouette
Special, a Rickenbacker 325V59 and an Ibanez AE-30 acoustic.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Vocals were
straight forward. I used an Audio
Technica AT-4033 condensor microphone into the SSL preamp. On the processing end it's EQ, Compression,
De-Esser. That is sent to a bus that has
a frequency selective compressor on it designed to smooth out my voice, which
can get harsh in the upper mids. I also put some more compression on it. I had to put a gate on because I picked up a
lot of weird sounds in between words with all the compression. It sounded like
I was eating soup between lines.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The mix was
very large and involved. I tried to get as close to the original recording as
possible without sacrificing quality. There was a lot of drastic EQ'ing and panning.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once the
music was done, I had to solve my orchestra problem. With no useful footage
recorded, I needed to come up with something. I decided to make a gag out of it
and record my own green screen orchestra. This turned out to be another huge
challenge. I really didn't have the
right equipment to do this. My room was too small, I was using a green cloth
curtain that had a lot of folds and was picking up a lot of shadows, my lights
were not the right kind for this and my camera was just not picking up the
green correctly. I ended up using an iPhone to record the green screen footage
because the green was coming out better on the phone than my lousy camera. My
cousin, Phil, helped me with the green screen camera angles. I tried to stay as
still as I could while playing along with the track. If you're a stickler for details and you check
all my positions on the orchestral instruments, it should all be correct
because I was actually playing along.
(Before anyone jumps down my throat, I know my technique is probably miserable.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At first I thought having some HD
video from the iPhone would have been a good thing, but I had a hell of a time
incorporating this HD footage into my SD session. I think from now on, I'm going to try to
shoot in 100% HD if I can. Once I keyed and masked out all of the green I had
to downgrade the quality of the file so I could retain the transparency in my
SD session. By the time I composited all
of the musicians over the stage backdrop, the quality was pretty bad. It also didn't help that my limited skills as
a cameraman and light designer produced some very uneven and washy shots. My
friend Steve Corn helped me make this footage look as good as possible
considering the source material.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another big
problem I had was that violin 2 kept going out of the frame at it looked like
the violin kept disappearing. I decided
to add the conductor to cover up this invisible border. It covers up the problem spot and I think
it's pretty funny too. I could have just
re-shot the violin 2 part, but at that point it was much easier to just stand
there and wave my arms around.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Overall,
the lighting was a big problem in this video. In my last videos there wasn't
enough light. This one was too bright so I painstakingly tried to match all of
the videos in color and brightness as best as I can. I used Sony Vegas Pro for the video
editing. I really love this
program. It's well laid out and has a
lot of powerful tools included.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All in, the
video took about 2 weeks. Although this is much simpler song than Bohemian
Rhapsody, this was a much more difficult project. The loose nature of the band
tracks actually made it harder to cover.
Plus all of the orchestral stuff was very challenging from a playing and
producing perspective. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My favorite
part of this video was getting to play with instruments I've never tried. I recommend
it to all musicians. Especially if you write and arrange music. It gives you a
new respect for the people who are great players and it gives you a better
understanding when it comes to writing for those instruments.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My least
favorite part was dealing with all of the technical problems that kept
happening with the video. Usually the video editing is my favorite part, but
because my source material was so inconsistent, it made things really
difficult. Next time, I'll spend more time prepping shots. It also wouldn't
hurt to learn more about cameras and lighting before my next project.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In closing,
I have to give a huge thanks to my fiancé, Ann Marie. She's had to endure two
weeks of horrible violin, trumpet and trombone noises. She's had to hear me
listen to this song and watch this video over and over again. She's also been a
very good sport about my being completely obsessive over trying to get this
thing done. During the scrolling credits at the end, that's her sitting next
me. Thank you Ann Marie!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I'd also
like to thank all of the people who have watched my videos and subscribed to my
channel. I am overwhelmed by the positive response I've gotten and I can't say
thank you enough.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally,
thank you to the Beatles for writing great music and providing a lifetime of
inspiration.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Richie Castellano</div>
Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-76917581866043860352012-11-12T02:02:00.000-05:002012-11-12T02:02:05.566-05:00MorningStarlettI've been mentioning MorningStarlett a lot recently. MorningStarlett is my original band. If I had to describe our style, I'd probably use movies instead of musical terms. We're like "The Fifth Element" meets "Lord Of The Rings" but in metal band form. One of our most unique traits is our singer. Ann Marie Nacchio is our frontwoman, and her range is astounding. Not only does her pitch range seem endless, but she effortlessly shifts in and out of metal and operatic vocal styles. It's pretty crazy.<br />
<br />
Our album drops on 11/21 and will be available in digital format in most online music stores. We'll also have physical discs on sale at morningstarlett.com.<br />
<br />
We're doing something I've never tried before at our CD release party. We're playing our whole album live while synced up to a video screen. It's going to be awesome if it works!<br />
<br />
Our CD release party will take place at the Full Cup in Staten Island, NY on 11/21 at 8 PM.<br />
<br />
I hope you can make it down there and witness this epic event!<br />
<br />
-RichieRichie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-40548561859036445862012-07-27T10:51:00.002-04:002012-07-27T10:51:34.776-04:00Stuff Music Students Should KnowA couple months back I put up a facebook post intended for my private students about what I expected them all to know. From time to time I would quiz them on some of the things we'd gone over in the past and a few of them put some of those fundamentals out of their brains for good. So I made a short list of what they should know at all times.<br />
<br />
Since I posted this, a lot of musicians have been asking me to post the list again. I'll re-post it, but I just want everyone to understand a few things. This is a list I made for some of my students at this particular phase in their development. For your own musical development, you may need more than this, or you may not need any of this. There are plenty of very successful musicians who know none of this and have done wonderfully without it.<br />
<br />
Here goes:<br />
<br />
Chords: Know all 12...<br />
Major<br />
Minor<br />
Augmented<br />
Diminished<br />
Half Diminished<br />
Dominant 7th (plain ol' 7th)<br />
Minor 7th<br />
Major 7th<br />
Minor/maj 7<br />
<br />
By all 12 I mean C, C#, D, D#, E etc....<br />
<br />
The more shapes you know, the better. At the very least, be able to play one type of closed shape for each.<br />
<br />
Of course it helps if you know the neck. Make a chart of the neck and write all the notes on it. This will be a good reference. Don't download this chart. Make it yourself. Make a bunch of them by hand. Each time you make one, you'll learn the fretboard better.<br />
<br />
Scales: in all 12 keys (easy on guitar)<br />
<br />
Pentatonic Minor and Major in all 5 positions. Let's be honest. We're gonna spend a whole lot of time playing this scale so it would be really helpful to know it all over the neck.<br />
<br />
Blues<br />
Major<br />
Minor<br />
Harmonic Minor<br />
Dorian<br />
Mixolydian<br />
<br />
I know I left out some really good scales. But with these, you'll be able to cover a lot of bases. It also helps to know these in multiple positions. I also find it helpful to figure out how to play these scales where they sit on top of the pentatonic position 1. This way if you panic mid-solo, you can always go back to the comfort zone.<br />
<br />
A lot of guys like the 3 note per string scales. I do too. Those are great for sequences, but I do find that when first learning a scale a lot of students have trouble improvising with 3 notes per string.<br />
<br />
Of course I'm leaving out a whole bunch of important stuff in this list. Again, please don't take this to be the end-all be-all of lists. At the very least I hope this is helpful.<br />
<br />
Thanks,<br />
-Richie<br />
<br />Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-75059622735118149472012-07-17T11:50:00.000-04:002012-07-17T11:50:17.596-04:00The Unwritten Rules Of Air Travel<br />
<blockquote style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.600000381469727px;" type="cite">
<span style="color: black; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">A lot of people have jobs that require them to fly a lot. I realize the last thing anyone wants to hear is someone complain about work, but after a particularly </span><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">atrocious travel experience, I feel that it's my duty to write about this subject. There are unwritten rules of air travel. Some would consider these rules to be common sense, but when you put New Yorkers in a confined space for 5+ hours, common sense goes out the window. If we can't sit in seats for an extended period of time and be civil to each other, how are going to survive the big EMP or the zombie apocalypse? The answer to that question is: We wouldn't. We would eat each other first.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></span><br />
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: arial;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: arial;">
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;">Here are the unwritten (now written) rules of air travel.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>1. Middle seat wins. No matter what.</u></span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;">Nobody likes sitting in the middle seat. If you're unlucky enough to draw the short straw of seating assignments and get stuck in the middle, then the good news is: You get both arm rests. No matter what. Window guy has the wall to rest on and Aisle guy can hang over his seat into the aisle as well as come and go as he pleases. The only small bit of comfort the Middle guy gets is the arm rests. Don't fight the middle seat person for the arm rests. That's a total jerk move.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;">The next set of rules go under the heading:<b> This is a plane seat, not your living room couch.</b></span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>2. Your elbows belong at your side, not mine. (That goes for other body parts as well)</u></span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;">This is a self-explanatory rule. If you're going to sit in coach, then figure out a way to not jam any of your limbs into your neighbor. I understand that there are also larger people who have to fly, but I'm not talking about that. In fact all of the larger people I've shared rows with have been very courteous and conscious about the personal space issue. This rule is addressed to the rude people who just don't care. Fold your hands on the tray table, cross your arms, sleep like a vampire...do what you have to do keep your body in your space.</span></div>
<div style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>3. Bring a small pillow and blanket, not your entire bed set.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">This is something I've been seeing more frequently. People bring giant pillows, comforters and even stuffed animals on planes. I'm not talking about children either. These are teens and adults doing this. The problem with this is that there's no way for you to keep all that stuff contained to your seat. Yes, we would all love to be able to snuggle up all cozy on a plane, but there's simply not enough room for that in coach. If you must bring all that stuff on with you, then you need to spend the extra money and sit in first class.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>3a. Take your winter coat off.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Just like the previous rule, there's not enough room in coach for a giant bubble jacket or similarly large winter coat. You need to stow that coat overhead, or even better, leave it in your checked bag. Jackets are OK, as long as it can stay in your seat and not spill over to your neighbor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>4. Shoes + Socks. Keep them on. At all times....please!</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">If someone is sitting close enough to you to be able to smell your feet, then you need to keep them covered. This is going to be controversial, but I'm going to say it. Sandals and flip flops should be outlawed at the airport. If you just can't stand the thought of having your feet confined for hours, then bring a pair of slippers and put them on before you get on the plane. DON'T TAKE YOUR SHOES AND SOCKS OFF ON THE PLANE. That's gross. I don't care how nice you think your feet are. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>4a. Feet go on the floor.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">I'm glad there are some very flexible people in the world, but this doesn't mean you get to cross your legs on the flight or keep your feet up on the seat. Keep them on the floor. If you're neighbor is in danger of being poked by your little piggies, then you need to adjust your position. Keep them on the floor and out of sight if possible.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>5. If you can't keep an activity confined to your space, then that is not something you should do on a plane.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">a) Newspaper guys are a big culprit here. This is not the breakfast table. There's no room to spread out and have both sides of the paper open. If you're sleeping, these are the guys who wake you up with every single page turn. It's completely obnoxious. I saw one guy who had it down. He had the paper folded so just the article he was reading was visible. That is a travel pro right there. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">b) If you have a gigantic laptop that requires your elbows to move back and forth, then leave that in the overhead.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">c) Certain video games require large motions. I'm a gamer. I love video games, but I know not to play motion-based games on a plane. I'm not talking about Wii or Kinect, but certain iOS games where you have to shake stuff over and over again, should not be played on the plane.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Basically anything that forces you to go out of your space should be saved for after the flight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>6. Food: Do's and Dont's</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Ask yourself these questions before purchasing food to bring on board:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">a) Does it have a strong smell?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">b) Is it messy?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">c) Does it require more space than the tray table?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">d) Will it be disastrous if I spill or drop this? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">If you answered YES to any of these questions, then you should not bring that food on the plane. I had a couple sitting next to me bring a giant plate of buffalo wings on the plane once. They spent most of the flight with their hands covered in sauce as they sucked the wings down to the bones. Oh yeah, the bones.... They went in a pile on the tray table next to me. It was disgusting. So no buffalo wings. Tuna is probably not the best choice. Neither is a pizza pie. Basically, a sandwich or a wrap is ideal. Something self contained and easy to clean. Salads can work too, as long as they don't stink.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>7. Meal time = seat up.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">If through some miracle, you get a meal on the plane, bring your seat back all the way up. If you're reclined all the way, the person behind you will not be able to eat.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>8. Your kids....not as cute as you think.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Travelling with children is incredibly difficult. Most seasoned travelers cut parents a lot of slack. Especially when travelling with infants. If a baby is going to cry, then there's nothing you can do about it. Most seasoned travelers have noise cancelling headphones to combat this, so it's not a big deal. However, this doesn't refer to babies. This is about your little 3 to 10 year old brats who you can't control. If you see the kid kicking the seat in front of him/her or constantly messing with the tray table, then please make an attempt to stop the kid. I understand that kids get restless, but what irritates me is that most parents to don't even try to control their kids on planes anymore. I was on a flight recently where there were 3 kids running up and down the aisles for the entire flight. How is this ok? Have parents given up? Actually, there was one parent who had an inventive way of settling her child. They sang songs the whole time! Everyone on the plane was thrilled with that bright idea. (this is sarcasm, just in case you weren't sure.) Everyone understands that kids will be kids, but that doesn't mean the parents shouldn't attempt to keep their kids from kicking, screaming and running around for the entire flight.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>8a. Infant in arms = infant in YOUR arms.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Self-explanatory. This happened to me only once on a flight. Usually people are pretty good about this. There was only one couple who wasn't. Would you believe that it was the same couple who brought the buffalo wings on board?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>9. Let people sleep.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">If your neighbor is sleeping, don't wake them. If a person is sleeping then they're less likely to aggravate you. Unless their sleeping on your shoulder or you have to use the restroom, I would advise you to let people sleep. I had a woman sitting next to me, wake me out of a deep sleep to inform me the drink cart was coming. I know she meant well, but I really wished she hadn't.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>10. Use your inside voice.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Although the plane noise can be pretty loud, the person sitting next to you can still hear you whisper. There's no need to shout your conversation. If a person is too far from you to hear you whisper, then you can't converse with them. I've seen couples who both like aisle seats sit across from each other, and then carry on loud conversations across the aisle. This is pretty rude. This also applies to pre-takeoff phone conversations. Everybody has text messaging nowadays. Use that instead of screaming details about your business into a phone surrounded by strangers who want to put a foot in your mouth.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>11. Standing in the aisles.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">Yes, some people start getting cramps and back problems if they sit in one uncomfortable spot for too long. So they get up for a stretch. No harm in that. If you are prone to these kinds of back and joint problems I would suggest that you walk to the back of the plane and hang out in the galley by the restrooms for a bit. Don't just stand up by your seat. Aside from blocking traffic, you are doing something far worse. You are basically sticking your backside in someone's face for an extended period of time. If you need to stretch, that's fine. Just be conscious of your surroundings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;"><u>12. Baggage.</u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">They say "one small carry on and one small personal item that fits under the seat in front of you." Since storage space is so precious on a plane, I've become overly conscious of what other people are bring on board. In this rare case, I actually agree with the flight attendants. One of your items should be able to fit under the seat. I see people bringing on 2 big rolling suitcases, or deciding that they don't want to put their small bag under the seats in front of them. I understand the benefits of legroom, but if you must have that space under the seat in front of you for your legs, then you need to figure out how to bring one less bag onto the plane.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: arial;">I'm sure there are more rules if I sit here all day and try to recall every miserable plane experience, but these are the big ones. Basically, it comes down to personal space, common sense and courtesy. A plane (especially coach class) is shared space. Try to stay in your assigned space and avoid doing things that disturb others. Try to cut parents and middle seat passengers some slack...as long as their not being completely inconsiderate of everyone else. If you find that you can't follow the basic rules of air travel, then you need to spend the extra bucks and either sit in first class, or buy an extra empty seat next to you.</span></div>
</span></blockquote>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-51579105452098738642012-05-22T11:44:00.000-04:002012-05-22T11:45:04.586-04:00MorningStarlett and a chart full of X's<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><font face="arial" size="2">I know I'm not the only guy to do this, but when you make an album (cd, record...whatever) it's helpful to have a checklist. First on the left column, you list all the songs on your album. Then on top you list each element of the songs. So for us it's Drums, Rhythm Guitar, Bass, Richie Lead Guitar, Walter Lead Guitar, Synth/FX, Ann Marie Vocals, Background Vocals, and Mix. Then you draw boxes, and you put an X in the box when you finished that particular part. Well, I've got a chart full of X's. Except for the Mix column that is. Right now, in terms of tracking, this album is done. Now I've made rough mixes of everything so we can obsess over </font><font face="arial">minuscule</font><font face="arial" size="2"> details that no one will hear except us. This is part of our process. Once everyone gives me the OK, I'll start mixing. Luckily, we recorded a lot of the instruments in the same session. That means that we did all of the drums for the album in one day on the same drum set. So now, when we mix, we only have to get a good drum sound once, and then we can make a template and apply that to all the songs. This saves a massive amount of time. It doesn't mean every song will have the same drum sound. It means that we will have a much better starting point as we approach each mix.</font> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">I've been gearing up for this by watching a bunch of Pensado's Place episodes. It's a free podcast on iTunes about mixing. I highly recommend it if you're an engineer. Some of the stuff I've learned from there has made my mixes instantly better.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">Also, while I'm on the subject of podcasts. Last week I did a podcast called the Glory Hole. It's usually a pretty raunchy show in the same genre as Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony. They decided to do a musical episode and called me to do it. It was a lot of fun, and you should check it out. It's Free!</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-089-blue-oyster-cults/id378753355?i=115669025</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">If you listen to this show, there is a sneak preview of the MorningStarlett song, "No One Needs To Know" at the end. It's a quick mix that I did, but I think it sounds really good.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">-Richie</font></div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-15026400356489140662012-01-25T17:13:00.001-05:002012-01-25T17:13:30.931-05:00Bohemian Rhapsody<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'> <div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; "> <div id="AOLMsgPart_1_3b5f1d28-a3ad-49a5-976e-5175e68958ed"><font color="black" size="2" face="arial">I'm pleased to announce that my Bohemian Rhapsody video has passed 50,000 views. That's insane! I think today I will write about my obsession with that song. Here's where it began....</font></div> <div id="AOLMsgPart_1_3b5f1d28-a3ad-49a5-976e-5175e68958ed"><font color="black" size="2" face="arial"><br> </font></div> <div id="AOLMsgPart_1_3b5f1d28-a3ad-49a5-976e-5175e68958ed"><font color="black" size="2" face="arial">FLASHBACK<br> <div style="font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">In 1992 (I think) I went to the movies with my dad to see "Wayne's World." When it got to the famous car scene and Bohemian Rhapsody came on, I asked my dad, "What is this?" He said, "This is Queen." I remember listening as the song just kept adding more and more layers of awesomeness until it just erupted at the famous headbanging climax. I was sold. This was officially the best song I'd ever heard and it only took one listen of only half of it to realize that. After the song was done and 12 year old me's mind had been </font><font face="arial">thoroughly blown, I turned to my father and said in a very serious tone, "Why wasn't I told about this song?!?" He was a bit alarmed by my reaction. I was actually incredibly irritated that I had to go through the first 12 years of my life without hearing the greatest song ever written. My dad and I played music together, he introduced me to Motown and The Beatles. In my very under-developed opinion he was clearly negligent in his responsibilities to me as a musical mentor and a parent by omitting this song from my listening diet. He gave me a slightly puzzled look and said "I don't know. I don't listen to this kind of music." I was flabbergasted! How could you not listen to this?!? This is the only thing I wanted to listen to from that point on. Bohemian Rhapsody was in first place and everything else started at 4th place. My dad saw that I was not satisfied by his answer. If he knew the song and he knew the band who did it, then why didn't he think to tell me about it sooner? To shut me up he said, "Ask your uncle, he likes that stuff."</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">I got home from the movies and called my Uncle Phil. </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">"Hi Uncle Phil. Do you have Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen?" </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">"I think so." </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">"Ok, I'll be right over."</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">I remember seeing the CD in his wall unit. Queen greatest hits. There it was on the back; "Bohemian Rhapsody." I went home and put it on my CD player. Holy shit! There's a guitar solo in this song!!! In the movie, they start the song from after the solo. To my amazement, this song was even better in it's entirety! If this was the best song I ever heard, then this was clearly the best guitar solo I ever heard. It had everything. Beautiful melody, fast runs, perfect tone! I couldn't handle how awesome it was. I listened to the song non stop. I didn't even bother to listen to any of the other songs on the CD. Then something horrible happened. I realized I was going to have to leave my house at some point and I wouldn't be able to listen to it! I got fresh batteries and put them in my cassette walkman. Then I took a 60 minute cassette tape and recorded Bohemian Rhapsody 10 times in a row on each side. I did this so I could keep listening to it without having to rewind.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">I remember just walking around my block several times while listening to the song over and over picking out something new every time. The layers seemed to be endless. I never heard that many vocal tracks. I never heard that guitar sound. I never heard those chord changes. And that voice!</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">When I wasn't listening to Bohemian Rhapsody I was trying to play it. MTV began playing the Queen video due to Wayne's World's popularity. I remember seeing Freddie crossing his hands to grab the high notes in the piano part. I saw that and went to our upright piano and tried to imitate it. If I remember correctly I was way off. But over then next few years I kept refining it. Changing a voicing here and there.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">Fast forward to high school. I think it might have been senior year. My music teacher, Lou Mannarino played us a tape of a session that he did. He was hired as a singer to record a spoof version of Bohemian Rhapsody for some commercial. All the words were changed to promote some company, but I remember hearing it and feeling like someone hit me over the side of the head with a frying pan. This is possible?!?!?!? This can be recreated?!?!? Holy shit!!! It was like he gave me the key piece of information I had been missing. And right then I realized that I would be able to do this song live....with A LOT of help.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">I don't remember exactly how I did it, but I went home and began to record the opera section on my analog 16 track. If I do some digging I may be able to find the mixdown tape somewhere, but I'm pretty sure that I had a lot of wrong harmonies and I can only imagine what the piano part was like. I probably sequenced it a painstaking pace. I mixed it down to a DAT tape because CD-R technology was still incredibly cost prohibitive in those days. There was a school rock concert coming up (I'm pretty sure that Curtis High School in Staten Island was one of the first to do official school rock concerts.) I told my friends, we're going to do Bohemian Rhapsody at the concert. I got it all planned out. Andy Ascolese will play keyboard. Chris Kuffner will play bass. Brendan Pezzoli from the Jazz band will play drums, and that freshman Matt Lindauer will do the guitar parts with me. Our teacher, Lou will sing it. I've heard him do it on that commercial. He's great! When the middle part comes up, we're gonna play to this track that I recorded at home. So, at the school rock concert, we did Bohemian Rhapsody live, and I remember it felt fucking awesome!</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">Fast forward to college. I started a rock cover band called Hit Me With It. Right from day 1, our big song was going to be Bohemian Rhapsody. We had a great singer named Jason Spoor. We played the song with my track for a little while but it wasn't really working out. It was time to re-do it. I remember Jason coming to my dorm room at Purchase College, and he and I recording that opera section right in the room onto my computer. People on my floor thought we were nuts. Eventually they realized what we were doing and a few of the music majors passing by would stop in to check it out.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">Over the next few years I played that song a lot. It ALWAYS went over. When you were losing the crowd, whip out Bohemian Rhapsody and you could save your gig. I kept toying around with the piano part here and there. It was my favorite thing to play on piano even though I only knew bits and pieces of it. A few years later, Ann Marie decided to do that song for her college recital, and we re-recorded that section yet again, this time with her singing everything.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div>No matter how many times I heard that song since Wayne's World, I never ever got tired of it.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>Back to the present.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>By this point I could play all of the piano part with the exception of the opera section. The B Bb A Bb bit was incredibly difficult for me. I realized that if I couldn't get that, I couldn't do this project. I just sat there building up the muscle memory to play that over and over. Ann Marie was ready to murder me because if you play those three chords over and over again, it's really really obnoxious. After I felt comfortable enough with the piano part, I decided to start the project. I set up a tempo map in Pro Tools. This was a pain in the ass. Queen didn't play to a click on this song. There are many parts that are Rubato. Pro Tools and Rubato don't mix well. Regardless, I had to tempo map the song out. I wouldn't be able to do it without a click. </div> <div><br> </div> <div>Recording the piano took the longest by far. I did so many takes. I could have just programmed it in, but it was important to me that I actually play it this time. After the piano was done, I breathed a sigh of relief. In my mind the project was mostly done already because the thing I was dreading the most was over and done with. Luckily for me, the drum part isn't too crazy. I'm not a good drummer by any stretch of the imagination. I can play very basic things. I knew I wasn't going to be able to remember every fill like I had done with the other parts so I notated the entire drum part. Having the music right there in front of me made it a lot easier to deal with, although I think it was less about actually reading it and more about the actual act of transcribing it. That's the best way to memorize something...write it down.</div> <div><br> </div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">The bass and guitars were a breeze. I loved doing the guitars. It was so much fun trying to get those sounds. I borrowed my friend, Chris Segalini's Vox AC-30 amp and used my little Brian May amp as a preamp and that got me really close. I even miked up that little amp for a couple of tracks.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">When I got to the lead vocal I kind of hit a wall. Wait a minute...I can't sing this song. In every band I've ever been in, I've never sung this song. Sure, in the car, but not on stage. I didn't even know it I'd be able to do it at all. I hit record and did a rough take just to see if I could. I sang through the whole song and at the end of the take, my voice was completely fried. I was hoarse and in pain. I listened back, and to my surprise, I sang the whole thing! I hit all of the notes. It didn't sound great, but it was a functional take. I was satisfied with that. In my mind, I wouldn't be able to do it again without severely damaging my voice. I was very proud of the way it sounded as it was.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">I showed it to Ann Marie and she told me that it could be a lot better. She said, "If you going to go crazy re-creating every single articulation in every part, then why wouldn't you treat the vocal the same way?" She had a point, but I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to sing like this much more. I took a break from the song at this point. I had no choice. I couldn't sing anymore for the rest of the day anyway. I listened back to what I did and thought, "she's right. If I can hit these notes at all, then I should go the extra step and try to match Freddie as closely as my own voice will allow." I really zeroed in on Freddie's lead vocal. It was an amazing experience. With each track that I recorded, I was peeling back the layers of this masterpiece. I was seeing the wizard behind the curtain but at no point was I ever disappointed it. Every new detail that I picked up was inspiring. Examining Freddie's lead vocal was like taking a master class in breath control and how to manage the break between chest voice and head voice. </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">In the end, Ann Marie was definitely right. Doing the vocal over with more attention to detail really made a huge difference. Unfortunately that also killed my voice again so I had to take another break. After that, I started to tackle the background vocals. This is another area where Freddie kicked my ass. I believe that the Queen harmony sound comes from the fact that he was able to flawlessly match his performances from take to take. Every nuance and articulation would be nearly identical from track to track. The harmonies sounded so lush and smooth as a result of his unique ability to do that. I did not have this unique ability and instead opted to keep doing it over and over until it matched. : )</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">By this time, my computer was ready to explode. Not only did I have a full band on there with nearly 16 guitar tracks, but I had 28 vocal tracks. I had to do pre-mix bounces of the background vocals. This was pretty cool because that's how Queen did the original. The only had 24 tracks to work with so they had to bounce. In the end it made the final mix much much easier.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">The final mix was another opportunity to peel back another layer of this song. Getting the panning and effects as close as I could was an audio-geek's dream come true.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">The video part was also challenging. I had Sony Vegas, which is great, but anytime you do a project with up to 12 separate videos on the screen at the same time, it can really chew up system resources on your computer. It was really hard to see what was going on while my computer was chugging along trying to keep up with everything. Although it was tough, doing the video was probably the most fun part. Video editing is a hobby of mine and it didn't feel like work.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">Overall, I'm very happy with the way it came out. Oh, if you haven't checked it out, here it is:</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><a href="http://youtu.be/2Iiy_YfpVn0" target="_blank" style="color: blue; cursor: pointer; ">http://youtu.be/2Iiy_YfpVn0</a></font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">There are few things I wish I could change, but nothing major. My video camera has an auto focus that constantly blurs out on me and I was forced to use some of those blurry shots at points. Also, some of the sync is slightly off as a result of my computer not being able to keep up during the video editing. Other than those minor issues, I'm very happy with it. It was a fun project that I was considering for a long time and it made me remember why I fell in love with this band in the first place.</font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font face="arial" size="2">-Richie</font></div> </font></div> </div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-80387200605168832702011-11-16T01:36:00.001-05:002011-11-16T01:36:55.759-05:00I've been a bad bloggerIt's been way to long since I've written anything here. Here's what's going on:<p>I'm doing lots of gigs with BOC. Fortunately, our busy season got extended a bit, which is totally fine by me.<p>I'm still working on the MorningStarlett album. It's hard to coordinate everyone's schedules, but I think I can safely say that as of next week, all of the instruments will be done and all that will by left to do is vocals.... and maybe some extra added effects here and there.<p>After that I'm scheduled to mix the bad mouth Bettie's cd which will be equally awesome.<p>I've been getting a lot of studio work and that has been a welcome challenge for me. The work has been diverse and fun.<p>I'm starting to get the itch to do some more tiger's fang, but I promised myself that I would complete a few legit music projects before returning to my hobby of making over-produced, under-watched you tube movies.<p>In terms of gear, I got some exciting things coming up. I have a secret guitar in the works, and I'm looking forward to sharing info about it when it's completed. I also just finished the process of retro-fying my rickenbacker 12 string. I'm looking forward to recording with that. I've also been using a Music Man Steve Morse Y2d model on some of my gigs. I bought this guitar because it was purple, but I ended up really liking it. It's nothing like the axis. It has 5 very different sounds and the output is lower which causes the guitar to clean up a lot easier.<p>On a non musical note, I was invited to beta test star wars: the old republic. I Liked it a lot, but I was expecting a bit more with all the hype this game has received. I will still be playing it at launch and I'm sure I'll have loads to write about once we start playing.<p>-RichieRichie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-41138201452937301462011-07-08T15:08:00.000-04:002011-07-08T15:09:01.947-04:00New Song!<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I just posted a new song and video on Youtube. The song is called Shazam, and is performed by Danny Miranda, Jules Radino and me. This is basically a more fleshed out version of a demo song I did for Peavey's Revalver. We recorded this a couple of months ago, but I wasn't able to mix it until now, because I had a flood in my studio. If I get enough hits on this song, that might persuade us to record some more songs like this.<br> </font> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font> <div style="font-family: arial; clear: both; "></div> </div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Check it out!</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWzU0Il4wyA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWzU0Il4wyA</a></font></div> <div><br> </div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">-Richie</font></div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-43857262642178653362011-05-22T17:19:00.000-04:002011-05-22T17:20:07.566-04:00It's OK to dance to live music<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">I've been observing the audiences at various gigs. Not only audiences at shows I play, but also the audiences at shows that I go see. I'm not talking about concerts, but club dates (weddings, bar mitzvahs) and bar gigs. After a couple years of observing, something has become clear to me. This current generation only dances to pre-recorded music. Believe me, this isn't a blog intended to slag DJs. I have friends who are DJs, and they're very talented and good at what they do. I just think it's conditioning from childhood that has caused this problem.</font> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">It first dawned on me when I was doing a gig at a club. We just played a Michael Jackson dance song, and I thought we did a pretty good job of it. People were into it. They watched intently, and then applauded loudly at the end. We then took our between-set break, and the DJ took over. The DJ played Michael Jackson. All of the sudden everyone started dancing. Huh?!? Ok, maybe we just had an off night or maybe the sound wasn't great. But then I saw it happen at a Wedding. A fantastic wedding band was playing. I was very impressed by how great they were. No one danced to them. As soon as the DJ comes on people start dancing. What's going on here?</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">A lot of people I have spoken to about this subject say it's the bass. The DJs can pump the bass more than a band. But this is not necessarily true. In fact most bands bring way more PA gear than DJs, and on top of that some of these bands are using kick drum triggers and synth bass to get that same low end response. So, I ruled that out. It's not a sonic thing. And since I thought the band was really great, I ruled out talent being the issue.</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">So why do kids only dance to pre-recorded music? Well, I think there are a couple of reasons.</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">First, parents find ways to pacify kids with TV. Cartoons in particular are very pattern heavy. In many cartoons, the same exact thing happens every day. It almost becomes ritualistic. Drive something into a kid's head enough times, it becomes hard to break the pattern. (Disclaimer: I know nothing about </font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial">psychology, but this just seems kind of obvious to me.) The connection with live music is that a lot of kids get so used to hearing a song a certain way, that they can't accept a different version, no matter how good it may be.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"></font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">Second. I don't think kids are exposed to live music as much as they should be. Nowadays, every kids party has a DJ or an ipod going. It's not that kids aren't interested in live music. (Put a set of drums in front of any kid, and you'll pique their interest.) It's just that they don't see enough of it.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">Third, Dance clubs don't have bands anymore. I realize that nowadays you MUST have a DJ at a club, but that further reinforces the fact that DJs are for dancing, and bands are not.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">So what's my point? Next time you see a band and they're good, feel free to shake it! If you're a parent show your kids some live music. It's good for em!</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font><br> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; clear: both; "></div> </div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-32692389881942372962011-03-23T01:02:00.001-04:002011-03-23T01:02:24.239-04:00Metalheads Unite!<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'>So I'm at the pharmacy today. As I go to the checkout counter there's a young man (probably in his early 20s) behind the cash register. As I step up in line, he notices my Van Halen t-shirt and says to me, "Van Halen is not cool." So I reply, "Oh yeah?" He says, "No they're not cool, but at least they're not as bad as Dragonforce." I didn't feel the need to get into a musical debate at the checkout counter, so I just smiled and got my change. As I was walking out, I thought what would prompt someone to say something like that out of the blue? Then it hit me. This guy is obviously passionate about heavy metal. When he's not wearing his blue apron with the white name-tag, he probably sports a variety of black t-shirts with detailed illustrations of dragons, demons, skulls, and the name of some obscure metal band that only plays in Sweden written on top to look like the words are bleeding. He saw me with a metal t-shirt (or hard rock...whatever) and thought, "Hey there's a guy who likes metal! I want to share my enthusiasm with him. What's the best way to do that? I know! I'll tell him the band he likes sucks!" <div><br> </div> <div>My point is not that metal fans are argumentative morons. My point is that there's a large group of people who are passionate about hard rock and heavy metal, and instead of banding together, they spend most of the time bickering. I can't tell you how many times I've heard students tell me they can't form a band with their friends because they don't like the same type of metal. "Well, I like power metal, but the singer likes death metal, and the drummer only plays hardcore." I hear this sort of thing over and over. Instead of refusing to cross sub-sub-genres (that's not a typo), why don't you just start a fucking metal band? <div style="clear:both"></div> </div> <div><br> </div> <div>I went to see Iron Maiden at Madison Square Garden, and you know what? It was a sold out show! They've never had a hit song, they never get played on MTV, and I almost never hear them on the radio, but right in front of me we're 20,000 heavy metal fans! There is an army of metal fans out there, but they're so determined to argue with each other that it makes the genre of heavy metal seem so small when compared to pop or r&b. Aren't you tired of hearing auto-tuned garbage everywhere? We should unite and show people that we are a huge community of people that appreciate real bands with real singers and good musicianship.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>Do I think a simple blog post will change people's thinking? No. But just imagine how things would be if it did.</div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-49742819248741174942011-03-10T02:11:00.001-05:002011-03-10T02:11:12.077-05:00gigs...recordings....movies....Oh my!<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'>I have a bunch of local NY stuff coming up. I haven't done a Staten Island gig since the Spinal Tap tribute on Halloween. I'm looking forward to the next few months. <div><br> </div> <div>On Wednesday, March 16th, I'm playing at the Full Cup on Van Duzer Street in Staten Island with Baby Johnson. Baby Johnson is the band I play with at the Red Lion in Manhattan. The best way I could describe a Baby Johnson gig is: "A party band where anything goes." Hopefully the Staten Island people will be crazier than the Manhattan people. We'll see! The show starts at 8 PM and they're promoting as a pre-St Patty's day bash. The band for that show will be Russ Jones, Andy Ascolese and Vinny Cimino.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>Next on the list is Epic and Triumphant return of MorningStarlett. On Wednesday, April 13th at 10 PM, we will be playing the Trash Bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. MorningStarlett is actually in the process of recording an album. We began production in January and things sound really great so far.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>After that I have a trio gig booked at Uncle Bourbon's In Staten Island on Bay Street. This will take place on Thursday, April 21. This show will feature and Danny Miranda (of Queen, and Meatloaf) and Andy Ascolese. We're gonna do a lot of guitar based stuff, so if you like shredding, this is the show to go to. I may also sneak in a few originals as well.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>I'm trying to get my music online. I made a Last.fm account, but I'm learning it takes some time before it shows up in the radio stream. If anyone is into Last.fm and has any of my stuff on their music playing device, do me a favor and give it a scrobble!</div> <div><br> </div> <div>Aside from all of the gigs and recording projects, I'm also knee deep in Tiger's Fang! We're gonna have a release party in late April. Details To Be Announced!<br> <div style="clear:both"></div> </div> <div><br> </div> <div>-Richie</div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-60355674564719112382011-01-29T09:27:00.001-05:002011-01-29T09:27:53.082-05:00ebay<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'>I've been selling some stuff on ebay. It's been a mostly positive experience. I have been noticing that their policies are extremely slanted towards the buyers though. I understand the need for buyer protection, but isn't it just as scary to be in the seller's position? People scam ebay all the time. It's real leap of on the seller's part to send something out in the mail without having the cash first. The problem is that Paypal always sides with the buyer. When you send an item out, a buyer send a payment to paypal, but paypal holds that payment for a short period of time before adding it to your account. All the buyer has to do is say they never got it. This seems like too big of a security flaw to ignore on paypal's part. They need to figure out a new way to verify this. Maybe work with UPS or Fedex to confirm delivery and the contents of a package? Actually that would solve everything. Here's my proposal: <div><br> </div> <div>1. On your ebay sale demand that buyers must agree to "double verified shipping" for an additional cost to be paid to the shipping company.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>2. When someone buys your item on ebay, they send their money to paypal who holds the money. Once paypal has the money, you can ship the item.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>3. Go to a shipping company store like Fedex or UPS. Present them with ebay item number or even a barcode to scan off your phone.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>4. They enter this item number into a computer and then verify that the item you're shipping out is the item on the ebay auction (serial numbers will be important here if they're available.) </div> <div><br> </div> <div>5. Once they click verify, the shipping labels automatically print out. This ensures that the item will be shipped to the location the seller has indicated in the transaction.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>6. Once the item's tracking number is confirmed as being delivered, the seller gets the money.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>Now, of course there are times when sellers send broken items or stuff that doesn't exactly match up with the descriptions. When this happens the buyer must continue the double verification process and mail the item back to the seller. When the package is confirmed as being delivered back to the seller, then (and only then) will the buyer get a refund.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>That's one idea I have. The next one, I'm borrowing from Steve Corn.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>Sniping is a big problem on ebay if you ask me. It hurts everybody. If you're at work or on plane when an auction is ending, you can pretty much forget it (unless you enter a million dollars as your bid.) People wait until the last minute to start bidding in the hopes that no one else will bid. I think the reason people put stuff on ebay auctions is to encourage bidding. Sniping hurts sellers who are looking for an honest auction, and it hurts buyers who can't be there at the last 2 minutes of an auction. Here's the idea to fix this:</div> <div><br> </div> <div>All initial bids will be closed 1 hour before the auction ends. Only re-bidding (or adding a higher bid) will be allowed in that last hour. This means that if something has been up for a week, and you want it, you have to put a bid on it right there and then. You can still wait until the last second to adjust your bid, but you will only be able to do this if you've already put a bid in prior to one hour before the auction ends. That will effectively kill sniping and help sellers get a fair deal.</div> <div><br> </div> <div>There you go. 2 ideas that will improve the ebay sellers experience</div> <div> <div style="clear:both"></div> </div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-62745874677784942692011-01-16T23:58:00.001-05:002011-01-16T23:58:18.743-05:00The Big NAMM Blog<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">Here it is. The Big NAMM Blog. Here are some thoughts, impressions and other kinds of brain spew.</font> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">After leaving the NAMM show, the one thing I keep thinking was, "Man, I wish I had cool hair!" This year, more than ever, the NAMM show was taken over by the Hollywood rock scene. Sure, this means there were some great musicians floating around from various LA bands, but on the whole it meant that the show was flooded with tattooed autograph seekers with dyed black hair, facial metal, black leather, and in some cases brightly colored contact lenses and/or kiss makeup. Don't get me wrong, I think the look is cool, and I don't mind seeing women walking around with corsets so tight that their chests become boob-shelves, but in the end it was circus that obscured what NAMM is really about. Most of the people I saw were obsessed with celebrity to the point where it was disruptive. </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">(WARNING: "BACK IN MY DAY" MOMENT.) </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">When I first started attending NAMM in 1993. It was a very different show. The companies brought everything they had, and they all had booths on the main floor. There was live music everywhere. On a given day on the convention floor, you could see Frank Gambale, Joe Pass, Jeff Berlin, and Steve Morse just jamming at different booths. Autograph lines were short. Everything was hands on. Now it's a very different show, and the spirit of NAMM has really changed. Autograph lines wrap around booths several times. They have to put people there to direct traffic around these huge lines. The biggest lines are always for the 80s bands. The sad result of all of these autograph seekers attending the shows is that these great 80's musicians like Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen, and Ritchie Sambora can't go to the NAMM show because it would cause too much chaos. </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">Another big difference is the actual content of the booths. Many companies only bring a small sampling of what they have, and most of that is behind glass cases or tied down so you can't use it (because the punters might steal something.) What they do have is a big flat screen with a "What's New" presentation. I guess in the end it gets the job done, but it's not as much fun.</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">The layout has also changed a lot. Now many companies are pulling their displays off the main floor and moving them to rooms in other areas of the convention center, or in some cases, out of the convention center completely. Every year, I also feel like fewer companies show up to NAMM. I would have loved to try out some Native Instruments stuff this year, but they weren't here.</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">I don't want to give the wrong impression here. NAMM was great. It was just really tough to accomplish anything on Friday and Saturday when the convention center was raided by celebrity hunters and Criss Angel lookalikes.</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> <div style="clear:both"></div> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">Now, onto the meat and potatoes....GEAR!!!!</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">I saw more cool stuff on Sunday than I saw Thursday, Friday & Saturday combined! Overall, there weren't any huge innovations, just little tweaks here and there. The biggest trends I saw were: Gear that can receive settings from the web, iPad music apps, new guitars that look beatup, looping, better sample libraries, big things in small packages, and things being overpriced.</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">Let's start with the overpriced thing. Not all companies, but many companies think that their products are like water in the desert. A tele-style guitar shouldn't be $25,000. That's ridiculous. A sample library shouldn't be $2,500. A control surface, with no audio passing through it, shouldn't be $5,000. A stomp box shouldn't be $500. These companies are nuts, and </font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial">dlusional</font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">. I could get an original Fender tele from the 60s or 70s for less than 25k. I could hire musicians for a lot less than the 2.5k they're asking for a sample library. In general I think it's out of hand. Especially given the fact that people don't have that kind of money to spend these days.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">The iPad thing was crazy this year. Everyone wants to do music on their iGadgets. Some iPad apps were cool. The ability to remotely control your mixer is very handy. I think passing audio through the iPad is not the greatest idea. Sure, it's a fun thing to do as a gimmick, but it's not really practical yet. Although to be honest, if they came out of with any kind of audio app for Android, I would buy it immediately, no matter how crappy it sounded. I think the iPad will be great for notation and remote control.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">TC Electronic makes stomp boxes that can connect to the web. You can download your favorite guitar player's settings and upload them into your pedal and use those settings on your gig later. Music Man made a pickup system called "the game changer." It allows you to connect your guitar to a computer and choose any kind of pickup configuration your could dream of and store it to any switch on the guitar. For example. I have a country gig tonight, so I setup up my pickup selector to have all single coil sounds and some thinned out, out of phase sounds. Then I go to my gig, and that wiring is stored to my guitar. No need for the computer. The next night I have a metal gig, so I can put everything back to standard humbucking sounds. I think there's also a way to program it from the guitar, without the computer, but it seemed a lot easier to do it from the computer.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">A lot of companies are following the Fender bandwagon and making distressed looking guitars. I played the Eric Clapton Les Paul model which is beat up to match his original. I liked it. ESP has guitars that look like their 50 years old which is funny, since ESP formed in the 80s. Gretsch is also making a George Harrison duo jet that is all beat up.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">I saw some very impressive sample libraries. I will be buying the Big Fish Audio Epic Orchestra plug in. It sounds like the Lord of the Rings soundtrack and will work very well for the MorningStarlett album that I'm currently working on. Vienna Instruments was awesome as usual. Overall, the quality of these samples keeps getting better, but as a result, the prices and the gigabytes keep getting higher.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">Everyone is looping now. Most effects companies make looper pedals. I got to see a bunch of very talented people using them, and they do some pretty incredible stuff. It has gone beyond just playing a few chords and then soloing over them. I saw a Japanese girl named Naoryu perform a J-pop song by herself with a few loopers and sounded like a professionally produced pop song. </font><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBbeNHP4bN0">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBbeNHP4bN0</a><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">. I'm inspired to get one of these loop stations. I'd love to incorporate this into my gigs.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">My favorite products at the show were: The Electroharmonix 44 caliber, The SM V-Machine, The Eventide Harmony Pedal, and The Peavey graphite acoustic travel guitar. Of course I also loved everything at the TC, Engl, Dimarzio, and Music Man booths, but I always talk about that stuff.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Electroharmonix 44 caliber is a 44 watt solid state guitar power amp that fits in the size of a very small stomp box. It's smaller than a boss pedal. It's really loud, and actually sounds quite good. I heard it drive a 4x12 cabinet and I thought it sounded great. I definitely want a couple of those. A pair of those and a pocket pod in my gig bag could be the perfect backup amp in case of emergency.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Peavey graphite acoustic was very fun to play. They make a standard size version, but I was drawn to the travel size guitar. It had a unique design and it sounded very good electrically which would be perfect for me. It was pretty cool.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Eventide had some great pedals. I really like the harmony pedal. It does all the effects that I use, but in one very small pedal. It's not as flexible as the Nova System, but it's so small that it would be a cool thing to get one day. It has 4 part harmonizing in about 20 different scales in all keys with delay and modulation effects added. It sounded great.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Finally, the SM V-Machine blew my mind. It was the size of a Nintendo DS-Max. But you could load all your VST plugins on it and use it as a MIDI module. It was pretty cheap too. I definitely want to get one to use with BOC. I hope it's not too good to be true!</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So there's my big NAMM report. I got see a lot of gear, and I was lucky enough to catch some great performances.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">In closing, all I can say is, "I wish I had cool hair."</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">-Richie</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-29734726841007052372010-12-27T18:36:00.001-05:002010-12-27T18:36:44.619-05:00guitar effects<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'> <div>I just learned something. Well, I guess I kinda knew it already, but I never really tried it. For years I've been approaching guitar effects like a guitar player and studio effects like an engineer. If you're using a simple setup with one amp and a couple of pedals, then this doesn't really apply. However, if you're using a monster rig (or an asshole rig as I like to call to the rig I use) then this is the way to go.</div> <div> </div> <div>I was watching a Steve Morse video today and he was talking about his setup. He has a dry amp and a wet amp. This seemed silly to me at first. Like there's really a big difference? And more importantly, who wants to bring 2 amps everywhere?</div> <div> </div> <div>Well, maybe the practicality of having a dual rig like this is questionable, but the concept makes sense. Here's when this became obvious to me.</div> <div> </div> <div>I was doing a gig last week and I kicked on my lead sound. Here's a little under the hood description of what that means.</div> <div> </div> <div>1. I press a button on my MIDI controller</div> <div>2. The MIDI controller simultaneously sends out messages to my effects processor and my amp.</div> <div>3. The amp switches to channel 3, kicks in the midboost button, the secondary master volume, and the noise gate.</div> <div>4. The effects processor switches to my lead preset which is: my sound -->Chorus--->delay--->amp</div> <div>5. Then the expression pedal controls the wet/dry mix of each effect.<br> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">This is how I've been doing it for years. However, at this last gig I noticed something that I've been subconsciously doing for all that time. When I blend in the effects, the overall volume gets lower, so I've been going to the volume pedal and increasing the overall volume to compensate. This constant tap dance has become very annoying. By the time I get it right, the solo is almost over, and instead of using that time to play something good, I was tinkenering with levels! At this last gig in particular, I couldn't get the lead sound to be loud enough with the effects on, so I played dry all night. I had the rack of doom behind me and it was pretty much bypassed all night. The effects were burying the guitar tone, and I just got tired of dealing with it. Well, that's not going to happen anymore.</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">Today I went back into the presets that I probably programmed 5 years ago, and I changed them radically. Like I said before, I'm not going to start carrying two amps with me, but I did use the Steve Morse concept today. I configured everything in parallel. Basically, I have straight path from my guitar sound to the speakers at all times (unless doing something drastic like whammy or wah.) On separate paths (you can do this in most advanced processors, or you can do this with complex wiring) I ran my effects. The mix was 100%. The output volume was set to OFF. Then I assigned my expression pedal to control the output volume of each effect and VOILA! No more subtracting volume! Only adding volume! So now when I blend in the effects, my guitar tone stays un-touched. I can't wait to play my next gig and try it out.</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">If you're a strictly analog stomp box person and you want to try this concept out, here's how you do it:</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">First, you need 2 amps. You'll also need a volume pedal (or 3) and a mono splitter or Y cable (depending on your setup, you may need multiple splits.)</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">Plug your guitar straight into the amp. Or you can plug it into your wah and distortion first if that's where you're getting your basic tone. Anyway, get your basic guitar sound happening. No delay, reverb, or modulation effects should go in this path.</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">Once your basic sound is to your liking run a cable out of your amps effects send.</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">Things to consider:</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <UL> <LI> <div style="CLEAR: both">Some amps terminate at the effects send until you send the signal back through the effects return. If this is the case, you'll need a mono Y cable/adapter. Plug the Y cable into the send. On one end of the Y, go back to the return. This should complete the loop and make your amp happy. We'll discuss the other end in a bit.</div> </LI></UL> <UL> <LI> <div style="CLEAR: both">Some amps don't have effects loops. I call these Caveman amps. Most people like to call them vintage amps. (come on people, it's almost 2011. Get effects loops!) This can be problematic for a setup like this, but it's not impossible. The problem is that we want your tone in all it's glory to be duplicated through the wet amp. An effects loops takes your guitar sound after the amp's gain and tone controls (the preamp) and sends it somewhere else. If we can't do this, then we can't exactly duplicate this tone. It's not the end of the world. It's just that your wet amp may have a different tonal characteristic than the dry amp. This may or may not be a good thing depending on your taste. If your old amp (that you paid thousands for...ok, I'll stop now) doesn't have an effects loop then just put the Y cable out of the last pedal you would plug into your amp. So if you have a wah and distortion, take the output of the distortion and split it. Send one end of the Y to your amp and like I said above we'll discuss the other end in a bit.</div> </LI></UL> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">Now you should have your basic sound all tweaked out. That sound should be going through the speakers of amp A and it should be going through a cable that you haven't plugged into anything yet. Next, you're going to take the cable (the effects send cable, or the cable from the Y split) and run it through the rest of your pedals. You're going to want to tweak the pedals out. It may be beneficial to run these in parallel as well, but that will become a major pain in the ass because it will require more Y cables which can make things messy and noisy. For the sake of simplicity, let's just say you have one delay pedal. (if anyone's interested in the multiple effects parallel setup, I can do that in another post)</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">Plug this dangling cable that you have into your delay pedal. Run the mix (or effects level as some pedals call it) at 100% on. We want this to be all delay and no original sound. Take the output of that pedal and run it into a volume pedal. Take the output of the volume pedal and plug it into the effects return of amp B. If amp B doesn't have an effects return, then just plug it into the front input. If you need help with this step, ask your neighbor, Barney Rubble, to come over and help you.</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">Now your all set up. When your raise the volume pedal you will add delay through amp B. This will preserve your initial tone and only add delay through a separate source. It's pretty cool and I think it sounds great.</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">guitar ---> wah ---->distortion----> amp A</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">amp A effects send ----> delay ----->volume pedal---->amp B effects return</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">You can also technically do this sort of additive setup with one amp, but it would still require you to blend the wet and dry sound before going into the amp which could get messy sounding.</div> <div style="CLEAR: both"> </div> <div style="CLEAR: both">-Richie</div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-90186471803784055572010-12-13T03:01:00.001-05:002010-12-13T03:01:39.349-05:00I assure you, we're working on it.<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">Some news for Tiger's Fang Fans</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> We're definitely opportunists here at Tiger's Fang Productions. It's been more than a year since Tiger's Fang 6, but that doesn't mean we've been taking a break. We've been working on this non stop since March. So what's taking so long?</font> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">When you're trying to make an ambitious amateur film (or any other project you can think of) and you have a budget of $0, you become an opportunist. When someone is willing to give you something for free, or do you a huge favor, you need to take advantage of that on their time. You don't get to choose when you will get these opportunities, you just take them as they come. We've been fortunate enough to have several great people donate their time, services, gear and facilities to us. Like I said, when the opportunities come, you can't wait too long or they will most likely go away. We started working on Tiger's Fang 7, but then an opportunity came up to shoot in an amazing location that would work great for episode 10. So before we even finished 7, we shoot half of 10. Then another great location become available to us, but for a very limited time. We need that location for parts 7,8 and 9. So, we do a marathon week of shooting every night and get it all done. Last week I just finished the video editing on Tiger's Fang 7, but we have super-duper top-secret special guests who are only able to shoot next week, so as I'm editing Tiger's Fang 7, I'm prepping for next week's shoot of scenes that will be in Tiger's Fang 10. </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">It's a big mess. We're working on 4 movies at once. My computer has so many files on it that I'm starting to lose track. Aside from all the chaos of doing 4 movies at once, I also had to get knee surgery smack in the middle of shooting which complicated things a whole lot. </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">Each one of these 4 movies is more ambitious than any of the previous 6 we've done. In fact, Steve and I spent today trying to figure out how we're going to achieve certain effects, we did green screen tests, watched countless tutorials, and even messed around with 3D animation. I feel very fortunate to know Rudy Sarzo, and Jon Rodgers. Aside from being fantastic musicians they're both video experts. I was calling and e-mailing them both today and picking their brains. As crazy and as stressful as it gets, it's always fun to learn how to do new stuff. That's the most rewarding part of doing these movies. They force you to develop new skills. I encourage everybody to do some youtube stuff. It's fun and you learn new skills, and at the end of the day all of the skills are related.</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; ">Here's what you can expect in the coming installments.</div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><br> </div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; font-size: 10pt; "><ul><li>Bigger, Better, and Longer Fight Sequences</li><li>Amazing Special Guests</li><li>Increased Production Value</li><li>Mind Blowing Special Effects</li><li>New Costumes</li><li>Incredible Locations (seriously, you won't believe this)</li><li>Tons of New Music</li><li>The same old crappy dubbed dialog</li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">More </font></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial">Subtle Continuity Errors</font></span></li><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">NUDITY!!! (well...maybe)</span></li></ul></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">After next week, we will officially wrap production on Tiger's Fang 7, 8, 9, and 10. I seriously need to stop shooting for a while and start working on the post production. The only thing that would make me want to keep shooting footage is if we got an all expenses paid trip to the Shaolin Temple, and complete access and permission to shoot wherever we want. Other than that, I think it's safe to say that post production officially begins next week.</font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2"><br> </font></div> <div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; ">This isn't the end of the Tiger's Fang Series. I predict we will need to make 17 to 20 episodes to tell the whole story of what happens to the iron master and his daughter. I have the entire story written down. The climax is incredibly ambitious and I only hope that by the time we start to shoot those scenes, we will have developed the skills necessary to make them look amazing.</span></div> <div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; "><br> </span></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial" size="2">Once 7-10 is all finished, we'll have a release party. I'll give details on that later.</font></div> <div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; "><br> </span></div> <div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; ">-Richie</span></div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2420261084924510806.post-23726799638793076782010-11-24T16:51:00.001-05:002010-11-24T16:51:49.788-05:00Thanksgiving Eve<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; color: black; font-family: arial; ">Ah yes...Thanksgiving Eve. The biggest bar night of the year. Almost everyone is off from work on Thursday, so they let loose on Wednesday night and party hard. Obviously, bar/club owners also LOVE Thanksgiving eve. This is probably their busiest and most profitable night of the year. For bands, Thanksgiving eve was also a great night to play because you would get Holiday pay which is usually considerably more than what you would normally get.</span><br> <div style="clear: both; font-size: 10pt; color: black; font-family: arial; "></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Now, notice how I phrased that sentence about the bands in the past tense? That's because the days of Thanksgiving Eve being an awesome gig night are coming to an end. Yes ladies and gentlemen, strap yourselves in for another rant on getting paid to play gigs!!!!</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Why does one open a bar/club/restaurant? (we'll just call it a bar for the rest of this post.) The answer is simple. To make money...a lot of money. No one goes into the bar business if they think they're going to make a little money. Yet some bars come and go quickly while others seem like they've been around forever. This is because the bar business is a high risk business. With the markup that bars charge on food and alcohol, they could potentially make a seriously large amount of profit. However, if you have no customers, you will quickly lose your ass and go out of business. This is the nature of a high risk business. Excellent profit potential, and moderate probability of failure.</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We know that reasons why people like to go bars, but let's look at some of the reasons why people DON'T like to go to certain bars:</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Location</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Prices</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Selection</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cover Charge</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Service</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Atmosphere</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Entertainment</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Size</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Demographic</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So there you have it. If a bar sucks, people won't want to go there. As a bar owner it's important to make sure that all of the elements listed above will appeal to your desired customers.</span></div> <div style="color: black; font-family: arial; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Now to make my point. I turned down thanksgiving gigs this year because they weren't offering holiday pay. I have nothing against any musician who does a holiday gig for regular pay, but I try to avoid doing that because I don't feel it's fair. So now bar owners don't feel the need to cut the band in on the most lucrative night of the year. As abhorrent as that is, that's still not the point of this post. I've heard from friends that bar owner's are expecting bands to take a pay cut if they're not satisfied with the customer turnout on Thanksgiving eve.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Wait...WHAT?!?</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So, not only are you not paying them what you should, but you want them to make less than a normal gig in the event that your place isn't able to attract customers? This is insane, and more importantly it's wrong. Here's why:</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The bar owner stands to make a staggering amount of money on thanksgiving eve. They have agreed to pay you a reduced rate to play on the busiest night of the year. That should be the end of story, but by them asking you to take a pay cut if the turnout is less than ideal is the same exact thing as them asking you to incur all the risk for their bar. The bar owner would never ask any of his staff to take a pay cut, but as a musician they now feel that you are responsible for their risk. This is totally ridiculous and it's completely wrong. If you enter a high risk venture, you don't get to pawn off the risk onto someone else. That takes the risk out of it. It's not like they're saying, "if we have a great night, we'll give you double pay." They're saying, "if we have a great night, I win. If we have a bad night, you lose."</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This is an unfair business practice and it needs to stop now. See the list I wrote above? The one that says Location, Prices, Selection, etc...? It is the bar owner's responsibility to choose these elements to create his bar. The band is only a small fraction of the total picture. Why do they take the brunt of the loss? If they buy beer and nobody drinks it, do they call up their suppliers and ask for a refund? And on top of that, you can be sure that they don't pay their staff less on a bad night.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One analogy I can think of is a casino. You go to a casino to make money. It's high risk. Your chances of losing are very high, but you can potentially make a lot of money. If you go to a blackjack table and lose all your money, do you ask the dealer to share the loss with you? Of course you don't. Do you ask the Pit boss for a refund because you didn't know you were going to lose so much money? No!</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As a band, it is not your responsibility to incur the bar owners risks. You are a service that he is hiring to entertain his customers. If the night turns out badly it falls on him. He can then choose not to hire you again, but he may NOT ask you to take a pay reduction. You should make that clear when you book gigs. As it is, local gigs don't really pay that much. This new practice is turning gigging into a gamble. If I'm gonna go out and bust my ass all night, I shouldn't have to gamble on getting paid. People are supposed to get paid for work that they do.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bar owners, if you don't like handling the risks involved with owning a bar, then you should go into another line of work. Maybe retail, an office job, or even McDonald's. If every night was a winner then I'd open my own bar and do my own gigs there.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One more point I'd like to make, and then I'll shut up. A DJ would not deal with this sort of thing. I'm not going to say if a DJ is better than a band or whatever. I'm not going there. My point is that bar owners generally don't pull this stuff on DJs. They do it to bands because they think that we love playing so much that we don't mind lugging our gear around, getting treated badly and not being paid for it. This needs to stop. I feel like I'm going to have to start renting out spaces and putting on my own shows just so I don't have to deal with this.</span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br> </span></font></div> <div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">-Ricihe</span></font></div> </font>Richie Castellanohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11314596555638614583noreply@blogger.com0