Here’s a nice mix by Belgian Aeroplane.   Lots of those flabby-sounding synths that make French disco house so fun and happy-sounding and oh so ludicrous.

Aeroplane Soundcloud

i was at an orange drink show on friday, nodding to the awesome chiptune-esque sounds when i realized that if  i’m to achieve a live electro-acoustic setup i can be satisfied with it needs to include an instrument that makes the most beautiful sound ever.  a sound that when you hear it, you just know.   a sound to end all sounds.   and no, the answer is not the cello.   don’t get me wrong, the cello sounds great.  the tamber is rich, but…but it can’t produce the single most amazing sound ever.   and so, i went on craigslist and bought an autoharp.   actually wrong no.  first i went to andy’s music and spent two hours in the cold basement tuning one of their super-nice autoharps.  then i went on cl and bought one from a guy in logan square.

i installed my fishman transducer pickup, ran it through the fishman pro-eq and backed up the hot signal with 5 watts of tube sweetness from the valve junior and voila.   ripe indeed.

had the first cello choir meeting at CWS this saturday!   it was refreshing to play with the band (true, canned in the music room stereo) using martin norgaard’s jazz cello book.   norgaard’s two lessons on improv are awesome, and the focus on the minor pentatonic -> blues scale dovetails nicely with steiner pedagogy.   at waldorf, the 3rd and 4th grade is the time to move away from the pentatonic toward the diatonic (7 note) scale.    the pentatonic was seen by steiner as a great musical foundation since the five tones “float” directionlessly, and it’s basically impossible to play a “wrong” note.   the diatonic scales add the complexity of structure and harmonic “direction”,  a subsequent developmental step.

i think we’ll call it the “freestyle cello ensemble”,  since i realized that adding the word “freestyle” to any other word makes the whole phrase sound hip, rugged and fashionable.   like hip-hop.  bmx bikes.  figure skating.  and like the cello.

Finally finished this EP!

A track or two could be better mixed but the perfect is the enemy of the good, as they say.

Give it a listen!  Winterline on bandcamp.

Bury Us Alive  — STRFKR

Mosca via Gilles Peterson/BBC Radio One

Chicago’s own Arthur Hamidi

I recommend this shop to anyone in need of instrument work.  Cellist Kyra Saltman suggested I take my sick cello to this Adams/Wabash shop instead of to the usual suspects in the Fine Arts Building, and I’m glad I did.

Symptoms were:  Stuffiness.  Choked sound.  Lack of projection.  Too-high string action.

Michael from the shop adjusted the bridge (lowering the string action) and loosened the soundpost, which had become too tight.   Free of charge.   With no-bs explanation of what he was doing.

A healthy buzzing-growl did indeed return to the body of the cello,  and the open strings once again reverberate inside the cello and project outwards for like ten seconds after I play them, instead of the zero seconds of reverberation they had before.   Sympathetic vibration is also back with a vengeance.

Awesome!

Darnton and Hersh Fine Violins

Exciting news! Going to get a Saturday morning cello choir going here in the new year! It’ll be a lot of fun I think– we’ll do some classical and some fiddle stuff, rock music.    I’m hoping to have it at CWS.  I’m thinking an hour long,  first half hour for Padawan, second half hour for Jedi.

After a tour of the awesome Emperor workshop on the Southside, a test with the electric cello and some discussion with Dylan, I went ahead and ordered my xmas/b-day present to myself– a loaded Emperor 2×12 cabinet in natural stain,  upright cabinet design, with black grill cloth and black hardware.   

Each cabinet is custom built by hand in their 6th floor warehouse workshop, out of really nice wood and using a really sweet-looking and apparently extra- sturdy ‘dovetail’ joint.    They’re going to upgrade the two speakers to Indiana-handbuilt high-power Weber ‘Michigan’ series 100-watt 12 inch cones, with extra doping along the edges to protect them.   This way I can use the cab with the 240 watt Gallien-Krueger bass head with little fear of blowing the speakers.  

It feels awesome to invest in something built by someone I trust that I know is of higher-quality than its mass-produced analog.  What’s even better is that Dylan offers his work at a comparable price to the mass-produced speaker cabs that I was previously considering.

I can’t wait the 4 weeks!

(Here’s a link to a Chicago Reader article about Emperor)

I have the field narrowed down to an Emperor 2×12 or an Avatar 2×12.   These are guitar cabs.  No more bass cab + horn.  The full-range speakers sound better.

Avatars have a more attractive price and perhaps a lighter weight.

Emperors are built in Chicago,  feature higher-quality Weber speakers*  and better build-quality*.   And way more cred, Jesse says.

*debatable.