Gig Bands, Reaper, New Solo Work
In the last year, I joined a couple of gig bands (The Hurry Hards - an upbeat ska-punk outfit that plays kick-ass covers of Canadian classics, and The Inconsoulables - a cool garage rock / r&b group playing a whole different type of classics). It's been really refreshing and challenging to work in this way again. Naturally, it's different from all the solo / Patreon / short songs and stories stuff from recent years. I get to spend a lot more time listening to what others are playing, arranging horn parts, doing vocal harmonies, building back up my rusty sax chops.
All of this has inspired me to dig back into my solo stuff as well. It's been too long since I've done a performance of original material. I want to do something that would make my weirdo friends say, "I don't know wtf that was, but was it ever cool!"
One thing that's been holding me back is my aging computer. The thing is pushing 15 years. It's just hard to run beefy programs and staggering VSTs. So, I switched from Ableton Live on Windows to Reaper on AV Linux. I'm still using the same computer, but now it's running very capable, lightweight stuff, and instead of shelling out thousands of dollars on a new top-of-the-line machine, this cost me a few afternoons of learning. Heck yeah!
I've been watching so many videos on Reaper to get acquainted with it. Now I'm just exploring some options for a simple live setup, then I want to work on some new material as well as figure out how the old stuff works in the new setup.
That's about it for the moment. More to come.