Announcement
California, here I come! Hot on the heels of the last show comes yet another, on Saturday, April 26, an out-of-town gig in the small-yet-apparently-vibrant college town of California, Pennsylvania, about an hour south of the city of Pittsburgh. I'll be doing couple of short sets during the afternoon, sometime after 12:30, and ending sometime before 4:30, I'd think. (I haven't been able to nail down a more precise time, although as I say I'll apparently be doing more than one set. Apologies for the lack of specificity, but hey, you never know--this show could actually happen!) I'll be experimenting more with Girl, and may just make the leap this time to not going through the amp at all, just putting everything through the laptop. Hey, less to haul up the steps. We'll see.

Also on the bill is Ben Cox, a fellow Pittsburgh Electronic Musician who's slated to play an upcoming Re:PULSE show, doing his layered and intricate ambience.

Directions can be found here by choosing the driving directions option.

Saturday, April 26, Jozart Studios, 333 Second Street, California, PA 15419. Free, all ages.

Report
I wasn't sure quite how this one would work out, as it was new territory for me both physically (never been there before) and in terms of performance (I wasn't taking the effects or amp; just going direct into the PowerBook through the mic pre). That's growth for you, however--one needs a challenge in order to do any of it. I was a bit tired from helping a friend move the night before, and from my unfortunate discovery in the middle of the night that the generic copy of Claritin® doesn't last quite as long in the body as does the actual brand-name stuff. Or maybe I've built up a tolerance in the last few days. In any case, I was quite tired in the morning. This domain's email was working again, though, unlike the day before, and that was a bright spot.

I assembled my gear, discovering to my frustration that I seem to have donated some cables during Monday's Club Cafe show. Damn--so even if I'd wanted to, I wouldn't have been able to bring effects pedals. Well, less to carry. I got a shower, called Manny (to whom I was giving a ride), loaded up the car (feeling like I was forgetting something), made some coffee for myself, and headed on over to pick Manny up, which reminded me that I'd forgot the merch box. Back to my place, which was on the way, at least, and on to the deep Mon Valley.

It's been a while since I'd been as far south on Route 51 as the location of the interchange for the new Mon-Fayette Expressway, and it was something of a changed world. The road was indeed new, virtually untouched. (The idea of the road in the first place is that the teeming masses in that area, desperate to get into the city, will surge forward in wave upon money-spending wave, once there is a direct section to Pittsburgh...which might come through my neighborhood, if it's ever built. What'll happen if it is, of course, is that around 10% of the city's population which would like to move far out of the city, but still within commuting distance, will hightail it out of town to these farther-flung--and cheaper--reaches.) Still, nice road, even though no one's on it.

It was a fairly quick trip down to the town of California--less than an hour--and the town itself turns out to be quite small, rather quaint, and to have a number of people doing their best to get an arts community happening. The venue was at one time the old 5 and 10 store, accounting for the wide steps and high loft-like ceilings in the second-floor space. The room sounded good, too! When I got there (glad that I'd kept the rig minimal), Ben had already set up, and was hanging out with his wife and daughter.

After exchanging greetings, figuring out where I should set up (next to Ben, as it turns out), and scaring up a small table, I started my setup process while Ben got his programs organized and the first act went on--electric piano, electric bass, and drums. The first tune sounded very Ben Folds-like, an observation backed up by their second tune, a bowdlerized version of "Song For the Dumped." (Well, there were kids in the audience.) Various other covers followed (Led Zepplin, Billy Joel of all things) in the style of Ben Folds, and overall it was quite well done. During this time, however, I had a hard time hearing my own setup through the headphones, due to their volume, and tuning was impossible.

Ben Cox was up next, and he turned in a nicely consonant ambient set with the mighty 100-pound Kurzweil and also his significantly lighter Ovation acoustic with piezo pickups. The sound was nice, but...a bit quiet, expecially after the Ben Folds group. Arguably they wanted to keep us low so we didn't dominate the other stuff going on, but I think there was plenty of unused margin that could have been ceded to us. I finally managed to get tuned up, at least. And in any event, Ben's set was quite nice, and while he was playing I managed to get comped on lunch.

My set was up next, and I found this one to be better overall than the last Club Cafe set. The big difference was having everything going through the PowerBook--I could concentrate just on Girl, and not have to split my attention between controlling the software and controlling the whole guitar/effects/amp chain the way I usually have. Instead of doing separate pieces, I did one long continuous one for 22 minutes, starting with ambient ring modulated guitar, and slowly introducing more percussive sounds and samples. Listening back to it now, at some points it's actually kind of difficult to differentiate the guitar from the pre-recorded samples. (I also learned that my first set got written to the MD as monaural, for whatever reason.)

The texture ended up being rather nice--one feature of the software I'm happy with is the ability to apply low-frequency oscillators to just about anything, including ring modulation, which at frequencies below 20 Hz becomes a tremolo effect. I did introduce actual beat samples, but only let them run straight for a few iterations before changing their speed or putting them through granular modulation, some of which could actually work in a more lowercase setting. I kept building the layers up and manipulating the samples, though, and at a few points my set bordered on power electronics. A few guitar drones and swells put us back in the ambient camp for a while, then more beats took us out, and deconstructing them put us back in. I'm definitely in a transitional phase here.

Eventually I decided to try recording a sample of the processed guitar and then reintroducing it for processing. The moment I tried to bring it back in, however, all audio ceased for about thirty seconds, long enough for people to come to the conclusion that my set was over. Audio did come back briefly, but the set was de facto over. I had, after all, mentioned to a few people beforehand that I was using beta software, and if it shut down on me, I'd treat the interruption as the end of a piece. So it worked out.

Apparently the set was rather quiet, which Ben and Manny thought was a bit of a disadvantage, but probably worked out ok for me, especially at the few moments where I got mic feedback from the monitors or the PA. In any event, my set over, I got some lunch and wandered around for a while, just checking out the festival that was going on, talking to people, that kind of thing, although the rainy weather kept me from wandering too far afield. (Manny mentioned at one point that he'd taken ten minutes and walked around the business district.) A few folk singers were up next, and after they played I went back on.

I combined some drones (some of which came from low-level feedback) with broken-up granular beats, and finally a slowed-down breakbeat for a kind of dub flavor, before going back into drone territory, which was brought to an end by a software freeze. Starting again, I combined some environmental samples with things I've pulled out of the old film archive, treating them granularly. Going back into guitar drone and reverb sample territory, I was eventually joined by Ben on synth for a duet in the last six or seven minutes of my set. Very spacious and nice.

Then it was time to leave, so I packed up and we headed back to town, where the sun was finally breaking through the clouds. I hadn't sold CDs, I didn't expressly get paid, either, but I was comped in lunch an amount greater than the cost of the tolls getting down there, so I was happy. And it was another attempt at making a set with the new software, and not at all bad for going exclusively through the PowerBook. Even with a few crashes, not a bad day.