Announcement
On Saturday, May 15, I'm headed back to this amazing room (an enormous third-floor elementary school gymnasium) for a solo show. Because of the room's great echo, I'm going to be concentrating on ambient stuff, but don't be surprised to hear my recent remix activity come out (Such as my "Freebird" remix or my Bowie remix) should I be in the mood.

This is part of the Live@ Series (http://www.pghevents.com/) at The Schoolhouse Yoga (http://www.schoolhouseyoga.com/) in Lawrenceville. (A correct map can be found at http://tinyurl.com/2suvz) The idea behind these is to have early, all-ages, alcohol- and smoke-free performances in nontraditional spaces. The early requirement means that I'll be starting at 7PM sharp, and the whole thing will be over by 8PM. And yet...the promoter thinks people will pay $10 to see me play for an hour. As this seems unlikely, I've attached a coupon good for $5 off admission! Just print it out and bring it to the gig, so they'll know you're down with my sound. (If you don't see the attachment, get it from http://mauricerickard.com/mr_51504_coupon.pdf)

That's Saturday, May 15, 7PM sharp. All ages. The Schoolhouse Yoga, 41st and Foster, right near the 40th St. Bridge, Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh, PA 15201. (412) 401-4444.

Report
Back to my old pattern of being disappointed with my playing while it was happening, only to realize later that the set wasn't half bad. The audience was small, and entirely made up of my partisans (Steve Pellegrino and family, and Ryan Sigesmund), but on the other hand the audience was quintupled from the last time we all played here, and I did get to experience this room again. I'd spent much of the day preparing G for the full-scale return of Guitar Clouds (I'd done a couple of them the last time out with Unfinished Symphonies, but this was the first time since losing the use of the software that got me through 2003 (Girl; I'm using its successor G now, in addition to Ableton) that I'd be constructing most of a set around them. The prep was promising--some actual Music was occurring. I didn't want to play myself out, but I thought that I kept it balanced between getting prepared and exhausting my ideas. How should I pace the thing? How long should pieces be? Would I be finished by 7:20 without any additional material? Would I run long? All concerns.

I had to pick up an amp from Steve to give me stereo output, so I left early, got the amp, and was in the house by 6:20 for the 7:00 start time. Turns out that they do have a PA down there, but it's not set up, and there's no explicit permission from the Schoolhouse Yoga to use it, so I stayed with the amps. Setup was easy, though, and then all I had to do was wait for the audience. Steve and family turned up right before 7, which meant that I could start on time.

I'd been debating what running order to have, since it's been quite a while since I'd done a set of Guitar Clouds. In the event, I started with a G setup in A, at 60 bpm. I used to use the easy auto-pan with Girl, and the auto-pan with G is a bit different, so I manually panned each channel. One problem presented itself right away--the cloud built up fairly quickly, and it was difficult for me to hear any space or definition in what I was doing. It seemed like pure texture. Some of thie problem was how I'd positioned myself, to the side of the amps. Out in the room, though, apparently it sounded better. Listening back to the recording now, there's a nice Eastern sitar-like quality to the guitar on this one. I relied a fair amount on plucked notes, which do offer a kind of landmark for listeners, and an interesting part came a few minutes in when I did some volume swells with downward glisses.

There's been a sameyness to some of the clouds, though, so I'm going to need to spend more prep time working out a good combination of delay times. At some point during this piece, Ryan walked in, which was a nice addition to the audience, so I thought I'd acknowledge him by dropping in some percussion. This worked all right in the beginning, with slowed-down bass hits that really spread throughout the space, along with some spidery guitar percussion. I might have made a wrong decision with the percussion in adjusting the speed to set up a backwards groove to play over, although on listening to it I can say it kind of works. I popped the granulation in and out on the backwards drumming to aleviate the tedium, which it did, a bit, although I think overall I let this section go on too long, and I definitely made a misstep with a piercing looped slice of percussion that I pitch changed in two separate glisses. And yet...there's something mysterious about this piece that makes me inclined to listen again.

The next cloud presented another problem--I'd saved this set as a variation of the first one, and it turned out that it wanted to launch with the percussion playing. Oops. This was another one in A, but with a different tuning--based on a tritone--and so it was significantly darker at the beginning than the first one. It seemed kind of shapeless, though, so I dropped in more granulated percussion, but soon gave that up. I had set this one up with an additional channel for straight playing--not into the cloud--with a bit of a wobbly delay on it, for that Frisell-like thing I've been getting into lately. I failed to consolidate this at all, though, probably because the cloud was fading, and the piece lost shape again until I re-built the cloud and "soloed" over it again, though I again lost the thread into some scratchy guitar sound that now sounds like a broken connection, but I recall doing something deliberate to get this. I brought in some Ebow guitar toward the end of this, and I think that used correctly it (and the other things I tried) could have saved this piece, but it's still about as tedious as I feared at the time. So, another one to work on.

The next piece was another dark piece in B, at 70 bpm, and it (once again, sadly) began with a percussion misfire. There's that scratchiness again, which might be grounding issues or something from touching the strings and letting go. I really don't remember where it came from. I covered it with some guitar percussion and an ominous low E buzz. A few short pick drags added a tribal-percussion vibe to this one that actually worked, which gave way to some intentional 60-cycle hum, and more pick drags, string percussion, and one nice sound I was getting by mashing the low E and A down onto the pickups. I brought some low drones in over this, which gave way to another ominous buzz and more percussion. I finally broke it up a bit by bringing in some delay modulation, adding another post-human insect culture kind of vibe, before letting it all fade. It's a pretty simple piece, but it has some promise. I'll have to bring this into another performance.

For the next couple of pieces, I switched over to Ableton Live--first up was that second election-year piece I still haven't gotten a handle on, although this one was somewhat more promising of a performance, and I wish I'd captured it right to disk. (The room was so live that the speech ends up kind of mushy on the room recording.) The fragmented percussion worked, and I dropped in some harsh, distorted guitar at the right moments. Damn, I'm going to have to give this one another try.

As encores, I did "Red Fiber" and "Bring Me the Lion" the new Bowie remix I'd been working on. My audience seemed to dig it, although admittedly they're all biased. Still, it was enjoyable, and I made a few bucks. (Curiously, the promoter mentioned that I'd have gotten more if I hadn't used a coupon...but I think without the coupon, I wouldn't have had an audience.

So, from a delayed point of view, a pretty good evening, and afterwards (after dropping off Steve's amp and my gear) I joined Patricia and Ryan for a soireé at the Funkies', where a good and avant-garde time was had by all.