Announcement
At the invitation of Life In Balance, I'll be doing two afternoon shows at the Whole Health Expo on Saturday, April 30.

I'll be doing mainly ambient looping, a bit of sampled dumbek percussion, and may just haul out some of the things I've been recording recently. I'm playing on the main stage in the exhibit hall, at 12 and 4 PM (assuming they let me go on again after the first set) on Saturday, but be sure to catch the other acts as well, particularly Life In Balance. Considering the ethos of the Expo, I'd bet that my darker stuff is out, though I'm still toying with the idea of an Earth-inspired fuzz drone piece. I'll also be busting out some new merch. I'm performing under my own name, as unfortunately realized last night that I could have billed myself as Funk Shui. Ah, well. Should be fun.

Admission: $12 for one day, or $20 for both Saturday and Sunday. For that admission fee you get to wander the booths, see other performers, and check out workshops by Life In Balance (Sound Healing Meditation) and painter Jill Palermo (discussing her Cellular Portraiture, which is well worth checking out). There are also other workshops on topics such as eating healthily, crisis management, weight loss, reiki, and various other healthy/self-help/spiritual/etc. kinds of things.

Other performers:

Life In Balance: crystal bowl and shakuhachi trance-masters continue to expand their sonic palette. Shows at 11AM, 2PM Saturday (with a workshop at 12PM), and shows at 12, 3, and 5 Sunday.
Faith Stenning: Celtic harp and voice lesson, 1PM Saturday.
Sonador Yoga: 3PM Saturday

That's all at the Pittsburgh Expomart, 105 Mall Boulevard, Monroeville Mall, Monroeville, PA. Just off Rt. 22. More info, including downloadable PDF Guide and Speaking Schedule can be found here: http://www.wholehealthexpo.com/

Report
Well this was quite a surprise. Heading into this, I'd figured that this wasn't really my audience, and I'd assumed that there would be friction, considering some of the other shows I've played which weren't to an experimental/noise/improv crowd. Sure, this was an expo, and people were wandering around rather than sitting and listening (generally speaking); sure, I probably wasn't what most of the attendees listen to normally; sure, I had one less-than-focused set in the afternoon; and sure, we got several requests to turn down. But. I got some very enthusiastic responses from people, and sold more CDRs than I've probably sold at any one show. In short: quite a morale booster.

Several life factors combined in a way that I didn't devote the kind of preparation time I'd wanted to, but I did get a chance to burn a number of Guitar Clouds and Death Pig (retitled "Life Pig" for the occasion) CDRs, as well as some UCoCo and a new set of speech sample poems, which will appear on onezero music fairly soon. I headed out around 10 AM, and found Steve and Ami from Life In Balance already set up (they'd done so the previous night) and laying down some sounds. I set up next to them, and spent some time tuning (while I wore headphones--no audience-audible tuning) while they played to a smattering of people. It was shaping up to be a bit of a drag, it seemed, with bad weather, sparse attendance, and a general lack of interest. I helped them move some stuff down to their Sound Healing workshop room down at the other end of the exhibition space, and then hightailed it back to finish my preparation and begin playing at noon.

I'd modified my most recent Ableton Live template to give me a number of options for performing, including some soloing, some looping, possibly some guitar clouds, and co-opting the "Scimitar Dance" percussion I'd arranged last year. I started my noon set with volume swells, laid in the ring modulator, but it wasn't really cloudlike, and the ring mods and the multiple looplex plugins vastly increased my processor use, which was potentially dangerous.

I also threw in some simulated tape delay and some stutter, which I liked quite a bit for breaking up the drone. I stuck with the pseudo-clouds for too long (in retrospect), about 10 minutes. I may just throw in the towel on these, unless I get the Pure Data/Jack combo up with this concept. As it is, the clouds aren't happening in Live, and I need to accept that. At about 16 minutes into my set, though, things began to get interesting--I brought in the "Scimitar" percussion, stuttered it, grabbed bits, ran them backwards, half-speed, etc., while recorded a few volume swell loops, did similar manipulations on them, and soloed over the top (a lot of high E on this). For the next half hour or so, I did a respectable job of mining this vein (though I probably could have switched things up more than I did). At one point one vendor came over to tell me to turn down, as someone was Reading not far from me. Well, reading is fundamental, so I turned down.

After I'd been playing about a half hour, a woman approached with some questions about the music, which she found to be very calming and conducive to meditation. Since I had loops going, I set the guitar down and talked with her for a few moments. She was interested in what I was doing right then, and wanted to know what discs I was selling that were similar. Rather than steering her to something convenient for me (and most likely not what she really wanted), I told her to check back with me in a half hour or 45 minutes or so, and I'd sell her a disc of the very set she was listening to at the time. I'd set up global record in Live, which would let me easily reproduce everything I was doing, and I could render this out and burn her a CD of the set she was hearing at that moment. Slick, but not unique--in fact, the Residents were doing much the same in the early 90, being able to sell at intermission a few cassettes of the first set on the King and Eye tour. I'd not be able to make cover art for this before giving the CDs out, but I'll work something out to get art to those who have emailed me.

I finished the set to little attention, although Ami came up and said she really liked it, being able to hear it in the workshop room. (I guess the sound did indeed carry.) I started the rendering process, exporting what I'd played and my effects settings (and changes) to two-track audio, meanwhile having to clear the stage for the harpist, her vocalist, and her roadie. There was rather a lot of gear onstage (I'd thought it would just be harp), so I really had to clear it. I managed to do this, though, and loaned them a much-needed 1/4" cable. At this point I went in search of some water, and learned that one vendor was supposedly giving it away. It turned out that he had a few little sample cups of water in front of him, and several cases of his bottled water behind his table. No, he wasn't giving out bottles of water, so I thought I'd ask him what I'd need to do if I wanted to buy his water. He said I could go to the grocery store. This was strange--here I was offering to buy his product, and he turned me down. So I said that this didn't do me any good, since I was thirsty now, and went out to a convention-center-owned concession, buying bottled water for $2.50. Water was followed by a Clif bar for lunch, and just hanging out at the CD table, occasionally checking on the export or the burn. Eventually I had the CDR burnt, and tracked down my interested customer, poised to enter the hyperbaric chamber. Cool--first sale.

The rest of the day I hung by the table, surprisingly often talking people into buying one or more of the discs. I'd tried to steer them away from the more dissonant stuff, although a few felt drawn to it. (I hope they're not disappointed, but I suspect they will be on some level.) The Guitar Clouds were a top seller, but there was a lot of interest in the 12:00 performance. When Life In Balance went on again, I manned the merch and sold several of their discs and a number of mine. Cool. I spent some time reconnecting with a friend by cell, and also preparing a new setup for my upcoming set. During this process, I encountered several interested parties, including one woman who bought a whole array of discs, including the 12:00 set, speech sample stuff, Life Pig, and UCoCo. Awesome! Quite flattering.

My next set was at 4, following a yoga demonstration, and I'd planned on doing some Clouds, as well as more keyboard and uke work. In the event, the clouds did not work at all in this manifestation, and I spent way too long in boring cloud drone mode. (Not all of my modulators or delays were functional, either, and I was sure I'd activated them all. Damn.) I did add a little keyboard here and there, but I didn't have the attention to invest in making it work. Fortunately, Steve played some flute over top at times, giving people something to focus on, but I really fumbled that set. Another distraction was that in doing my many volume swells, I finally exceeded the lifetime duty cycle of the volume potentiometer of my rhythm pickup in the Kalamazoo. I've already replaced the bridge volume control (at which time I bought several potentiometers) so I have the parts lying around, but it's a drag with this guitar, since I have to take off the bridge to take off the pickguard, and then I'll have to start over again with setting the intonation. Discovering that I'll have to do this brought a kind of negativity to the set. One redeeming feature was that toward the end I started playing uke, and the layered-up echoing ukes were both beautiful and haunting. There really is something about that instrument.

Following this, I sold only one CDR to a friend of Steve's and Ami's, which was a nice redeeming of my second-set screwup. We also decided to do one collaborative jam, which was nice except for having some difficulties in self-monitoring due to my volume being turned down, probably Steve hearing uke feedback and minimizing it. Still, we did the group improv until Steve's implemenation of Live crashed, as it tends to do when he maxes it out. Not bad.

A bit more hangout and schmooze time, and it was 7--time to pack it in (hey! an early show!). Considering the response, I'm headed back tomorrow. Pretty neat. And I've already seen positive email comments, too.