shoshara

Dark Dissolve is doing band photos tommorrow. I'm rather sad that I'm still overweight :(. I had hoped to actually be a good weight by the time photos came around for the bands, but alas it didn't happen.

You all know I'm picture-phobic. At least these pictures I'll actually be able to see! I obessively search the internet for pictures from shows. I see so many people taking them, and I never see them. It bothers me on such a bizarre deep level to know pictures exist that have me in them, that I have no control over and have never seen. Especially if I'm unhappy with my weight.

I also have no idea what to wear. I want to blend in with the guys, hopefully it will work out.

Anyways. Dark Dissolve's EP is going to come out soon! Exciting! Voodoo's CDs are coming out really soon too. Also, Voodoo has a website now : http://www.voodoopharmacology.com/, yay cthulhu and the free flash editor they've been using to make it.

I swear, this is the most difficult harp part I have ever seen in my life. Maybe I just haven't spent enough time looking for enharmonics to make the pedal changes easier. Okay, I spent like 30 minutes looking at it. But seriously. I'm wondering if its worth learning just for a reading session. On the other hand, I hear rumors that another harpist is going to come to the readings and I'll probably get kicked out and replaced if I don't learn the stupid part. Seriously though. Wow. I think its more difficult than Symphony Fantastique. I mean, if its just learning to play some chords or something quickly thats one thing, but 2-3 pedal changes every note, at a fast pace, thats insane! Or maybe I just haven't been playing enough pedal harp lately.

If you're a fan of classical music, I'm playing with the Montgomery Philharmonic on Sunday at 7pm. I think its free, but I'm not sure. They sound great. Here's the program :
Sunday, June 7 2009 at 7:00 pm
Verdi - La Forza del Destino: Overture
Beethoven - Overture to Coriolanus, Op. 62
Tchaikovsky - Symphony No. 5, Op. 64

The Forza has two harps! Exciting! Its in Gaithersburg. The address is on the orchestra's website.

Then, after that, Voodoo is playing at Artomatic at 8pm. Obviously I won't be playing, but that just means they'll rock even more and play some of the heavier stuff I'm not up to speed on :-p. Its at Artomatic, so its free! I'm hoping I'll be able to make it to hear part of their set! Artomatic is an AWESOME event. I had a great time when Dark Dissolve played and wish we could've stayed longer but I was still sick and was hoping to be able to make it to Ren Fair the next day (which I failed at).

Now, for the random crap I always put in my blog posts, The Silver Diner has *THE BEST VEGGIE BURGER EVER*. Its a black-bean/cumin base. So great. Its so hard to find good veggie burgers in the States. They always try to make them "like hamburgers". The best veggie burgers are just a delicious blend of vegetarian things. This one, and the one at the Brickskeller, are the only two I've ever had in the United States that were even tolerable, let alone absolutely delicious. I've been eating primarily vegetarian again (really just out of habit, I'll eat meat if Larry cooks it but I don't usually order it). I figured, I weighed 110 lbs (just 18 more to loose!) and was very fit when I was a vegetarian, so I should go back :).

Dark Dissolve played Artomatic's Cabaret Stage on Friday. We were intending to do an acoustic set.... acoustic guitars, acoustic harp, acoustic violin, awesome portable acoustic percussion (no drumset). Its our "small setting" instrumentation. Anyways. We got there (after much drama with some of the worst traffic I've seen), and the stage was HUGE with a drumset setup, and they wanted to mic us!
We did our first song acoustic. Larry said you could hear the harp that way.
The sound guy wanted to mic us. So they tried. Of course, everything got miced well except the harp, which could no longer be heard :(. The crappy thing is I had the pic up for it, but they decided after we started our set to mic us so there was no time for me to get it out and do a real sound check. I should've just brought the electric harp! Oh well.
I've been sick for the past several weeks. A cold/sore throat that just won't go away! I was feeling so great for so long, I guess I started doing too many things and not sleeping enough :(.

Dark Dissolve is playing a free acoustic show on the opening day of Artomatic. Here's the flyer!


We have new music for this show as well. So if you saw our last acoustic show and enjoyed it, come to this one and hear our new stuff!

So I competed Saturday for the first time since high school (at the Southern Maryland Celtic Festival). I won the amateur category (and they didn't seem to do overall competition awards). Anyways. I played horribly! The frustrating thing about competing is you always end up with the same comments, ie : player slower and more accurately and work on accurate ornaments. Which of course you know, but you always fail to do when you're extremely nervous! I'm fine with regular ol' gigs and shows, pretty much anything that isn't me being judged by another harpist. Competitions though, my hands get clammy and sweaty and nothing works out! No matter how well I know the piece I can't guarantee I'll be able to play fast and clean when I'm nervous. I don't know how to fix it! Anyways. I'm glad I went because I got a chance to meet the judge that plays Welsh triple harp and studied in Wales. We seem to have similar interest in music (baroque and Welsh!). She let me play her triple harp later. Its awesome! Tricky though. And not as versatile as I thought since the outside courses don't have levers you still really have to retune to change keys, its just great for accidentals, which is great for baroque music. Anyways. I need to get some of her books and CDs of Welsh music.

In other news. Voodoo has a FREE show this Sunday in Baltimore. We're going on in the evening but the festival starts at 12:30pm.

Here's the poster :

Pirates
Sword Fights

When did reality start larping?

We did a taping for a theoretical local access TV Show on Saturday. If nothing else comes from it, at least there's some nice pictures of all of us dressed up playing our instruments!

Here's the one of me :


Here's the rest on Voodoo's myspace : Link

Here's some video from our show at Jaxx!! Taken by Jana's husband and I put the audio from the recordings Jaxx gave us from the soundboard on them.

Check it out! 98 rock's noise in the basement! Voodoo is playing.



Also, in other news, Larry made roasted pork on Sunday. From it we got 3 bags of pulled pork for future use in the freezer, about 30 tamales to freeze, Monday night dinner of carnitas (yum!), and tonight's dinner of papusas. It was the most delicious roasted pork ever. And made so many delicious meals.

We have new songs on our myspace! Live recordings from the Jaxx show. Thanksfully, they sounded good!

Anyways. Check them out : http://www.myspace.com/darkdissolve


Also, I found some pics someone took of the show on t3h int4rw3bz. I look like a drugged, obese, slightly goth, extremely unhappy hooker. Maybe I should smile more.... :)

And, in unrelated news, the end to Battlestar Galactica was a horrifying travesty.

Okay, normally I can never hear myself in the monitors, but I hear everything else. Last night's show at Jaxx was the complete opposite-- and I think its worse! Much worse! I would rather hear nothing and just play it from feel and at least know I'm with the rest of the band than hear noone else in the band! I could hear Alex and Paul which was great for keeping rhythm and being together when they were playing, but I fucked up the intros to all our songs when I come in with Patrick or Arthur (who I could not hear when I was playing).

I know the sections me and Patrick play together alone were not together (even Larry noticed it). I have the feeling this might be because what I heard was the reverb from the audience and not Patrick's cabinet (so there was phasing). I really feel like this is the worst I've ever played at any show.

I think I was trying too hard to listen for the beat and not trusting myself. I wasn't clean at all in my playing and kept getting confused about the beat (again phasing I think). Thats something thats very important to me, and if its not clean, then, crap! Also, I had a huge brain freeze during Solstice Song and could've sworn when I came in it was the wrong key, but when the rest of the band came in it sounded fine so I think it was just another problem with the lack of monitors.

I love our music and the moving complicated sound and variety of parts and clear tones we use, but it makes it really noticable if I'm not clean and right on beat! We can't hide in distortion and effects!

On the bright side (or possible down side) we had a huge crowd. HUGE. We got bumped to 3rd (of 5 total bands, headliner last) over politics (which I feel bad about, which is one of the best crowds. People from the outside bar area came into hear us and the place was packed when we played. I thought it was a lot of people coming in early to Hanzel und Gretyl but the place cleared out when we were done (and then obviously cleared back in when Hanzel und Gretyl came up). So I hope it wasn't as bad as it sounded to me. Larry and some of the people I talked to seem to think it was great, but Larry isn't a musician.

For my edification, here's what I still desire for music (in order of priority, which is really in order of price) :

1) DI splitter to go to my amp so I can use it as a monitor. I still can't reliably hear myself.

2) Good amp for keyboard and harp, maybe a multi-input amp. Nothing fancing, just something that doesn't introduce a lot of noise like my amp seems to. I think mine might be broken. Everyone else seems to love my amp, but mine is noisy.

3) Multi-effects board that is mine and not Voodoo's and has a built-in tuner.

4) Irish harp (with light strings) for competitions. They are so much easier to play! And have such great sound!

5) Electro-acoustic pedal harp. In ebony. Preferably a Salzedo model if I can get lyon & healy to electro-acoustify it (piezo pickups on each string and onboard preamp). And when I'm rich. Because that will probably be like 50k total.

Anyways. Bridgett's coming and we're going to do some recording together. So I bought a good vocal mic. Hopefully it will work with Dark Dissolve too. Its coming tommorrow!

So I've been subjecting Larry to the Adrian Paul Highlander series on DVD. We're at the end of the Methos arc in season 3. And it occurs to me, Peter Wingfield would make the best Dream ever (Sandman comics by Neil Gaiman). Why haven't they made this mini-series yet?!!?

We're playing a show at Jaxx opening for gothic/industrial band Hanzel und Gretyl. We need to sell our own tickets so if anyone is free and can come out, it would be greatly appreciated. The show should be great. Hanzel und Gretyl is a very amusing and awesome band. And you know you want to see harp and violin in a goth band!

Come! It will be fun!

I'm so sick of hearing this phrase! I like America. Well, I had my doubts, but it seems to be getting better... and really is there anywhere thats better? Everywhere has its problems. America has its problems. Europe has its problems. America seems to have the least annoying. But thats from my rather libertarian perspective which makes Europe out of the question. :)

Now, speaking of Europe, I'm so sick of hearing Europeans say Americans are ignorant and lazy. According to so many of them on the internet, well, duh Americans overweight because we're indulgent, don't exercise, eat too much, and are lazy.

Well, we also work signifigantly more than you! If we could get by on 30 hour weeks and months of leave we'd be thinner too! America has a horrible work ethic (ie :too much work!). Work culture in the US says its not okay to just put in your 40 hours, you should work unpaid overtime. And don't take lunch breaks!

I agree, we should be more like Europe. I would love that. I would love to be able to work part time (and make less... thats fine) and spend more time on working out and music. But today's urban American culture leads to an inability to find a reasonable hourly rate part time job with healthcare, so thats not really an option unless you have someone willing to support you or have noone to support.

So in order to not be fat, Americans pretty much either need to a) not eat, or b) decide that the one hobby they have time for is going to be being a fitness buff. Me, I won't give up music, so its got to be option a) or option c) be fat :).

So, basically, STFU Europe. I'm sick of your pretentious superior attitude toward Americans.

Finally, after like a week of having the thing, I got my Digi 003 Rack+ setup, with the ProTools 8 LE upgrade and all the little plugins. I can't believe what a complicated time consuming process this was! I'm going to start playing with it tommorrow. I need some good headphones and monitor speakers now :'(

Yay!
In 3 days the most (or second most... but for less good reasons!) democratically corruptive presidency will officially end. I'm quite ecstatic about Obama. I am, however, a bit peeved about the whole "our president" thing from some communities, as though he isn't ALL of our president. He's my president too! Even though I'm a genetic WASP (and would be the P if I was all christian and stuff), and would-be-WINO (if only I took my Italian-American husbands last name...). White people love obama too!!!! I do wish I could go to the Inauguration, but its just not worth it to drive to DC for a worse view than I could get at home.
Anyways. Yay Obama. I'm excited for a hopetastic changeabration.

For those that asked, here's a recent picture of me with my new hair. It doesn't look all that different when its in pigtails.... :). Its from Dark Dissolve's show at Wohlfarth on Friday.