shoshara

Jam House (the studio that is run by most members of Voodoo Pharmacology) is hosting a music festival. The festival is 12pm-9pm Saturday 7/25. Bridgett and I will be doing a classical/celtic flute/harp/voice set around 3pm, and Voodoo is playing (with Bridgett playing flute on some songs) at 8pm. Other sets include some bluegrass, an ambient/electronica set, and some awesome rock! The show is at the Sunoco Gas Station in Crofton, MD 21114 on route 3.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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!

Sunday we opened for Amorphis, Samael, and virgin Black at Jaxx. I think it went rather well. The few comments I've found on the internet about it were positive. However, several claimed they couldn't hear the harp. This confuses me, because Larry says he could hear it very well and I could hear it better than I've ever heard myself on stage before. I guess it depends where you were standing? Maybe they didn't know what harp sounds like... it sounds different amplified. Maybe they thought it was the guitar? I feel bad about that, because the preamp volume was actually not all the way up.
Sunday I learned that I need a smaller keyboard. And I can't wait until I have the electric harp. I hate being in the way and having a gigantic harp and gigantic keyboard is not the way to not be in the way. Thats a lot of ways. Anyways.
A photographer from the Washington Citypaper was there and wrote up a nice blog post and took some awesome photos of us. I am still reminded to continue to not eat by looking at them though :).
Here's the link : http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/blackplasticbag/2008/09/29/how-often-do-you-see-a-harp-at-a-metal-club/
And here's the rest of the photos :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brandonwu/2898076003/in/photostream/
I would really like to have some time to work on my own stuff. I have some ideas for music. And even lyrics. And my personal tastes in composition tend to be more symphonic/composed than Voodoo and Dark Dissolve are. I'm a big fan of symphonic and lyrical metal. I also tend to like the instrumental parts/themes of death metal, but I can't bring myself to be a fan of the whole growling thing. I'd also like to sing some more. Not for shows or anything. I don't want to push my opinions/style on either band. But it would be awesome for me if there was more time/composition with both. It would let me write better harp parts as opposed to just playing chords. Harp is difficult in a sense because playing fast requires actually practicing and fingering. Otherwise you just run out of fingers. It isn't like piano where its easy to just hop along the keys. Your hand will get tight and it just won't be even. But I'd love to be able to do some more complicated harp parts. Part of my problem with dark dissolve is I'm still not very good at figuring out the tonality of the pieces and just tend to stick with open chords. It doesn't leave much room for creativity on my part. But if they are happy with what I do, I'm okay with it.

All right so, I think I'm officially working with both bands now. Anyways. Saturday was a big music day. I had a rehearsal with the goth band first (which was fun, except moving the damn keyboard) and then I played a show with Voodoo Pharmacology. It was fun, but a little disappointing. I was not prepared for how difficult it would be to hear myself. I sang and played harp. The singing I'm afraid was horribly out of tune. I wouldn't know! I couldn't hear! I need to practice more being in the room with loud instruments and singing (and playing the harp for that matter... I had a hell of a time even hearing chord changes for the improvs). But all that aside, it was fun :). A new experience and one I can hopefully repeat.
With both bands I'm a little disappointed in myself. They both seem pretty okay with what I'm doing, but I want to experiment more with different sounds on the harp and when it comes down to "improv and do something now!" I just do standard harp stuff. And keyboard for that matter. Now that I'm a little more confident with doing my own thing and adding parts, I'm going to try to mess around with different keyboard sounds and things for the goth band and see how they like it. Especially for some of their more punk songs.
I'm having a hard time getting the harp heard even with its pickups and preamp. I'm hoping the electric harp will fix that.
Also I'm getting to do some backup vocals with both which will be great fun. I LOVE singing harmony.
On a funny note, I'm pretty sure Voodoo Pharmacology thinks I'm a bush-loving conservative :). I declined alcohol and then they found out where I work and no drugs.
On a non-music related note, me and Larry biked like 20 miles today. And I actually rode MY motorcycle for the first time. Once I got over my deathly fear of dropping it. Now I remember how to ride and I should be good to go for the test. Fun stuff :). And now Mercury thinks my harp is a bed :( .