Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Happy Rocktober!

Council of One is still alive, I can report.

I've gotten away from regular updates, which is unfortunate. There are a fair number of things to report--especially the riduculous amount of guitars and gear coming in the front door of my apartment. Some stuff needs to start going out the door, too. ;)

The great rackmount experiment continues unabated. I've now got a Yamaha T50 rackmounted amp and two new power amps (Peavey Classic 50/50 and Carvin DCM600) to go along with the Mesa Quad/50-50, Peavey Rockmaster and Fractal Audio Axe-FX setups.

No, I am not opening up a gear shop. Some of this stuff is going to go, but I want to try out a bunch of different stuff to go with the isolation cabinet. The Axe-FX has snuck its way back into use as my primary preamp, since it sounds great with the Peavey Classic 50/50 tube power amp. The Carvin DCM600 solid-state power amp doesn't do what I need and will get sold as soon as I get motivated. The Yamaha is my newest acquisition, but it might be a bit too powerful for use with my isolation cabinet. I need to experiment more with it.

Rackmount stuff is so cheap, that you really can afford to try things out without breaking the bank. So, you could say that the boutique amp snobbery of today benefits me indirectly, by making all the cool rack stuff unfashionable and therefore affordable.

On the music front, I am currently working on a new album of improvisations, called The Structure Creates Itself. So far, I've completed two trio pieces, which in my opinion absolutely blow away the stuff on Saturation. I've gotten so much better at free improvisation in the last few months just from practicing and thinking about how to do it, that I'm really excited about the future. I can't wait for people to hear this crazy shit I've got on the way.

The Structure Creates Itself will feature a wider variety of settings than Saturation did, including possibly a few programmed beats here and there. Not purely free-form, I guess, but interesting. The rest should be all free, including the percussion. Expect more textures and unusual sounds. It shouldn't be that long before I have the album finished, actually. I've got a three-day weekend coming up, and that's usually a good time to lock myself in the studio and get to it.