Tristan's Blog

2010.06.09
Tristan = BLOG catcher-upper. Here are some additional submissions:
Jeremy Jensen Born to Run
The Feelings Born to Run

2010.06.06
Tristan = BLOG slacker. Here are the covers of Born to Run so far:
Grant Olsen Born to Run
Josh Galloway Born to Run
Tristan Andreas Born to Run
Tristan Andreas Wendy Baby

2010.05.30
My right hand has some big blisters from drumming. I tracked another "version" maybe, this time down-tempo and synth heavy. In the evening Grant and Josh came over, we all tracked vocals. This was funny. Very funny.

2010.05.29
Soon grant came over to start recording. We tracked his stuff first. Drum machine, bass, drums, guitar, solina. Josh Galloway came over to play too! He did his parts, but used the original Springsteen recording as a cue track. Next I tracked all my music parts. Wow, long day of recording. Fun!

2010.05.16
I worked on Brian's white tele. I routed out the body for humbuckers and drilled new holes for new pickguard and bridge plate. Did some rock putty action on birdbath and telecaster body.

2010.05.15
Fauxbois show at VAC. The Very Most, Soft Paws, us, Finn Riggins. Big Fauxbois set. Very strong opener with Hearts A Radio and Kate's Muscle car near the top. I played guitar on most songs, and put my best shreddding rhythms forward. Some thumb blisters from Fury III style saw-picking near the bridge. Eventually busted the D string on my Bronco, good thing I brought a backup. I like having a tuner inline on the pedalboard, I don't know how I ever got by without one before.

2010.05.14
I went out to VAC to watch discoma/ alter/ pussy gutt. All the usual friends there. Discoma very ambient + lots of percussion. Nice. Alter is the less-core more-goth expansion of pussy gutt with Blake on guitar/vox, Brittney on bass, Steve on drums, Elijah on microkorg (analog strings would be so much better) and Jake on laptop. Pussygutt very good with same old set, just tighter than ever. The dude is a perfectionist.

2010.05.09
Assembled my pedal board. Picked up brian (and Shawn and his dog) and went to Fauxbois practice. Pedal boards are swell. We didn't do all the songs but what we did sounded really good. I feel pretty good about this stuff. Taco John's per usual. I never get tired of those bean burritos. Grant came by for a short visit. We fired up the Nord L2X and the Solina- these things play well together. Also tested the solina through the polyphase. Very nice.

2010.05.05
My Nord Lead 2X arrived today and what a killer deal that is!! Brian came over to work on his guitars. He has 2 telecasters, a 1996 MIM tele, and the 2008 made in indonesia Tele deluxe. We took both apart and appraised the situation. He likes the deluxe body and mexican neck. I agree. The mexican neck has a broken nut. We transferred the cheap plastic nut from indonesia to mexico. Will replace later. Then we tested all the pickups built-in and what I have on hand. We selected the cream humbuckers (possibly super D's) that I bought on ebay and installed those. We drank margaritas. Lately I'm using cointreau, corallejo and newman's own limeade. Yum. We got as far as almost installing the neck but I need to redrill the pilot holes.

2010.05.01
Went to Vancouver BC to see Pat Metheny concert. Very nice space. So much awesome guitar noodling. From a performance standpoint, i liked his solo pieces better than the orchestrion stuff. I think mainly because I feel like robots should be utilized to play things humans wouldn't/ couldn't. Instead he has robots playing stuff that his ensembles can do better. It's impressive, but it's not improvisation.

2010.04.20
Gig's. Good chats with Andy. Bought some tubes for the twin and borrowed a Kustom 200 head to try out. Also stopped by Gtr Center. Those guys are idiots. Bought a book about tube amps and a set of strings.

2010.04.17
I finished assembly of giant Kalimba. Grant came over and we put together a quick mix for him- mostly some Sample & Hold noises and some solina, soundtrack for his performance at VAC tonight. Next I "tuned" the kalimba. It's done for now. I might later replace the pickups for a lower-noise system, but it works. Posted my Jazzmaster and Dr. Sample to eBay.

2010.04.12
Morning- UPS came by with the Solina! I collected my gear for Fauxbois. Also totally cleaned up and reassembled the Jazzmaster. I'll try this tonight and see if I like it. Fauxbois practice at Shawn's new house. I played the Jazzmaster, which I still don't like. I like the new bridge better, but I really don't like the pickups. Later at home I played the Solina. Ahhh that is nice. This instrument I totally love.

2010.04.10
we picked up a wurlitzer organ w/ Orbit 3 mini-synth!

2010.04.06
Nollifur set at VAC. Vagerfly canceled, so we were'nt in too much hurry. Soon enough we played. It was a bit of a challenge in the dark, and there were a couple of DVD player glitches, but otherwise OK. Except I learned that Steve didn't put any bass (and too much guitar) into the house mix. Ooops.

2010.03.28
Nollifur practice. Grant used one of my tele's, I used my Yamaha, Noel had fixed his prodigy. Everything sounded great.

2010.03.24
Low-impact evening, but practice at Noel's. We each had kind of "wrong" instruments. For example, grant played the ibanez talman until a string broke, then switched to some other strat that sounded even worse. I played my Jazz bass, which sounds completely wrong- it's likely the lighter gauge strings and funky pickups. Noel was having issues with his Prodigy and Juno 06. But I think it's good training. Even though the tones are off, we played all the songs just fine.

2010.03.23
Grant came over, we worked on the bypass pedal- we stripped the box and drilled new holes, and painted it orange. I rewired the guts, adding LEDs. Up late but it's fun geeking out.

2010.03.20
Geek fest at reuseum. I took all my electronics gear and went to garden city. A little late but no problem catching up. We built dual filter pedals with distortion (minus the case). This took longer than I expected- like 5 hours.

2010.03.13
Soon I set to work fixing Grant's Ross Distortion pedal. I replaced both jacks, installed an LED, and put a switch inline for the silicon diode. Diode switch doesn't do anything to the sound!!! I cleaned the pots and drilled the housing. Grant came over. We reassembled it and he was quite happy with the results.

2010.03.07
Worked on Aerophone and Kalimba. Today we put the tubes into the frame (very nice) and we fabricated the remaining wooden pieces for the kalimba.

2010.03.06
Worked on Run To The Hills (maiden) programming and overdubs. Grant helped with this. It's sounding less like maiden and more like Gary Numan. Noel came over, too. We kinda skipped practice and just worked on this song. VAC: Farm Days and Dirt Fishermen. Yes, a reunion show of sorts!

2010.02.25
Pascal played thingamagoop 2 for school talent show- very funny!

2010.02.20
Recording session with actual clients - Anthony, Drew, Matt. Grant came by and helped. We tracked upstairs. 2 hrs setup and level checking. We used walkie talkies for downstairs-upstairs talkback. That worked well. These guys were not bad at all. Very good drummer. Amazing tempo skill. Finished tracking just in time by 7pm.

2010.02.16
New pedal here, unlike any other: WMD geiger counter.

2010.02.13
Grant found a grandma in Notus selling 2 organs. One was an early 70's hammond piper, we took that for $20. The other was an older (all-tube) Conn. We left that with her. Later went to VAC for 80's retro night. We missed the first band (basically spondee). Watched the second (Sloppy Seeds + Zac House) they owned my favorite moment of the evening, when they played She Bop. Finally (super hyped) Mostly Muff. This was Lisa Simpson, Ivy Meissner, Gia Trotter, some drummer I don't know (again female) and Sam Stimpert on tambourine and backing vox. This was a crowd pleaser, but what I didn't know was the theme was hair metal bands from the 80's. Primarily ballads from said bands. So we had crappy songs by night ranger, bon jovi, poison, aerosmith, lita and ozzy, journey, etc. I learned that lead guitar is not exactly Lisa Simpson's area of expertise. Perhaps this adds to the charm.

2010.02.01 Brian and grant over. We did final review on the Fauxbois master. There's a big project finished!

2010.01.30
Went to VAC for a night of loud metal. Oilslave: one man band drums and guitar. Kinda cool but kinda boring after a bit. Aces and Eights: super tight fast hard rock ruined by over-macho screaming. Uzula: slowcore with Chad and Darcy, with Steve Gere on drums. He is a fantastic drummer. Mainly this was the first Uzula show and it was a bit tentative. Switch to Beautician in the back corner. Now with Caustic Brett on guitar. It's still fast and heavy, now a little less dynamic but a little more sweet. Fun to see Brett on a flying V. His playing is flawless. Finally Pussygutt back on mainstage. They had a very smooth, excellent set.

2010.01.24
Uploaded Letter L to bandcamp today. Worked on Kalimba and monochord at the shop. I installed new 5-way switch in my Strat at Church of Craft.

2010.01.22
Went to Linen Building for Floomdorm, Spondee, The Very Most, Finn Riggins. Popfest.

2010.01.15
Received Moog CP-251, which completes my Moogerfooger collection. As a test, Grant and I recorded a simple 8-track improvisation using only guitar and MF units. Check out Make Time To Take Knives.

2010.01.12
Mixed Grant's 2 min song Wicked Horse Rider per 2010 challenge #1.

2010.01.10
Noel and I built 35% of the giant kalimba.
Noel recorded and mixed his 2 min song This House Is A Mess per 2010 challenge #1.

2010.01.08
Grant recorded the musical parts for his 2 minute song per 2010 challenge #1.

2010.01.06
Thought for the day: it's not the 90's anymore.

2010.01.03
Uploaded Lowbelly's Hallowe'en E.P. to Bandcamp.

2010.01.02
I mixed Brian's 2 minute song Sup's and my 2 minute song Nieuwjaar 2010 (Crazy Dude Mix) per 2010 challenge #1.

2010.01.01
Brian tracked vocals for his 2 minute song per 2010 challenge #1.

2009.12.31
Breakfast with Brian Mayer and Lisa and Eric from Finn Riggins. Brian and I recorded musical parts for our 2 minute songs per 2010 challenge #1. See projects tab for instructions.