Silverwing's Mini-Vacation

Silverwing Band takes a mini-vacation

Well, January has been a slow month for Silverwing.  I think we played just about every weekend from July all the way to New Year's Eve.  But January only has one gig in it.  I'm going through withdrawals.  What will I do with all that time on my hands?

So during our mini-unexpected-vacation there are a few things the band is going to do:

Market our new CD "Moonshine"
The CD was printed at Disc Makers and it available at CD Baby, Amazon, our website and a few other outlets, but if no one knows about it, we won't have any sales.  So we did a great radio interview at the local country radio station, KHWG 750AM, Fallon, Nevada.  Ronzo, the morning DJ, invited us into the studio and between playing some of the songs, he asked each of us a few questions.  I won't deny it was nerve-wracking, but it's all part of the joy of getting to play music for a living.

Learn a few new cover songs
It's a good idea to keep the set list fresh, so we each picked out a new song to add to the set list.  Since we are a rockin' country bar band, we normally play from 8pm to midnight.  Four hours can be a long time and playing the same old set in the same old order can start to make the night drag.  So bringing in something new is a good idea.  I'm not sure the dancers always appreciate the effort it takes, but we are proud of ourselves even if the dancers have to go home and learn a few new steps off of YouTube.  It's good for them!

Work up some new material for the next CD
Silverwing can't sit around and wait for "Moonshine" to become a big seller.  We need to work on the next CD while we promote this one.  At this point we have a bunch of half completed tunes, some with no lyrics, some just a hook and a lead.  It's time to decide on our favorites and focus on completing them for the next CD.  Mel is going to get a CD together of snippets of songs and have each of us decide on our own which ones have the most promise.  Hopefully we can come to a consensus on about 10 or 12 songs.  Then we need to complete them and record them.  It's intimidating to create.  In Twyla Tharp's "The Creative Habit" she discusses the white room with nothing in it and how challenging it is.  Well that is the challenge of completing songs, can I make the lyrics better?  Is this good enough? Should I toss it in the trash and go sell french fries cause I am terrible?  Oh, the mind can think some terrible stuff. 

So our mini-vacation from playing gigs is going to be very busy and I'm happy about that. Playing music is so satisfying and as a formerly shy person it has changed my life.

Check out the CD "Moonshine" by Silverwing at CD Baby. http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/silverwing You can purchase the whole CD with the nifty art work or download one song at a time.  If you know an old cowboy, he'll probably love "Wide Open Spaces"  It is a crowd pleaser.

Stop by the website and leave us a message at www.silverwingband.com.  Check out our schedule for a gig near you. 

Thanks,
Mary Warstler, rhythm guitar player and songwriter

Silverwing records new CD

Hi friends,  I have been busy playing music with my band Silverwing and of course procrastinating since I last posted, so I need to do some catching up.  Here goes....

When I last posted, I was talking about recording the drum tracks and how we used the wrong microphones for the first attempt and so we purchased the Shure PGDMK6 Drum Mic Kit which worked perfectly.  Each mic picked up only the sound of the drum that it was pointed at, so we ended up with 6 individual drum tracks.

Next we recorded the bass guitar.  Of course, our bass player listened to the scratch tracks through the headphones while he played along.  Instead of placing a microphone infront of a bass amplifier, he used a chord do go directly from the bass into the Tascam DP 24 Digital Portable Studio.  This produced a clean track without any room noise at all.

Next it was my turn to do the rhythm guitar tracks.  Even though some of the songs are pretty rockin, we used an acoustic guitar on all the tracks.  I just changed the strum pattern for each song.  For "Moonshine" and "Rodeo" I strummed in short hard strums, but for "Wide Open Spaces" I used a much more flowing light strum.  It just is dependent upon what the song requires.

On a few songs I went directly into the board from the acoustic guitar with a guitar chord, but we also used an amplifier and placed a mic infront of it, for a different sound. One of the mics we used was the Guitar Cube from MXL. It is manufactured for recording guitar amps, so it served well.

It is difficult to hear your own mistakes and even though I have played the songs many times live, I still made a few mistakes. In past recordings our engineer has had us replay the entire track again and pick through it for the best parts, but since we are using only one track per instrument, we used the "Punch In" technique to fix errors as we recorded.

So after my initial track was completed, I would go outside and get some fresh air and let the engineer and my hubby listen to the track for any errors. I didn't like to hear it. It makes me cringe to hear myself and I am so critical. If they found a mistake we just "Punched In" the correction.
So they would make a note of what measure needed a correction, and I would play along with the recording, when we got to spot that needed fixing, they hit record, let it go through the error and then turned off the recorder. TA-DA big booboo all gone, just like that.

The CD is actually already completed and up for sale all over the internet, but just for the record I am going to continue to discuss the recording process. You can find a copy of our CD "Moonshine" at CD Baby and our site www.silverwingband.com. If you are in Northern Nevada or California check our schedule and come out to one of our gigs. This New Year's Eve Silverwing is playing at Sharkey's Casino in Gardnerville, NV. I'll post some pictures at my next blog.

Check out this link: New CD "Moonshine" by Silverwing

Silverwing recording CD of original music

What have I been doing since I last posted?  Oh, I think that would be procrastinating.  Yep, that's it.  Because the CD has been coming along quickly and I have posted nothing.  So here we go....

After the scratch track was completed, the band members were all supposed to come back to the studio, listen to the scratch track through headphones and then play our individual part, one person at a time.  So first up is Frank the drummer.  The drum tracks will be the first layer in our final CD.

Frank has the drums all set already from playing the scratch tracks and so now we mike the drums put each mike into a different channel on the mixer/recorder.  Frank puts the headphones on and plays along with the song, while the recorder does its job.  Sounds to simply, but whoa, nothing is that simple.

Frank plays his heart out.  His time is perfect and he adds little touches to each song.  He is just great.  So he plays each song and he heads back home which is an hour away.  He probably spent an entire day working on these individual tracks for the drums.  We are very excited.

Our engineer is going to listen to the tracks and do a little clean up before we go forward with the next layer of our CD.  He is going to listen to each individual tracks and see if there is any ugly white noise or overbleed from another drum.  Theoretically each mike should only pick up the drum that it is pointed at.  But no, we didn't use the right type of drum mikes.

And so the mikes picked up the drum in front of them and then everything around them as well.  Microphones come in a variety of types, you got your vocal mikes, instrument mikes, condenser mikes, etc, etc, and we used the wrong type of mikes on the drums.  So we picked up a Drum Mike package from Shure.  The PGDMK6 Drum Mike Kit from Shure did the trick.

We had Frank return to the studio and the drum mikes were placed strategically, so each tom, snare and cymbal had a clean track recording.  The kick drum was miked and a blanket was tossed over it, so it wouldn't bleed over into the other mikes. 

Frank re-played the entire CD and, wow, what a difference good mikes can make in your recording effort.  So use the right tool for the right job.  When recording drums for a CD try the Shure Mike Kit.  It worked well for Silverwing.

Home Recording: The Scratch Tracks

Our first step in recording our original music will be to create what we refer to as scratch tracks.  The CD is going to be recorded one instrument at a time, but the scratch track will be all of us performing the songs together.  That scratch track will be used by each member of the band.  We will listen to the scratch track through the headphones while we play and recording one instrument at a time.

So we met a few weeks ago to create the scratch tracks.  We set up our equipment as if we were going to play at a gig.    Everyone had a vocal microphone that was plugged into the recorder.  Each instrument amplifier had a microphone in front of it and they were plugged into the recorder.  Then the drums were miked also.  Those microphones were input to a mixer and the two line outs from that mixer were plugged into the recorder.  We needed to do it that way, because our recorder doesn't have enough inputs for the drums to go directly into it for recording with all the vocals and instruments.

We are using a Tascam Digital Portable Studio DP-24 for creating this recording.  We have had two failed attempts at recording this music in the last few years and decided that instead of depending upon others to produce the CD the way we wanted it, we would just do it ourselves.  We pulled together some money and my husband researched home studios and selected this model.  We are sure that it will do a great job.

Recording the scratch tracks was not very difficult at all.  We have played these songs in public many times.  Our original music gets very good crowd response and sometimes we get requests for our original music and that is quite the compliment.

We ran through a few warm up songs, just to get the cobwebs out.  The bands favorite warmup song has to be "The Fireman" the George Strait hit or the Dwight Yoakum version of the Elvis hit "Little Sister."  Those songs are upbeat and fun, they just get you in the right mood for playing music.

After the warmup songs, our engineer turned on the DP-24 and we played one of our originals.  The main point right now is not to be absolutely note for note perfect, but to have the tempo be perfect.  The DP-24 has a click track option, which is like a metronome playing in your ear, but we decided we didn't want to do it that way, so it is up to the drummer to maintain the tempo and not speed up or slow down.  This is critical because as we each lay down our individual tracks we will be listening to this scratch track through the headphones.  If it speeds up or slows down, so will our final product. So this is alot of pressure on the drummer.

We did a few of the scratch tracks on the first take.  That is very satisfying.  Several of them required more than one take, but it went very quickly.  We created scratch tracks for nine original songs in less than an eight hour day.  Very productive

Our next step will be to record the individual drum tracks.  That will be the first track that will be layed down on the final CD product.  Very excited.  I will report back on our progess soon.

What have I been doing for two years

Here I am looking at this blog which I have abandoned.  It's like an old house that no one has lived in and has deteriorated due to lack of attention.  I think my blog has a few cobwebs, maybe a leaky faucet and definately needs a fresh coat of paint.

So here's the news...my band, Silverwing, is recording a CD of original music written by my husband and myself.  It is very exciting.  We don't have daydreams of fortune and glory, but we need to do this cause it is an unfinished project. 

You know how it is...I can come up with great ideas and be all excited and full of energy and then the tough part of the idea hits me upside the head and guess what????  I put the idea away and it never gets finished.  I am a great starter (yeah, see first sentence about my abandoned blog), but my finishing skills leave alot to be desired.

So we are going to finish this CD and then we are going to start another CD since we have that much material.   Our band website is at www.silverwingband.com.  We play regularly throughout Northern Nevada and occasionally in California.

We had the honor of playing for the Nevada Republican Convention during the last Presidential Campaign when Sarah Palin spoke in Carson City and Reno for thousands of people.  We played fairs and festivals, honky tonks and classy casinoes.  It has been a great adventure and now we are going to record our originals.

And our original songs are warmly received by everyone.

I'll keep you posted.  Thanks, The GuitarChic 

Hot Guitar Riffs

Well, the title sounds good, but the reality is...maybe not so hot. But I have learned the minor pentatonic scale and I jammed to Oye Como Va on the CD which accompanies my new book, "Rock Guitar" by Hal Leonard.

I'm impressed that you can play any note in that pentatonic scale and be in tune. It's great. I also learned some power chords and that makes total sense. I've played enough blues and rock that I know where the next chord is, really pretty easy to figure out. So I am learning "I hate myself for loving you" by Joan Jett and of course it sounds much better with the power chords.

I may even try out a distortion pedal. I know that is the crunchy sound that I need for that song. I am loving this guitar playing and soon I am going to get up at open jam rock night and throw down a Joan Jett song. I think I will be first female to show up at this rock jam night. Yes!

Lead Guitar Riffs

Quick update on my new goal of learning lead guitar, I forgot all about my new goal and so I have nothing to report. The book has not even been opened. So today, Sunday, a day of take it easy and watch some playoff basketball, I make a promise to myself to open that darn book and make some progress.

But in the meantime, Brandywine played two gigs. We played at the Oasis Bowl and at the American Legion Hall. Both nights were great with great crowds. We added quite a few newer songs to our set lists. I added White Liar by Miranda Lambert and I did a pretty good job singing it and got a few compliments. I think my Karaoke singing has actually helped me loosen up when I try and hit the high notes.

Karaoke at Big O's in Fallon on Thursday & Saturday is taking off with good crowds and lots of fun. Thursday is ladies night, so come on out.