My awesome day

1. Woke up and checked stats. My most recent software creation, a Kinect MIDI Controller (KMIDIC) is on engadget in the US, Japan and Germany!

2. Managed to get a ticket to one of my favourite bands Kyuss for next year. So happy! Tickets sold out super quick!

3. Got to work, did a bunch of work, then my band’s (Throw Catch) freshly mastered debut EP arrived in the mail, and it sounds amazing! Big thanks to Dylan Adams (recording and mixing ) and Michael Lynch (mastering at shoehorse sound).

4. Did more work, finished work, and off I went to my first guitar lesson in 12 years…with Peter Northcote! I learnt sooo much in that one hour lesson, and have now made the commitment to pratice guitar at least 10 minutes a day.

5. Started practicing as soon as I got on the train and had a random conversation with a stranger, who is a guitarist and IT professional like myself, and I now know of Animals As Leaders. Fantastic band!

All in all, pretty much the BEST day ever!!!

Also…if you are a musician or a music business in Australia, check out Rockstar Hookups for your music classifieds needs!

BOSS Bass Synthesiser Fun

(2010-09Sep-19) Bass Synthesiser.mp3

I was playing with my Boss Bass Synthesiser pedal and heres a new snippet of a song I came up with tonight. I used a 5-string bass and recorded it with Ableton Live.

Pretty fun little toy to play with 🙂

Next Stage

I’ve been playing a lot of drums lately now that I have a Yamaha DTXplorer in my room (thanks Scotty!). I’ve been saving clips in Ableton Live of the loops and fills that I create. I realised that I haven’t played my bass in a while so I plugged it in today and started playing along to some of the drum loops I made. Many hours later, this song was born.

I’m doing a little experiment and posting it on wordpress as well as the usual benxtan.com, twitter and facebook. This way I can write about it and people can leave comments. Have a listen and let me know what you think!

benxtan – Next Stage

I skipped lunch and dinner to make this.

Technical Details:

Drums – Programmed in Ableton Live (using Impulse). All inspired by beats I made up on a Yamaha DTXplorer. I think they sound a lot better (both composition and sound quality) compared to my older stuff. Having a physical kit to play with helps a lot, and is loads of fun too!

Bass – Recorded using a Schecter 5 string bass through Line 6 POD Farm VST.

Guitar – Recorded using an Ibanez RG1570SDB through Line 6 POD Farm VST. I decided to put a middle eastern sounding lead at the end as a change to my usual pentatonic/blues solos that I always do.

Vocals – Recorded using a Shure SM58. Applied lots of effects in Ableton to hide my bad singing 🙂 Lyrics are a mix of old and new. Didn’t really put that much thought into them. Just needed something to fill the space.

Bass, guitar and vocals recorded using an M-Audio Firewire 410 and Ableton Live.