The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus Blog

Five String Basses Bais

2012-03-25T17:26:01Z

Five string basses

ORGIN STORY
I play bass quite a bit and it is one of those instruments that fell into my lap. Everyone seemed to always need a bassist and I had always had wanted to play in whatever band that I could. The first bass that I ever bought (and still love) was the
Epiphone Viola Bass. It is an amazing little bass and the short scale neck always worked for the type of music that I was playing at the time (either Brit Pop or Post-Punk). But as time went on, I started to realize the limitations of having a four stringed bass.

NASHVILLE LEARNED ME WELL
After spending some time seeing bands play in Nashville, I noticed that the five-string bass was the most common bass to be playing. Session musician after session musician would bring a five-string on stage and I noticed there were reasons for this.
The five string bass has a factor that allows for more versatility than a normal four-string bass in how one is able to play certain notes while not having to move the hand. Let us take a look at this little fret-board chart that I created:

from high string to low

On a typical four-string bass, we only go as low as that E that is at the bottom, so that when staying in first position (the first few notes), the lowest of low notes that can be hit is the E. With the introduction of the fifth string, the lowest note is now a B which allows for an easy follow up into the E on the fifth fret (which translates over to our normal low E string).

Watch this in action in a video that we did with a group of students at USC, Marjorie by Brett Fromson and The Monday Night Boys Club .

See how the bassist is able to stay in one position and clearly make a sonic mark in the song by hitting super low notes to match the kick while being able to do runs up and down the neck without having to get into the more treble-y 12th fret range? That is the advantage of the low B string on the bass.

PRACTICAL USE
For session work, this is necessary. If an artist comes in with a song that is drop-tuned or requires a deeper sound that a typical song, the five-string allows the bassist to be ready to play right away, versus the four-string bassist having to retune.

As any studio should, we have a selection of basses to deal with any need for any song. To make sure that we are ready, we got the Gibson Tobais Growler bass as our five-string. The pick-up controls allow us for quite a few different tone choices as well, though I think the round-low bottom end is really where it is at for this bass.

Poem for SXSW

2012-03-19T00:59:30Z

From top left: Cruisin’ USA, Lissy Truillie , Rachael Sage, Birds of Chiacgo, Wheeler Brothers

We made it through SXSW today
Live streaming and recording everyday
Todocast folk helped beam signals around
Live streams from everyday can now be found
On our website
It was all right
So do go see
Music for thee
So much more to come in the next month
Streamin’ from the bus we are not grunts

THE FUTURE: Part 1: Introducing: The Firebird X

2012-03-04T23:23:09Z

1. Preconceived notions are tricky beasts that play dangerous games with your judgment, on the bus or off the bus. Off the bus, that would be an entire other story of value judgments, critiques and a book length idea about making decisions.
2. This is a blog post
2.a. (Ceci n’est pas un blog post?)
3. But preconceived notions and guitars is what I am specifically thinking about right now. For the non-guitar players out there, someone’s favourite guitar and preference can make all of the difference in the track or their guitar playing.
4. We have a lot of guitars on the bus but not all of the guitars in the world. Gibson SG, Les Paul, Casino, Blues King and more. There are plenty of options.
5. The Gibson Firebird X is a new addition to not only our guitar family but the world.
6. You should click that link and read more about the guitar. It is a strange and amazing little device.
7. Ours is a shiny blue. Pretty beautiful, actually. See?

8. It has a lot of character to it. The ability to change tones is more in-depth that I previously thought. In this clip, I am playing the first chord from A Hard Day’s Night through the Firebird. There are a lot of settings on this guitar.

9. Did you hear those acoustic simulations? It sounds really pretty. I am really happy with it actually. The Stratocaster simulation is cool and nice, the ES-335 has me sold but when it got to the acoustic 12-string, I fell in love. A 12 string that I do not have to constantly retune.
9.a. All of that was recorded with the Avid Eleven Rack as a DI interface into this Macbook.
10. Is this the last of it? No, this is the start. More of these to come as we get to play around with it more on the bus.

A Delay and Waylay That Wa LA: SAE & McDSP

2012-02-11T23:57:00Z

Like that, like some strange flash, we were gone from Southern California. We had been there for a full month, we rarely spend such an amount of time in one area but it was the start of the year, the landscape of the southern part of the state is expanse and warm in the winter and tradeshows and events were abound. Driving up the grapevine (see: Interstate 5), the next event was up in Pleasant Hill in the East Bay by San Francisco and the previous event was a stop at S.A.E. Los Angeles. Down there on Sunset Blvd, we sat at S.A.E. and had a day parked between two buildings gazing out to the beautiful streets that make up Hollywood. This day we had the amazing songwriter and producer Toby Gad and artist Chelsea Williams on the bus doing a live performance and an interview with winners of an S.A.E. contest.

exhibit a: sunsetblvd

As we were conducting the interview, there were a series of hurdles that we had to overcome like a marathon runner who is in it for the education rather than the checkered flag (Do marathons have checkered flags? I never ran one, I would not know). The first was that we had 7 people speaking at once in the interview and each had to have descript audio inputs. That was easy enough, we have enough recievers and batteries to where we just ran that all into Pro Tools 10 and grabbed the video with a mixture of our cameras and Tri Caster.
In post, though, we ran into some issues. Listening back to the audio, it was insightful and beautiful, with genuine moments and instances of everyone connecting, thought it was a bit noisy. With any of this live audio stuff, I found out, there is quite a bit of work put into the act to make it listenable. I had never attempted a project of these sorts so the tricks that I learned from this session were thanks to Ryan. What he pointed out to clean up noisy post audio was this:
MCDSP NF575 was the main tool for the session. I played with the preset settings until I got one that was somewhat close to what my goal was and then went into “solo-mode” to go after one specific buzz that was going on. In this case, it was a frequency in the highs that was the result of a A/C running in the background. Using a super small Q number, I surgically pulled out the one frequency and the audio came out clean.

POW POW: PREs and Sunshine and Literature

2012-02-03T06:35:06Z

I sit enthralled in the front studio of the bus, I sit enthralled reading Eugenides’ new book “The Marriage Plot.” I sit so enthralled that I do not realize that we were sitting at the University of Southern California campus until I look up and noticed the markings of the Trojan mascot around me. It all blurs on me a bit, I am running audio for today’s session. I sit and realize that the students we are going to have on today are a practiced band and will be coming ready armed with guitars and all.
Impressive, I think that they were described as impressive.
USC is a really impressive campus. Was it one of those instances that happen on the bus where we end up at a pretty location on pretty day and pretty sun lights our pretty parking spot and everything is just pretty. The weather was fantastic, the people were nice and I was running audio.
I do not do audio too often. I’m on a big video kick so doing audio was a slight change for me this day and I felt ready for the task.
Guitars are a subject of fascination for me. I spent a youth with Sonic Youth. They are a strange tool that can coax so many different sounds and feelings and emotions and chords and sensations and tones from the solid (or hollow) body.
We spent the beginning of the year setting up the studio as we wanted things to be changed around for us for the New Year. A passing thought we had that shaped its self into a reality is the idea of being able to plug guitars into the bus anywhere and have them DI’d and set to record.
Ryan and Hans spent an evening soldering and setting up the http://www.avid.com/US/products/PRE”> Avid PRE to be a DI pre for the bus just by patching.
I had a nice view of the campus most of the day from my view in the middle studio just out the front window, I had little to no intention of moving from my spot. Joy enthralled me when I realized that they are remote controllable through http://www.avid.com/US/products/family/pro-tools”>Pro Tools.
Sunshine enjoyed from inside the bus.

exibit 2: sunshinebusfine

I learned about audio
And the protagonist of “The Marriage Plot”
And my own personal love of not only guitars
But suit jackets
And MIDI controllable PREs.

Near Year’s Honours

2012-01-31T04:37:51Z

When the New Year begins and the bus staff returns to the bus, it is a kind of a celebration. The bus exists as our home, the bus exists as our place of work and the people at the bus exist as our friends, so the return in the parking lot in Burbank served as a time of celebration. It was quickly back to work though for us. One of the reasons for this celebration is due to that the fact that the start of the New Year and the end of the break from the previous year is when new technology gets installed on the bus.
This is all worth noting but it is not nothing to note that it is a few weeks into the New Year and there have been no signs of activity on the blog. There is a reason for this. We got our selves a new toy to play with, though I believe it would perhaps be two toys.
The first being the Newtek Tricaster and the partner in its crime being the satellite dish on the bus powered by Todo Cast. With the combination of these two technologies, I may present to everyone a new and exciting facet of the Lennon Bus.

Lennonbus Live!

On this site, we are going to be showing of live broadcast of concerts that the bus does, Lennonbus Live sessions and many other things. We got the chance to break in the Tricaster at NAMM with a Lennonbus live session, concerts at the Wanna Play stage and an amazing live concert headlined by Bootsy Collins.

exhibit 1: Lennon Bus at Namm 360 view

This is our first foray into the field of live broadcast. Where it will go from here, we can only assume good places. With the bus having a history of doing Warped Tour, SXSW and other festivals, we really have the chance to crank out some fab live footage from the bus.
As we work on what could be the next Lennonbus Live video, go to the site and watch any of the videos that are archived on the site right now.
Go!

Getting Technically Creative with iPad Wireless Control

2011-11-14T19:20:42Z

Hello all! It’s been tooooo long since our last chat! Warning: excessive use of exclamation points may be used throughout this piece as we have just turned the bus into the wind and are heading west. Final Destination: California aka HOME!! The Lennon Bus has officially ended its 2011 tour and will be heading into the shop for repairs and upgrades while the crew trains for 2012! To say we’re excited to see what next year brings with the production of a Lennon Bus Europe would be a massive understatement.
Moving on… to continue from our last discussion, we ended on integrating Sibelius and the Scorch app with your songwriting communication. And before that we provided you with a method to capture that initial inspiration with the Garageband app. The next step? Getting your composition to become truly immortal! One of the beautiful things about recording a song is the realization that by storing it in a digital format (or analog if that’s your style) you are in fact creating something that will last longer on this planet than you will. A weird thought, yes, but its something that many artists don’t realize and often forget. After you’re gone and this recording is something you’ve left behind, what do you want people to think and feel after hearing it?
I digress. As you may already know, there are multiple DAW’s these days to capture a performance with, but the industry standard worldwide is Avid Pro Tools. Now when it comes to using Pro Tools, it is a known fact that until you reach a certain level of comfortability with the program it is a rather technical operation to run. Compare that to writing, arranging, and performing a song, which is an extremely creative operation. I’m no expert on neural processes but I’m quite positive that the creative and technical portions of your brain function on complete opposite sides. It’s so hard to combine the two! And when trying to record and perform at the same time you need to limit the amount of switching as much as possible. This is where the AC-7 Core app from Saitara Software comes in. This app allows you to control Pro Tools from the safety of your iPad, with movable faders and knobs for adjusting levels, pans, mutes, scrubbing, and full transport control. Imagine you are laying down a guitar track in the best sounding corner of the room, your computer is at the other end, and you couldn’t move if you wanted to as you’re surrounded by microphones. Load up AC-7 on the iPad and your wireless control of Pro Tools is good to go! Or perhaps you are recording a band, but you’re the only engineer. As you walk back and forth between the control room and the studio, you move mics around in the room and record their various locations, playing back on the fly to find the best sound. Endless possibilities! And when it comes down to it, anything that furthers your knowledge of recording and Pro Tools will in turn allow the program to cease as a technical process and allow it to become the amazing creative instrument that it truly is.
Just to clarify, magic is in fact not real (although Santa Clause DOES exist) so the app doesn’t automatically connect to your computer upon opening. However, the setup whether on Mac or PC is very easy and Saitara has down a wonderful job of supporting the software. I’ve included a video of how to setup below, along with a specific setup for Pro Tools below that. Enjoy the app everybody and cheers to all!

What Wonders We Witnessed When We Went To South Beach: 2011

2011-11-07T13:22:58Z

How was your weekend? Was it well?
Over the weekend, we at the Lennon Bus had quite a bit going on.
We really did!
Our tour season is winding down with only a few more days to go before we begin the trek back to California and what could be a more strange and fantastic way to end the year besides being in South Beach in Miami. The weather is not too far off from San Diego in the summer time, so I felt rather at home. Palm trees were abound and adorable pups scrabbled around s the bus sat parked on the beach front by the Betsy Hotel. Tours were given both days but the highlight of it all was the unveiling and birthing of the Wish Tree that will be on permanent display here in Miami. The amazing photographer Rob Zuckerman was there to make portraits of the first 100 people that hung their wishes.

“Wait, one second.”
Yes?
“Make portraits? That is a strange phrase.” Let me explain.

This was a phrase that Rob used when he was taking portaits that evening. Something that he had said that had failed to cross my mind was the way we use language when talking about photography. TAKE portraits. SHOOT pictures. CAPTURE photos. It is all very aggressive and a proactive alteratation of our discourse can alter the way the entire action of photography is seen. MAKE portraits together, not SHOOT them.

“Ahh, okay.”
Anyways…
At the ceremony, the excessively talented bassist Kate Davis played her rendition of imagine for the crowd and recorded a version of it on the bus that near brought us all to tears. We’ve got to say “salutations and thank you” to Young Arts for helping us set this musical aspect of the ceremony.

“And now?” Now we get ready to head back out west for the winter and prepare for the next year.

Beam Me Up - Video Light Painting in Motion

2011-11-01T18:49:51Z

A really cool looking visual effect is light painting.

In photography, the effect is achieved by using a slow shutter speed, but recently, I wanted to obtain the same effect in video. Turns out it’s a bit more complex than changing your camera’s shutter speed, but if you use Apple’s Motion, the effect can be done quite easily, in just a few steps.

STEP 1
Import the footage that you want to use for you video light painting and title the group subject.

STEP 2
Create a new group and title it null object. Create a new shape, I’ve chosen a rectangle, but it really doesn’t matter. What does matter, though, is to make sure that it has no fill and no outline, basically making it a ghost shape.

STEP 3
Track your ghost shape to whatever you are going to use to do the light painting with. In this case, I’ve decided to use my subject’s fingertip.

STEP 4
Wherever you want your subject to start light painting, add a particle emitter, the one that I’ve decided to use is the Magic Dust emitter as I have found that it gives you a pretty good place to start.

STEP 5
Add a match move behavior to your particle emitter and use the ghost shape as its source.

STEP 6
In the inspector for the particle emitter, change the life parameter to 10 and the speed parameter to 0.

STEP 7
Under the particle, change the random motion amount to 0.

STEP 8
Change the gravity parameter to 2.

STEP 9
This is personal preference in terms of what thickness of light you are going for, but for this, I’ve changed the scale over life to about -55 for the scale at start of life and -25 for scale at end of life.

STEP 10
This is also a preference depending on what color you want your light to be, but here I’ve changed my light to a blue-ish gradient in my inspector.

STEP 11
Add a gaussian blur to your light, making it look more natural. The amount should be either a 1 or 2.

THAT’S PRETTY MUCH IT!!!
YOU SHOULD NOW HAVE SOMETHING THAT LOOKS A BIT LIKE THIS:

Codecs: Part II

2011-10-25T05:48:53Z

In my last blog post we talked about some basic video codecs and their history. This time we’re going to talk about a couple of popular post-production codecs, Apple ProRes and Avid DNxHD.
Last time we talked about capture codecs like DV or DVCPRO and delivery codecs like h.264. The two codecs we’re talking about today are post-production codecs. ProRes and DNxHD aren’t codecs used in cameras and they aren’t what you’d post to the web, burn to a disc, or send to someone for viewing. They’re used during the post-production portion of the workflow. These codecs are capable of virtually lossless quality at high bitrates (for online editing) or very good quality at lower bitrates (for offline editing). They use algorithms that are very easy for modern computers to decode to minimize the impact on the computer’s CPU, resulting in the computer being able to devote more of its resources to FX processing than to playback of the raw video clips. Post-production codecs are also designed to maintain the integrity of the video when multiple processes like FX, keys, and composites are layered. This is something the more heavily compressed capture and delivery codecs usually fail at.
There’s a correct tool for every job. When you’re editing and finishing a video, the correct codec is probably a post-production codec like ProRes or DNxHD. So do yourself a favor, and transcode to it before you begin working in your editor; you’ll get more power out of your editing system, fewer headaches and higher quality. All at the expense of minimal time transcoding (a good time to make a fresh pot of coffee) and some extra file size (quality hard drives are affordable these days).