Whenever we tour, Jon always is designated to the bathroom for practice in the hotel rooms and I get the room. This is because the floors make my cello slip and usually the toilet seat is too close to the tub for my bow to not hit it. When we were on tour last week to Boston and NY, we stayed in a Hampton Inn that had a bathroom I could tell would work fine for me to practice in; so, I decided to be considerate and went in the bathroom to practice. How lucky I was!!! The acoustics were fantastic. I was surrounded by my cello's sound and it was a round full bodied sound. Not a weird pingy sound w/ lots of reverb like some bathrooms (Yes, even though the bathroom is usually Jon's territory- I am not a bathroom practicing virgin. I recorded many a demo tapes in bathrooms when I was in school and I have an ear for the finer points of bathroom acoustics.)
This Hampton Inn not only had those special comfy beds but also a great acoustic bathroom for me to practice in. :-)

I was practicing Bach that night and playing both the Bouree movement from the solo cello suite IV. and also the Prelude from Suite V. I love both of these movements from the solo cello suites in particular. The Prelude to Suite V. tunes the A string down to G to create a dark tone you cannot get with regular tuning. That prelude is very dramatic and dark like a Vampire movie. The Bouree movement to the IV Suite is made up of two sections. The first is a lighter one with sixteenths and a skipping along sort of feel. The second section is very special. Bach was such a master! It is like a reminiscence of something so nostalgic you can barely stand it but not a slow slurpy ballad type thing. It is still in the Bouree feel and plods along through the memory. The chords are wonderful in the second section and really remind me of the Prelude to the modern work for solo cello by Benjamin Britten. With Bach it is complex but yet beautifully simple. Everything has it's place. Everything has purpose and is going somewhere. It is obvious through his music that Bach was very spiritually in tune to the of creation on earth and he knew how to express that through his music- meaning the flower is perfect in it's symmetry, the sea shell's intricacy, etc. Bach's music reminds me of these wonderful aspects of our world like a perfect flower. Yet his music also reminds me of the Bumble Bee who's body shape and proportions are not supposed to be able to fly (according to our human calculations) but somehow the Bumble Bee does fly anyway.

Well, TV is evolving and I figured our live sound set-up should too. We started on this transition to digital a few months ago after my Boss RC-50 bit the dust before a gig. I ended up getting another one at the Guitar Center as a replacement. I knew after our trip to Russia though that digital was the way to go. If I could get all of my analog hardware in a software version, it certainly would make travel a lot easier. For Russia, we had to perform a sort of equipment triage, and ended up leaving a few pieces of gear behind. We fit the essentials into a suitcase and a rack case. It worked, but it was still heavy and hard to keep up with, especially for plane flights.

I have had my eye on Guitar Rig for a few years now. They started with modeling software. Amp sounds, effects and more that could live on your laptop. Recently they also came out with a version that featured a looper (which was the largest piece of analog gear that I had. I purchased Guitar Rig Kontrol edition and it worked great right out of the box. The only trouble is that the pedal is pretty noisy. it has the metal style buttons that make a loud click. Ok if your playing heavy metal, but not cool for music that uses instrument mics. The clicks were even picking up in the loops. After some more investigation I found the FCB 1010 (made by Behringer). The pedals are very quiet and the pedal is fully customize-able using the midi interface. There is also a sort of underground user community that has sprung up around this pedal. Reading the user groups and user videos on youtube really helped a lot as the Behringer manual sucks quite badly. Anyway, the pedal is amazingly functional.

Getting used to using software is the tricky part. The best part of analog gear is that you have a knob for everything you need. If something doesn't sound right or you aren't getting the sound you want, just reach for the appropriate knob. With software, it isn't always as intuitive. I have had a few times where the system was muted or a routing wasn't right and the result was no sound! Scrolling through menus can be frustrating if you aren't sure what is wrong, especially in a gig situation. This has happened to me twice so far. I think the only solution is to know the software inside and out!!

So that is the only "con" I have come across so far. The "pro's" certainly outweigh that. One, I have reduced the weight of our equipment from a 90 pound pedalboard case to one Behringer FCB 1010 midi pedal. Number two, the sound signal to the house system is MUCH cleaner. With the analog gear, of course, you have multiple power supplies, each of which can cause humm or buzz in the system. Also you have much more cable to deal with as it goes from one effect pedal to the next. The result is much more noise in the final signal. Even the cleanest analog setup can have quite a bit of noise. The cool thing about digital effects is that they are perfectly clean. No wires to deal with.

Recently Ableton Live also came out with a version that uses a looper. I have been using the LE version for composing and cataloging ideas. I downloaded version 8 last night and had a lot of fun working with the looper. The effects sound great too. I think this will open up a lot more possibilities and we'll be able to travel MUCH lighter. We're ready for you Europe!!

PICS BELOW: THE BIG PEDAL BOARD (in the case) and the Behringer FCB 1010 (which controls various software effects and loopers)

Our thanks to all of the folks who have come out to the concerts over the last few weeks. Dahlonega..you rocked. We really want to thank YOU for coming out and for telling your friends. We really appreciate it and we are always humbled when people tell us that they heard about our music through a friend. It really is the highest compliment we could get!

Since we've been home we've been dealing with all sorts of fun stuff, including clearing rights for our new release. Also, some stressful legal claims (which are unfounded) I won't go into it now, but needless to say it doesn't exactly fill the soul with positive energy.. ha ha We would love to have a manager take over some of this stuff. Sometimes it can really bog down the creative side of things. We probably have at least an album of new ideas, but it is hard to get to the the development stages and recording etc.. with so many other things to keep up with. Anyway, that's another story...

We do have some ideas regarding releasing new music and would especially like to do something that our fans (mailing list subscribers and blog readers) could experience firsthand as we create it. One idea is this (please comment or email and let us know what you think):

1. We'd like to release a new song each month. Leading up to releasing the song we'll post on the blog our thoughts about the composing process, revision process and finally to recording and finishing up the song. We would probably include video from the recording sessions as well. Finally we'll post the song online for you. At the end of the year we'll have all of the tracks and release it as a complete album on itunes and as a physical CD.

We could release each track directly on our community page here.

It seems that the "old school" way of releasing music as finished project on a CD, every couple of years, is falling away. We'd love to know what you think about these types of new ideas and let us know if you have any ideas to add.