Well times are exciting for the captain . Captain bleeped out at wrongpop last Friday great set , great crowd, great promotor and when is say great promotor I do mean it. See the captain gets offered a lot of deals where a promoter books the captain and them gives us a bunch of tickets and says you have to sell this many 30 tickets I'll keep half the cash and the band gets the other half. Now that stuff doesn't wash with us. If you call yourself a promotor and what's more expect to earn money off nights by being one them sell the fucking tickets yourself.tHat's what promotion is. Don't ask the bands to do it we are there to play the music and the tiny 30 quid split three ways doesn't even cover the costs of petrol. Now at this point people sometimes say yes but you shoud be prepared to promote your own band. Well the captain is and he does. But let's be honest if we want to play a gig that we promote ourselves it's better for us to wok directly with the venue rather than a middle man who takes a cut then asks us to do the promotion. When we work with the venue we choose the acts we play with often we can make the door price free so as many people come as we can and no slackarse middleman taking any cash.
This is why we love promotors like steve wrongpop he's a better class of promtor. He books the bands, works with the venue AND promotes the night rather than putting the expectation on the bands. He makes sure the crowd is there and the bands get paid. Now thats what i call promotion. And it's because of promoters like steve that we were able to give a free wwtcd tape to every wrongpop goer. So steve whenever you want a herzoga remix just call.
In other news the captain might be getting played on BBC radio subculture tonight. Exciting times indeed plus we are just confirming some date in Stafford with ford squad. And even more exciting we are working on some new material. Imagine thurston Moore recreating daft punk on a commodore 64 with at the drive in doing vocals and you are hot hot close but not disco.
Love captain dan - Via BlogPress from my iPhone
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Monday, 1 February 2010
In New Music We Trust...
It's been a while since the Captains have played any new music - but - when a missing Tenori-On cable wrecks rehearsal there's not much you can really do. So here's a few iPhone recordings of what the Captain did.
The Captains are currently listening to Modeselektor and wearing watches. The Captains also advise you to visit BitJam this Thursday for Artic Sunrise.
What Would the Captain Do? are also playing @ Wrongpop 27 - Friday 5th February.
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
Here's three samples now go and form a band
Ok so captain dan and his dominatrix girlfriend skream queen were having a heated debate about music. Skream qween is punk through and through and much more besides but has no love for the electronic wigga beats. Captain dan, as you will remember back in the day was a proud member ofthe league against ska punk.
There's mad love between the two of them but it stretches across a musical divide !
During debate about said musical divide skream qween , partly in jest made the comment the problem with electronic music is any kid with a laptop can do it.
And indeed this much is true: back in the acid rave leading to big beat era when this stuff really started to kick out of the major studios and into the smaller outfits there was still a huge expense involved in getting the kit together. It took time, it took commitment and continualy collecting hardware . Print mags like future music and sound on sound told us our music just wouldn't be good enought if we didn't save the grand for a REAL tb 303.
Fast forward ten years and now we have far more powerful laptops that can make any sound we need. There are plenty of free soft synths and effects out there to keep us going and our virtual samplers have as much memory as we want. Rightly or wrongly thanks to software crackers like SSG and h2ozone we can even get the big name software like ableton or cubase for free. And if you are feeling particularly moral there are plenty of freeware /cheaper ware equivalents which are just as good if not better ( the captain has recently switched to reaper which cost a voluntary 40 quid). Nowadays bloggers like petermkirn, Casper electronics and Get Lofi don't teach us to fetishize that expensive kit we don't have but that it's what we do with our kit that matters , how it enables us creatively and what our relationship with it is along with it's meaning in our creative process. And if it's not right open it up and hack it or build your own!
Now people will still argue that hardware us better than software or analogue sounds better than digital but the point is that software is good enoug
Good enough for any kid with a laptop to make music. And we can slate the pretty who stands there with a MacBook pro and a few ableton presets who has never even heard of granular sampling but that just makes us twats. Big prog rock twats . It's the equivalent of the way Emerson lake and palmer or phil Collins looked down on sid viscious cos he couldn't even hold his bass the right way up.
Way back before the captain was alive punk zine sniffing glue published a now famous article which had just guitar tab for three chords and the statement "here's three chords now go and form a band"
The captain says:
Here's three samples - now go and form a band
http://www.topsamplesites.com/
There's mad love between the two of them but it stretches across a musical divide !
During debate about said musical divide skream qween , partly in jest made the comment the problem with electronic music is any kid with a laptop can do it.
And indeed this much is true: back in the acid rave leading to big beat era when this stuff really started to kick out of the major studios and into the smaller outfits there was still a huge expense involved in getting the kit together. It took time, it took commitment and continualy collecting hardware . Print mags like future music and sound on sound told us our music just wouldn't be good enought if we didn't save the grand for a REAL tb 303.
Fast forward ten years and now we have far more powerful laptops that can make any sound we need. There are plenty of free soft synths and effects out there to keep us going and our virtual samplers have as much memory as we want. Rightly or wrongly thanks to software crackers like SSG and h2ozone we can even get the big name software like ableton or cubase for free. And if you are feeling particularly moral there are plenty of freeware /cheaper ware equivalents which are just as good if not better ( the captain has recently switched to reaper which cost a voluntary 40 quid). Nowadays bloggers like petermkirn, Casper electronics and Get Lofi don't teach us to fetishize that expensive kit we don't have but that it's what we do with our kit that matters , how it enables us creatively and what our relationship with it is along with it's meaning in our creative process. And if it's not right open it up and hack it or build your own!
Now people will still argue that hardware us better than software or analogue sounds better than digital but the point is that software is good enoug
Good enough for any kid with a laptop to make music. And we can slate the pretty who stands there with a MacBook pro and a few ableton presets who has never even heard of granular sampling but that just makes us twats. Big prog rock twats . It's the equivalent of the way Emerson lake and palmer or phil Collins looked down on sid viscious cos he couldn't even hold his bass the right way up.
Way back before the captain was alive punk zine sniffing glue published a now famous article which had just guitar tab for three chords and the statement "here's three chords now go and form a band"
The captain says:
Here's three samples - now go and form a band
http://www.topsamplesites.com/
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Filesharing
Stretta destroyed Bono on his blog the stretta procedure today after Bono had been ranting about the evils of filesharing he finished up with this quote from moby
"I've made a record that I really like, and I'd like people to hear it. If someone wants to hear the record, I'll give them a copy of the record. If someone goes online and listens to it on a bit torrent site or spotify or whatever, I'm thrilled. You know, I'm just incredibly flattered if anyone makes the effort to listen to what I've done. For someone to give up an hour or two of their life to listen to the record that I've made, they're doing me a service. I think that the relationship between musician and audience at some point got turned on its head. Musicians started to feel as if the audience needed them. The truth is I need an audience way more than the audience needs me."
The captain feels exactly the same way. Email iamdigitalslut@whatwouldthecaptaindo.co.uk for a free copy of the album
"I've made a record that I really like, and I'd like people to hear it. If someone wants to hear the record, I'll give them a copy of the record. If someone goes online and listens to it on a bit torrent site or spotify or whatever, I'm thrilled. You know, I'm just incredibly flattered if anyone makes the effort to listen to what I've done. For someone to give up an hour or two of their life to listen to the record that I've made, they're doing me a service. I think that the relationship between musician and audience at some point got turned on its head. Musicians started to feel as if the audience needed them. The truth is I need an audience way more than the audience needs me."
The captain feels exactly the same way. Email iamdigitalslut@whatwouldthecaptaindo.co.uk for a free copy of the album
Thursday, 31 December 2009
NYE
Ok so the captains gearing up for NYE. Captain nick being the young urbanite electropioneer he is is djing at walrus's scouthall skank rave . It's probably gonna be messy not least because it's always that way when the mighty mighty walrus is involved. Captain Dan being the owner of a small child he is training to beat box is staying in on new year and carrying on setting up the Captains studio. All the gear is in place and new laptop installed (touchscreen reaktor ftw!) next up put in the power cables and audio leads which isn't too much of a huge job because a lot of it is hard wired into the captains live desk. After that we can start optimising the new laptop which should be interesting running windows seven and Maybe even think about acoustic treating the room.
As for daveteonicas? W think he's at an open mic night somewhere , singing.
So what does the new year hold for the captain. Well first up Captain Nick is moving to London. It's going to be an interesting challenge being in an electronics band in two cities , drop box and google wave should help though. But being in London should open up some great gig possibilites.
With this in hand we need to hav a serios think abou how we promote the album / band and what that actually means in a web 2.0 all music Is torrented and free context.....
Love captain dan - Via BlogPress from my iPhone
As for daveteonicas? W think he's at an open mic night somewhere , singing.
So what does the new year hold for the captain. Well first up Captain Nick is moving to London. It's going to be an interesting challenge being in an electronics band in two cities , drop box and google wave should help though. But being in London should open up some great gig possibilites.
With this in hand we need to hav a serios think abou how we promote the album / band and what that actually means in a web 2.0 all music Is torrented and free context.....
Love captain dan - Via BlogPress from my iPhone
Monday, 28 December 2009
tooling up
ok so the captain ordered some new gear today. One of the issues with live computer based music is you spend a fortune buying hardware knobs and sliders to control virtual knobs and sliders on your laptop. Because of this the captain was pretty excited when windows 7 included touchscreen, no need for hardware knobs and sliders if you can actually touch the virtual ones on screen. so a new touchscreen laptop from acer is winging its way to the captain as we speak - happy days
[Caption]
[Caption]
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Being an Internet band
Ok so we are attempting to become an Internet band. Captain nick is moving to London which is great news- but how do we write without being in the same place at the same time . We considered streaming osc over the net bit this would mean a pc at each end running both ableton and captain dans reaktor ensemble. Theoretically possible but we'd need some super powered pcs which we just don't have. This would e a great way of actually playing together live but we would still have the issue of daveteonicas vocals.
So the next best option seed to be dropbox which would allow us to sync and share audio files very very easily and synced to our iPhones too. But we need some sort of way of talking about what we are sharing her in non realtime. Googlewave seems like a possibility bit it's early days and no iPhone app as yet. Or the other option is this log itelf the various captains could make posts around what they have created discussing the songs as they ate written and embedding the odd file. Is rss the right format? Well the amount if different frontends means we can individualise and go iPhone too. And the interesting part will be that others can see it too.... Assing anyone still reAds the captains blog
Love captain dan
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
So the next best option seed to be dropbox which would allow us to sync and share audio files very very easily and synced to our iPhones too. But we need some sort of way of talking about what we are sharing her in non realtime. Googlewave seems like a possibility bit it's early days and no iPhone app as yet. Or the other option is this log itelf the various captains could make posts around what they have created discussing the songs as they ate written and embedding the odd file. Is rss the right format? Well the amount if different frontends means we can individualise and go iPhone too. And the interesting part will be that others can see it too.... Assing anyone still reAds the captains blog
Love captain dan
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
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