Author: Ruku

Categories
life stuff

So you wanna be a musician…

Welcome to the first part of a possible multi-part series I’ll call “Advice from someone who doesn’t really know any better, but hell I’ve been on this planet long enough to have a good idea or two, surely.”

I’ve been in a band since late 2019 and shared in it’s ups and downs (mostly ups, thankfully), I’ve also recorded solo bleepy-bloopy nonsense. I’ve played guitar longer than I care to admit given my skill level, so I like to think I know a thing or two about a thing or two.

So you wanna be a musician? great! It’s fun, learning an instrument is rad, and once you start down this path everything is expensive so you’ll have no money to waste on drugs, Fortnite skins, or OnlyFans egirls (uwu).

If you’re wondering where to start? Well, I’m a terrible role model, but I’ll tell you what I can. I’m going to be sharing some general stuff, as well as tips and tricks that helped _me_, specifically. Ultimately, I hope any budding muso out there finds this useful!

I’ll also be talking primarily about guitar, but I’ll try and keep it as general as possible.

PROTIP #1: Figure out your learning style

Do you prefer to just figure it out on your own and follow along to a YouTube video? Do you want lessons? If so, in person or online? This is a tough question and one you may not have an answer for right away, but it’s good to know. There’s no real right or wrong way to learn (picking up bad habits aside, but I’ll get to that later), so figure that out as well as you can.

For me I felt that getting lessons face-to-face was definitely the leg-up I needed when it came to starting out. It wasn’t through a music school or anything (it was pretty much some guy at school) so it’s wasn’t the most robust education, but totally worth it. That was for a few years and then I was out on my own, learning new songs and tabs via YouTube and Ultimate Guitar. Occasionally, I’ll pick Herschel’s brain for things if I need to.

PROTIP #2: What sort of music do you want to play? Where do you want to take this?

This sorta goes with tip #1. I’ll admit YES, learning the basic chords, your scales, whatever the fuck modes are, and a few rounds of ‘Greensleeves’ or whatever never hurt anyone. There’s a lot of fundamentals there you kinda need to know to be good at an instrument. But learning “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” (as much of a bop as it is), or “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” isn’t going to be fun or teach you anything about learning how to play say, Black Sabbath, or Bad Religion. Definitely learn the fundamentals, but cater it to the sorta stuff you wanna play.

Additionally, do you want to just play for fun? (the answer is almost always is yes. The age of getting rich from playing music is kinda over) Do you want to work on your own music? Do you want to join a band? Work that out, too. I started playing guitar because I read that the school band needed a bass guitarist and both me and my parents misread the PSA. It takes all sorts. Even the annoying cunt with the acoustic guitar at parties had to start somewhere.

This will also narrow down the instrument you buy (though, it never really ends at one).

PROTIP #3: Get good gear

This is an important line in the sand. I didn’t say “buy the most expensive”, or “buy the best”, but buy good gear. The benchmark for affordable instruments (in the guitar world, anyway) is pretty decent these days, so don’t waste your money on ebay-spec, bottom-of-the-barrel trash unless you definitely know what you’re buying. Hell, buy used! Yeah you’ll have to scrub off years of skin flakes and dust and god-knows what, but that’s what technicians are for. Read or watch reviews, do some deep diving if you find something you like, and definitely take the time to go into a music store and have a play of things, as well. With everything going online these days, the store clerks will probably be grateful.

Speaking specifically on guitars, here. Some models you could look into are the Squier Sonic series and the Pacifica series by Yamaha.

PROTIP #4: Go outside and touch grass

No, seriously, you might have to go outside at some point and touch some damn grass. Go meet other musicians or get your mate who also plays an instrument over and just noodle, have a laugh over a beer while playing dumb songs. I learned way more and was table to take stock of my playing ability from rehearsing and gigging with a band than I ever did on my lonesome. Plus it’s fun! And you can count it towards your quota for socializing and going back to being a hermit!

PROTIP #5: You. Are going. To suck. (at least for a while)

There’s no avoiding this. You’re going to suck. You’re going to suck harder than a Hoover for a long time. You’re going to suck during lessons, suck during practice, suck at the music store, and suck while playing with friends. Learn from it, embrace it, and just fucking have fun. Learning an instrument (unless you’re a particularly gifted River Tam-type) is hard. Don’t make it harder by being hard on yourself.

PROTIP #6: Work on a repertoire

Inevitably, you’re going to be asked to play something for someone. This happened to me at a party and it went down faster than a lead balloon with concrete shoved in it. Learn a few songs and shove ’em in your back pocket for these occasions. My recommendation? Go for a couple of funny songs, couple of happy songs, a couple that just sound nice to listen to and a couple of crowd favourites (maybe a few sad songs too depending on your friends circle). For the sake of transparency, here’s mine:

Eels – I Like Birds
Corky and the Juice Pigs – The Only Gay Eskimo
The Smashing Pumpkins – Bullet With Butterfly Wings
The Smashing Pumpkins – Today
Bill Bailey – I Will Not Look at Titties For a Year
Blink-182 – Dammit
Blink-182 – Stay Together for the Kids
Eels – Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)
Jon Sudano – Wonderwall (Wonderwall chords, but the lyrics to “All Star” by Smash Mouth)

I sincerely hope all of this helps you get somewhere, young (or old, or somewhere in between, for that matter) budding muso. If you read this far? You’re gonna do great. <3

Till next time…

IF YOU’VE READ THIS FAR:

Hey so I provide this on my own website, funded by myself, with my own money. If you liked this and want to support this nonsense, feel free to flick me a couple of bucks on Ko-Fi!

Categories
The Limited

‘The Coffin or the Suitcase’ – One year on.

For those who don’t know, I’m in a band called ‘The Limited’. It’s pretty fun.

In 2023 we released our debut album, “The Coffin or the Suitcase” which pretty much compiled everything we’ve worked on up to that point (minus a few songs we’d prefer to forget). It’s been a year since that came out so I figured it’d be a nice revisit to go through what sorta led up to that point, and the proper album recording experience!

By the point the album was a “yeah ok let’s do this already” we already knew all the songs back to front, upside down, in the bath, front to back, in Esperanto, Pig Latin, and that clicking language from “The Gods Must be Crazy. We would have been gigging with only the EP to shill for a couple of years at this point, which we recorded for about $500 in the studio we were rehearsing in at the time.

By the time we were talking about finally making the album, Jomz (former drummer) had left the band, and Landon was officially ‘in’, complete with a dorky “welcome to the band” video on YouTube (and quite frankly the band has never been the same since). Sean (singer, The Owen Guns) was hounding us to release something already and the EP was definitely showing it’s age compared to how the songs were played now, so it was definitely high time we threw a proper album together.

We tracked the drums and bass at Studio Woodford (conveniently placed right near Herschel’s house, so he could just walk there, the bastard), and also recorded a scratch track for the vocals and guitars. It felt pretty much like doing the EP except we had to wear headphones. Kitty’s bass had it’s own little compartment to be recorded in and Herschel and I were plugged into the DI.

Once that was all tracked, we headed to Songcave (about 5 mins from Herschel’s house, so he had to drive this time, just not as far as the rest of us, so he’s still a bastard) and worked on the guitars and vocals with Eliot Boyd Reynolds, whose body of work is frankly amazing, and current member of Sideshow Annie.

And this is where it kinda got a bit pear shaped, so consider this your first word of warning: If you wanna be in a band with other living, breathing humans all with ego’s and their own ideas and their own mini-goals working towards your common goal, and you wanna record something that doesn’t sound like trash: Fucking communicate with your bandmates. Communicate lots, especially when it comes to the music side of things. Too much is never enough.

I say “it got pear shaped”, I’m catastrophizing a little, admittedly. I was recording solo vocals where it could have easily been gang vocals (not that takes are _really_ an issue aside from wasted time, everything’s digital now), Landon was coming up with all these ideas for tracks without telling us (it seemed, anyway. Could have been a spur of the moment thing and he went ‘fuckit, we’re doing it’), “Bodycount” was tracked way too fast and there wasn’t enough caffeine in my system to nail that in one take, that was really it. a few miscommunications and different ideas. Sorry to like, clickbait or anything.

The amount of trickery involved in the album was cool, too. We had Landon on a totally different mic for his vocals in “Coffin”, Eliot put this weird rotary phaser thing over my noodly bits (I refuse to call them solos, that would imply I could solo and frankly, I really can’t. I just know octaves and the Pentatonic/Blues scale) in “Tikkun Olam”, the only real issue was getting us all to fit comfortably in the vocal booth for gang vocals. Four of us, with headphones, screaming into the one mic? chaos. Fun chaos, and it was all very silly, but still chaos.

Because Herschel lived like, five minutes away, he did the bulk of the work with Eliot in mixing and editing the tracks and we all did a final listen. Few months later? we had an album. Bam, done. We released it digitally and then shipped the masters off to Replicat to do the physical release later on. It was a huge, monstrous expense for the band (as Herschel will tell you in between songs, by the way, come to our gigs), but it was totally worthwhile and a learning experience for all of us.

The album art took some time. A lot of the artwork was done by Jade Gallogly, with additional photos by Zak Campbell (both went on to do the video for “Coffin or the Suitcase”). We pretty much all just discussed our favourite album art as a band and put together a mood board from there to send through. Landon and Herschel took liner note duties and DIY’d it, matching the style to suit. The animal caricatures (why am I a bird? I don’t know. I did vocals on a cover of an Eels song so I’m ‘the bird guy’ now) were also done by Jade specifically for the album, but if I recall, we managed to get a few social media posts out of how ridiculous they were.

It’s weird. Seeing your name, your face, and knowing you played those parts on something that exists, you know? We did the EP of course, and I release things under Pigeonrat, obviously, (and sometimes it hits me then too), but for some reason “Coffin or the Suitcase” hit different. A sort of self-deprecating dissociation of “that can’t be me/us/, it sounds too good” for a brief moment, then the realization sets in that it was you, and you did sound good. It’s good weird, but still weird.

I can’t speak on behalf of the band, but would I, personally have done anything different? Yeah, absolutely. There’s a few bits in “Bodycount”, “Animal” and “Tikkun” that could have done with a tweak (when I suggested we re-re-re-record a few bits while the album was being mixed to Herschel he almost drove down from his mountain compound and murdered me in the face), I’m sure the others would tell a very similar story. Ultimately though, I’m very proud of what we put together and hope the next one (yes there’s more stuff coming, promise) tops it.

Going into the next chapter of The Limited, what would I want to bring to the table? Hard to answer, really. As a band I’d like to see more collaboration between all of us on what we’d like to try and what we could probably drop, definitely having all the songs as completed and finalized as possible, and absolutely bringing something new to the studio so we’re not just re-releasing “Coffin II: Electric Boogaloo”.

Personally? There’s definitely places where I want to build on the work I did on ‘Coffin’ and do more than just “play a bunch of power chords really fast” (though there’s gonna be way more songs like that. We’re a punk band, after all), and I guess try new and weird ways to ruin Herschel’s songs as much as possible before he yells at me.

Till next time…

IF YOU’VE READ THIS FAR:

Hey so I provide this on my own website, funded by myself, with my own money. If you liked this and want to support this nonsense, feel free to flick me a couple of bucks on Ko-Fi!

Categories
Ranty nonsense

Kyle Gass Did Nothing Wrong

Another day, another celebrity being a goose.

Tale as old as time.

For those who are somehow not in the know, how do you survive without social media? But also let’s get you up to speed.

During a show in Australia, Tenacious D celebrated guitarist and vocalist Kyle Gass’ birthday. They had a cake and everything. Gass blew out the candles and made a wish. His wish was that the next aspiring Lee Harvey Oswald “doesn’t miss Trump next time”.

Tenacious D. Older and clearly not wiser.

Cue shock and awe, because apparently we can’t make jokes about convicted criminals has-been celebrities sex pests grifters liars the President of the United States anymore. I guess it’s okay to want Clinton’s head on a stick but not the MAGA guy.

Cue every single conservative talking head having a complete meltdown, but that was to be expected. There were also comments from so-called bastions of free speech calling for blood as well.

Most notably (here in Australia at least), KIIS FM broadcaster Kyle Sandilands who’s up there with Alan Jones with the amount of hot water he’s been in from what comes out of his mouth. The saving grace here being at least Sandilands occasionally makes good points and is good for a laugh, while Alan Jones is well, Alan Jones.

On his show, Sandilands said Tenacious D are barred from ever being on the show.

Free Speech Warrior #1 – King Kyle

There was also United Australia leader Ralph Babet who called for Tenacious D to be deported despite -of course- raging against cancel culture in the past and saying “Without free speech our nation will fall” when he was called out for sharing clips on a stabbing on Twitter.

Free Speech Warrior #2 – Senator Ralph Babet
Babet’s media release following the show

As a result of Gass’ gaffe, future Tenacious D AU/NZ shows were cancelled for the tour, and it seems the future of the band itself is in jeopardy.

Let’s break this down a little. Tenacious D, a comedy rock band who are regularly vulgar and obscene (cock pushups, anyone? What about ‘Fuck Her Gently’?), made a joke on stage about a recent event that -let’s be honest here- we were all thinking, and the world goes mad and there are calls for deportation.

Senator Ralph Babet, defending free speech like a champion.

Then-President Trump himself makes a vague threat to assassinate Hillary Clinton and… nothing?

Republican Senator Richard Burr makes a similar joke and… nothing?

I guess those were just harmless jokes, right?

How about another liberal example to keep the two conservatives who actually read this drivel happy? When The Dixie Chicks make some disparaging comments about then-President George W. Bush and the Iraq war, they were straight up cancelled. They’re just “The Chicks” now, and former fans destroyed CD’s and called for blood.

Again, tale as old as time. Those who claim they’re hit hardest by cancel culture and consistently claim “facts over feelings”, are calling for people to be cancelled because their widdle fee-fees were hurt.

Should Tenacious D be cancelled? I dunno. I like Tenacious D. So my heart says “no” but my head says “given the current political climate, probably for the best”. Given that this was the same band who once wrote “The Government Totally Sucks” (a banger, by the way), Jack Black’s response to the outrage kinda leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone violence, really. I’m more of a pacifist softie bleeding heart than anything (except Nazis. Punch fucking Nazis). I’d rather witness or be party to civil disobedience and being a shit-stirrer than seeing people getting their cunt punched in, or worse.

What I don’t condone, is the diaper-filled caterwauling from these free speech warriors when someone says something they don’t like. Or similarly, when they get called out for their bullshit.

Someone isn’t “telling it like it is” or “is fucking real“, or “says what we’re all thinking” just because you like them. You don’t like people who “tell it like it is“, you like people who agree with you.

Free speech (but not freedom from consequences of free speech, I could write a whole essay about that alone) for all, not when it’s convenient.

This isn’t a “left” or “right” thing, it’s about consistency. Maybe my brain’s wired wrong (read: most likely), but shouldn’t calls for free speech for all mean -you know- free speech for all?

If you condone one and not the other? You’re nor a warrior of democracy and free speech, you’re a hypocrite. End of story.

Till next time.

IF YOU’VE READ THIS FAR:

Hey so I provide this on my own website, funded by myself, with my own money. If you liked this and want to support this nonsense, feel free to flick me a couple of bucks on Ko-Fi!

Categories
Uncategorized

From the ashes….

So ‘Don’t Eat the Felafel’ as an ezine was an amazing failure.

Maybe I’ll get back to it, maybe not. But it’s become very apparent that I do a lot of shit online, and I need someplace to curate it all into a handy-dandy list of shit I do…

…and still have a place for me to shitpost outside of Facebook, and blog my thoughts somewhere that people read. Which rules out Livejournal. Does anyone even use livejournal anymore?

Anyway welcome to rukusan.com.au version whatever. It’ll probably change back to ‘Don’t Eat the Felafel’ (edit. Changed it already. lol) because I love the title. but here we are.