Let's Head Into The Bright Lights Again...

Hello, people I like!
Meet some other people I like...
Tom Lancaster (Drums)Scott Cawley (Bass)This is my band hQ. We've been playing our brand of bluesy rock and roll for about 3 years and we're planning our historic first album, and dear lord, it's so very complicated.We started writing our own songs about 2 years ago so songwise, we're all sorted for material. But I want our release to be as professional as possible, given our budget which is essentially whatever we can get out hands on.
We have been pooling our money from the last few gigs and built ourselves a fantastic PA system which we tried out at the last gig at the Barnstormers in Horwich and that turned out as one of our best gigs ever. The actual PA came together surprisingly cheaply and quickly, and this is how we managed it...

----doo doo doo dooo----

(That's dreamy flashback music, to you and me...)

About a month ago we decided after a string of techincal hitches and trouble with levels to finally make that historic switch from amps to a full PA system. We tried borrowing a PA system for our first gig a while ago, but due to us not having a clue how to work it everything went a bit tits up and we ended up playing through just the amps for the rest of the gig.

We had a budget of about £450 pounds to build a full PA. And here is how we spent it...
(Cue A-Team like building montage...)
This is some of the hQ garage.
hQ Hq, if you like.
First of all, we made a list of things we needed which looked basically like this:

. Big speakers!
. Mixing desk
. Power amp
. Leads and connecty bits

Not so hard you might imagine. However, for a combination of reasons involving price and my love of building and messing with things we thought we would have a go at building the speakers ourselves.

It is at this point that I should mention Steven Cawley, Father of the hQ bassist, Scott, and our general financial saviour.
He found some 15” woofers on Ebay for around £30-40 pounds and decided to invest in them on our behalf. We paid him for them using money from the hQ budget and the next day he jetted off to pick them up for us. When he arrived in Nottingham to pick up the speakers the seller proposed that we could have an extra set of ridiculously powerful speakers if he could have a lift to a place in Manchester. It turns out that he had been trying to buy a car part off someone who was having trouble with communication, so Steve agreed, and drove him all the way back to Manchester, where he found out that the car part deal had fallen through.

On the way back the seller mentioned another car part seller that he could pick his item up from, if he could get there, but it transpired it couldn’t be picked up until the next day. But Steve decided to offer a lift from Nottingham to Manchester again, as he felt like he hadn’t upheld his end of the deal after the first journey.

So the next day he got a call from the guy asking if it was still ok for him to have a lift, so Steve drove all the way back down to Nottingham, to Manchester, back to Nottingham to help this guy out. Now, that’s just magic, isn’t it? Makes you feel nearly as happy as this does...A lick of paint through the new wooden stencil and...Speakers number 1
Speakers number 2
But wait... It gets better.

In thanks, the seller of the speakers brought out a large square case containing a fantastic mixing desk, and gave it to us in thanks for our trouble. We had just acquired around £750 pounds of hardware for about £50.Now, the moral of this story is, in the words of Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves:

Right. All we had left to purchase was a power amplifier, and we knew a guy who was in charge of a lot of karaoke stuff and was possibly selling one. Short story shorter, we bought it for around £100 and it was ACE.The final bit of the checklist involved a trip to the electronics shop Maplins. From whom we have bought so much stuff we’re considering asking them to sponsor us. As the speakers, power amp, and mixing desk all had a different input method we spent about £50 on mono jack, stereo jack, and XLR adaptors and leads, and 2 large, intimidating speakon cables.
Which lead to this most beautiful of monsters, the homemade Public Address system. (Yeah, I had to google that.)You may also have noticed that we sprayed the logo on the front of the speakers. You really can’t imagine how satisfying that is. We also have an old rolling blind which we’re going to spray hQ on and use as a backdrop for the next gig on the 30th of July, and we’re going to do the unspeakably vain thing, and paint hQ on the front of Tom’s kick drum head. Cliché POWER!

So, hopefully, for the next gig the whole setup will be complete and we will have a rockin’ stage setup. I cannae wait!
In addition, since I wrote the first draft of this blog, it has got better. Today we added 8 lights and 2 huge pole things to put them on, for just £30. We rewired the plugs to go to a switch for the top 4 lights, to create 3 spotlights (one each, woo!) and one will eventually have a UV bulb, just to add an extra tasty layer of awesome cake.The bottom 4 were wired to go in sequence or flash to music, so photos don't quite portray the extremity of the deliciousness.We're adding this to our current lighting rig, which consisted of these:So we're looking forward to our gig this friday at the Red Lion in Blackrod. Pop down if you're anywhere near the area!
We should be painting the backdrop tonight as well, so keep an eye out for the blog about that!
Also, I'm ordering the parts of my new computer on monday, so an album should be well underway sometime in the next month which, if all goes well, should be video blogged, Frost* Report stylee!I will talk to you soon, guys! I'm in a thoroughly fantastic mood now!
xxx

I'm BACK!

Right, first off, hi!

How are you?

it’s been a while.

Yes indeed.

How’s the wife?

Kids?

Good to know.

What about me?

Well, I’ll tell you...

Today was one of the happiest days of my university term so far. Because, as it is nearing July, I haven’t received an opportunity to unwrap a present for some time. Today, however, would put an end to this giftless streak...

In a recent(ish) blog, I mentioned the purchase of a keyboard from the marvellous Mr. Jem Godfrey, of Frost* fame and today I was delighted to see ‘Rideout, Rob – Jenkinson A: Large Box’ on the mail list at reception. Long story short...

It had ARRIVED! But before i got to the tasty keyboard goodness within, I had to mount an assault on the mass of duct tape holding it all together. As you can see, that is no small amount of duct tape...

After about 40 minutes of wrestling the sticky black ooze from my new favourite thing I managed to rip off the last piece and throw it victoriously to the corner of the room. Where it stuck. So I left it hanging, as the bin in my room was full, and that was as good a way to dispose of my adhesive nemesis as any. I really can' explain how excited I was when I got it open. There it was, laying amongst a myriad collection of all varieties of packing stuff. Including 2, yes 2, different kinds of bubble wrap. Even that made my happy, but I would have to play with it later, because I had a new problem. As a student, and a male one at that, the state of my room is what scientists would refer to as 'a disgrace'. And to put the keyboard on any kind of ledge or table in my room would mean I would have to clean. *sigh* 1 Hour of cleaning and 1 beautiful Axiom keyboard later...Isn't it just gorgeous! I feel like im putting up holiday pictures. Here's me playing my favourite chord.

A prize to whoever guesses my favourite chord. :D

And here is the MIDI drum kit I intend to fuse it with to make some kind of horrible MIDI Monster! That's quite a good band name... *takes note*.

Anyway the upshot of this is now that I have my computer pretty much ready to order (there will be a blog about that for particularly nerdy people :D) and my MIDI and USB A-B cable on their way I should have ProgPit Studios up and running in just under a month! JOY!

Oh, and I'm moving house on thursday, it's gonna be my first house :) I'm so very excited. I expect I'll end up publising a billion pictures of that anyway so look out!

I'M BACK!

And, also by the way, for those who didn't get here by my twitter link, you can follow me as DrBlowThingsUp :)

Or search for me on facebook and stuff. We can be FRIENDS!

Hope you have a fantastic couple of days 'til we meet again!

Ciao!

xxx

Find a penny, pick it up, and all day long, you'll have a penny.

Oh, hi there. Do come in. :) It’s 1 o clock in the morning, and what does one do at this hour? Why, one blogs.

Since the last episode of the ProgBlog, my focus has been split between many projects. And as a result of this, nothing significant happened on any of them. So I decided to get a bit more serious with one and then nail the rest in due course.

My current project, therefore, is the remodelling of my old SX GG2 guitar. As a quick reminder to new readers, when I bought it, it looked like this:

Then after one small mess around with electrical tape, it had white stripes on it. I can't find a picture of that right now, but it was pretty cool, even though it was a shoddy job.

Just recently I decided to completely deconstruct and rebuild it, so here’s a run down of whats happened so far, and maybe a guide to people who haven’t done this before, and want to have a go. I found the whole process so far pretty exciting and not as much trouble as you’d expect. I recommend it if you have an old guitar.

Anyway...

*cue cheesy 80’s montage music*

Just before Christmas:- I Took the stripes off the guitar, and the markers off the fretboard. It took longer than I expected, because I had to polish off a load of sticky marks that the tape left in its malicious and adhesive wake. We then headed into the festive season, with my guitar looking like this:

Shortly after Christmas:- Due to receiving a small toolset for Christmas, I took all the hardware off my guitar. This is anything that can be unscrewed without having to break any wires or permanently disconnect anything. This is my little box full of guitar hardware at this stage:

1. Misc. Screws

2. Tone/Volume Knobs with washers

3. Machine Heads and all relevant screws & washers

4. Big screws for Strap

5. Pickup... holders? Not sure what they're called.

6. Tune-o-matic bridge (sounds like a wallace & gromit invention) with screws

7. Pickup selector switch with washers & screws

8. Bridge with screws

9. Pickguard, trussrod cover, and all relevant screws

10. Back panel and screws

About a month ago: I got me a soldering iron! And set to work on what was at this stage the manliest part of the process. Burning metal off other metal. It was brill, despite the very minor burn I incurred during the process and it got better quickly and I had a cool scar for about a week. I’d say it was worth it. So with all the pickups and electronics removed, here’s how they looked:

And here’s how the guitar looked:

Last Week:- popped into a shop in Huddersfield where a lovely old woman sold me several sheets of sandpaper. This’ll do me, I thought, until later that night I ran out of sandpaper and my guitar still looked very much clothed...

Today, however I bought 12 sheets of the stuff, and only two sheets in, with the help of some good friends, I managed to finish sanding down the front, including the headstock. It now looks like this.

Impressive, eh? I even managed to get started on the back. Although at the moment it looks more worn than sanded.

And here’s what my supposedly black pants looked like after a day of sanding. New fashion trend maybe?

I think that’s about it for the guitar workshop!

In other ProgBlog news, my Progressive metal band is ready for action! I sorted most of this out just before I got properly started on my guitar, and now the lineup is confirmed, maybe short of an extra guitarist and a singer. The band name, and album name have both been decided and the track listing is done, even though I’m going to have to write lyrics for a couple of songs so that they have titles.

The name of the band is MetroGnome, it consists of me on guitar and vocals, my good friends Ben Wareing and Dale Cross from back in’t Runshaw days on bass and drums, respectively, and James Goetz, the newest addition to the crew, on what is likely to be a mellotron. We may settle for miscellaneous key based instruments, however. ;p

The album will be called Worlds Apart, after the title track which is 23 minutes and ten seconds long, and split up into 4 sections. There are 3 as yet unnamed B-sides, all of which I am very proud of :D and they last between 5-10 minutes each. I fully cannot wait to get started on this, I think recording will commence next July, so watch this space.

Finally, a few developments have been made in the ProgPit construction plan, which if you’ve never heard of it before, is the name of my home studio next year! I have managed to get hold of a pretty powerful Mac for about £400 and a very basic drum kit for free! I’m going to Prog up the kit with a china cymbal and a splash, that I managed to haggle from a music shop for £100 quid for both, and I need to look into getting a cheap double bass pedal.

After mentioning this venture on the Frost* forums a while ago, I received a thoroughly amazing reply for a man I know only as SerFox, advising me in pretty much every aspect of my studio development. On his recommendation I am on the market for some Rokkit monitor speakers and the lil pads that you put underneath them that stop your desk and room from being bass-raped from the low end output. It’s all coming together rather nicely, if I’m honest. Thanks, Fox, if you're out there!

Oh, and I’m going to get 2 of these bad boys put up on the wall either side of the computer to make it look more like a mad science lab. Dont’cha love it.

Well thanks very much for checking in and let me know on facebook or something if you want to ask anything. I’m still open for suggestions about what colours to paint my guitar ;)

Peace out! A-town,

Xxx

so many things....

good arfternoon Ladies and Gentlesirs!

I come to you this instalment from a fervent bubble of ennui at the back of a composition 1 lecture. I haven’t posted anything on here for a while, due to a mass exodus of effort consisting mostly of attempts to get work in on time for Uni. Shortly before Christmas I made a list of my projects for this year, so here’s my 2010, part 1 itinerary:

2 Demo EP's for Cartoon Explosion and nameless prog band. I might call it MetroGnome.

HQ album

work on my workshop guitar (see list below)

and get my uni work done.

I wont bore you with the details of the latter, im not one for complaining about uni work via a blog. Here's the rundown of the things I must do with my workshop guitar!

Yeah, many a thing to do...

This Thursday, however, Cartoon Explosion has booked out studio time to record our songs. The main twist to this tale is that we haven’t technically written them yet. We have songs, but if I am permitted to let them speak for themselves the working titles for the 2 finished songs are ‘Sumptuous Willy’ and the hauntingly beautiful ‘Tears On My Cock’.

No, there's no picture to illustrate that.

Obviously the lyrics aren’t finished yet, and many of the solos aren’t written but my opinion for the moment is on a very basic demo we want to capture the real soul of the messaroundy band that we are at heart, as we are slowly becoming squashed into the box that far too many bands feel the need to constrain themselves within, which is that of the ‘serious band’.

And yes... that may mean we will have to change the names. Of both the songs, and the band. But dammit, Me and Ollie will fight for our rights to keep that name. I don’t feel a band should be forced to be serious. Just do what you want and let the public decide whether to take you seriously. As this bunch of rapscallions showed us not too long ago...

On a slightly contradictory note... we were playing around last week with Gay Bar by Electric Six and came up with a smug jazz cover, called Wine Bar whose lyrics were cobbled together amazingly by Mr Harry Doodson. A short preview is as follows...

Girl,
I wanna take you to a wine bar.
I wanna take you to a wine bar.
I wanna take you to a wine bar, wine bar, wine bar

Let’s have a white.
A chardonnay white....

And so on. :D

I may or may not post the entire song some other time. I might even record it one day :)

Also, in ProgBlog news this week, I typed my name into google images and the first thing that comes up is a picture from my blog! Well done, all. I feel just a LITTLE bit famous. Though these days it seems like an inherently vain act to google one’s own name. I don’t know why.

But I have a week off next week, and though that screams ‘work’ and ‘revision’ to some, to me it simply screams ‘Prog!’ so maybe I’ll make a start on Worlds Apart. Most probably by seeing how much I can do with MIDI, without playing them in because a lot of the solos are at a Jem Godfrey level of insanity befitting a prog odyssey and my weedy fingers cannot keep up. I almost get the feeling that guy TRIED to set his fingers on fire. He looks a tad young... oh well.

Finally, 1 last plug. If you have never heard of audiosurf, for the love of god look for it on youtube or something it’s one of the greatest ideas of all time. ;)

Ooh, and a big hello for all of you from Funk Snail Bye guys! I’ll try and leave less of a gap between this and the next one. This gap was caused partially by a massive 2 day computer fail.

Oh well, see on the flipside, motherflippers!

xxx

The Rob Rideout ProgPit Constuction Blog vol.1

Well, hello there!

It’s a new year, a new decade, and now that Jenky Aid is done, thar be new projects to get on to. Not least those of the mountain of actual university work I’m supposed to do this term. But as a start to the new year goes, the gig my band, HQ played last night was proper bo. We got one of Tom’s parents’ friends to do guest guitar on Johnny B Goode and Purple Haze. The man is almost definitely a blues genius. We polished of the evening of several arrangements of auld lang syne ranging from a punk rock one to a nice reggae rendition which was my personal favourite.
But as good news goes, this next nugget is up there.

A couple of weeks before the end of term, I sorted out my living arrangements for my next year. It’s a fantastically lovely 7 bedroome house on an ol’ school cobbled road, with 6 of the awesomest people ever. Proper looking forward to it, but that’s not even the best bit...

After seeing my room for the first time I immediately decided that I would be turning my room into a bit of a home studio, so over the last few weeks I have been wondering about what exactly I need to buy. Essentially I’m planning on an Imac, a reasonably large MIDI keyboard, some adequately badass speakers and maybe a little DI box or something like that for if I want to record guitars. Well after posing the burning question of ‘What shall I get’ to the Frost* Forum community I got some fantastic advice of the dudes there which definitely helped to shape the mental image of the finished product, and then something wonderful happened. Jem Godfrey, Keyboardist and songwriter for Frost* has recently been tweeting about how he was moving house and dismantling his old studio; and I thought seeing as how some things would be thrown away, I might ask if I can just nab them before they get to the skip so I can use them in my evil plans. And it turns out that If I can get down to london before the 4th, I can get this: for free, and this: for just £100! It makes me so very, very happy! This is possibly the best opportunity ever. It makes me feel like this: (i would like to point out that in real life that jacket is a nice manly red... but this camera apparently disagrees.)

I expect I’ll get the majority of the money towards the Imac for my birthday and will buy the monitor speakers over a great deal of saving up. But as for now, that is all the news about the Rob Rideout ProgPit. I’m still settling on the name to be honest...

Peace out, and enjoy the new decade! (Apparently we’re in the ‘Teenies’ now)
xxx