Mike Shupp Music 

It Never Ends...

Hmmm... remind me to start attending NAMM. Even as I redesign my rig to incorporate my new Peterson VS-II, I hear that this little guy is coming in April...

Getting Better All The Time

An interesting practice run for mixdown of the live recording while helping a friend convert some LPs to CD... unless I'm mistaken, the only way to get a CD burner to identify individual song tracks (so your player can navigate to each track) in a continuous play recording (like the live recording, or in this case, an LP transfer) is to generate individual masters of each song from the complete audio file... thus an exercise in edit points (and fades, at session front, and end) and file management. The convergence of recording and computer technology is, in many ways, ideal. A serendipitous merging of skill-sets... I love that.

Damaged Beyond Repair - Not

Have finally bitten the bullet and taken my Taylor 310-CE in for a neck reset, after weathering the Washington, D.C. humidity for a year. The innovative "NT" neck-joint on new Taylors is actually designed to allow neck angle readjustments for just this purpose, and luthier Jim Warwick at Music Technology in Springfield, VA, has done a half-dozen neck resets on Taylors, including one of his own. And since we're doing a reset, we're going to try some 12s instead of 13s for string gauge... there's already tone to spare, I'm going for maximum playability. Jim seems to think we can get down to about 3/64" string action, that Taylors are designed for just that. And it's all warranty work... I'm officially excited again.

Airplay in Spain

Hmm... BMI reporting some performance royalties for a little airplay in Spain... a very little... from 2nd quarter 2003.  3rd and 4th quarters 2003 should be interesting, when the promo campaign for This Time kicked in...

"The Key" in iTunes

"The Key" has made it into iTunes Music Store... download at will. More to come...

Smooth As Velvet

Our "triumphant" return to the Velvet Lounge last night... and first time on the new stage. Start times being what they are here, it was a very late night for us, as Nefrit El-Or and Chrissy Coughlin took the first and second sets, respectively (great sets by both), and we closed out the night. A small but hearty crowd cheered us on, and my friend Mike Ratel snapped some photos. And the stage -- who knew? One of the better sounding stages I've played on in recent months. The red (velvet?) curtain behind the stage plays a big part (of all nights to wear a red shirt), as do the excellent 2x12" speaker monitor wedges up front (which, now that I recall, were once in use at the 9:30 Club around the corner...) Took a few songs to get up to speed (no sound check), but before long it felt real good up there. Soundman Craig did a great job and was most pleasant to work with. The Mesa Boogie blew a fuse just as I powered it up to start, and I didn't have replacement in the right amperage... so it was back to the single amp rig for the night. Thirteen song set list, including the newly added "Forgiven"... next up, Luna Park, 1/30.

Mike Shupp Gig Archive: Velvet Lounge: Tue Jan 13 2004

Jammin' Java (Part 3)

Just completed a rough mix of "Right Through Me" from the live show, posted an MP3 file (stream, download). This was the final set list.

"Rock" and "Roll"

According to XMFan.com we're getting continued airplay over at XM Satellite Radio... nice. OK I really need to buy one of those players now. Hmm, I wonder if my Starry Night software plots the positions of XM's "Rock" and "Roll" geostationary communications satellites...

Washington Post Reviews "This Time"

...in the Weekend section today MIKE SHUPP "This Time" Private Mind (washingtonpost.com)... didn't even see it... and a nice little sound clip in Post Haste 202-334-9000 (press 8107). Some great publicity for the Velvet Lounge show this Tuesday...

Airplay on XM Satellite Radio!

XM Satellite Radio has been spinning tracks from THIS TIME this past week...  "Came To This" and the title track have each been played several times on the Rock "Unsigned" station (#52).  Stay tuned to XM this Tue JAN 6th, between 5:00 - 6:00 pm EST to hear more... and keep those requests coming!

Jammin' Java (Part Two)

So... I have finally got all the audio files from the live recording transferred, and have begun the process of listening back, and rough mixing, and can finally write a quick note about the show...!! Though I was under the impression that we'd be recording straight to Pro Tools®, the on-site studio was in fact only set up to record to (MOTU's) Digital Performer; a fine platform, but necessitating some extra steps for me. I guess they "have" Pro Tools there, but... whatever. I'd brought with me a 60 GB FireWire drive and a 160 GB USB 2.0/FireWire drive, in hopes of writing directly to one of them, but we couldn't quite get that to work... however, engineer Bobby McIntyre converted Digital Performer's raw audio files to .WAV format, and burned them over two (2) DVD-R discs (4.7 GB capacity each -- exactly 6.0 GB total of data -- 85 minute show recorded on 14 channels at 16-bit/44.1 kHz). My good friend Mike Harvey at Actiondale Recorders lent me an external DVD-RW drive which ran flawlessly on my Pro Tools machine (a Dell Dimension 8200), and after quickly setting up a new PT session, importing and synching the audio was a snap.

Slowly working up some rough mixes -- here's a short clip of a rough mix of "What Did You Mean"... more to come. Performance-wise, it was a tough night for us, as the venue, nice as it is, is really best suited to acoustic performers (even though they actively book rock acts)... the brick wall behind and along the sides of the stage, along with all the rest of the hard surfaces in the room, make it extremely reflective, acoustically... and as soon as you introduce a rock drum kit and some guitar amplifiers, you end up with a situation where it's very difficult to properly monitor your vocals, no matter how low you try to keep the instruments, and how hard you try to push the monitors.

But the crowd was great, really supportive, and the sound out front was by all accounts excellent, even among one of the better shows we've done. That's the latest, more news and sound clips to follow...!

Jammin' Java (Part One)

Have posted some early photos from the show last night... on my way to Actiondale Recorders to borrow a DVD reader to transfer the audio files from DVD-R to my hard drive...!

Happy New Year!

Skeezer at work on her New Year's resolutions!