Last Tuesday, March 3rd, I stopped by my friend’s open mic to show a little love and support to local music. I brought my guitar and a Zoom Q2n video & audio recorder to test out. When it was my time, I put the camera on the bar and played three songs. When I brought the footage into Final Cut for editing, I was not at all impressed with the video or audio. I’m going to chalk that up to user error for now, and revisit the settings next time I record.
Regardless of the quality of the footage, the playing was loose and right where I want it to be. Loose might not sound good to some, but let me explain what open mic is all about. It’s about experimentation and trying different instrumentation, arrangement, and approaches. This site is also a place where I can capture the creative process, step by step.
This site https://www.theram.io/ is a snapshot of the creative process at any given time. The mistakes, the progression, and the evolution of the songs as I write and perform them. Just the mere fact that we had a National Steel alongside a Double Bass, qualified as a worthy post to YouTube. Oh, and the music sounds pretty fine to boot. There is a portion of one of the songs that featured bow playing on the double bass, which added a level of dynamics I had never would have associated with the song.
Fast forward to mixing the video down, I had fun with the animations at the beginning and end of the video as well as the text and labels throughout the video. One look at my channel, https://www.youtube.com/user/blackmountainbigfoot and you’ll see the intro styles are all over the place. One of the decisions I made was to create a consistent style throughout 2020, once I came up with something I liked I did the same for upcoming vinyl releases. The result was a consistent design for my next 3 albums. This is progress. As an artist that approached music in a DIY fashion, I think I have a single aesthetic I can fork with for a bit of time, and move my focus back to the studio and songwriting.
Let me know what you think, and enjoy the performances.
LIVE RAM
Coomber Craft Wines Oceanside, California