Tag: guitar

Music

A couple of firsts

Well, the show Sunday was definitely a success. After playing gigs in a few other places these past few weeks, I was surprised to feel cozy and comfy in a room I was familiar with.  It’s the first time I’ve had that feeling playing a live show. It felt good! I think our songs are getting more consistent too, now that we’ve been playing them out a lot. Where I used to think, ‘okay here comes the next part of the song, don’t mess up!’ (and then of course I immediately, loudly and confidently would strike a sour note that instantly resulted in some funny facial expressions, ‘what was that?!’), I am now feeling an ease for the first time, almost like some of the songs are becoming automatic. I can just sink into them and rock out. It’s a great feeling!

rungs chappySome other firsts of the night include:

Inviting one of my good girlfriends up to play drums and sing some of her own original songs.

Having another friend play drums on a few covers, (Blur and Nirvana).

Playing with our openers, Erika and Doug, whose music was just enchanting. I am definitely booking another show with them soon!

So, I’m loving these new first time experiences, all thanks to music! The last first would be getting this funny picture, compliments of my dad 🙂

Art

Sunday Funday

It’s so much fun performing music, I just want all of my friends to get to do it too! We have another Sunday show coming up on June 2nd, and this time, I’ve invited some friends to come and play with us. I’m really looking forward to sharing the stage!

Meanwhile, my Photoshop skills are still in their toddler phase, but with each poster I make,  I will hopefully slowly improve….

Here is the poster for Sunday 🙂 

 rungs poster dad prop yell

..its a dual purpose poster with a little inside joke as I found someone’s old prom picture. hehehehehe 🙂 boy were they psyched to see this up around town!

Live

Boogie Shakedown!

What a fun Memorial Day Weekend! Thanks to some very nice friends, we were able to play at a local outdoor party, an annual Boogie Shakedown. The air was a little chilly for late May, but clear skies let the heat of the sun keep us warm. Our set was a rough one, but a few musical kinks can’t stop us from having a blast while playing live 🙂  It’s just encouragement to keep practicing! Plus, we’re our own worst critics right?

rungs at boogie shakedown

There’s no place better than a sunny outdoor party with friends, food, and fuzzy beverages to enter new musical territory..

 

Live

Front Desk Runaway

Luckily there was some video caught of our Elephants for Autism Music Festival set at the Boneyard in Atlantic City! This is currently our roughest song, but we decided to give it a go. Not too bad, but definitely time to vamp up the vocal practices!! Check it out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ymi4MsgXbQ

Note the cool sparkly lights in the background. We need to get some cool sparkly lights!

 

Music

Elephants for Autism, Thank You!

Elephants for Autism Music Festival in Atlantic City was a blast!

We arrived at the Boneyard venue just in time for our set after getting stuck in traffic, borrowed an amp from our new friends, the Red Hill Ramblers, and played to a super friendly crowd of new faces. Jerry Ryan, the organizer of the Festival, was a very cool dude to meet and it was immediately apparent why so many musicians love working with him. He is a true supporter of music for all! At this Festival, he brought together an awesome and diverse group of bands to help raise funds for providing autistic children with music lessons. How sweet is that?!

After our set (our first out-of-town set that is!) we enjoyed meeting and rocking out to the other acts; Wrath of Typhon, Empty November, Linus in the Sapphire, and Purple Suns to name a few! And of course, being in Atlantic City for the first time, we did have to sneak away to take a stroll on the boardwalk and slip into a Casino to try our hands at gambling. The damage: five dollars lost to the slot machine! Oh we’ll, we didn’t hit it big on the slots so looks like we’ll stick to music! Especially music for a good cause 🙂

Live

Music for a good cause

This weekend, we will be heading out to Atlantic City to play at the Elephants for Autism Music Festival! It will be our first out-of-town gig, first time playing at a music event in support of an important cause, and first time in Atlantic City! I am already excited to see some of the other bands at the Festival and feel very thankful to Jerry Ryan, the organizer of the event, for all of his dedication and hard work!

Any readers out there in Atlantic City? Here is an article with more information:

http://m.acweekly.com/20060/show/de7e737152c3775c44d83639d80a8cc9

Hope to see you there 🙂

 

 

 

Live

Matched third-party content on YouTube anyone?

Yes UMPG publishing, I acknowledge that our cover of Iron Maiden’s The Trooper involved playing a song owned by a third-party.

The power of search engines enables us to find information we desire on the web. It still amazes me that I can type a word or phrase or question in Google and instantly retrieve vast amounts of information matching my query. Search engines use algorithms to mine databases for matching content. Beyond our basic queries, a web crawler, or bot that browses the World Wide Web, is an amazing tool for discovering trends in scientific data, determining where advertisements are most effective, and providing publishers with matches to third-party content!

So, what does this mean for us playing cover songs and sharing them with friends online via YouTube? Well, a WebCrawler may match a YouTube cover song to audio content of an original copyrighted version. A content ID claim from the publisher, like matched third-party content, will appear in your video manager and you can either acknowledge or dispute it. Once acknowledged, any advertisement revenue produced by the video goes to the publisher with rights to the content.

Considering the rapid emergence of online music sharing, publishing companies must remain innovative to reduce copyright infringements. With so many free and illegal MP3 downloads, you bet a publisher is going to claim rights to copyrighted content!  No wonder why the music publishing sector is growing 🙂  I’m just happy that my video can still be shared!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbL4P_XpuxY

Live, Music

My first sick show!

Okay, not sick like ‘rad!’ or ‘awesome!’ .. more like under-the-weather-sick. It was pretty rough, but I couldn’t let a stupid cold keep me from playing music!  We played in a local art gallery, with beautiful artwork hanging on all four walls, completely covering them from the floor to the ceiling. The room wouldn’t have been the same without the art. We stood surrounded by intricate colors and designs and it felt wonderful to play music amidst such creativity!  I swear there were charges of energy bouncing off the walls, giving off a buzz. Here is a video of our last song of the set, and guess what, its ‘Trees!’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74LW_RDtXQ8&feature=youtu.be

My first sick show = 100% worth it 🙂