Joshua Van Tassel

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so relaxing.

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Sooooo mastering next week on the new record, which means it’s time for another project! In the land of the label-less, there are no deadlines or expectations or marketing plan, or unfortunately plan at all, so the best thing for me to do is just keep on creating.

NEW PROJECT TIME

I had a great time making a record of songs based on the idea that they were actually pieces playable by minimum 2 humans on 2 acoustic guitars. I think the next logical step for me is to take the production knowledge I’ve gained from the last record and do something bigger, more aggressive this time. Be less worried about being able to play it live or re-create in any form, and take advantage of the recorded medium. I want to experiment, I want to make something loud, and I want to be weirder.
To make music that sounds this way, I want to take some sonic cues from a big aggressive environment, which lucky me I live in, Toronto. I mentioned earlier that I got the new Zoom H4N which is a handy portable recording buddy, and I think it’s capable of capturing really great sounds. From now it’s never leaving my side, whereas with so many different kinds of people and machinery and activity, there’s an overwhelming number of sounds happening all the time that could be the seed of a really interesting composition. Twyla Tharp tells a story about a writer who met a hero of his after years of fandom, and lost his chance to get an autograph because he didn’t have a pen on him. I want to be sure to have my own form of pen at the ready.I’m not sure if any of these sounds would even end up being discernible in the end result, but you can’t see the seeds on the out of a cucumber now can you? What’s important is the start to me right now.

Anyway, S.I.T. now stands for Sounds In Toronto, and I’ll be trying to S.I.T. a lot in the next little while. Some touring coming up to, so I’ll extend the collecting to various cities across the country in case something great comes up. First off, corner of Dovercourt and Hallam, the sounds I can never escape in my studio, the bus.

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For even more Toronto sound experience, I’ll be regularly posting sound walks on Urban Sound Ecology’s website. Great project, have a look.

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Having a super quiet Sunday morning, getting messed up on coffee and learning to use my new H4N. I beat the living shit out of my old H4, and it was time for an upgrade. The new one is a little clunkier, but far,far easier to manoeuvre around menu wise, has better sounding built in mics, and an option to do 4 channel recording by running the on board stereo mics and 2 external ones as well. Thank you ebay and you’re overstocked electronics warehouses for such a sweet deal. The first sound I recorded on it? Samwise licking my hand. Up close and in 120 degree stereo -

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Also, upon recommendation from a bunch of respectable musicians, I started reading Twyla Tharp’s “The Creative Habit”. Really interesting and motivating without being preachy. I like the fact that it deals with not just feeling inspired, but what to actually do with that inspiration. I seem to always have a dozen thoughts about interesting sounds or pieces or projects going on in my mind at once, but I lack the discipline sometimes to actually just do one of them. There seem to be some ways to examine this kind of thing in a realistic manner in the book, so we’ll see how it all goes.

What’s that? You’d like another book suggestion? Well, ok, sure. Finally found a sound related book that’s written in a language that the common human who doesn’t have a degree in advanced physics and a minor in acoustics can understand and enjoy. It’s called “The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want” written by Garret Keizer. Enjoying it so far, really clears up what I define as “noise”, and the human relationship to it over the years. A good one.

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Nice to hear some happy people on the TTC.

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and then there’s this which will be turned into a real live grown up song in the next 2 weeks.

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In other news, there’s a band in the works that I’m going to be part of which I’m super extremely excited about. It has most of my favorite musicians in it, and I’ll get to do all manner of weird and normal things. I’ll tell you more about it as it progresses along.

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This weekend’s Toronto Star had a very interesting article on sound levels in restaurants around town, and even went as far as to measure the SPL levels and decibel readings of a handful of them. An interesting side note in the article is the fact that the readings were done using a $20 iphone app which has been proven by a university audiologist to be within a couple decibels of a $6000 pro meter. Check out the article here
And here are the readings, and a helpful little diagram for context.

Parts & Labour: 90.4 dB

Pizzeria Libretto: 89.1 dB

Lee: 87.2 dB

Bier Market: 97.8 dB

Rodney’s Oyster House: 87.2 dB

Nota Bene: 80.7 dB

Oliver & Bonacini Café: 89.9 dB

Terroni: 88.9 dB

The Boiler House: 77.5 dB

Ruby Watch Co.: 88.5 dB

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Doesn’t matter if it’s in the middle of a city or on a pond in a field in Manitoba, for about 4 months of the year you hear this everywhere. This was in Christie Pitts park.

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every day. Stringer is breaking us down, little by little, to mold our sound into what his own nefarious mind desires.