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Tom 7 live @ Open Mic Night, 5 Sep 2008
(09 Sep 2008 at 19:14) |
OK, here is the other music post, as foretold by the bards. I played "open mic night," one of the first times I've played by myself in front of an audience of more than 2 or 3 people. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm trying to get better at this. It's strange because I don't think of myself as being nervous in front of others (like for example when giving talks), but I definitely make more mistakes when I'm playing guitar for an audience. Maybe it is the distractions. Anyway, I got a mini camcorder a few weeks ago to play around with, and so there are videos of this performance:
I highly recommend clicking through to view the "HD" versions, or even downloading the 1080p AVIs linked on the bottom right of those pages. I was limited to 10 minutes so I was playing fast. The middle one, Post-Glacial Identity, I think is the best performance of the three (contains fewest screw-ups). I also have a fourth video of the remainder of my 10 minutes, which I want to show you, but I'm hesitant because it gives away one of my best secret projects, which I want to arrive in the most best way possible. I'll let you know. |  |
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that was great! bravo!
did you notice you tend to kick one of your feet backwards--it's as if part of your brain is saying 'we're running now?' or something like that perhaps--how interesting! :)
you have a great natural stage presence. has that always been the case--it sounds it from your blog post. |
Those were fun, thanks for posting them. I also liked the leg kick, particularly where you almost knock over the guitar behind you.
Although, I hate to say the thing I was most struck by was the quality of your camera, but holy crap those avis I downloaded look nice. |
| I, too, enjoyed the cool poses and faces you made while playing your cool songs. |
Cool, you actually did it! That's awesome. Post-Glacial Identity is the only one of those songs I'm really familiar with (read: have listened to over a dozen times) but they're all fabulous live.
Thank you for sharing the performance with those of us who couldn't make it to the open mic in question.
Also, yay for secret project. Can't believe an obsessed fan hasn't spilled the beans already... |
That was pretty awesome, especially Theme from Loss (wow, those capos make it look hard to play, heh...), although Mario Kart Skills... was a bit on the "doubled tempo" side.
Could that secret project mean a Tom 7 audio-related thing that took more than a day to make?! Inconceivable... I don't know if I can possibly contain my anticipation, you know.
Also, what kind of camera did you get? |
I really appreciate the positive comments everyone! And thanks for watching.
MK: Yeah, the kicking is funny, isn't it? I think when I'm standing and playing I have a tendency to jump and move a bit, but I was trying to make sure I stayed in front of the mic. The dance was subconscious. Like I said I do enjoy being in front of an audience generally speaking (I think that's pretty much always been true); I'm glad that comes across as stage presence!
C (&A): Hah. Those are moderately compressed with XVID, too; the originals are nicer still. I got a Canon Vixia HF100. I have been planning on getting a nice ENG-style HD camera like the XH-A1, so I can put a depth-of-field converter on it and shoot some really nice shit, but that thing is so old tech and I have been waiting for the next model to come out for all summer now, so I decided it would also be nice to have a tiny cheap handheld camera too anyway, and that makes me less annoyed and anxious waiting for this camera I believe will come out any month now. The HF100 is a great deal just this moment because it's only 8 months old, but Canon released an update to it a few months ago, and now just announced another update, but these updates are essentially only utterly pointless upgrades to the internal flash memory. A 16GB flash card is only like $40, but to get that internally it costs several hundred dollars. Why would you want to do that? Recommended.
S: Thanks! I'm sure I'll do it again (this is like a project for me now) and if I get a chance to record it I'll post them. If an obsessed fan (really you internet guys are the only fans, sorry) spills beans, I will censor it!
A: Lots of my songs these days are partial-capoed, or even double partial-capoed like Theme from Loss. The only special skill really is playing on or beneath the capo, the difficulty of which doesn't really increase with the number of capos. But I'm glad it looks notable because I want to not just be a regular ol' singer-songwriter. All three songs were pretty sped-up; IMO "Based On Your Mario Kart..." actually the least of all, or at least relative to how I usually play it these days. Your impression may vary. The secret project is indeed audio-related and is a many-month (or maybe even many-year, depending on how you look at it) ordeal, but it's not totally done so don't start holding your breath!
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| i'm envious of your ease in front of an audience. i'm a blathering nervous wreck when i do it. when i was a kid i liked it though--funny how things change! you don't get nerves at all? |
| I dunno. I feel some kind of acceleration in anticipation of talking or some other kind of performance but I wouldn't call it nervousness. It's one of the reasons I tend to go fast at the beginning of a talk, until I catch the right pace. |
| If you want to be a totally unique singer-songwriter you should go completely prepared-guitar and carry like 20 of them around to shows, that would be sweet. |
| Like a solo Sonic Youth, huh? It's a super pain in the ass to haul around and prepare (e.g. tune) gear, to be honest. This is why I've been restricting myself to standard tuning as much as possible. I agree it would be sweet, though. On my old shitty Fender I have restrung it in an interesting way, the fruits of which I hope to share on an upcoming album. (Quite contrary to what I just said about restricting myself to standard tuning, ahhh..) |
| Please, next time... some great classic from the Untitled Gif Orchestra files! :) |
| oh man, I haven't practiced those in years... Neal and I did once karaoke "Punk Kids" at a party though! |
| Punk Kids, The emperor of Djbouti, Centurion Clowno and Professor Fish are actually all that crowds are yelling for. GO! :) |
| I'm with you on all those except... Emperor of Djibouti?! |
| Oh I just listened to that one again and I like it, nevermind! |
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