The Null Device Blog

The Electric Tumbi

Originally uploaded by nulldevice.

Oh yes, I did.

Using a small power drill, a few wood screws, and a leftover violin piezo pickup I just happened to have lying around, and some dental wax (so I can figure out where best to put the piezo element), I now have a fully amplifiable tumbi. It sounds remarkably true to the unamplified version.

Makes me wonder if I couldn’t build a solid-body, full-electric tumbi at some point. Now THAT would be overkill. Sweet, sweet overkill…

Dr. Parks!

Originally uploaded by nulldevice.

Twice a year, the local community radio station WORT throws their pledge drives. For a few years now I’ve gone down to help out during Ryan Parks’s show “Something Wonderful” because, well, Ryan asks me to. He seems to be laboring under the misapprehension that people want to hear me talk. Anyway, usually others drop by as well. Matt Fanale of Caustic/DeadBeat Productions/Sonic Mainline, Stochastic Chuck, and occasionally a few others.

There’s a good reason we’re all eager to help out – Ryan, and WORT in general, is hugely supportive of local music. Ryan’s predecessor, Al Ritchie, used to play early eaaarly Null Device demos on his show as far back as 1997.

And Ryan? Well, the good Dr. Parks is a fascinating individual. One look at him – incredibly infectiously cheerful, bedecked in a hawaiian shirt and white socks and sandals – belies his encyclopedic knowledge of electronic music. He knows trainspotter details about everything from old-school dnb to new-school powernoise. You’d expect a guy like that to be some obsessive monochromatically-clad hipster-type, not the outgoing colorful person that Dr. Parks is.

Matt and Chuck “helping”

Originally uploaded by nulldevice.

Anyway, WORT has been a staple of the Madison music scene for decades, and is a big part of why the electronic music scene is flourishing in this town. People like Ryan and Al and the rest of the hosts and staff of the station put in an absurd amount of volunteer time to deliver unique independent programming. Sure, I don’t always *like* all the programming, but there’s no denying that it’s a different voice from the corporate stations in town. No advertising, open to the public, gosh-darn friendly…that’s what radio should be.

(now, if only they would improve the state of their website…)

I’m proud to be associated with WORT and “Something Wonderful.”

Another weekend, another rehearsal. Another acoustic rehearsal, to be precise. Those are fairly exhausting, as there’s no hiding behind the backing tracks, no hiding easy-way-out songwriting with a wall of production, no expecting a poor performance to be cleaned up by effects. And since we get only one of these a week, it’s even more important that we all get it right. This week was significantly better than last week, which was somewhat of a relief. Still, miles to go before I sleep and all that.

The last time we did this we had 3 months to prepare. This time, we’ve got one month and new percussion. I’m trying desperately not to freak out.

I’m glad we’re doing this, as it both plays to my sense of ambition and it does force us to all sit down and figure out what these songs are all about. At the same time, though, I know it’s a bit of a burden to put on everybody. I mean, we all can handle it musically, certainly, but it’s a lot of work and we’ve all got plenty of other things going on. I have to balance the “hey, everybody, Practice!” admonishments with the realization that everyone has day jobs and lives beyond making electronica in my basement. Even I have other things to do, despite my obsessive-compulsive need to create music.

Discussing this led Dan and I to try and come up with a few brainstorms as to what to do about the live show. We both agreed we’re heading in the right direction but we’re not where we want to be yet. The main problem is I’ve just gotten lazy. I’ve not spent enough time in the studio working on new material, and not spent enough time trying to figure out what to do with the material we already have. We’ve had the same setlist for a long time. Granted, there was also a bit of a time constraint – it’s hard to put together a bunch of new tracks when significant chunks of the band are gone for long periods of time and when they’re not, we’re all playing a gig together. Most of the summer we were at any given time two men down, so to speak.

There is the question of just what it is we want to do live. We’ve got a percussionist, I play violin on at least a track and that is unusual (although not unheard of) for an electropop band, but I’m still treating it as a novelty rather than an integral part of the act. I fiddle on one song, the dholak appears once, and that’s pretty much it. That just won’t do. I haven’t figured out how to integrate these things better yet, though. Part of it is my lack of experience in actual orchestration – I’m never quite sure what I can break off the backing tracks and hand to players – will that drum part cause Elizabeth’s hands to bleed? Does that bass part require two more strings? Can you even do that on a guitar? I’m getting better, but I’m not there yet.

I’m still also toying with the idea of a stripped down, downtempo version of the show, too. Whether that’d be just a trip-hop version of what we’ve got now or whether it’d be just me, a bunch of weird instruments, a laptop, and a loop-delay pedal remains to be seen.

Okay I’ve been kinda busy recently.

Well, actually I’m just addicted to “Lego Star Wars II:The Original Trilogy” and it’s been consuming a lot of my time. It’s sad, but it’s also fun. The game is just too hilarious. My favorite part thus far has been the dialogue-less cutscene involving the “Luke I am your father” revelation.

I did manage to get a little done in the studio, though. I dragged Julie into the vocal booth to record some backing vox for a (short) choral part. She’s trained for musicals, so it worked pretty well…and at one point I got to actually conduct.

Now I just need to rerecord *my* vocals so they don’t, you know, suck.

This song is getting kinda epic. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. But I’ve taken a sort of kitchen-sink approach to arrangement on it, which is different from my usual “throw a lot at it then back some things off” methodolgy.

We had our first rehearsal for the next acoustic show on sunday. Well, semi-acoustic. Chuck will play fretless, I’m playing electric fiddle, and Dan has a soundhole pickup, just so we can actually get a little sound reinforcement. It went better than I had expected. Yes, we’re all really rusty on this, I forgot the lyrics to a few of the older songs and couldn’t remember the arrangements, I can’t sing and play tumbi at the same time, etc etc…but I’m confident we can put something together in 4 weeks. All I have to do now is convince all the promoters that we’re not an “industrial” band before they plaster that all over their flyers.