gig this Wednesday…
Hello everyone, another entamoeba gig… this one is THIS Wednesday, 4.8.09. It’s at a space I haven’t been to before, called the Climate Theater, as part of their “Music Box” series.
Performance starts at 8pm. Climate Theater, 285 9th Street @ Folsom, San Francisco, 94109. Google Map.
Hope you can make it… if you can let me know, I can probably get a couple of guest passes.
Published by mark fassett on April 6th, 2009 | Filed under general | Comment now »coffee in Redwood City
If you haven’t tried this place yet, I highly recommend you try “The Grind” coffee in Redwood City, next to Movie Groove on El Camino (and owned by the same people) at Jefferson.
What is different: They don’t serve espresso drinks, so if you want that double half decaf soy caramel latte, they can’t help you.
What else is different: The only serve drip coffee… and they make their coffee fresh to order.
What is perfect: There is no question they make an excellent cup of coffee, made fresh to order, but the best thing is the temperature… honestly, it’s served at the perfect drinking temperature. I had one the other day, made into my thermal “to go” mug, and I was able to enjoy it right away on my drive to work, and it kept warm enough to enjoy courtesy of my mug for the next half hour.
Give them a try… good stuff.
Published by mark fassett on March 31st, 2009 | Filed under general | Comment now »general update
Well, unfortunately I’ve been not-so-good at updating this page….
RPM died an agonizing death this year, I’m afraid. I ended up needing to fly back to Michigan, where I grew up, because of some family health issues. It was a good trip, but it meant RPM was impossible. That’s OK, priorities are priorities.
The music John and I had started to create for RPM ‘09 will see the light of day at some point… probably that long either. There are several songs that are fairly far along. I’ll see if I can whip ‘em into shape and post them as demos just so you can hear them.
Jennifer and I have been approached by someone who wants to get our music placed in TV/Movies/etc. We’re looking over all the paperwork right now and reviewing it, but we’ll probably go for it. Much of our music is VERY suited for that kind of playback… at least I think so.
Oh, and before I forget, I’ll be playing with entamoeba again, this time it’s Wed April 8. It’ll be at the “Climate Theater,” 285 9th street at Folsom… I’ve never been there, but it should be fun. Love to see you there.
Published by mark fassett on March 24th, 2009 | Filed under general | Comment now »entamoeba gig!
Entamoeba is playing Friday night, February 27 at the Makeout Room in San Francisco!
The web page has been updated, and we will have four new songs up that we just recorded this past couple of weeks… minty fresh music! Check back, we should have those songs posted in a few days or so… and hope to see you at the makeout room!
Published by mark fassett on February 15th, 2009 | Filed under general | Comment now »RPM Challenge Update
John Rose and I are on track for the RPM Challenge, in spite of very busy schedules. So far we have a bunch of song ideas that we’re playing virtual tennis with… one of us starts with an idea and we toss it over the net to the other, repeat until finished.
So far this one is going to be different… there’s some real old school stuff, but also some mellow stuff. It’s all pretty organic so far, especially compared to last year when we had more of an electronic flavor. The nice thing is we’re really getting to PLAY on this one… John has laid down some FINE bass riffs, and I’m playing lots of guitar. I haven’t even picked up the bass yet for this challenge, but I think it will happen (there’s one song in particular that needs some upright, but only if I beat John to it). John has done some nice guitar work too. One song is just piano right now, and I’m working on a melody.
So check back on our progress…
Scott Caplener has once again offered to help with some artwork, which is awesome. Scott is a great visual artist, filmmaker, and all around great person.
Published by mark fassett on February 15th, 2009 | Filed under general, music | Comment now »…what do you call a guy who likes to hang out with musicians?
The usual answer is “a drummer” but that doesn’t work today.
I was at the library the other day with my daugther. She needed to pick out a biography for a school project, and as she was thumbing through the biography section she came across this book titled “Ghost Rider” and said it looked great. Thirteen years old, and yet so wise.
The book is written by the Rush drummer Neil Peart, and it’s a memoir of his motorcycle travels after the death of his daughter, and then his wife just months later.
Mercifully, he tells the death story in the first few pages… and the rest of the story is a travelogue mixed with his observations and meditations. For anyone who has gone through a “Dark Night of the Soul” as Thomas Moore describes times like this, the book is a revelation. It provides yet another opportunity to connect with the great questions about life, in a very deep and meaningful way.
I would think this book would not be that interesting to a Rush fan, because it contains very little information about the band (at least so far). But for me, this book is something I am having trouble putting down. I guess I’m going to have to see what Rush has done since… see if/how this has affected Neil’s lyrics (he is the lyricist for the band).
Published by mark fassett on January 16th, 2009 | Filed under general | Comment now »watch this
Published by mark fassett on January 13th, 2009 | Filed under general | Comment now »
update…
I haven’t posted in a while, but there are several things to talk about…
- I had a great gig this past Saturday night at El Rio in San Francisco with Entamoeba. We had a great crowd, thanks so much to everyone who made it out. Yes, I should have told you about it on these pages… but alas… I didn’t. Nevertheless, turnout and energy were great! I think we clearly drew enough people to justify a night on their big stage, I know Nicole is working on that. We will also do some recording soon…
- The RPM Challenge is happening again for me this year… and I’m pretty sure John Rose will be working with me again, under our moniker of “Warren Peece.” I have no idea what we’ll be coming up with, since we won’t start working on this project until February 1, but stay tuned, I’ll be sure and post here about what we’re up to.
- I have at least two gigs scheduled for February, one with “Along For The Ride” and another with Entamoeba. The “Along For The Ride” performance is a private party, but the Entamoeba gig is at the makeout room in San Francisco on Friday, February 27. I will update here when I know more (who we are playing with, etc).
- I have begun work on another new project. Hopefully this won’t be yet another phantom project that never sees the light of day, but you never know… I have one song that is getting close to being ready for you to hear, I will post that in the next couple of weeks when I get a bit more time. However, I imagine this project will stop completely when the RPM Challenge rolls along February 1…
Carry on! Buy a CD or digital download if you haven’t already… they start at only $.79, head to the music page!
Published by mark fassett on January 12th, 2009 | Filed under general | Comment now »subwoofers, home theater, ported vs. acoustic suspension
OK, this is really from the “oh whatever” department. If the title of this post puts you off, then you might not want to waste your time reading.
I bought a new subwoofer for the studio to pair with my Dynaudio bm-5a monitors. The Dynaudios are great monitors, but they don’t have the best bass extension. I have been looking for something inexpensive, but something that is NOT like the home theater subs out there.
The whole story… I bought a Sony wm-40 a few years back. This is a home theater subwoofer that was a known quantity among the home theater crowd for being an affordable and decent sounding choice. I bought it, stuffed it full of polyfill, and set it up. Really not bad at all… it seems to match OK with my Polk RM-7600 mains. It’s not too boomy, and it works OK with music.
But… the more I’ve listened to it critically, the more I realize it really is slow. For music with a promiment kick drum, the kick happens late relative to the higher frequencies. This is something I’ve heard in a lot of home theater subs.
The great majority of home theater subs are ported, because porting a cabinet allows you to increase the bass output for the same amount of power. I recently read an article about how porting affects music in the time domain… and it’s not that pretty.
So when it came to evaluate subwoofers for my studio, one thing that was important to me was a closed cabinet, regardless of how much that cost in efficiency. But it also seemed there weren’t that many affordable closed subs..
I discovered the Tapco SW-10 online. My dealer didn’t have it, but I thought it was worth a shot without listening because it’s really cheap. It arrived today.
The first thing I did was hook it up to the living room system, and… it’s significantly tighter then the Sony, but it’s also right on time. There’s no more lag in the low end that I heard with the Sony. More a/b comparisons showed the same thing.
In the studio, it seemed to match well with the Dynaudios. I didn’t have to do too much in the way of tweaking, it was actually pretty easy to get it close by ear. I will be running some pink noise through it to calibrate it some time in the near future too, but it blended fairly well straight up. Luckily it sounded great in the place I put it, because I don’t have a ton of options for placement.
It’s great to have that lower octave! However the other thing I noticed was the Dynaudios seemed to become a touch clearer, which makes sense since they are being crossed over by the subwoofer now and don’t have to extend as deeply.
Anyway, all in all it was a good exercise, and a worthwhile experiment. The best part is I didn’t spend any cash on the sub, thanks to some Amazon gift certificates I’ve had hanging around for a while.
Published by mark fassett on November 26th, 2008 | Filed under general | Comment now »Getting over it…
I’m getting over my cold. In the meantime, music has been a bit stagnant. It’s time to get refreshed… I came up with one good idea last night, which my find a way into an Along For The Ride song… or who knows what else?
These days, music has come a lot easier than lyrics, unlike my former days when I was known as the “lyricmeister” by bandmates. That was a long time ago. I suppose you have a lot more to say when you are younger, because you are more certain… and the older I get the less certain I am about pretty much everything.
It’s good to be inspired again, and I’m hoping to spend some time in the studio doing some more writing tonight.
Published by mark fassett on November 24th, 2008 | Filed under general | Comment now »
