I picked up a TASCAM 414 4-track cassette recorder off of craigslist for $10 about three weeks ago.  I always wanted one of these when I was a kid, and figured I should jump on it for $10.  Why not, right?  It took me awhile to find a power supply, but I finally found one on the 'Bay.  Plugged it in and made some noise last night and it was surprisingly fun to play around with.  Its very simple and intuititve.  I don't see it replacing my computer setup any time soon, but I think I might demo out some tunes on it just for the fun of it!

In other news, we are still auditioning drummers this week.  Everyone has been super promising so far, but hopefully we will have this band rounded out in another week or so.  Next gig with the full band is at the Sugar Bowl in Boston, on May 8th.  See you there?

Original band from the Boston area looking for a new drummer. We have been around for about a year now, released our first EP in December of 2009 with some reviews, and are currently planning on doing a college radio promotion in the spring to promote the album. Our major influences for our sound include the Counting Crows, Fleet Foxes, Band of Horses & Wilco. We are three college educated musicians and have been playing in the Boston music scene for five or six years each. Our instrumentation consists of Chad (Guitar/pedal steel/mandolin/vocals), Joe (Bass/Guitar/Vocals) and Luke (Guitar/Saxophone/Vocals).

What we are looking for in a drummer is someone that is creative, dynamic, and has the ability to play controlled and simple parts. One of the major focuses of the group is to play as a unit, and to play simple, layered parts with a strong sense of dynamics and feeling. Our hope is to find somebody with the musical maturity and sensitivity necessary to accomplish this, and yet not feel creatively limited. We plan on touring (next summer) and really pushing this thing as far as we can. Our immediate plans once we find the correct drummer is to play regionally (VT, MA, ME, NY, RI, NH, CT) and build up a solid fan base before we complete writing and recording our first full-length. If you are interested, we are holding auditions on Saturday 4/24. Thanks for reading and keep rocking!

www.chadgosselin.com
www.myspace.com/chadgosselinband
Email: chad@chadgosselin.com

I fell into a weird place this winter.  I had absolutely no desire to create any new music.  At first I thought it was the excitement of playing the songs from my EP with a band, as this had been my only such experience playing original music in almost five years.  The last couple weeks, my sleeping habits have gotten out of control.  I have spent most nights completely awake until close to six AM, mentally exhausted but physically anxious. 

It came to my realization that I have been watching television in the most consistent amounts I have in easily ten years.  I decided tonight when I got back from work and finished eating dinner I would go for a walk and listen to some music.  At first I thought I would only walk around the block, but then the block turned into walking up to the bar.  I walked right past the bar.  The bar turned into walking towards the old neighborhood.  The old neighborhood turned into walking towards Whitman's Pond. 
After listening to August and Everything After to completion twice through, I started making my way home, where I just finished writing down every thought that has been running though my mind for the last six months.  Some lyrical, some chaotic, but still words.  Do yourself a favor and turn off your TV. 

We are trying out a new drummer this weekend.  If that works out, we will start booking some shows again.  Hope to see you all out there soon.

After much work and painstaking amounts of time on the telephone, I found a wholesale supplier for the fiberglass insulation I needed for the gobos.  To be specific, I have been searching for Owens Corning 703 and 705 medium density fiberglass, as these seem to be the industry standard for sound absorption.  I drove up to Woburn before work to pick them up at Kamco, to come to the realization that they weren't going to fit into my car with the two guitars I was bringing with me to teach for the day.  After three minor heart attacks, I managed to squeeze everything in but not without completely blocking my view of the rear view mirror and positioning the driver's seat at about a 75 degree angle.  After three hours of driving in bumper to bumper traffic, I am now the proud owner of some sweet looking gobos and one sore neck.

I spent the better part of the week trying to track down some specific insulation for the isolation baffles I have been working on.  After calling Home Depot, Cape Cod Lumber and Lowe's, I finally lucked out finding them at Kamco in Wobun, MA.  The fiberglass I am going to use is Owens Corning 703 and 705 medium density fiber boards.  People rave about them over all the message boards, so I figured I would stick with the tried and true method of doing these things.  Since I haven't had a chance to drive up to Woburn this week, I spent the weekend staining the frames so they would look a little more appealing.  After all, I am going to spending a lot of time looking at these things, and they are in a "creative" space.  Why not add a little vibe to them?

I have been spending a lot of time over the last few months trying to get better at recording so when I track the next album I can get better sounds at the source.  I still believe I will have someone talented (like Mr. Jeff Hall) do all the mixing again, but I want to get better raw sounds for the engineers on the other side to work with.  I have been coming to the realization more and more that I need to do something about my awful recording room which happens to be a small square room in my apartment.  My main concerns were:

1) Tracking better vocals

2) Tracking cleaner electric guitar

3) Eliminating the room sound when I track acoustic instruments (mandolin, guitar, etc.)

4) Try to make the room have a flatter response when I attempted to do rough mixes for demo's.

Living in an apartment, I had two major constraints to work within: I needed something only semi-permanant and I did not want to spend too much money.  I have been putzing around the web for months to find some designs that other people had made.  I happened to find quite a bit, but ultimately decided on a custom design.  I wanted to have a frame that was 4' x 6' in case I ever wanted to use it to build a vocal booth (even though thats way down the road) and I figured they would be just big enough for any of the aforementioned applications.  With the help of my father (who am I kidding, he did basically all the work), we put together two frames over the weekend.  The frames consisted of 3/4 inch plywood, and 2x4" boards measuring 4' x 6' all the way around.  We used the excess plywood to make some simple stands for now.  All together now, I am about $90 deep in the project with about two hours of labor. 

I'll post up some pictures next week if we finish the project.  The hard part right now seems to be finding the correct insulation for these beasts...

     I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the mystical world of blogging, and I have decided to reapproach my attempts from a different angle.  I started my blog last year when I recorded my first EP as sort of a window into the process, but sort of quickly lost my focus once that was over.  I want to start over, and hell, its my blog so I can do what ever I want, right?
     Over the next few months, I want to chronicle all the work that goes into being an indie musician.  I have big plans for the next year, and I think this could be very therapeutic for myself and possibly educational to others.  I know I am personally indebted to recording blogs that I frequent. 

More to come,
Chad