Author Archive
Wow.
by Matt on Dec.29, 2008, under Uncategorized
On the 2nd floor wall of the Country Music Hall of Fame…..
Yes, Emmylou. Fuck yes.
Facebook Changes.
by Matt on Dec.25, 2008, under Life & Times
Ok, so I check my facebook pretty regularly. When I say pretty regularly, I mean pretty regularly throughout the day. So yeah, you could call that frequently. When I first created this facebook page back in 2004, I never thought about the fact that today would come.
Today, I changed my network status from “Berklee ‘08″ to “Berklee Alum ‘08″. I also had to switch my “Boston, MA” network to “Scranton, PA” temporarily, until the move to Nashville. I had to go to my settings section to do that. Who ever goes in and messes with the settings on their page? When is the last time YOU messed with the settings on your facebook? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Also, I’ve begun using the status updates feature of Facebook regularly for the past month or so. I spent a LONG time without ever updating my status. It wasn’t an original feature of facebook, so I wasn’t interested in getting involved in that. However, maybe someone out there is interested in what I’m doing at any given time, or might just like to see it in passing. I don’t know. I like the idea.
I will NOT, however, be getting involved in applications. That is one road of facebook I refuse to go down. My dear friend Edward Loveall did a fantastic PSA for one of his Music Synthesis classes that I am including at the bottom of this post. You can see his site here, and read his stuff, and listen to more of his really intriguing work.
Oh yeah, Merry Christmas!
Matt O’Donnell Quintet Recording Date
by Matt on Dec.24, 2008, under Matt O'Donnell Music
Just wanted to let everyone know about the recording session I had with my boys from Matt O’Donnell Quintet before the semester ended. The session files are currently being prepared for mixing, which will be done by my good friend Jon Altschuler. This will happen in the next few weeks, and then I’ll assess the mastering and replication situation before it’s finally available. Give this really rough mix of “Squeak In Your Door” a listen while you read my report on the recording session that I turned in for my final project at Berklee.
We entered the studio on December 13th, for what was booked as a five hour session from 5pm to 10pm. With freshly printed versions of charts in hand (it had been a while, ok? Haha), we sat down to put 5 songs on tape. The biggest problem that I felt we might run into was the idea that even though we were playing live, which would bring out the best of us, Steve and his 7’ grand piano were in an isolation room, while the 4 of us got to be in the same room. This was only an issue a few times when we needed to get him a cue quickly, and that resulted in some wasted good takes. Also a detriment to the idea of it being a “live studio album” is that although we never really talked about it, a crowd is a big part of this band. Having friends there to joke around with, share witty banter, and smile at turned out to be a bigger problem than we thought.
Our first run-through of the Curtis Mayfield song “No Thing On Me” looked grim. I had to wonder if we were going to make it through this with enough manageable takes for the project I had due. After two clearly awful takes, we moved over to one of my original tunes, “Squeak In Your Door”. After one shaky take, we hit it (minus a bass solo to be re-captured at a later date), and were able to move on.
We did end up with a whole bunch of little arrangement hiccups moving from one section to the next. Even when I listened back to the rough mixes, I was waiting for the parts that I thought were noticeable mistakes, but then I heard a piano roll or a drum fill that I didn’t catch from having my bass pretty loud in my headphones.
“Gentleman” proved to be kind of a challenge. In the song, each soloist gets to play freely over the A section vamp, and then cues when moving to the B section to round out the solo. I wasn’t very overtly clear with my cues, and so we dropped it a couple times coming out of the bass solo (parts of this can also be traced to the idea that I was so concerned with getting the song forms and group synergy together that I completely forgot that I had to solo on this and “Squeak In Your Door”, and thus ended up with less than great solos which will be re-recorded in the near future). Other times, Abye wasn’t quite done with his sax licks, and so Steve would jump in too early. This was clearly the byproduct of having the piano in the iso booth. However, I do think that ensuring that not much bleed would happen was crucial.
We were able to finish up the session in 4 hours, including one vocal overdub from Quinn, and a re-do of a bass track on “Shake Your Rugalator”. I suppose without those, it was about a 3 ½ hour session including 4 or 5 quick breaks. The tracks round to be about 30 minutes in total (a good length for an EP), and I was able to save an hour of studio fees.
Listening back to the rough two-track mixes that were done in real time, I know these songs are going to sound absolutely killer when I get them properly treated. It would have been nice to get them to that level by the end of the semester, but that’s on my list for the immediate future. By mid to late February, I hope to have the music commercially available in physical format as well as the general round of download services (iTunes, Rhapsody, etc.).
Home. Graduated.
by Matt on Dec.22, 2008, under Life & Times
Wow. It’s all over. I was officially a Berklee College of Music Student from 8/29/04 - 12/19/08. It was a long ordeal, but I’m really glad I got to the end of it. What’s funny is that I don’t really remember what my musicianship was like when I started at Berklee. I just always remember being able to play the bass and make music. I rarely ever had any light-bulbs go off in my head. It was just kind of like painting a wall. Eventually, you just keep putting coats of paint on, and it shapes into something. I really enjoy the idea that I don’t have some sort of line of demarcation as to when I turned from a bad musician into a good one. I’m a lot happier thinking that maybe every time I play I get a little better than I was the last time. As long as I can keep playing what’s asked of me, I’m getting better.
For those who don’t know, I’m currently on detox for the next month. I’ll be keeping myself busy here at home in PA for the whole month of January, with the exception of a couple trips (Nashville, Virginia, and New Hampshire), before I move down to Nashville and start trying to be a professional bassist for real.
Moving somewhere far away from where i was born and grew up is important to me at this point. I’ve always been able to keep building on everything I’ve got because I’ve always been north of the Mason-Dixon and east of the Mississippi. I think by moving to a place that is outside both of those parameters forces me to bring nothing with me but me and my skills. With any luck, I’ll be able to build something new and fantastic using that as the basis.
More soon…..
Welcome To The New MattODonnell.com Blog!
by Matt on Nov.30, 2008, under Life & Times
Yes, friends, relatives, and other loved ones, I’m back! This is finally the version of my blog that will be properly updated. In a few short weeks, I’ll be leaving so many of my dearest friends when I graduate from Berklee College of Music. With that being said, I’m hoping that they like me enough to stay in contact, and I think this blog will be a good way for me to update them on things that are going on, music/movies/books/other things that I’m into and wanting to talk about. I’m always thinking and feeling and talking, so this will be a good place to let it out on a regular basis. And hey, with no steady job lined up yet, I’ll have the 20 minutes it takes to write a short entry!
Let me break the ice real quick and show this one off. Gimme a break, I like The Last Waltz, ok? (No matter what Stephen Croes says about the fact that it’s almost all overdubbed except for Levon Helm’s drum and vocal tracks.)
Talk to you soon….
