Wounded Soul live video blog, 8/22/09

[davidshek]

Hey gang, figured I'd start a new thread for these new videos. Last Saturday, Wounded Soul (my band, I'm the drummer) played at SomeWhere Else Tavern in Greensboro, NC, the same place that we got the other videos from back in March. It was a long night of bands, I think there were 5 bands altogether, and we were scheduled to go on 2nd-to-last, at 11:15 to play for around a half hour. Well as music shows always do, this ran late and we didn't go on until shortly after midnight.

We played the following setlist for a total of right around 40 minutes:
Siren (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANcKHbciPLk&fmt=18)
One (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7QVLxqHlD4&fmt=18)
Payback
Without a Voice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ge4zX94IA&fmt=18)
The Gift (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6573XhSNe2E&fmt=18)
The Path (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzmuZP014V8&fmt=18)
Rx

This thread is going to be a video gig blog (a vigblog?) of sorts, with videos from the various songs and some funny stories about what actually occurred between each song that is NOT on the separate song videos.

[davidshek]

There were several bands that played before us that night, but one that particularly caught my attention was Rest Among Ruins, from Baltimore, MD. They had emailed me many months ago about wanting to playing this gig with us, and I forwarded their email to the promoter of the show. I'm really glad they made it onto the bill...I had never heard them before, but they kicked serious booty for their entire set. They actually reminded me a bit of my own band, but with male lead vocals. Can't believe they're not signed by RoadRunner yet. :) Definitely check them out if you live in the Northern VA area.

http://www.myspace.com/restamongruins

Anyway, on to our first song, "Siren". This is a new song that has not been studio-recorded yet, and will be on our forthcoming full-length album Bloodlines.

After a somewhat extended soundcheck, they dimmed the lights and we played Siren. This song is, what should be obviously, very heavily influenced by Iron Maiden...heavy kick activity with a perfectly locked-in bass line, and harmonized dual-guitar solos, complete with a real life Big Rock Ending! Doug goes OFF on this song, slamming that bass like you'd think he's gonna break it in half. He's the really big guy right behind Maria.

Click here to watch the video of "Siren" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANcKHbciPLk&fmt=18

Man I love playing that song, it's so much fun and I get to do 16th sextuplet fills (the ones where I go 4 on the hands, 2 on the feet, rolling down the toms) all OVER the place. :D Hopefully we can get in the studio soon to record it so I can submit it to the Rock Band Network. I honestly feel that this song would be fun as crap to play on every instrument, and really should give vocalists a good challenge. Maria really shows off her wide range in this one.

There was really only one monitor on stage there that night, right near Jason's (rhythm guitar, the guy in the kilt) head. So Maria couldn't hear herself very well, and all I could hear back behind the drums was myself, some of vocals bouncing off the rear wall of the club, and Jason's amp since it was right next to my kit. Basically, that means I was playing every song from memory rather than cueing off the other instruments and band members like we normally can.

Instantly after this song ended, Carlos (lead guitar, the one all the way on the left with hair as long as Maria's) blew a fuse in his amp and lost all power. What timing, right? More about this in the next post with the video for "One".

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! :cool:

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[davidshek]

So on with the story we go!

As mentioned earlier, immediately after the end of "Siren", Carlos lost power. We quickly discovered that he had blown a fuse on his amp head...Doh!

What followed was Doug getting on the mic to ask if any of the other bands had a 4A fuse that he could borrow, and a mad scramble to find one in the club. On the uncut video, you can hear the sound guy say into his mic (that comes through the monitors, not the main PA speakers), "Carlos, quit buying your sh*t at Walmart!"

Luckily, the club had a spare fuse on hand, and Carlos regained power after installing it. Surprisingly, only 2 minutes had been wasted.

We then proceeded to play "One", off our EP The Ascension

Click here to watch the video of "One" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7QVLxqHlD4&fmt=18

Shockingly (at least to me anyway), this is by far our best selling song on iTunes. For many months, "One" outsold all of the other songs on the EP combined. Recently, "Payback" has overtaken it in month-by-month sales. It has a fairly simple drum beat, but it's a really driving high energy song that crowds always love.

The song after this was "Payback", but I won't be posting the video for that one. Because of the aforementioned lack of stage monitors, Maria was unable to hear herself very well on stage. Even though most of the song kicked ass, she was a bit flat during the 1st verse of "Payback", so she has forbidden me from posting that video. :rolleyes:

Next post will be "Without a Voice".

[davidshek]

So skipping Payback, here is the 4th song we played, Without a Voice. This is one of our newest songs, and like Siren, does not have a finished studio recording yet. It will also be on our forthcoming album, Bloodlines.

Click here to watch the video of "Without a Voice" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ge4zX94IA&fmt=18

If you've seen the video from the last show that I posted (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxO1L_s3zuk&fmt=18), you'll notice that we played it much slower this time. This is much closer to "normal speed" for Without a Voice, but still a little bit faster than the album version...that last show we played it super fast for some reason, probably just adrenaline.

Without a Voice is a great example of our songwriting process. It starts out with a bass intro, and that's the same way we started writing it. One day at practice, Doug said "Hey check out this riff", and played that intro. I then matched it with a 6/8 beat, and the guitarists jumped in with some chords. The chorus and bridge came later of course, but the verse almost just wrote itself.

One of the things I love most about this song is its rhythm. The verses are in 6/8, and the rest of the song is in 4/4, so this is one of the only songs that we actually play in a time signature other than 4/4. That and I have to play 16th notes on the hi-hat with just one hand during the first half of each verse...it's damn tough, especially when we play it too fast.

That short fast pre-solo riff that we all play (at 2:30 in this video) is the part that I like to call the "giggity giggity cha cha" part. As in, at practice, I'll say, "Carlos needs to run through the solo again? Ok, let's take it from the giggity cha chas". It's hard to hear exactly what's going on in that part with the audio mix of this video, but I'm playing 8 32nd notes (snare/tom1/kick/kick, tom2/tom3/kick/kick) and then 2 8th notes (snare/china, snare/china). 12341234 cha cha. That riff repeats 4 times and then we go into the guitar solo.

Another intricacy of this song that people might not notice at first is that the choruses get progressively longer as the song goes on. The first chorus is 4 times through the riff, the 2nd chorus is 5, and the last chorus is 6.

Funny story I'll share with you: When we were in the studio recording the demo of this song, and it came time for the guys to do their backup vocals (repeating the last phrase of each verse), we ran into some problems with Doug...Every time he went to do the first one, "You didn't hear", he kept trying to shout the word "hear" and it was coming out as "HIYAH!" like a cowboy spurring a horse into a gallop (not like a karate chop). So that's a running joke now with us, the HIYAH!

Anyway, enjoy Without a Voice. Next up will be The Gift. :)

[davidshek]

The fifth song of the night was "The Gift". This was the last song we wrote with our previous lead guitarist, Wyatt. I've you've seen any of the live videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmhLAeY8gyU&fmt=18) I posted on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSuijXoqXsE&fmt=18) from November 2007 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIP-42TEKGA&fmt=18), then you've seen Wyatt ripping the hell out of his guitars.

Two of those videos there are songs we also played at this last show ("Siren" and "The Gift"), so you can watch and compare the solos Wyatt played then to the ones that Carlos plays now. That's not to say that Carlos can't rip it up, he definitely can! Carlos is just a bit more aware of how the dynamics of a song should go, and realizes when it's appropriate to shred and when it's not. Wyatt was only 16 when he joined up with us, but goddamn could he ever play! He only stayed with us for a few months, but the time he did have with us was well-spent. After all, "The Gift" was written during that time and it's one of my favorite songs of ours.

So here is "The Gift". This is another song like Siren that has not been studio-recorded yet, and will also be on Bloodlines. Maria usually introduces this song by describing to the audience how it's about a woman who can see ghosts & spirits: her "gift".

Click here to watch the video of "The Gift" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6573XhSNe2E&fmt=18

Listening to this song as objectively as I can, I can honestly say that this is a song that, if I heard it on the radio, I would love. It has great dynamics between parts and some really cool changes. The hook of the chorus is something that frequently gets stuck in my head after both practice and gigs, and that's a good thing! You might think that band members would get sick of hearing their own songs after hearing and playing them a zillion times, but I don't think I could ever get sick of "The Gift".

This is one our very few songs where I completely drop out during any part of the song. During the bridge, I just stop playing entirely. When we first wrote it, I used to hit my Zil-Bel after every vocal phrase in the bridge, but we all decided that it was better without those bell hits. It leaves the bridge sounding very spooky with those haunting vocals Maria does over the clean guitar line. But combine all the changes with the Neil Peart YYZ-ish ride work in the chorus and the fun-as-crap double bass work I do all over this song, and it's just a pure joy to play.

"The Gift" is another song that I hope to eventually get into RBN because every instrument's parts are complex and should provide a really good level of difficulty for any Rock Band player. Plus I believe it has the longest guitar solo out of our entire catalog of songs.

Funny story: Last time we played this song at this club, during the bridge, when Maria is doing that "You didn't show me..." line, some girl (who had completely missed the meaning of the song and thought it was about a guy cheating on his girlfriend) kept yelling out "He never does!!". Funny as hell, at least to us. :)

Next song: The Path.

[davidshek]

Oh, "The Path". This is actually one of our oldest songs, the very first one we wrote after I joined the band back in late 2003. We have a demo recording of this, but nothing that is fully studio polished. It unfortunately didn't make the cut as one of the 6 songs on our EP, so it will be on the new album, Bloodlines.

So here's the 6th song we played that night, "The Path".

Click here for the video of "The Path": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzmuZP014V8&fmt=18

"The Path" fills out so many "This is the only song that does this" qualifications...

* It is one of only 2 current songs of ours (Payback is the other) that has a dedicated "The crowd is supposed to MOSH HERE" section.
* It is our only song that has no lyrics in the chorus, just Maria's "Ooooooooh!"s.
* It is our only song that features the cowbell. During the bridge (starting at 2:54), you can see Jason (rhythm guitar) turn around and start whacking the cowbell on the front of my drum rack. It's turned outwards toward him for that very reason.
* It is our only song during which Maria frequently forgets her own lyrics, and has to use a "cheat sheet" on the floor. :cool:
* It is our only song where I extensively use double bass for long periods of time (during every chorus and the entire bridge)

After watching these, I think that this song is actually the most complex of all of my drum lines. It changes up so many times and there are lots of very different fast fills thrown in, including several 32nd note fills near the end. That, and the fact that during the bridge, I'm holding down a steady 16th note rhythm on the kicks (RLRL RLRL) but playing modified paradiddles with my hands between the ride cymbal and snare (RLRR LRRL).

The paradiddles are played like that to match up with the guitar and bass riffs being played during that part of the song. The ride hits on every "D" power chord, and the snare hits on every "E" power chord during that rhythm.

I'm kind of annoyed that in this particular recording, you can't hear what Jason is playing throughout most of the verses. You hear Carlos chunking on those 8th note power chords, but Jason is actually playing a very Arabic sitar-like phased riff, similar to the intro riff. You just can't hear it in this mix. :( You can hear it much better in the video I put up of this from our show back in March, here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwlkwWQuJqU&fmt=18)

Whenever we do get this studio-recorded, I'd love to get it into RBN simply for the challenge it will present for the drummers out there. :)

Enjoy! Next up will be the last song we played that night, "Rx".