A Story About Rita

Well hello there. Thanks for joining me for the third instalment of my little blog. I was unsure what to write about, so I thought I'd just update ya'll on Honeybone's progress on the way to world domination.



Brain: The Next Rebecca Black

NB: You may feel a little cheated if you clicked on this blog hoping to hear about some hot chick called Rita but hold your horses. We'll get there.

So we've got a few exciting things coming up on the old calender for Honeybone. We've had a few practices (always interesting, as we're never quite sure if we'll actually be able to get into our practice room), and this weekend we're recording some demos of our new songs. The reasons for this are twofold.

1. We'll get some good(ish) recordings of our new songs so we can take them away and listen to them. This may seem a bit ridonkulous to some people (probably to the percentage of readers who don't play music), as you would think we could listen while we played. However, being that 75% of the band is male, we're not too flash at muli-tasking.

Master of the Multi-Task

I've found, since releasing our EP 'Soul On Fire', that whenever I listen to it I think 'Oh man we should have done THIS, or THIS'

Not exactly a sound file, but you get the idea. This guy is awesome. We should've got him on the EP.

Basically coming up with even better ideas for the songs, but unable to do anything about them, as the EP had already been mixing, mastered and released by that point.

So thats our wee method of side-stepping that landmine. Plus it'll give those 'critics' something less to whinge about. Or more. You never know with those smart, talented, not-bitter-and-twisted-at-all folks.

2. The second reason is pretty straightforward. It gives us 445 students (read previous blog if unfamiliar with this term) some practice time to play with the wee recording studio in Albany Street (not the big fancy one, again read previous post). We have booked the studio from 5pm Friday and all day Saturday. In theory, this should give us some time on Friday night to set everything up (drums, mics etc) so we can spend all day Saturday getting some good(ish) demos done.



Take 38: He's made up his mind about which seat he will take.


We're going to record 6 songs this weekend, some of which you will know, some of which you will not. They are:
Black Widow Woman
My Black Heart
The Edge of The Sun
Woooahhh Song (working title)
Rita (working title?)
Outta Time

The song 'Rita' is a new direction for Honeybone. We wrote it at a very productive band practice last Thursday night. Josh had a few rifs up his sleeve so we jammed them out and then we came up with some lyrics. The structure isn't entirely mapped out yet, but thats what the demos are for (gotta love them demos).
Anyway, heres a cool story about 'Rita'.
While we were jamming and going into some crazy dissonance while Josh played in 3's, I screwed up. Not exactly uncommon, but this particular mistake was. In this wee bridgey/instrumental thing, Drew plays a dissonant (for all you non-musos, dissonance is basically notes clashing, which often sounds terrible but can sometimes sound cool) chord then goes back to the original chord (the 'tonic') for two very quick beats (coming back to beat 1). I accentuate this on the snare and floor tom, and it sounds pretty cool. However this time when we did it, I completely forgot which part in the song we went to next, and stopped right after the two quick beats. To my complete amazement, so did the rest of the band. Suddenly, we have a ending to our song. All because I'm a slack drummer and forgot what happened next.

Bobby was way more interested in twirling sticks than learning what day comes after Thursday

That moment was probably the most amazing musical moment I've ever experienced.

So there you have it. Talk about 'Bi-Winning'.

Time for a little 'Ranty McRant'

Hello again, fine people.

Somes people lie (blatant and obvious: 'I hate that Friday song'). Sometimes people tell a white lie (in which the liar tells the lie-ee that he/she looks good whilst wearing tights-as-pants, to avoid hurting their feelings). Sometimes people lie accidentally, in which they didn't lie to begin with, but went back on their word so, six months down the track, what they originally said is now a lie (I'm not sure whether this actually constitutes as a proper LIE but lets just all agree with me).

This last type of lie is something I have come across in the recent present.

I (and two of my fellow members of Honeybone) am completing my final year of an Honours Music Degree at the wonderful Otago University. Part of the Honours programme of a contemporary rock music degree is a paper which allows students to produce and record an album. I am rather excited about this project, which is also a little daunting as I don't know much about the actual technology of recording. Drew, Josh and I are all enrolled in this paper (MUSI445) and Drew is going to record the Honeybone album as his project.

So what is this 'ranty mcrant' really about, I hear you ponder whilst you stroke your beards?

This guy knows what I'm talking about

Today we had a 445 class, half of which was spent debating the Music Department's sudden change of policy about who gets access to what at what time (eg. us Honeybone kids not being able to get into the msuci dept. studios last weekend, even though our paper profile states we have 24/7 access). This debate then ventured into the 'rehearsal time' zone, with our teacher relaying 'their' (they being the men in the suits upstairs) views on the fact that a band recording an album shouldn't need to practice every week. This really got my goat, as (on weekends) most of the rehearsal spaces aren't being used so we wouldn't be hurting anybody, and the spaces would be utilised.

Goat being gotten

But, all debates aside, what I really want to talk about is the desk (mixing desk, which is used for recording music/sound, for all you non-techies). Oh yes THE desk. The one you've all (if you live in dunedin and get ODT) read about. The one I got extremely excited about last year, when I decided to definitely do the 445 paper (instead of the 46 version, the stream I took in previous years, which turns you into a session musician, focussing on your skills and techniques as a player).

You can read all about the desk here.

In the above article, the head of department states 'The equipping of the studio with the new technology will also lead to greater creativity and opportunities for innovation for postgraduate students of music within the University’s Music Department'.

WAIT A MINUTE!

 Post-grad students get to use the desk? Is that what you said?

What's that you're saying?

I'm no University expert, but I'm assuming a 4th year Honours student is considered to be a past-grad, yes? (please correct me if I am wrong).

However, upon entering the very first gathering of us fine 445 fellows, we were told that under no such circumstances will we be allowed to record using the Holy Grail of musical equipment. Sure, we can watch someone else play with it, while the saliva drips from our un-deserving and irresponsible lips, but to record with it for our own projects is simply out of the question.

Now, I can understand some of their arguments. Yes, it is a veeerrry expensive piece of equipment (note the extra r's and e's), and I wouldn't have the slightest idea how to work it, but isn't that the point of university? To learn things that previously went right over your head, like trying to understand Chewbacca? Couldn't they just have someone supervise us as we twisted knobs and pushed buttons to our hearts content?

Sorry John, no amount of double-tracking will make Bieber sound manly

So theres that elusive accidental lie, where (I'm guessing) the powers that be originally wanted to use the equipment for educational purposes (which would not be unusual in a tertiary institution), but once they got their hands on this million dollar deal, they acted like a small child in the playground who brags about having the best toy around, yet won't let the plebs play with it.


As Des'ree sublimely put it, Oh Life.

PS:  However this blog entry may seem to 'diss' the Music Department, I am simply stating my opinion. I think that, while there is certainly room for improvement, the Music Dept is an awesome department to be involved with, they've taught me a lot and for that I thank them.

Welcome To The Madness

Well hello there friends. Welcome to my blog. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Rachel and I play drums in a band called Honeybone. The whole purpose of this blog is to let you guys in on what goes on behind the scenes in the Honeybone world (which isn't much more than you'd expect). I'll also let you in on my thoughts about life (hence the title 'Honeybone and Life'), because if I just ranted on about how awesome my band was, you'd all probably get rather bored.

                                                  this guy is bored already                                                            

 So if I start off with a wee bit of background to Honeybone, I think we'll be away laughing soon enough. Honeybone formed as a three piece in May 2009 comprising of myself on drums, Drew on guitar, and Peter on bass (in your face). We formed a week before OUSA's Battle of The Bands, and quickly threw together the 15 minutes of material necessary to melt some judge-face. Unfortunately, the judges 'went another way' so we didn't make it to the finals. However, it did gain us some extra hip fans, and we followed that 'gig' up with a couple of Refuel gigs later on in the year. It was all going swimmingly, however we found a hole in our sound that only another guitarist could fill. Enter Joshua Simons, the man who altered the bands average height by about 10cm.

                                                     Josh does tower over the rest of us

 His sweet as strat licks were just what we needed to fill out our sound, and he quickly adapted into the Honeybone way of thinking, including knowing all the words to 'I'm on a boat'. We did a few more gigs in 2010, and in July we released our debut EP 'Soul On Fire'. We've done a video for a song off that EP 'All My Sins' which was a ton of fun to make, directed by Hamish Gavin, and starring the most incredible Sasha Nationson.

So far this year things look pretty promising. We've got an album in the works, which we are going to get some demos recorded for in a couple of weeks. We've got some gigs lined up, and a possible tour. So this year is looking to be quite exciting. Hopefully.

If you're new to the whole 'Honeybone' deal, then go to http://www.honeybone.bandcamp.com/ to check out our EP, and maybe you'll get a free download...*


*Free downloads are only available to those persons who comment on this blog in such a way that pleases the author (the author of this blog: rachel@honeybone). They must provide their contact email address, name, and star sign. The comments must only be complimentary ie: 'Rachel you are very pretty', 'Honeybone is awesome' etc. The author is willing to take bribes. You, as the reader, are entitled to only one free download, so don't think you can go giving away free downloads willynilly. The author reserves the right to give a free download to one applicant over the other if he/she is better looking than the original applicant. The author also reserves the right to use astrology to predict the coming of the next blog entry.