You Might Think We're Sharks

Inside the Shark Factory

Mike — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:59:43 +0000

I thought some of you nerds might like to see a little more in-depth stuff about the way that the Sharkbox runs. We do our writing and production these days largely in Apple Logic, which is a fun and easy, some would say “frictionless” piece of software for music composition. I’m still attached to Cubase in some ways, and I’m moving already-written tunes into Pro Tools for polishing up the mixing for our new EP. But Logic is nice, and one reason is easy porting to its sister program, MainStage.

What the heck is MainStage? It’s Apple’s somewhat amazing tool for rocking a live show, hence the name. It’s vastly different from say, Ableton Live, because it’s not specifically about loops or electronic music. A DJ or electronic artist could probably use it, but the presets show what the intent is: guitar rigs, virtual keyboard/synth racks, and even a looper (a la a Boss LoopStation type of pedal). But there are a lot of options and easy assignment to controllers, and not a ton of guidelines, so it’s a remarkably creative piece of gear.

Click the little screenshot for a big screenshot. The program starts as a layout engine, where you drop shapes and instruments onto the screen and arrange them like so. Each object either corresponds to something you can look at on the screen for information while you’re playing (like the waveforms), or a controller you can use (like the keyboards, buttons, sliders and knobs). Deb and I each have a keyboard, shown at the bottom. I have a 3-button footswitch, shown next to my keyboard. The rest of the knobs and sliders are on my Korg nanoKONTROL unit, a nice compact little guy.

The great part about MainStage is that it doesn’t dictate how you should work. Once you figure out what you need in a set, each song can be different. Some, where I play guitar or bass, use a single song-length backing track. Others have loops that I can turn on and off, add effects to, and generally “play” more than “play back.” Some acoustic-based songs don’t have any backing. On our cover of “Flume,” I actually play MPC-style drum pads on my Akai keyboard controller.

I feel like we’ve barely scraped the surface of MainStage: there are tools for improvisation, tools for building drum loops in real time a la Maschine or an Akai MPC, and great stuff if you want to run a guitar through your computer. If you have a multi-out audio interface, you can do some creative routing, like sending the backing track by itself to headphones for a live drummer to play along with. So in the future, look for us to be doing some very interesting things, and drop the notion that an electronic band is just playing over a backing track!

Making progress

Mike — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:01:37 +0000

A new setlist, and a new EP in the works…

Watch this video on YouTube.

Thanks!

Mike — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:35:56 +0000

Thanks for making our illustrious comeback a success. We filled the Mozart’s back porch with good friends and fun tunes while trying to stay warm by chugging espresso.

Things we learned:

Tamara and Nathan are great people with great songs.
We bring a lot of stuff out to a DIY show, and maybe if we do coffee shops in the future we’ll tailor a set more toward that, while keeping the big production, big beat sounds to the clubs and bars.

Still, that said it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it, though there’s a lot to manage and plug in these days.

Thanks to everyone who bought a CD, we sold a ton of ‘em! Guess the price was right. Don’t forget to download your digital bonus track.

Inside Sharky’s Machine

Mike — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:52:11 +0000

No… no Burt Reynolds here, but I thought you might want to see what powers the new live “sound of sharks.” To start, how about my Odyssey rack case and everything in it.

At the top is my dirt-old Behringer Eurorack mixer. They don’t make these guys anymore, and frankly most Behringer gear is not especially exciting or high quality but this is one of the cheapest rackmount mixers with enough channels for us to do what we need that exists out there. The last channel is labeled “iPod” but is just as likely to have a Korg Monotron or other small goofy thing plugged into it. It still has a sticker from one of my old bands, Custom Car Commandos, stuck to it. On the front side of the rack, we have an almost-equally ghetto setup.

At the top is a BBE bass preamp, which I got from a friend for literally nothing when he moved to Africa. It allows us to travel out without a bass amp, which would really be a drag considering we use a live bass on two songs at this point.

Under that is a dbx 1066, which is totally cheating because I rented it for the show on Sunday. It’s the least cheapo thing in this rack, which is easily explained by the fact that I don’t actually own it. The 1066 is a gold-standard in the recording world for all kinds of compression. We’re using it on the master to smooth out the sound and to prevent the also-rented PA from blowing up when I drop an espresso on a mixer fader and suddenly the kick drum or Deb’s voice sharply cuts through the mix at +2000db. We might be mistaken for pros with this thing on our side!

Which brings me to the final piece of gear, the Behringer Virtualizer. I snagged this for $35 on eBay. It’s an effects processor that can run in stereo or two mono, with two separate effects on it. I use it for some nice reverbs on the vocals and a fancy delay when I have the free hands to adjust the send knob on the mixer. Which is usually never. It makes a ton of hiss, especially for a digital unit, but hey, the reverb is really nice and it was 35 bucks.

That last thing is just a drawer. It’s where I keep things. What kind of things?? I don’t have to tell you anything!

CDs!

Mike — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:12:44 +0000

CD versions of 27 Dogwalkers are coming. We’ll have them at the Mozart’s show.

The CD will have a hand-silkscreened cover (yes, screened by us), an exclusive download of a track you won’t be able to get otherwise, and a sticker. All for such a ridiculous price, you’ll think someone else stole our CDs and is trying to get rid of them.

Stay tuned for news about the next EP, coming before you know it.

Show at Mozart’s October 30

Mike — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:29:51 +0000

Whelp, guys, it’s time to get back on that horse. Let’s make some music.

Yes, that’s a new face. Jess will be joining us on acoustic geetar and singification.

We’ll be playing October 30, the eve of spookytimes, at the way-awesome Mozart’s coffee house on Lake Austin Blvd (right next to Hula Hut), with piano-toting singer-songwriter Tamara Miller.

We’ll be on around 8:30pm, with Tamara Miller playing both before and after our set. Come enjoy some coffee, cheesecake, and tunes.

EP Available to all

Mike — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:41:05 +0000

Our new EP Whatever You Like (27 Dogwalkers) is up on Bandcamp for everyone. It’s 4 quick tunes, a little electronic and a little folky, a little hi-fi and a little lo-fi. I hope you enjoy it. You can stream for free as much as you want, or download for a measly $3. A pittance!

I think you could probably consider this our debut, since in the 3 years we’ve been doing this, there’s not really a lot of documented recorded evidence, and nothing we put together. Once again, we hope you enjoy it, and stay tuned for show dates.

New EP! Free for Pupapalooza guests

Mike — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:43:51 +0000

Thanks to everyone who came out to Pupapalooza and made it a fun time! Sure, it was hot enough to melt a dog’s paws, but the bacon flavored snow cones seemed to help. We gave out some flyers with codes printed on them, they’re good for a free download of our new EP Whatever You Like (27 Dogwalkers). Follow the link on the right side of the site, or right here. If you have any problems whatsoever, contact us here or on Facebook.

Right now, the EP is exclusive, but we’re going to release it to everyone else for public consumption soon. And I hope that more EPs follow soon after, we have a lot of songs we’re working on.

As for the EP — you have probably heard versions of these songs before, these are the finished and somewhat mastered versions of tunes we put up on Soundcloud for a while. We hope you like them!

First new show!

Mike — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:27:49 +0000

Well, it’s finally that time. We’re playing. And it’s double-scary, since not only is this our first show with the current setup, it’s a pretty unique type of show for us. We’re going to be providing some of the live entertainment at the first PUPAPALOOZA fest, a benefit for the Animal Trustees of Austin and the Humane Society. Should be a lot of fun — You can bring your dog, eat some dog treats, check out dozens of vendors, and from 1-2pm you can watch Daniel, Deb, and Mike nervously strum their way through the first show of the rest of their lives. Come hear some new songs, and hear some old ones in new ways. We would love to see some friendly faces out there.

New song: Be My Be My

Mike — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:11:06 +0000

We’ve been a bit bogged down lately in complicated song structures and dense arrangements, so we decided to take a quick stab at recording a new song of Daniel’s live in the garage with 3 room mics. Deb even decided to pick up a guitar for this one! Check it out, it turned out pretty well.

Song removed. Now available on the Whatever You Like (27 Dogwalkers) EP, released soon.