You know when you intend to do something and a year goes by and you think of what you wanted to accomplish. Then another year goes by. Then you remember at some arbitrary, unrelated time and wonder if that intention is still relevant? You might be laughing or annoyed at that description. An intention I had was to generate more content of my live show to help give people an idea of what I sound like. As a one-man-band, people often envision that I have a kick drum strapped to my back and pulleys and levers around me and I waddle around to activate the drums while playing guitar and singing and intermittently blow on a clarinet or harmonica or melodica.
My One-Man-Band Setup
I produce drum tracks in my home studio and process them all in the same way with the same eq and compression settings so they all have a “Kyle sound” to them. A couple people have thought I used backing tracks…nope. Drums are individually produced for each song I perform. I add guitar live and use technology to help. There is a guitar pedal called the Key 9 that turns your guitar into an electric piano. Organ sounds give some nice texture. I use a Boss Octaver pedal to add sub-bass. That’s often a head turner the first time I play at a venue. People will see a guy with a guitar then hear drums and the bass kicks in…eyes on me. A few drums I add piano as there isn’t a good guitar to piano conversion pedal (that I know of…). I loop my songs live. Anyone that’s seen me during the summer time while wearing sandals know I may make a mistake setting up a loop. But, what’s the fun in performing if there isn’t the risk of error?
Generating Content
Using my old Samsung S6 on a tripod, I have about 2.5 hours of video time. I play anywhere form 2-4 hours so I can catch quite a bit of performance time. Then I just need to edit and upload. At a recent show on August 24, 2018 at Rock And Brews in Chesterfield, MO, I edited the footage to three songs and have uploaded them to YouTube. Recording shows is something I need to continue and try to have one song, cover or original, uploaded.
Some Video
These are added to my EPK but here are the three songs here.