Electric Violins

New year, new pictures. I’m back at school again, here’s what I’m rocking with in my extremely small room.

And in the other corner…

I’m gunna be doing lots of exciting projects this year, stay tuned!

Bought parts to make 4 different effects pedals, schematics for which I found here:  circuit snippets. I’ve wanted a lo-fi pedal for a while now, and I just kept finding more interesting circuits to build and since parts are so cheap… I’ve built the lo-fi and rambler distortion pedals, I’m debugging a pulse width modulation pedal, and I have all the parts on my table to put together a new fuzz pedal as soon as I get some more perfboard.

So, I bought a bass. 5 String Ibanez SR405 to be precise. Its awesome. And now I can lay down backing tracks to all the stuff I record. Speaking of which, I’m working on a new song for which I’m sure you’re all extremely excited. Here’s a teaser.

But back to the title. I found some Nine Inch Nails stems online and since I’m on a huge NIN kick right now I had to grab the 31 Ghosts IV drum stem and record a quick, dirty, ballsy, brutal, raw, bass  and violin cover. You should check it out cause its awesome.

Also I’m currently learning Icarus by Kansas for the Virtual Kansas Online Band youtube thingy. It’s a tricky song but I really like it so far.

Just built a simple FET Preamp to the violin – really makes a difference, evens out the output volumes. Pretty happy with it so far.

http://skudmunky.com/gallery3/index.php/DIY-Violin/Fet-Preamp

I just recorded a quick cover of The Frail by Nine Inch Nails – check it out in the music player on the right or download it here:

http://skudmunky.com/MarkW_NIN_TheFrail_ViolinCover.mp3

I’ve got an internship for the next 6 or so months, which is giving me a lot more free time than I have during school, so expect updates to come more frequently (hopefully).

I finished it. Kinda. Woodwork is all done, need to make a new bridge, and of course the pickups aren’t perfect. Need to laser cut some covers and plates for the electronics as well…

I’m going to get someone to take good looking pictures sometime soon. Time to order a bridge and work on electronics!

Loading Images

Just recorded a solo for a Metropolis Pt 1 – Dream Theater cover over at the Mike Portnoy forums!

http://skudmunky.com/skudmunky-electric-violin-solo1.avi
http://skudmunky.com/skudmunky-electric-violin-solo1.wav

Got the videos from the Brockport Christmas Extravaganza up on youtube now! Watch, rate, share and enjoy!

Siberian Sleigh Ride

Christmas Eve / Sarajevo aka Carol of the Bells

Had one of the best shows EVER last night – 3 friends and I played 3 Trans-Siberian Orchestra covers at a Christmas Extravaganza show in Brockport NY. We played an extended version of Siberian Sleigh Ride, Wizards in Winter, and Christmas Eve / Sarajeva (aka Carol of the Bells). It went so well! (Which was great because we’d only been playing with our drummer for a sum total of 6 hours up to the show)

Videos shall come as soon as the people who videotaped it get the files to me, but rest assured they will be up on youtube asap.

Here’s a great picture that kinda covers the event!

And a link to the photo gallery.

So the wordpress theme I’ve been using broke when I updated wordpress, so I’m using this one temporarily / maybe permanently, gotta do some configuring first. Who knows!

Added some pictures of my current recording rig to the Equipment album… For some reason nextgen gallery wont integrate with my updates.