Ground To Zero

Freedom and music

Don’t let all the internet politics and piracy debates fool you, the Ground To Zero project is all about making music and sharing it freely!  The music-making machine fired up again last Saturday (thanks again Jake and Gazz), however you may have noticed that I’ve totally slacked off in the music sharing department.  That ends here dammit!

Unfortunately we don’t have any studio tracks for you, but we do have a metric shit-tonne of raw video footage taken from our 2009 jam sessions. “Shit-tonne” is of course the technical term for a hard disk full of video files, which I’ve been trawling through like a pig digging for truffles.  Before you get too excited, let me first point out that these videos were never meant to be high quality productions.  What we have is a demo reel of musical experimentation, and some of those experiments failed spectacularly.  Others sucked considerably less (to my ears anyway), so I’m going to release those ones to the world.  Why?  Because that’s how we roll bee-atch (cue the gansta beatz).

My god that was a lot of preamble.

If you’re keen to hear some raw new music, check out this demo track I cobbled together from our second jam session on 28^th March 2009.  It features Jase on bass, Jake on guitar and both Gazz and myself on the duelling drum kits.  Roll it…

So now that we’re all sharing, it’s time for you to share your comments.  You can even share the video itself if you want, it’s free under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.  Have fun!

Now we’re starting to get into the swing of things after another fun Saturday of jamming.  Extra fun for me because I got to try out my new digi-kit at full volume.  For all you drum nerds, I’m talkin’ about the Yamaha DTXtreme III Special.  I’m not sponsored by Yamaha (wish I was), but the kit is pure magic!  So much that I could hardly get Gazz off the thing, which brings me to my clever segue to introducing the line up for ‘open jam’ number 2:

• Jase on bass.  My brother joined us for the first time, but you can catch him on stage with his band Dusted Orange on Easter Saturday at Ruby’s Lounge.
• Jake on guitar.  The man whose riffs evolved into our first song returned for more mayhem.  He is currently working hard on an album with his band Spark Iris (formerly Against The Grain).
• Gazz on acoustic drums.  This time, the mean machine of the metal marching beat brought out his monstrosity of a Tama kit (that thing is HUGE!) and laid down some rocking grooves.  You can catch Gazz on stage with Crimson Face and check their Myspace for some freshly recorded tracks.
• Me on the digi drums.  While I’m plugging, I might as well mention that you should definitely see Dusted Orange next Saturday because my other band (currently known as Nitidus) will also be on stage rocking out.

Once our equipment was set up, we launched into a 4 hour non-stop rock soundscape.  The special effects and percussion made possible by the digi-kit blended brilliantly with the acoustic drums, which Gazz and I alternated a few times.  Jase brought his own uniquely progressive stylings to the mix as I’d hoped he would, which fit right in with Jake’s mammoth riffs (the dude seems to have an endless supply).  Some interesting ideas emerged during the session, plus a very interesting reimagining of the Terminator theme.  Video footage was taken, however due to technical difficulties I’m yet to tell if there’s anything worth showing.  The issues involve Sony hardware and Apple’s iMovie, so if you’re an expert in either, it would be awesome to hear from you.

Photos on the other hand…

Thanks Jase, Jake and Gazz for sharing your skills.  Another fantastic jam session down, bring on the next one.