Sad Skelton

End of an era - The Embassy Hotel coming down

Jeremy — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:04:39 +0000

Last call at the Embassy Thu, February 5, 2009 Landmark to be torn down to make way for a condo complex * Email * Print * Write * Size: A A A Share: * Facebook * Digg * Del.icio.us * Google * Stumble Upon * Furl * Newsvine * Reddit * Technorati * Blinklist * Feed Me * Yahoo * Socializer * Ma.gnolia * Raw Sugar * Simpy * Squidoo * Spurl * Blink Bits * Rojo * Blogmarks * Shadows * Netvouz * Scuttle * Co.mments * Bloglines * Tailrank * Sitejot + Help By KATE DUBINSKI Bands that played the Embassy A legendary East London watering hole and live music venue is closing and will be demolished to make room for a new condominium project. The Embassy Hotel at 732 Dundas St. where bands such as Our Lady Peace and the Cowboy Junkies played, will close at the end of this month, building owner Gary Walters confirmed yesterday. The project was approved by city council this week and will lead to 150 condo units on the site of the Embassy and neighbouring vacant buildings, which also will be torn down. "The Embassy, she's hurting," said Greg Thompson, president of the Old East Village community association. It's the end of an era for The Embassy. In its heyday, the hotel was a key hub for the London music scene. Social Distortion, System of a Down and Jesus Lizard played for sold-out crowds, the shows were for all ages, and many acts just getting their start rocked the gritty bar. "There was a time, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was a hopping place," Thompson said. "It's very much like the Brunswick Hotel, with lots of bands using it as a rehearsal space and performance space." Built in the early 1900s, the Embassy Hotel was bought by Helen Haller in 1977. "It's kind of sad, especially to see the poverty there now," said Haller, who owned the bar and hotel until 2001 when she sold it to today's owner. "I can't tell you how fortunate I am to have all these memories and those experiences." Haller's son, Tyson Haller, managed the bar and "loved every minute of it," she said. "We had some awesome memories there," Haller said. In 1981, Haller introduced live music as The Embassy's main entertainment, and after a brief focus on country music, Tyson Haller began working with his mother and bringing in international bands from every genre. "Jewel played her first time in Canada here. It was wonderful, the fan base was extremely loyal, and it was exciting," Haller said. Greats such as Henry Rollins performed to thousands of people in the now-defunct bar, which houses several rooms where bands can play, some large and some smaller. These days, those bands would play at the John Labatt Centre, she said. Haller cherishes her memories and her home is filled with memorabilia of the old haunt. "It wasn't just a bar. We made sure to display artists that were having their first solo shows. We did massive tours of the art. It was just as famous as the music," Haller said. A mural outside the hotel was painted by a Cuban artist and a tiled bathroom installed by another artist. Both features still exist and will be preserved, the condo developer said yesterday. Two or three men still live in the building, and the city is working with outreach workers to find them a new home. Walters, today's owner, said it made financial sense to sell the building when the developer approached him. The developer is expected to take possession of the property in April.

Sad Skelton playing this Saturday at Fanshawe

Jeremy — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:11:14 +0000

This ended up being kind of a last minute show but we’ll be playing at the Outback Shack this Friday as a benefit Sunshine Foundation. It will be Sad Skelton with Pilgrim and Matt Naylor. Details below:

Saturday March 21, 2009
Show begins at 9pm
Outback Shack Fanshawe College
$4 at the door/$3 in advance

Facebook event page

“The Favourite Game” interview on FNARadio.com

Jeremy — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:42:31 +0000

Got an email a couple weeks ago from the guys FNA Radio. Apparently they found some of the tracks we had posted on the The Favourite Game website and Rock went to #2 in it’s first week. It’s always fun when people find your music and like it without us having to say anything.

Anyway, they wanted to do an interview so we setup a whole Skype thing (I’d never tried it actually but it worked great). I think it’s going to be airing Wednesday March 18 so check it out at FNARadio.com

Oh yeah and if you don’t know who “The Favourite Game” then check out the website.

Google “Sad Skelton”

Jeremy — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 02:03:12 +0000

I often Google (yes it’s a verb) our band name to find out if there is anything out there about us that I don’t know about (admit it, you Google yourself too!).

Today when I did it there were a couple entries that sparked a smile, and not because they were gushing about us. The first one had the title “Sad Skelton is forced out of Cole fight“. I don’t remember being lined up for any fight. Reading the article a little deeper revealed Matt Skelton (no relation) had been forced out of a fight because of a viral infection. What are the odds.

Then the second was even better. Our first descriptive bad review. They made sure to get our name right (Sad Skelton…yes Skelton) which I appreciate. I particularly liked the description of our style. “…a bunch of skinny guys playing guitars and taking turns singing inspired lines about shining plus some lackluster synth junk“. I don’t think we’ve ever had a review that descriptive!

New way to promote a band - Let others!

Jeremy — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:42:53 +0000

It really isn’t new but it seems new to me.

First I’d like to say thank you to all those who came out to our show at the museum this past Friday. The show was a huge success from all angles and we enjoyed showing off our new stuff to everyone.

One thing I didn’t really expect (although I don’t know why, I do work as a web designer) was that the social networking aspect of promoting a band is the best way. I say that somewhat in a selfish way. Normally I was the one doing most of the promotion for our shows, marketing and general image. However within hours after us playing at the museum there were videos posted on our Facebook page. So cool, a better angle than our camera was getting and someone else did the work of posting it!

All that to say I think it’s really cool and want to encourage anyone who has photos or video of us playing to post it to our Facebook page. Of course that is if you liked us.

So fun to see videos show up when you Google “Sad Skelton”.

Jan. 30, 2009 - Friday Night at the Museum

Jeremy — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 18:22:24 +0000

Sad Skelton will be the featured music at the preview of a new art exhibit opening of “Cultivating Care: Life and Treatment of London’s Asylum“. This is also the first event of the newly created “Museum Underground” program designed to cater to a younger audience.

Show should start around 9:30pm with the ribbon cutting and preview of the exhibit at midnight.

Takes place at Museum London, 421 Ridout Street North in London Ontario.

Hope to see you there!

Facebook Event - Friday Night at the Museum
Museum London

Saving MIDI SyEx dumps

Jeremy — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:07:36 +0000

I’ve always had a hard time with overwriting presets on any of my instruments. “What if I need that one!”. Like I’m actually going to need a

Seeing MIDI hex code made me think about Reboot

synthesized birth chirp sound. And yet I still can’t bring myself to overwrite them.

It has become standard with virtual instruments, DAWs and everything computer that you can save pretty much everything. However I still lament the prevalence of the MIDI standard of 25 some odd years. But there is hope even with that.

It seems my Nord Lead 2x has the ability to dump all settings as a MIDI system exclusive message. I just need to find a way to store that data. Enter MIDI-OX.

MIDI-Ox eases the pain of working with MIDI, if only slightly. It at least gives an insight into what is going on as well as tools to modify and conform MIDI to do your bidding.

To capture a MIDI SysEx message:

Open MIDI-Ox
From the View menu select SysEx. This will open a window with 2 panes. The top one for entry (if your so daring as to actually write or modify SysEx HEX code) and the bottom for receiving.
From the SysEx menu select Receive Manual Dump
Send SysEx message from the keyboard. On the Nord Lead 2x you do this by holding the shift button and clicking Dump One for one program or performance, or Dump all for the entire bank.
Click done. Your program info should be now displayed in the bottom pane.
Select Command Window > Save to save to a text file.

It’s amazing how little amount of data there is to make up the settings for a single Nord Lead 2x program. Now I finally can save an unlimited number of sounds. Here is the sound I saved. Looks grand!

F0 33 0F 04 00 00 08 04 04 04 07 04 0A 03 00 00 04 02 00 00 00 00 06 04 0E 04 01 04 0A 05 00 00 06 03 0E 07 06 03 0C 04 04 06 00 00 0E 01 05 04 0F 02 03 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 01 01 00 01 00 03 00 02 00 02 00 01 00 01 00 00 00 03 00 01 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 F7

OpenSoundControl - The Answer to our MIDI woes?

Jeremy — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:38:02 +0000

MIDI has been with us as a standard since 1983 controlling synths and various other related musical gear. It created a whole new way to make music in ways that were previously impossible or extremely difficult. However it amazes me in this world of fast paced technology changes, how it has survived so long.

In recent weeks and months, MIDI has become the bane of my existence. Normally when creating synth parts we record the MIDI data into Ableton live with a keyboard. Have the various tracks of the song in MIDI makes it super simple to edit. However often commands that you didn’t want recorded somehow get embedded in the tracks that you don’t want.

Last night I fought forever with why my bass track routed out through my Nord Lead 2X synth was fading in as if I had programmed in a volume envelope. After much banging of my head and yelling at the computer, antagonistically named “Toe-she”, I finally realized somehow in Ableton Live I had mapped the volume control of another track (which was muted I might add) to the output volume of the synth. Don’t ask me how.

Unfortunately I can’t do without MIDI, it’s too important in the production of electronic music. But how do you replace a 20+ year old standard? Well there are efforts being made, the most significant of which is OpenSound Control.

OpenSound Control is a protocol, much like MIDI, designed to send messages between digital devices. However unlike MIDI, OpenSound Control is far more versatile. To best illustrate this you can actually download a freeware app called lanniX. With lanniX you can build virtual controls that send specific messages, much like MIDI. However the messages carry far more versatile information at greater speeds.

For instance, with MIDI you designate a channel to send on then pass various messages. An example would be a volume controller. The MIDI message would have a CONTROL message along with which controller (volume is controller 7 normally). With OpenSound control you would specify a readable text name instead of a controller number.

The other huge advantage is the speed at which OpenSound Control operates at. Using UDP as it’s main transport protocol, the bandwidth and speed it operates at far exceed the old MIDI standard. This just translates into no more midi delay.

I really hope this technology catches on and at some point in my lifetime we can say goodbye to MIDI forever.

Sad Skelton in blog form

Jeremy — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:38:19 +0000

We’re finally almost ready to meet the world. We here at Sad Skelton have been feverishly readying new songs to play our longest show yet. Hopefully we’ll have the show announcement up here within a week or so.

This site is designed as a way for us to give you a small insight into what is happening with the band, for better or worse. Sometimes will be songs postings, new dance moves, endless ramblings but always in the spirit of Sad Skelton.

Leave a comment if you wish to say hi, we’ll try and respond promptly. And if you’re viewing this from our facebook page, click “View original post” to see the full real deal on our own site.

bye for now

Working on material with Kevin Black

Jeremy — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 16:05:42 +0000

If you want to have fun in a band you really should be friends first. Our long standing friendship started before the band with Kevin Black and therefore continues after The Favourite Game ended. But though we don’t play in the same band together it almost makes it easier and more fun to work on music together.

For our upcoming show on January 30th, Kevin Black will be playing with us for some of the first set. We asked Kev for a couple songs and we’re in the process of adding some “Sad Skelton” personality to them.

It’s amazing in this day and age to be able to work on music together even when you live in different cities. We’re pulling somewhat of a “Postal Service”, a band who did a whole album in separate cities.

And now that we’re working the kinks out of the “remote” song construction workflow, we hope there will be many more collaborations with our good friends.

http://www.myspace.com/kevinablack