Hello Everyone, I'm Marty Living Down Here In Melbourne Florida

[martinweeks]

Big Hi To Everyone here at Songstuff.

 

Just found this site and it seems like a very cool area of the internet to get my feet wet all over again.

 

Short bio as I don't want to bore you all.

 

Born to a family of writers (books not music) and raised in a family that was "tolerant" of Rock & Roll but really preferred Jazz in all things musical.

 

Started out playing drums at 14, then quickly took up rhythm guitar, realized I had a decent singing voice, and could play kick ass harmonica.

 

Started earning $$ around 16 as a street musician in Washington DC during the early to middle late 70's and was blessed with a "Renaissance" of musical giants all living and working in the area. (Danny Gatton, Little Feat, Jimmy Thackery & the Nighthawks, Dr. Billy Taylor as well as a ton of local players who were just plain amazing)  This was a wonderful "Learning" Pressure Cooker for me.  

 

Realized quickly that I was not a very good electric lead guitar player but with the balance of vocals (front and background/harmony) and percussion and harmonica I would have way more fun and more income as a sideman for other players and bands.  So I became a local hired gun and it worked wonderfully for me for the next 32 years of my life.  Earned my way this way in Washington DC, Phoenix AZ, and Miami Florida till 1992.  For me when people asked I would say I was a "Successful" Musician (as in earning steady income) not a "Famous" musician.  From the Jazz teachers I had early on I had realized that the most successful musicians across the board were the one's that did session work.  Steady income, excellent networking and so on.  So fame was not a big deal to me.  Being well known in the professional world of players, and producers though was the important factor.  This worked wonderfully for me till 1992.

 

Perhaps a bit too well as I wound up in a detox center getting sober from way too much fun and disposable income.

 

Needless to say their was a 10 year hiatus from music for me, from that misadventure. 

 

In 2000 though things just magically started up all over again like I'd never stopped.  Got involved in the "Littlefeat Grassroots Movement" (which was just starting up back then) and met a gentleman named Evens Colas.  Evens was an NYU Graduate in Music Theory and Sound Engineering and he literally re educated me on how to go about studio/ session work and the better venues to play and why.

 

Began building my first real recording studio at this time using all Roland VS and XP equipment.  For a full look see of this studio you can go to my website listed at the bottom of this and see what I was doing.  Absolutely loved the studio thing, but not being a real "Sound Engineer" it was pretty much hit or miss for me from the learning curve.  Still is but I'm getting better over time.  (compression still befuddles me not matter what I read listen to or study.)  But again, getting better over time.

 

Two years ago my now ex wife walked out on me after I'd just finishing two years of college and left me homeless and of course had to sell off the studio at a huge loss just to keep out of the cold and off the streets.

 

Now working steady (not in music) and putting things back together slowly and carefully.  I have absolutely the most wonderful woman in the world  now who supports me through thick and thin on anything I wish to take on as a new challenge so here we are.

 

I'm looking forward to feedback, comments and so on and would also greatly appreciate comments and feedback on my website as I'm building the online business thing as well.  I've given up all hope that our country's government is every going to care about the well being of it's citizens so if I'm to have any kind of retirement or enjoyable Autumn of my life it will have to be through my own efforts to build my own business streams.

 

Since the quality of sound in digital recording software has vastly improved over time, I'm now beginning to use DAW's as well as the loopers to augment my songwriting and arrangements till I can again start building up the hardware and instruments to get back to what I used to do.

 

As to the website, please do leave comments on it and let's develop interaction there as well.  Google likes traffic so I would personally appreciate the back and forth and suggestions posted there as well as here.  I have a page of loop arrangements I just did while research/testing out a DAW by Acoustica called Mixcraft.  It's surprisingly good quality (all but the amp modeling section) and a wonderfully easy learning curve that helps across the board improve my education on all the thing s that the more expensive and complicated DAW's do.  But enough of this as I do not want to be thought of as a spammer.  Want more info, just go to my site.  That way I won't be breaking rules here.  Thanks.

 

Anyway, it's nice to be here and I look forward to hearing back from folks.

 

Peace!

 

Marty Weeks

[martinweeks]

Hey David,

 

I'm not really getting it on this site.  Just took me like ten minutes to figure out how to check replies.  The forum tab is very confusing.  And I cannot load chat for some reason.  I've done all the registration stuff otherwise I couldn't log in and / or write this reply.  Can you or someone tell me where to find some kind of walk through so I actually know what I'm doing?  (lol!)

 

Thanks.

 

Marty

[john]

Hi

 

Your lack of chat access is simply that you only have a couple of posts and that doesn't open up until you pass 5 or 10 posts if I remember correctly. A brestriction added to curb chat spamming that was occurring.

 

It's a fairly standard forum software. The help topics are pretty good at a forum level and staff and members are happy to help with the odd issue. In fact we get very few issues. That aside I understand it is a big, full-featured system, so it is going to take a little getting used to for people not used to forums in general.

 

Cheers

 

John

 

PS Welcome to Songstuff Nice intro

[wtf audio]

Hey ,Marty.

[martinweeks]

OMG... another one of those harmonica player guys!!  (LOL!)  How's it going bro?  Oh yeah Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family.

 

Marty