Paul et Sylvie à Chapleau

Hé, ça fait un boute depuis que j’ai écrit mon dernier blog sur les spectacles à Ottawa et à Kingston… c’est le temps de faire la suite, n’est-ce pas?

Après ces spectacles dans la région d’Ottawa, nous avons pris direction vers le nord de l’Ontario pour trois spectacles.

Le 29 septembre 2011 – Chapleau

Après une pause-dodo à Sudbury le 28 septembre (et près de 950 km de route d’Ottawa), on a voyagé au Centre culturel Louis-Hémon à Chapleau. Après avoir débarqué de la 17 à Iron Bridge pour monter le 129 (par l’entremise de la 546), le chemin suit la rivière Mississagi pour un bon bout; vraiment une route de plaisance en automne (mais, sans contre-rail – on fait attention!)

Le Centre culturel Louis-Hémon est une belle salle attachée à l’École secondaire catholique Trillium où à peu près 30 personnes ont assisté au spectacle (incluant une élève qui a participé dans mon atelier aux Jeux Franco-Ontariens de 2011). C’était aussi le premier spectacle où Paul a interprété sa chanson “cartoon” On est tous pareil. Le spectacle était un bon début pour la série.

Aussi, il n’y a pas de réception cellulaire à Chapleau (ce que plusieurs entre nous ont découvert!)

Sur la scène à Kapuskasing

Le 30 septembre – Kapuskasing

Le matin, on part de Chapleau pour prendre le 101 jusqu’à Timmins (ah, réception cellulaire!) ensuite le 11 via chemin 655 (oups, réception perdu).

Le retour à Kap! La dernière fois que j’étais dans ce coin de la province était en 2009 lors de la fête de la St-Jean (avec les mêmes musiciens, en plus). La St-Jean à Kapuskasing marquait aussi la première fois que j’ai accompagné Paul en spectacle. Le Centre régionale des loisirs culturels était la plus grande salle de la tournée et la foule était aussi peut-être la plus grande. Le spectacle, comme la soirée précédente à Chapleau, s’est très bien déroulé et la foule avait de l’énergie. La soirée s’est fini avec une réception au Centre pour la fête du drapeau Franco-ontarien.

Le 1er octobre – Timmins

La scène à Timmins

De retour à Timmins (ma première visite depuis 2001). Nous avons revenu sur nos pas de Kapuskasing le matin du 1er pour se rendre au Centre culturel La Ronde. On avait, encore une fois, une bonne foule pour le dernier spectacle de la tournée du nord. C’était aussi la première fois que nous avons eu une première partie au spectacle; Joël Ducharme et Marcel Marcotte ont interprété quelques chansons pour réchauffer la foule. Le spectacle s’est très bien passé (sauf un petit moment où j’ai presque trébuché dans les batteries à Shawn), marquant une bonne fin à cette série de spectacles.

Joël Ducharme est aussi photographe par excellence qui a prit des photos de notre spectacle et a composé un bel article de la soirée sur son site web.

Et voilà! Mon petit aperçu de cette série de spectacles avec des très bons musiciens (Shawn Sasyniuk, Daniel Boivin, Éric Sauvé, Nathan Da Silva, Sylvie Chalifoux et Paul Demers), notre technicien fidèle (François Labelle), 2 300 km de route et un bon séjour dans le nord. Let’s do it again sometime…

• Big Sugar – Revolution Per Minute
• Brooke Miller - Brooke Miller
• Whosarmy – Whosarmy
• Coeur de Pirate - Blonde
• Anique Granger – Les outils qu’on a
• Cody Allen – All Is Not Lost
• Slyde – Feed The Machine
• Paul Demers - Encore une fois
• The Sheepdogs  - Five Easy Pieces
• Mireille Moquin - Aurevoir Princesse
• Regals – The Double-Duo Sessions

 Now, go grab yourself a copy of these and enjoy!

Serge à récemment lancé un vidéoclip pour la chanson “Reesor Siding”, tirée de son album Bad Luck. La chanson parle de la grève de 1963 où trois grévistes ont été tués. Le vidéoclip est présenté sous forme de dessin animé. Vous pouvez visionner le vidéoclip ci-dessous, ou sur YouTube.

Merci beaucoup à la gang de Franco Jam pour m’avoir invité cette année!

(Et oui, j’ai pris des photos!)

Photo by/par LiseAnne Gaudet

On Friday, February 11, I had the privilege of sharing the stage with Paul Demers, Robert Paquette, Serge Monette, Shawn Sasyniuk, Daniel Boivin, Éric Sauvé, Peter Cliche and Marcel Aymar at the Capitol Centre in North Bay, ON, during Quand ça nous chante. We performed material from Paul, Robert and Serge’s repertoire (including some real classics) and the band just killed! I still consider myself extremely lucky to be playing with musicians of this caliber! Mix all of that with an enthusiastic audience and it made for a great show!

On Saturday, February 12, I switched gears and played the role of guitar tech for my friend Daniel Sauvé’s band Règlement 17. Definitely a much different gig from performing; I had to be on my toes for the entire set. What also made this more interesting for me was the size of Dan’s rig compared to mine (mine’s a scooter, his is a Humvee)! Thankfully, the gear gods showed mercy and the show went off without a hitch (or, at least, any major hick-ups). The band also sounded phenomenal!

Other highlights from those two days:

• Seeing some great performances by Dominique-Laura Guénette, CANO and En Bref…
• Meeting and chatting with Chris Colepaugh (saw him and the Cosmic Crew perform twice in Ottawa; do check this band out if you get a chance!)
• Catching up with some old high school friends that I haven’t seen in ages!

En tout, c’était une belle expérence! Merci à la gang pour week-end inoubliable, et à Paul Demers pour l’invitation de participer au spectacle du vendredi soir!

• Renée Yoxon and René Gely – Let’s Call It A Day
• Pulse Mondiale – Testament
• Jason Lang – Boomerang
• Slyde – 2010 Demo
• The Swingers – Yeah…Whatever
• Cecile Doo-Kingué – Freedom Calling
• The Big Chill – A Chill In The Air
• Chris Colepaugh and the Cosmic Crew – Missed A Page

If you have a chance, do check these records out!

Happy New Year!

Sunday, December 12, 2010 (D-Day! Note: Times are approximate, but give you the idea…)

• 18:45 - Still no rough cut, but that’s ok. Go into the basement and start recording/experimenting with a few things.
• 19:00 - I get word from Dan that a rough cut is, in fact, going to be available shortly.
• 19:20 - I watch the rough cut (great flick!) and call Dan, who jumps on speaker with the Director, JF Dufault, to discuss some ideas for moods and whatnot. He also tells me that the final cut will be up shortly (which means I can record cues to the proper length!)
• 19:25 – Back to the basement and begin preparing some of the loopy things that I’ll be using while waiting on the final cut. I also begin on some variations of the theme to see what I can do when I finally record the cues.
• 20:00 – The final cut arrives! Using points from my discussion with the director, I write out times where actions are taking place and where tones/moods will shift. (Note: because I’m using an older version of Pro Tools, and because I have no practical way of transferring the video to my computer – no Internet on that one – I have to record the score without watching the picture at the same time. This is where the detailed notes came in handy, as well as watching the flick a couple of times.)
• 20:15 – Back to the basement! I put markers up on my time line bar in Pro Tools to mark where things change, start the loop and begin recording! Make a few changes, do a few edits and both cues come together nicely (IMHO). I just hope that the times I marked will match the music to the picture… (gulp!)
• 21:25 – Both cues are done and bounced to disk. Rather than compressing them into MP3 files, and because the WAV files were relatively small in file size, I upload the WAV files to the server and inform Dan and JF that they’re ready to go!
• 21:35 – Start working on a “theme” song for the credit reel. More of the same stuff with some variations and a bit more production.
• 21:50 – Get a call from Dan. They dig the stuff! (Whew!) It also syncs up to the film! (Whew!) However, the second cue needs to be about 15 seconds longer. I tell them that a longer cue and credit reel them will be finished around 23:00.
• 21:55 - Pull up the second cues and, after some quick editing, it’s now longer! I also finish up the “theme” (after spending about 10 minutes arguing with my bass! I admit defeat in the argument, gave up on the bass and pulled up a nice bass sound in Reason instead…)
• 23:10 – The cue and theme are finished, bounced and uploaded to the team’s server! A quick call to let them know that they’re ready and that I’ll be up until midnight if ever changes need to be made. Getting a li’l sleepy…
• 23:45 – Message from Dan; the cues work, the theme works and I’ve officially wrapped on InSight!

So, there you have it! How to score a short film in no time!

While I had a short window to do this, I imagine that it is nothing compared to what the rest of the team pulled off in that 100-hour window. They were able to write, plan, shoot, edit and complete that short film with time to spare!

(Also, to hear something you wrote turn up in a great little production like this one is very cool!)

Thank God for the Internet also! I don’t know how this could have been done quickly without the ability to move files around and work in our own seperate shops. Just the back-and-forth driving between the team and I alone to bring files, CDs, DVDs, etc. would have eaten too much time!

Many thanks to Dan DeMarbre and JF Dufault for giving me the opportunity to work on this film, and congrats to the rest of the cast and crew for a great job! Let’s do it again sometime!

Should the film ever become available online, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, here are some stills:

So, how did I do it? Here’s the breakdown:

Late Thursday evening, December 9, 2010

• I get a message from Dan informing me of the theme (Forever), the surprise element (a photograph) and that they’re hammering out their script. More info to come…

Friday, December 10, 2010

• Dan briefs me a bit on the film’s premise and mood. (No, I’m not going to tell you! You’ll just have to see it!) The film may require a few cues and a few songs for different settings (gulp!)
• Lots of back and forth to pick their brains as to the mood and tone they want. They’ll know more once they start filming (fair ’nuff!)
• That evening, inspiration hits and a record a “theme” that popped in my head. I quickly record it on my iPhone and send it to Dan – they like it! (whew!)

Saturday, December 11, 2010

• Nothing much happens that day (at least for me; Team C-Rox were still in the midst of shooting the film).
• Dan drops me a message telling me that I should have a rough edit of the film to watch on Sunday morning and that one of the scenes requiring some music has been cut.
• Considering time, I pitch the idea that that I’ll record a pile of variations on the theme for them to use.
• Gig at The Mix in Orleans with The Nimoy Brothers. Big fun!

So, what happened on Sunday? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion!

My friend Dan DeMarbre contacted me last Wednesday, December 8, regarding the Film Racing Grand Prix. It’s an international competition where teams must write, shoot, edit, score and submit a 5-minute-and-30-second film all within 100 hours. The teams are also given a common theme and surprise element that must be incorporated in their movie. Dan asked me if I were willing to write some music for the short film being submitted by Team C-Rox.

The competition began at 8:00 p.m. on Thursday, December 9, 2010, and the movie had to be submitted no later than 11:59 p.m. on Monday, December 13, 2010.

Now, there were some factors that added to the challenge on my end:

• I would not know anything about the film until either late Thursday or early Friday (after the team received the theme, element and came up with their story);
• I had a busy weekend lined up with friends, family and a gig on Saturday;
• I probably won’t even see the film before I had to start writing material; and
• I’m working all day Friday, December 10, and Monday, December 13.

So this meant that, at best, I had a few hours on Sunday night (December 12, 2010) to write, record, edit and deliver the score for the film.

So, did I want to score this short film? My answer: Of Course!

(Did I mention that I love a challenge?)

So how did I do it? Stay tuned for part 2!

In the meantime, you can dig on Slipping Sideways, which Team C-Rox created for the 2010 Montreal Film Race (where it had to be done in 24 hours!!) Enjoy!

The rest of the group consists of Tammy McRae (Vocals), Francis Thibodeau (Bass and Vocals), Barry Billingham (Drums) and Éric Sauvé (Keyboards).

I’ve got my first gig with the band in early November at a private function and hope for many more to come! I’ll be posting gigs in the Shows section as they become available.

You can also check out the band’s Facebook Page for more information!