You Might Think We're Sharks

Thanks! Phase 3 begins…

Mike — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:50:04 +0000

Just wanted to thank everyone for coming out last night to Beale Street Tavern. Sorry that things got cut short, that was partially just how the night was going and partially our extended setup time. Beale St. were missing some cables, which caused a little logistical issue, and then we had some power cables die. No fun. But you move on!

We chose to end with “Silver Lining” and “Firecracker” for an important reason: At least for quite a while, that was our last show with Deb. She’ll be recording with us to commit some of the songs we’ve been playing to a new EP, but you may have noticed that she’s reaching a time when she won’t be able to play with us any more. She’ll always be a shark, and hopefully sometime in the future we can welcome her back on stage. Let’s call it an extended maternity leave. We wish her the best, I know she’s gonna be an awesome mom.

And then there were two, right? We hope to get some new blood in there to fill things out on stage, and we’ve learned from these recent shows that we’re not going to take on so many responsibilities per person (especially me). Distribution of labor!

So… stay tuned for a new EP soon and look for Sharks MK III out there in the near future. Watch this space for info on two-piece or Daniel solo sets.

Going back to Beale St.

Mike — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:06:30 +0000

We hope everyone had fun at the Beale St. Tavern a few weeks back. We definitely did. We’ve ironed out some kinks and switched up some songs in the set and we’re going back on the 16th. We’ll be joined by our friend in Day Vs. Night as well as Modrag and Subspace. Sharks are at 10.

Show at Beale St Tavern

Mike — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 00:28:46 +0000

…And we’re back! Time to get rocking here.

Doors at 7pm, All Ages, $5

8pm You Might Think We Are Sharks
9pm Rambler Rose
10pm Anam Mila
11pm Ukemi

I haven’t heard the other acts, but Ukemi was also on the Austin Sound Sampler compilation with us and they are a very cool band. This should be a cool show, Beale St. is located underneath the Parish downtown and they’re going for the same kind of high-quality, great audio, nice show-going experience.

New release: The Race EP

Mike — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 03:33:16 +0000

Exciting news! A new, short digital-only EP — more of a single, really — is now available at Bandcamp and the other usual suspects including iTunes and Amazon mp3.

The Race digital single

Thanks for your patience and support, as always!

The Race (Boom Mix)

Mike — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 01:17:40 +0000

Now, we’re not afraid to thump. Don’t get me wrong. But this is probably not something you’ll see out of us too often, a full-on dance track. This is actually a commercial project for us, but we’re going to do a different mix with some cool textures and fun interesting beats to go on our next album. For now, here’s the danciest thing you’ll likely hear out of us for a while. Enjoy!

UPDATE: The track has been removed, we wanted to stream it as a preview for a while, but we have a new release pending! Stay tuned for info on that, and new shows.

Inside the Shark Factory

Mike — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 17:59:43 +0000

I thought some of you nerds might like to see a little more in-depth stuff about the way that the Sharkbox runs. We do our writing and production these days largely in Apple Logic, which is a fun and easy, some would say “frictionless” piece of software for music composition. I’m still attached to Cubase in some ways, and I’m moving already-written tunes into Pro Tools for polishing up the mixing for our new EP. But Logic is nice, and one reason is easy porting to its sister program, MainStage.

What the heck is MainStage? It’s Apple’s somewhat amazing tool for rocking a live show, hence the name. It’s vastly different from say, Ableton Live, because it’s not specifically about loops or electronic music. A DJ or electronic artist could probably use it, but the presets show what the intent is: guitar rigs, virtual keyboard/synth racks, and even a looper (a la a Boss LoopStation type of pedal). But there are a lot of options and easy assignment to controllers, and not a ton of guidelines, so it’s a remarkably creative piece of gear.

Click the little screenshot for a big screenshot. The program starts as a layout engine, where you drop shapes and instruments onto the screen and arrange them like so. Each object either corresponds to something you can look at on the screen for information while you’re playing (like the waveforms), or a controller you can use (like the keyboards, buttons, sliders and knobs). Deb and I each have a keyboard, shown at the bottom. I have a 3-button footswitch, shown next to my keyboard. The rest of the knobs and sliders are on my Korg nanoKONTROL unit, a nice compact little guy.

The great part about MainStage is that it doesn’t dictate how you should work. Once you figure out what you need in a set, each song can be different. Some, where I play guitar or bass, use a single song-length backing track. Others have loops that I can turn on and off, add effects to, and generally “play” more than “play back.” Some acoustic-based songs don’t have any backing. On our cover of “Flume,” I actually play MPC-style drum pads on my Akai keyboard controller.

I feel like we’ve barely scraped the surface of MainStage: there are tools for improvisation, tools for building drum loops in real time a la Maschine or an Akai MPC, and great stuff if you want to run a guitar through your computer. If you have a multi-out audio interface, you can do some creative routing, like sending the backing track by itself to headphones for a live drummer to play along with. So in the future, look for us to be doing some very interesting things, and drop the notion that an electronic band is just playing over a backing track!

Making progress

Mike — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:01:37 +0000

A new setlist, and a new EP in the works…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thanks!

Mike — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 16:35:56 +0000

Thanks for making our illustrious comeback a success. We filled the Mozart’s back porch with good friends and fun tunes while trying to stay warm by chugging espresso.

Things we learned:

Tamara and Nathan are great people with great songs.
We bring a lot of stuff out to a DIY show, and maybe if we do coffee shops in the future we’ll tailor a set more toward that, while keeping the big production, big beat sounds to the clubs and bars.

Still, that said it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it, though there’s a lot to manage and plug in these days.

Thanks to everyone who bought a CD, we sold a ton of ‘em! Guess the price was right. Don’t forget to download your digital bonus track.

Inside Sharky's Machine

Mike — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:52:11 +0000

No… no Burt Reynolds here, but I thought you might want to see what powers the new live “sound of sharks.” To start, how about my Odyssey rack case and everything in it.

At the top is my dirt-old Behringer Eurorack mixer. They don’t make these guys anymore, and frankly most Behringer gear is not especially exciting or high quality but this is one of the cheapest rackmount mixers with enough channels for us to do what we need that exists out there. The last channel is labeled “iPod” but is just as likely to have a Korg Monotron or other small goofy thing plugged into it. It still has a sticker from one of my old bands, Custom Car Commandos, stuck to it. On the front side of the rack, we have an almost-equally ghetto setup.

At the top is a BBE bass preamp, which I got from a friend for literally nothing when he moved to Africa. It allows us to travel out without a bass amp, which would really be a drag considering we use a live bass on two songs at this point.

Under that is a dbx 1066, which is totally cheating because I rented it for the show on Sunday. It’s the least cheapo thing in this rack, which is easily explained by the fact that I don’t actually own it. The 1066 is a gold-standard in the recording world for all kinds of compression. We’re using it on the master to smooth out the sound and to prevent the also-rented PA from blowing up when I drop an espresso on a mixer fader and suddenly the kick drum or Deb’s voice sharply cuts through the mix at +2000db. We might be mistaken for pros with this thing on our side!

Which brings me to the final piece of gear, the Behringer Virtualizer. I snagged this for $35 on eBay. It’s an effects processor that can run in stereo or two mono, with two separate effects on it. I use it for some nice reverbs on the vocals and a fancy delay when I have the free hands to adjust the send knob on the mixer. Which is usually never. It makes a ton of hiss, especially for a digital unit, but hey, the reverb is really nice and it was 35 bucks.

That last thing is just a drawer. It’s where I keep things. What kind of things?? I don’t have to tell you anything!

CDs!

Mike — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:12:44 +0000

CD versions of 27 Dogwalkers are coming. We’ll have them at the Mozart’s show.

The CD will have a hand-silkscreened cover (yes, screened by us), an exclusive download of a track you won’t be able to get otherwise, and a sticker. All for such a ridiculous price, you’ll think someone else stole our CDs and is trying to get rid of them.

Stay tuned for news about the next EP, coming before you know it.