OC Fair

The fair was once again conquered by HP2 and the Skeletones. Thanks to everyone who came out! For those who missed out, I pulled a "Roland Kirk" (I recommend three for the festival) and Tbone time for the skank. Curtis rocked steady with some extra tasty drum solos, Lindsey wailed (a friend told me "I couldn't even tell she was sick"), Captain County Dave crooned, frolicked and warmed up the crowd while Anthony's bass strap was finally fed up with all his grooving. ("end with a quote") (or two): "Pictures or it didn't happen"
-D#C Bhak

p.s. Did any one try the deep fried butter? Its all I kept hearing about.
Oh and Tyler, your 70's hip hop sample throws me off every time I visit this page. There is my comment about it. Peace!

Hp2 Blog: Beach Style!

Anthony here with your promised weekly update (of course Tyler already updated, but mine is here regardless!). I'm blogging from my phone with no spell check and auto correct so expect typos!

So the news for today is as follows in this surely shot blog:
We finally almost maybe know what time we're here tomorrow at the OC fair! If you come out and see us tomorrow remember that we're playing in the action sports arena and the show starts at 6pm. Seating is first come, first serve so make sure you get there early! The loser you are to the stage, the closer you get to be to the amazing Bhakti as he plays the trombone, as well as two saxophones at once!

I'm personally looking forward to playing at the OC fair this year because I feel like an honorary member of Orange County! I drive out here from Riverside a couple times a week (or every other day, as is the case this past week) and really enjoy my time here.

Speaking of OC and me being here all the time, I came out to the practice studio last night for a stellar session with the Tyler Mooreless Half Past Two (more on that soon!) and then promptly followed that with quite possibly my last show with my other band Time to Renew. Thanks again to Dave and Lindsey for doubling the crowd size at the Blue Cafe last night! And today I spend my day taking in the sun and boogie boarding at seal beach with my family! I love this place!

Okay, so now on to Tyler Moore news! Don't worry, he's still in the band, but to his allergies to funnel cake, deep fried foods and fun in general (also his deep seeded fear of large crowds of happy people enjoying themselves) Tyler will be spending his saturday playing Magic The Gathering in a dark corner by his lonesome and listening to the blackest of fantasy metal.

So in the interest of finishing this blog so I can join the rest of my family in the sand and get to boogeying I'm signing out! Peace!

- Anthony

Ps holy crap i just dunno that's been bloodiness whole time using my voice
Pps the voice recognition isn't that great

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Come Collaborate with HP2, Internet 3.0 Style

My blogs are so awesome they make sound! Anyways, just wanted to spill some thoughts about an online collaboration/social media site that I picked up on. Thounds.com (get it, thought + sound) is a relatively young platform for throwing all the musical ideas in your head on the wall that is the internets, and seeing what sticks. Any registered user (and from what I've seen it's a much more international audience than other similar sites like Indaba.com) can listen to your idea, post a new riff or line and then share your collaboration with everyone else. There is even integrated soundcloud integration when you are satisfied with the final version.

Now, to be fair, the downsides. Flash doesn't play nice with internal digital routing like JackOSX. I don't know if there is an easier PC work around, but when I wanted to sync up the audio stems from Reason I experienced some tone altering clipping as well as having to start and stop the tracks by hand...err by mouse. I know it's a lot to ask of a Flash based recorder, but having midi integration into my DAW (Cubase, btw) of choice would make the syncing and recording ONE BILLION times easier. The groove in my example is just off because of the manual start/stopping and that makes my ear sad.

I know this is asking for a lot, but some type of sequencer would be great as well. That way you could take the ideas and iterations that people have layered on top of your original idea and expand them into a whole song. I think the beauty of Thounds is that it is so simple, and literally anyone with a laptop and a built in mic can jam with anyone on the internet. For more complex collaboration, Indaba seems the way to go.

So if you have any ideas to throw on top of my 70s sample driven jam, layer it on and leave me a comment. If you have any ideas you would like to hear HP2 on, leave a comment. If Bhakti decides that Thounds is the preferred medium for writing our next album, he can leave a comment. Maybe crowd sourcing HP2 songs would be the best way to break Country Dave's writer's block. Hm...

Weekly Update: Genesis

So, I've noticed something recently. Guess what that is. Do it, I'll give you time.

Did you guess yet? Don't lie, you just kept on reading--where's the fun in that? Okay, fine but since you didn't guess I'm not taking you out for ice cream. Your loss.

Anyway, as I was saying: I noticed something. And that something is that the members of Half Past Two are terrible... at updating our blog! True story. The history lays beyond this post. But good news! That's changing here and now. Back in my Guilty Parties days I used to update our blog once a week and since they're dead and we're not I figured I'd bring that tradition to HP2!

Now, what will this weekly blog post entail? My guess is news updates, talk of new material, funny stories, typos and probably a whole lot of stupid things extending from my finger tips into your brain case. I have a feeling these will mostly come late night or in class so get used to tangents because when this baby hits 88mph you're going to see some serious shit!

So lets start this update with a little news:

What's going on with HP2? Well, lets start with out most recent show, shall we? First off thanks to everyone who came out and saw us, we were on first and it's always difficult being the being the opening act, but you guys that were there danced and made us feel welcome. Second, those of you at our last couple of shows may have noticed that we busted out a new, untitled song. I personally think it's pretty sweet and so far the reactions have been good. We've got some more new stuff on the way (despite Dave's rumored [according to Lindsey] writer's block) that from what I've heard in demos is pretty damn awesome.

Speaking of awesome! We're playing on July 31st at the OC Fair! Now, I've never been to the OC Fair because I'm not from OC so I never got the invite in the mail. Of course I've recently been informed that it's not an invite-only affair so the past 25 years I've lived in Southern California and not gone are all for naught. I'm not bitter... except I am. Either way, I'll be making up for the past 25 years by rocking out with Half Past Two on the Action Sports Arena opening for The Skeletones this July 31st at an undisclosed time! ('ll let you guys know when I find out, don't worry!).

And with that being the end off the news that I have noting more to offer. Nothing relevant anyway! So for the sake of my own personal entertainment while I sit through this developmental psych class, I bring you: Classroom Observations!

We're two hours into class and I kind of stopped listening while I was blogging (see the sacrifices I make for you?) but I've noticed that none other than Bilbo Baggins himself (from my previous blog) has moved on to bothering other women in class after he got the cold shoulder from that girl last week. He got shut down not once, not twice, but three times last class session and he's moved on to the girl who asks questions that have just been answered! I think they make a great pair because while he's chatting her up she's not talking so it's a win for everyone! Was that mean? Sorry, I get cranky in the morning.

Ohh lesson of the day from the professor: No Cop, No Stop. She also hates parking meters. I like her attitude! I'm totally with her. Parking meters are dumb. I don't carry change with me, man! And when I do, I have pennies! Why don't vending machines and parking meters take pennies?! They're not too small, they all take dimes! Pennies are a totally valid form of currency! I mean, you throw a penny in a wishing well and it's still going to do just as much as a quarter. What am I going to do with all these pennies? My wallet weighs 37lbs! It's causing my pants to fall off! I'm so not happy right now!

Okay, this post was stupid but I'm not about to proofread and prune so you'll read it and you'll like it! Or, if you hated it you probably didn't make it this far. So... that's it!

-Anthony (Maybe this weekly blog wasn't the best idea, be prepared for the worst!)

I'm in class, but blogging anyway!

So everyone, It's Anthony here again giving my first blog live from a classroom at Cal State San Bernardino!!

Why am I blogging instead of taking notes? Well, because note taking, as I'm sure you know are fully totally boring! And anyway, I'm feeling confident enough with my developmental psychology knowledge. (Also, I'm still totally taking notes, I'm not a badass--I'm here to learn!)

You know, you see some funny things in class like a dude that looks like Bilbo Baggins (pictured, right) totally hitting on the girl two seats in front of me. He's totally gone creeper and moved to where he's no sitting next to her and she's clearly not delighted by his decision to stay there for the remainder of the class. There's a lot of facebook happening here on all these laptops, so I'm not the only slacker in attendance today. There is far more FarmVille than I would like to see personally, but maybe it's just because maintaining a farm is totally not my style. I used to play Animal Crossing on the DS back in my undegrad days, but that Tom Nook was a damn crook and my neighbors were so demanding! I couldn't handle the stress!!
"You never visit me anymore, I'm moving"
"Deliver this package to Hooks, the elephant and he'll give you a rug!"
"You bought that painting from Red Fox, that's a fake!"
"I don't feel like talking about this, stop hounding me!"
"We already have this fish in the Buschemi Museum, Chachi, you should go find some fossils so you can make me and my owl daughter master curators that don't do anything for you, it's like to whole town is worthless without you, no go pick all the weeds because we're not going to do it for you, you worthless friend!!"
Woah, I think I got a little carried away with my Animal Crossing references. I think I just opened up some old woulds with that one. Lets get back on topic, shall we?

What's going on here... OH YES! I'm still in class waiting for things to end. Not a whole lot more going on here today now that Bilbo has calmed his approach and the girl two seats in front of my is leaning heavily away from his hairy creepshow advances. Everyone else seems to be paying attention to the lecture today. Lame! Oh man, my teacher just made a reference to playing doctor as a child and her version involved way less pretend life saving and way more naked people.

Speaking of naked people! (The follow has nothing to do with naked people) You know, we're playing the Glasshouse with Pato Banton, whom HP2 Drummer Curtis Marrero saw a couple of years ago at USC as described his show as "...Awesome." And if you don't know Curtis, you may not know that he doesn't just throw "awesome" around like it's some kind of trivial word--awesome actually means awesome to Curtis!

So that's it and that's all, I'm going to join the majority of my classmates with laptops and go on facebook and talk to my friends.

So once again please, come and check us out tonight as the show will be totally fun! Trust!

Peace,
Anthony

Tri-Force Games

I can remember the good old days. Playing Ocarina of time with Paul and Dale till the sun came up. This one goes out to all Zelda fans!




(HP2 Plug:)Tell me what you think is "wrong" with this version. You can do so at our show @ the glasshouse with Defunked, Maxwell Smart, and Pato Banton this Tuesday July 13th.