audiotthoughts on music

once again the work on ‘my little garden’ will be delayed as a friend/student of mine and i decided to record some acoustic-guitar-plus-vocals-duets. he wants to try making gigs on his own so he asked me if i would record him for kind of a demo cd. we’ve been playing together for quite a while now and so it seemed logical to not only record him but us as well…

yesterday i did some pilot tracks (no idea if that’s the right term in english…), meaning i tracked some rough playing of the songs which will be on the headphones during the real recording. actually we wanted to do a live recording, just playing along and recording but we don’t have the right room for it anymore. so we will record single tracks and mixing them together. hopefully not much feeling will be sacrificed due to this type of recording. the live session will happen as well, but we have no date yet, so it seemed a good idea to do this now…

as soon as i finish writing this entry i’ll record some more pilot tracks and tomorrow we’ll do at least one guitar, maybe more – we have only a few hours.

oh boy, i can’t wait to move back to my hometown on the 01.01.2009 and have a decent setting to record again. it’s kind of cool doing everything on the mac (i learned so much through this) but on the other hand, the real stuff is deeply missed. it’s possible to make it all electronically but when it comes to rock music for instance, i feel detached in a way. even if it sounds real, it feels a little weird…. but that won’t stop me from working on my little garden – it’s just a great experience, somewhat weird but still great. yay!

so it’s nice to be playing acoustic guitar again this few days, we’re doing that in my apartment. real strings…wow. then saturday morning off to gigland, returning on sunday and finishing the acoustic thing next week as early as possible so i can go back to picking sounds for the new album. guitar sounds are done, drums are next…

alright, this is a somewhat different entry but i was asked to post our setlist here. this is just to give an example. our complete set contains about 60-70 songs but since we haven’t seen each other for 8 months (at our last gig ;-) ), we put together a list of 35 songs that will work right now.

i moved to another town a little over two years ago and it’s 250 kilometers away, so this band dozed off a bit but i’m going back there at the end of this year and that should have a positive effect on things. by the way, the website is still online and it’s a great example of how not to do it. it hasn’t been updated in ages and hasn’t even been completely filled up with content in the first place… but anyway, if you want to have a look – go ahead: r-jam, just don’t say i didn’t warn you…

so here’s the setlist:

1. gimme all your loving (zz-top)
2. little miss can’t be wrong (spin doctors)
3. bohemian like you (the dandy warhols)
4. get it on (t. rex)
5. come as you are (nirvana)
6. behind blue eyes (the who)
7. running out of days (3 doors down)
8. mustang sally (wilson pickett version)
9. around the world (atc)
10. get over it (the eagles)
11. wasting my time (default)
12. it’s been a while (staind)
13. higher (creed)
14. kryptonite (3 doors down)
15. bad case of loving you (robert palmer)
16. hard to handle (the black crowes version)
17. sex type thing (stone temple pilots)
18. larger than life (backstreet boys)
19. dani california (red hot chili peppers)
20. dirty deeds done dirt cheap (ac/dc)
21. sharp dressed man (zz-top)
22. saturday night’s alright for fighting (nickelback version)
23. smooth criminal (alien ant farm version)
24. walk this way (run dmc/aerosmith)
25. fire water burn (bloodhound gang)
26. i’ll be there for you (the rembrandts)
27. all the small things (blink 182)
28. word up (gun version)
29. song 2 (blur)
30. along comes mary (bloodhound gang)
31. rebel yell (billy idol)
32. whole lotta rosie (ac/dc)
33. take a look around (limp bizkit)
34. the power (h-blockx version)
35. fight for your right (beastie boys)

it’s actualy three sets (1-10, 11-21, 22-35) with two breaks and most of it is played a little harder than the original ones…

hehehe, a few days ago i mentioned that a band of mine (rock covers, now ain’t that inventive?) will do two gigs in august. one of them is this coming saturday. it’s no big deal, i would guess about 300-400 people. p.a. and lights will be there, so we won’t need to lift any heavy stuff around, except the bassplayers cabinet ;-) . the whole thing will last about 4 hours and yesterday we had our first rehearsal in 8 months and it was….well…..kind of interesting. the most amazing thing was that we could remember (and play) the more complex songs without even the slightest flaw but the easy zz-topesque numbers went all terribly wrong. i always have troubles memorizing lyrics of such easy songs where each line is almost the same – i always get them mixed up and get myself into trouble. but throw a complicated, story-telling, two pages long text at me and i know it inside out within two singthroughs. that’s because it’s about something or it tells something or it somehow makes sense, those things are quite easy to remember, no matter how long they are…

anyway, we’re thrilled to hit the stage again after eight months. it’s gonna be lots of fun, even if it’s just covers. i doubt there will be a recording though, my minidisc device broke down recently and i haven’t decided about what to get now. and because i don’t know who’s mixing the gig, i have no idea what will be going on… i might bring one of my students along. not because we’re such a great band but because we’re masters in damage control, and that always comes in handy :-)

p.s. our website’s last update was about 2 years ago and i don’t even know if it’s still online at all. if there will be some presentation that i don’t need to be ashamed about, i’ll be glad to post a link. by the way, this website story should have been part of my if you want something done entry :-)

sorry, but sometimes i get the strong urge to just throw something out there:

singers, memorize those lyrics !!!

there’s nothing more ridiculous and shameful than someone on stage reading from a sheet or, even worse, a whole folder. it does not only show that you have no idea what you’re doing, in my opinion it’s also like insulting everybody in the audience, slapping spitting them in the face. maybe they even spent their hard earned money to see you there and you don’t even think it’s worth learning a few lyrics. show them a little respect. and, let’s not forget, you’d only need to learn them once. i’m often amazed that i even remember all those maiden- and priest-songs i learned inside out when i was 15 or even younger. brains are cool.

but besides looking stupid and as so-not-pro as it gets, there’s some other reasons as well. it’s not coincidence that we say ‘to play an instrument’. the idea is to know your part well enough to be able to play with it, improvise, do what you want – this is art, not some freaking reading-out-loud-contest. being yourself is the only way it works (this can be good or bad news ;-) )

being able to play is a wonderful thing but it requires knowing your part (except free improvisation of course) and, even better, the parts of the others as well. this will take you up to the next level.

and to all non-singers and singers who know all of their songs (covers as well…). the next time you see someone who brings a folder to the stage, point at him and laugh out as loud as you can. that’ll teach them!

…where were we? making a plan, right? i hope that was clear enough because it’s really important and, by the way, producers do that as well. it’s not just a rookie-thing.

i mentioned discipline and calmness as good habits already and i’d like to get more into this. i wanted to title this entry (part I to be precise) ‘good manners cost nothing’ but then i drifted off (again)…

i found out that one of the most important things in a studio is to be nice and easy to work with. no ego at all! no ego at all! no ego at all! maybe i’m repeating myself myself. the studio people work there. for you it might be anything but for them it’s work. so try to make things easy for them and they will be thankful. they have the power to make it sound good (or bad for that matter), so becoming friends is a good thing. and one more thing: they do this every day, so who knows better how it works? ask them about recommendations, maybe they want to do a certain song first, maybe they don’t like the take you really dig. another take would take about 5 minutes, discussing about it could easily take 10… as long as you’re not a pro yourself, who really knows about studio work (in which case you might not have read this post anyway…), let them do their thing – it will pay off…

and of course rule #1: relax !!!

recording in a pro studio can be a cool experience or it can be stress for anyone involved. i’m no star and i haven’t been to pro studios hundredth (is that even a word?) of times. but when i was there it was just great. we all had lots of fun and enjoyed ourselves the whole time. now, why’s that you ask. many musicians remember studiowork as something terrible. they go in and panic because it’s something new or different and every minute costs money. every take costs money, every mistake costs money, every break costs money…

it seems to me many musicians have no plan when they go into a studio. so they start with maybe the drums and want to make everything right – it’s gonna be a record so it has to be perfect, right? then they realize this takes way too much time already, so they hurry up with the next drumtakes – no more perfectionism, that first take wasn’t too bad… the later it gets, the worse it becomes and in the end they spent their money, they have a recording they don’t like, everybody’s angry – maybe even the band falls apart – and none of them wants to see a studio again. never – ever. i’ve been through this as well…once. but it wasn’t a pro studio, i was still impressed though. it was my first recording experience at the age of 16 or 17. it looked like a pro studio to me then but today i know the cd would not have been better even if we had a plan… but these things happen so we can learn something.

back to the plan. you should be sure about what you’re doing in there. you could rehearse the whole thing. sounds silly? well, it’s your money… practice it so you get an idea of how long it might take. this can only be an approximation of course but that’s ok. you need an idea. setting up the drums takes time. they’ve got a drumkit there? fine, but it still takes time to adjust it to your drummer. maybe it needs tuning, maybe there’s a problem with the mic placement, maybe…

does your guitarplayer know what he/she wants to play? i mean really know? including solos? and is he/she able to nail the solo in 2 takes? some guys absolutely want to throw in that fancy lick and think that they’ll mysteriously manage to do so although it never worked before. i will not even bother writing about guitar sound…

now might be the right time to discover that bass and keyboards don’t work together the way they should? think again, figuring out new parts definitely doesn’t belong here. make sure your arrangements work not only in your muddy sounding practice shed. you might be surprised how different it sounds when you suddenly can hear everything. practice somewhere else for a few times and – most important of all – tape yourself !!!

once again, time ran out – so we’ll meet again for part II

this is one thing i already mentioned in this entry. but it’s so important i thought to write something about it again.

no sweat, this will be a short one. once again it doesn’t really matter if you’re making music yourself or if you’re ‘just’ a listener. in the first case getting into it will make you a much better bandmate and musician as well. if you’re the latter, looking into different instruments, one at a time, makes you able to get the most out of any performance.

just go through your record collection, pick an album and listen closely to one song. then pick one instrument and make the second time you listen to the song about this instrument only. pretend, it’s only this one instrument that plays the song, the others are background noise (not much of a teamwork advice now, is it?). this should help you separate the single sound-sources. if you picked the drums, you can even go further into concentrating only on the hihat for example…

the idea is getting to know the single ‘voices’ that make the choir. did you know that a bell (those big thingies hanging around in churches) does not make the sound you hear? it creates all sorts of frequencies and the mixture of those is interpreted as the tone you think to hear by your brain. so the whole is more than the sum of its parts. and the same goes for music. but to really get into it, understand it and to be able to create it yourself, requires knowing the single parts. i’m not a bell-builder (or however these guys are called) but i’m pretty sure you need to know how that specific sound is achieved in order to design such a thing, especially if there’s more than one bell in the same tower. so get to know the parts to understand how it becomes the whole. think about the decisions the musicians made while recording that song and about how a change in those decisions would affect the song (what would happen if the bassplayer would lay down smooth long notes instead of slapping through that part?). this will teach you a whole lot about music…

now, what kind of a stupid title is that? maybe i should write the post first and then choose a title, but anyway…

i was just reading this blog entry and this got me thinking about zombielike people wobbling down the street, getting hit by cars because they don’t look where they’re going while the drivers pay attention to their device right in the dashboard… maybe i’m getting old. i remember people saying the same thing about the walkman many years ago. and they were right….kind of. there’s quite a lot zombies out there, no really – go have a look…

but seriously, what could this mean for the music itself? could it be that the future is only for videos, only the whole package? no more just listening? you’ll always want have to watch as well? how horrible is that?

no matter how hard i try, i simply cannot imagine myself to always want to watch something while i’m listening to music. ok, i’m coming out of the closet here: i never liked mtv. i always found it way too hectic, kind of felt like right in the middle of the brainwash-scene in clockwork orange. some music videos might be interesting, some even works of art but there’s something they all have in common: they’re distracting. how bad must a song be to need a distraction like this? you’re not with me on this? well, just think about all those clips where attractive people, barely dressed (this would have made a better title, right?), dance around. and now tell me you really do believe that this is not meant to distract from the music…

i didn’t mean to rant about clips on mtv (mtv is only an example here of course), i’m only saying i get by without watching it. and i’m virtually certain there are legions of people who think of it the same way. people who just don’t want to be distracted from the music.

don’t get me wrong, i’d love to own such a device and i’m waiting for the day when it’s finally released. and yes, artists will have to adapt to new technologies like this – as they always had to. but that’s all there is to it. it’s a new technology – actually not new, only portable – not a revolution. the automobile was a revolution but we still have and use our legs. people won’t stop listening because of this thingy.

at least i hope so

…i just wanted to let you know that i changed the permalink structure. it’s more logical that way. so if you linked to a specific entry on this site, you may need to change that link…

so there’s differences between playing live and in the studio. another example: while playing guitar, i tend to pick/strum too hard. live it’s ok, it adds a little something i like to the sound but it also is kind of a bad habit that gets me in trouble when i’m trying to record my playing. if i didn’t mention it already (and if you haven’t figured it out yet), i’m not a very good guitar player. live i get by, but recording is quite a challenge for me. so i’m really glad i developed some good habits too over the years. one of them is discipline, another one ease or calmness. there will be entries about good and bad habits in the future, so i’ll leave it at that for now. my point is, it’s very important to deal with the fact that different situations require different strategies. this might be something everyone has to experience on his/her own but there’s at least some things that work for all of us. and the most important one: tape yourself !!! maybe you heard that one before, i heard it lots of times. if there is such thing as a single most important aspect in becoming a good musician, this one might be it. come to think of it, taping oneself should receive it’s own entry as well…

i’d like to end this series of posts with a suggestion, or call it an exercise: if you’re a musician, try to figure out what differences in your playing do you make between live and recording? do you make any at all? and if yes, why? if no, are you sure it works that way? listen carefully.

if you’re a listener only you could become a much better one making the same exercise by listening to albums. compare studio- and live-recordings of the same artists. dynamics and precision should make a good starting point. see what you can come up with…