audiotthoughts on music

Image by audiot.eu via Flickr

ok, before the big move takes place, i need to get rid of some things…

so here are the links to some ebay-auctions:

1. Sonor Phonic Plus lugs
2. even more Sonor Phonic Plus lugs
3. Epiphone 12string acoustic guitar

the descriptions are in german, but if there’s anything you want to know, drop me a line right here.

there will be more stuff on ebay in the future – i’ll let you know…

hi there.

here is something i’m thinking about for quite a while now. there are vocal lessons online one can find through google or youtube, some of them good – some not. nothing fancy so far. but because i believe singing can only be really learned with a personal teacher and not through one-size-fits-all-clips, i’m gonna start an experiment. maybe there even is such a thing but i’ve never heard of one. so here’s the deal:

i’m gonna try to teach online. basically that means direct contact between the student and me via emails and sending audiofiles back and forth to have useful feedback and advice. no matter how much i thought about this, i simply can’t know if this could work until i launch kind of a beta-version. that’s what i’m doing now. the first people that are interested and willing to help me check it out will get free vocal teaching online (and i’m not talking about 1 or 2 lessons!). i have no idea yet how much time consuming this might become, so i can’t tell you how many students i can accept in this matter. but the offer stands – if you’re interested, drop me a line right here and we’ll work something out.

basically it will work similar to regular teaching. you will need the ability to record yourself, it doesn’t have to be perfect soundquality but i need to be able to hear subtle details – for quite obvious reasons. if you’re able to shoot some pictures as well or maybe even short videos, that would be perfect (if you’ve read through some of my singer’s faq entries you’ll know why). and besides, i’m going to ask you what you think about this way of teaching every once in a while and you’ll need to provide some feedback, because that’s what this offer is about. on the other hand, i will provide you with lessons, explanations, questions, answers and tasks – for example sending you some playback. you would then record yourself to it and send it back so i can laugh my butt off and spread it all around the net analyze it with you….

good idea? then don’t wait around. this sucks? then tell me why by commenting on this post.

have a great weekend…

there were these masked guys that broke into my home and forced me to post another video – again. that’s my story and i’m sticking to it…

this reminded me of “Wag The Dog” somehow…

yes, i know, i know and i’m really sorry to post another video again but this is just – well, no, i won’t say any more…

hmmm, for some reason it seems to not play the full video each time – so if the punchline’s missing, try watching it again. as someone who is somehow connected with music you should see it right away though. if not, you might consider crawling into a lake and die…

…well i did. actually i even own such a thing since i was about 16. saw an ad in the paper and a day later i had bagpipes, yay. the thing is, they are so ridiculously hard to play, it’s unbelievable. you need to have lungs as huge as a whale’s. the bag has to be filled up with air all the time. if there’s not enough pressure in there, the pipes just fall all over you. and imagine, there’s a bag with four holes in it and you need to keep it packed with air at any moment. i never figured that one out, probably never will. the blowing-air-into-the-bag is kind of independent from the sounds because you press the air out of the bag (through the pipes and the flute) with your arm. now when i tried this – no matter how much pressure i had in the bag – as soon as i pressed with my arm, the bag was empty within a few seconds, even with me hyperventilating. and the biggest challenge is to not laugh while this instrument of hell makes it’s startup-moaning-sounds…

i remembered this episode of my teenhood because of a youtube-video i found by accident. nothing special, it’s a scene from ‘Friends’ where Ross plays the bagpipes – and if I may say so: he’s doing really well. and i’m dead serious…

so here goes:

and if you ever, ever get the chance, you have to try it. you haven’t lived until you did, guaranteed!

Image by _ES via Flickr

i’m serious. we have all sorts of things that are supposed to define us, show off or create some kind of aura for us. we have a certain look (wanted or not), made out of clothes, hairdo, fragrance – combined with accessories like business cards, stylish eyeglasses, design-cellphones, briefcases or handbags and so forth… there is even such a thing as image-designers, no kidding – i once knew one. some people actually practice their handshake, overall motions and/or the way they talk to materialize their desired style.

so it’s mostly about seeing.

where do people get the idea to have a certain look or image? my guess would be movies and tv-shows because that’s what usually influences us the most. an example: when the seatbelt was invented, nobody used it. even when every car had them, still no one strapped him/herself in. then politicians (first in the US, then other countries followed) achieved, that in movies and on tv everyone used the seatbelt and – drumroll, please – within a rather short period of time, almost everybody followed this example. we usually don’t notice things like that and make up other reasons to justify, but we are strongly influenced by our surroundings – like it or not. another one: almost every time there’s problems in movies, you see someone pour him/herself a drink. so what do people at home do when things get tough? exactly. and without any real reason by the way. but i’m drifting off once again :-)

so what puzzles me is, why don’t we have themes? it would be the perfect completion to our designed style and, to connect the dots, it’s a common thing for a movie or tv-role to have a theme. but even the most obsessed stylefreaks don’t have one, right?

but why? maybe a reason is that it’s kind of hard to realize. imagine people walking around you or sitting next to you in the bus constantly emitting their theme through their cellphone or mp3-player. one huge mire of sound, what a terrible thou…..wait a minute, that’s exactly where we are today. only it’s not everybody’s specific theme, but even more random stuff. when i was younger (sheesh…) i had a walkman and used it all the time WITH my headphones on. today i see teenagers listening (not really) to music WITHOUT headphones, but through their crappy few-millimeters-almost-exclusively-midrange-cellphone-take-that-neighborhood-speaker, how lame is that? anyway, today an own theme would be easy to realize. lots of people have the possibility to do a simple tune themselves, even my 10 year old cellphone (back then a true masterpiece in design ;-) ) has a function for that and there could be websites to do that. and for the well-heeled people, appropriate services could be offered. new cars should have their own theme that plays when you put the key in. i want the ‘streets of san francisco’-theme in my next car. and garage doors could play something like the 20th-century-fox-fanfare when you open them (imagine how your neighbor would get crazy jealous) and even better, the doors in appartments could be equipped with sensors that recognize the inhabitants and play the tune of each one when she/he enters the room – should be something short though…. sounds ridiculous? think about it, the possibilities are there already – and we are not that far away at all. cellphones allow us to assign specific ringtones to certain persons (imperial march for the boss, jaws-theme for the girlfriend…), ain’t that kind of a theme-thing already? but way too random for my taste.

i say go get your personal theme and include it in your look – it’s about time…

hey there,

a few minutes ago i uploaded 3 more drumloops to mixmatchmusic. that makes 25 total, check them all out here. and while you’re at it, mix together a bunch of pieces to create your own song and – how knows – even sell it…

recently i mentioned that during recording, i prefer to do full-takes rather than punch-ins. if the tune plays from beginning to end and i’m laying down a complete track to it, i consider that a full-take.

now, lots and lots of musicians – the vast majority i guess – don’t do it this way. they do a full-take or two and the rest is kind of damage control or cosmetics or similar. so if the second half of the third chorus is not to their satisfaction, they punch in a few bars before, do the rest of the chorus, punch out again and then tinker it in there somehow. why? there’s usually two reasons: it’s supposed to save time and/or the musician is actually not able to do it all in one go and therefore needs to puzzle his track together, creating kind of a best-of-take…

back when i worked as a financial advisor (i’m serious!), i first learned about vibes – they did call it different though. in a nutshell: if you’re calling a customer to discuss business and you’re wearing a shell suit while lying on the couch, there will be no deal. i think it’s an interesting point. if you’re working, you’re working. imagine you’re going to a bank to invest some of your hard earned cash (i know, but there might be some non-musicians reading). what would you do if the banker was in a shell suit, probably hadn’t shaved in a week and was clipping his toenails behind the desk? yes, me too. of course, on the phone you wouldn’t know what he’s wearing, right?

wrong. enter the vibes. this is – among other things – about attitude. no one takes you seriously if you look like a trailerpark-inhabitant. you won’t even take yourself seriously – and that’s what the other one will know because of, tadaaaa, the vibes. on the phone, in a letter, on the moon – everywhere. is it wrong to judge someone by his outfit? maybe so, but who cares? it’s common practice.

anyway, back to recording. take it seriously. the audience will know if you did it right or if you just chose the fastest and easiest way. if you’re not capable of doing the whole tune in one continuous piece, how ’bout practicing some more? or doing it a little different? noone will miss that one guitarsolo-part where you’re playing a 20-notes-per-second-tapping-arp, believe me. what they will miss though, is a strong impact caused by your performance because it’s the work of a tinker rather than a craftsmen.

i tell my students that the song starts with the first sound there is. no matter what instrument it is, the song starts right there – for everyone. even if there’s no vocals at all for one whole minute, the song starts there. they have to dig in right there, not just a few seconds before their part starts. and they have to stay in until the last sound has vanished completely. i can get quite angry at them if this rule is not obeyed, because it is very important. the vibes are very important – and way too often underestimated. so if you record something, take it seriously.

and by the way, doing the whole track again just takes about five minutes – time well spent…

i was just zapping through some entries in other blogs and found this one here. the entry itself is interesting if you have read more of the author but check out the comments! there are lots of great links to music sites of which music-people think as examples of how to create your appearance online (terrible, that wasn’t even a sentence, now was it?).

damn, still trying to catch up with everything important i missed online, while building my first lens on squidoo, which was supposed to be some kind of tv-channel about singing. didn’t work though – i hate it when i am more stupid than i need to be things are more complicated than they need to be. it just looked like a site where i’m trying to sell you some irrelevant crap, so i cancelled it. gonna try again though because the opportunity is just too tempting to pass up.

then again the big move at the end of the year is kind of foreshadowing (is that even a word? – well, now it is!). contacting the electricity provider, the telephone company, the landlord and so forth to make this happen as smooth as possible.

then there’s the work on the guitar tracks for the little-garden-song. i narrowed the choice of takes first down to 11, now down to 6 – still not sure how many will make it to the final mix. all of them were “wholetakes” or however those are called if there even is a name for them. i’m talking about a complete take from the beginning to the end of the song. usually i do wholetakes exclusively – i don’t like punching in, because i always think this messes around with the vibes. paranoid? maybe so, but i still don’t like it. there’ll be an entry on that…

anyway, here’s a cool video of Sara K. singing “Vincent” by Don McLean. Forgot the guitarists name but he’s unreal – check it out: