audiot

as you already know, i was away for three weeks to prepare the new apartment and to record guitars for the garden album. now i posted a bunch of pictures to my flickr-site, where you can see the amps, cabinet, mic and guitars used. nothing fancy, though. two guitar amps (Laney and Sovtek), one Laney cabinet, one Shure SM57 mic and two guitars (Gibson and Heritage).

there’s some pics of my new drum setup and of the two guitars that are for sale (Sandberg and Epiphone). if you’re interested, drop me line through the contact form right here…

sooooooo, where was i? it might be best to just write away for now and then provide some links and info on the music i like to use in an extra-entry….

in a nutshell, what we had so far was – i work on precision every day for the length of one album, because this is a priority. then i’m working on the built-in eq with about 4-5 songs. that’s daily routine. by the way, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Endangered Species” album is good for this as well.

and then about 3-4 times a week, i spend time working on other stuff. sometimes it’s power, sometimes height, sometimes agility. i don’t call it speed because this could be easily misunderstood. it’s about singing fast changes in words, tones or rhythm. check out the song “Twisted” sung by Annie Ross (especially the recording Woody Allen used as title for his film “Deconstructing Harry”) to see what i mean by this.

but most of the time i’m working on my voice i just mess around. this might sound weird but messing around is one of the most important and efficient ways to learn or practice something. you just go and see where it leads you – i use jazz for that (what else?), whatever i can lay my hands on…

that’s pretty much it. this might not give you the magic insight you expected. and you’re right, it’s nothing special – just what i do on a regular basis to stay in shape. and let’s not forget, this is only the practice-part. the actual singing on gigs, rehearsals or recording sessions is the other half.

to conclude this series of posts i’ll do a list of albums and songs that i’m using, including the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’….

…well, not really. i’m lookin forward to the new apartment but right now i’m glad to be back from my almost-three-weeks-absence. so right now i try to catch up with all i’ve missed online, throwing the recorded guitar tracks i did in my soon-to-be-hometown on the harddrive (to be able to work with them tomorrow) and reading some funny stuff like this blogpost here….

so stay tuned, tomorrow i’ll be back again with my daily entries – starting with the next part of the singer’s workout series…

at the moment i have no internet access, so i’m sorry if the updates here aren’t very frequently. this will go on for about two more weeks and then i’ll be back home again and hopefully back to normal. i write some entries in advance and when i find someone with net access i force him to let me exploit it and post away…

anyhoo, if you want to know what i’m up to at the moment, you can follow me on twitter. thank you.

i promised you an inside look at my own workout, but as long as i’m writing on this handheld-thingy i’m not able to include links. so you’d have to go and find those records yourself – but google, amazon or itunes should usually do the trick.
first of all, there’s some things i work on all the time to stay ‘in shape’. and then there are the less important ones which i work on whenever i have the time… let’s start with the priorities:
precision (as you might have guessed) is the single most important aspect of every instrument. ask any pro or studioguy. you’d be amazed how much they love you if you are precise in your playing. and it makes things easy. so i’m working on precision every day because it has the bad habit of sneaking away if you’re not paying attention. for my workout, i’m using mostly two guys to work on precision: Joey Tempest and Don Henley. both of them did some great solo albums that i use a lot. i’m not a fan of the band Europe, so i can’t tell you anything about Joey’s work with them but his solo albums “A Place To Call Home” and “Azalea Place” are the perfect playbacks to work on precision – for me. (please note, that this is what works for me. there might be much better stuff for you of course. if you want to know more about it, drop me a line through the contact button at the top of this page and we might be able to figure something out together…) back to precision: i use Don Henley’s “Inside Job” record a lot as well, but also the Eagles’ “Hell Freezes Over” is something i like to work on.
then there’s sound. i work on that on a regular basis as well. to me it’s important that the voice is able to carry the song on its own, meaning without any instruments supporting it or together with only one acoustic guitar or piano for instance. so no hiding behind anything, the audience gets to hear it all. to work on this (i call it my built-in equalizer – more on that in a later entry), i’m using records that were made that way as well. two of my favorites, that i use all the time, are Whitesnake’s “Starkers In Tokyo” and Chris Cornell’s “Unplugged In Sweden”, both of them only one acoustic guitar and one voice – so there’s plenty of room for some singer’s ego-compensating ;-)
ugh, the batteries run out – there will be a next part to this, so stay tuned….

….or something like that… anyway, here’s some thought on reamping. i mentioned this a few times before, reamping seems to be a great thing. basically, it’s recording a guitar track (or bass or whatever) dry and then send that dry track through some effect algorithms to get the final sound. this is really good because you just need one good performance and then can do with it whatever you like. you could change the sound many times but still have the same performance. for example, if you record your guitar, apply some effects to it and mix it together with the other instruments – it could sound a lot different than it did before. maybe bass and guitar don’t fit together, maybe the guitar sound is too distorted and gets in the way of the vocals etc.
doing it the “old-fashioned-way” would mean you’re stuck with it. reamping however provides you with the opportunity to simply change the guitar sound with a few mouseclicks, so it matches the rest of the song.
another advantage would be the volume during recording. you can record the dry track through a di-box and therefore doing it all with headphones in your livingroom. recording a fully tubed laney stack turned all the way up though requires not only a room to record it in but also a few squaremiles of wasteland around your location to not p!ss your neighbors off big time…
but still there is this one point which makes it impossible to just use the reamping-method. only a tube amp sounds like a tube amp. and i hate to say this. i’ve yet to hear a software that does sound like the real thing but no matter what i try, it’s not quite it. don’t get me wrong, programs like native instrument’s ‘guitar rig’ or certainly the line 6 pod or other similar products have come a long way in simulating guitar sounds and they are still very versatile and great for many purposes and styles. but if you want to record anything rock-related, you have to go tube – simple as that.
i was amazed when i checked out native instruments ‘b 4′ organ simulation (sorry, i’m not able to provide links with this handheld-thingy i’m writing on at the moment…), because this software does sound real. and i’m quite sure there will be authentic-sounding programs for guitar as well in the future but right now there aren’t. at least not that i know of. if you do know something, step forward, help out legions of guitarists and become a hero…
so what good is reamping anyway? well, it’s the first choice if you don’t need a tubesound. and, that’s what i will use it for, it’s great to shape the overall guitar sound and add some spice to it. meaning, to record the basic sound with a tube amp and a microphone – and then add some reamped tracks to it to achieve a best-of-both-worlds-sound in the final mix. at least that’s my plan at the moment….
and this gives me a deep satisfaction, because my main guitar amp that i bought at the age of sixteen (the laney stack mentioned above), is still an important piece of gear – and it still sounds as awesome as it did 17 years ago. yeah!

alright, being away for three weeks made a mess out of my timeline. so i’m sitting here without internet access, i only have a small mobile device for emailing and some limited surfing. while renovating the new appartment – maybe rebuilding would be a more appropriate term – i’m concentrating on songwriting and arranging rather than tracking stuff. however, being here has its advantages as well. i have a room where i can be loud and i have my guitar amp here. a friend of mine’s gonna help me out with his laptop and audio-interface next week, so i will be able to record some guitar tracks – finally. that means a big step forward….
i really hope i have something postable for you in january. i guess it’s about time for me to upload something rather than just ranting around all the time :-)

hehehe, the title might be a bit….uhm…..catchy :-) but i guess that’s what life’s all about: catchy titles. anyway, i just watched an episode of south park and found it hilarious. i don’t care what others say, i like south park because of a documentary i once saw. they made the show that way because everything was becoming more high-tech, more complicated, faster, etc. so they thought some people must be tired of that. ‘let’s do the opposite and see what happens….’ really great, creative idea – love it. and by the way, most of the show is quite funny.

so this episode here is about a double of Jennifer Lopez and how it (the double) robs the real one of her record deal and even her boyfriend. i don’t want to tell too much in case you don’t know it yet, but i thought that this was a nice parody of showbiz….

so go ahead, think i’m stupid – or go watch this episode right here. yep, that’s right, you can actually watch full episodes for free on this site. so go have fun…

taco, taco – burrito, burrito !!! :-)

do you remember the last time you’ve been to a museum? what i always hated with this were the discussions about what the artist meant with his/her work. same thing with poetry. back in school, we spent hours and hours figuring out what the writer’s intention was – or to be precise: the intention our teacher wanted him/her to have back then…

another teacher of mine, a rather stupid man and an unbelievably bad teacher, who should never have been allowed to influence children in the first place, made one (!) good point (in all the years we had to deal with him): “how can they claim to know what the poet/painter had in mind while creating this? maybe he was just too drunk to know what he was doing or maybe he just did something he got paid for without even thinking about it…”

no doubt, there are works of art that scream for some interpretation. and of course there are those with which the creator’s intentions are a priority – or maybe they just don’t make sense without the background knowledge of the artist’s situation, surroundings, feelings etc. but then again – back to school – we analyzed stuff that surely had no intention whatsoever. ‘it’s spring, i see a butterfly and some flowers over there, looks neat…’ that kind of thing.

so what i’m talking about here is my reluctance to overanalyzing, i guess. when i see a picture, i decide if i like it. simple as that. i have never ever liked a picture more after i was told what the artist had in mind. there were some ahuh-effects with music though. i heard something, didn’t like it, then was told /figured out/read what it’s about and decided that it wasn’t that bad. but that’s more like having respect for it rather than liking it…

don’t expect some kind of conclusion or punchline here, just random thoughts… it seems there are two three kinds of art: the one that should be thought about, analyzed, figured out because it makes it whole and without the idea behind it, you’d just miss the point (political comedy comes to mind for instance) aka one important piece of the puzzle, so what you receive would be only part of the creation. second, the creations with absolutely no background, nothing to analyze – scribbling out of the head of some drunk. which might, come to think of it, not be art at all in the first place (usually the stuff that pays the most…). and third, something that just looks, feels, sounds great even if there is no deeper meaning (at least not to our knowledge). but aren’t the third and the second not the same? nope, because of what i didn’t take into account – read on:

in all this, i forgot one very important part. the second half of every artwork: the recipient, beholder, listener etc. if it means something to him/her, who’s to say that it is not art? if it means something different to him/her than the original idea behind it, who’s to say that he/she got it all wrong? maybe that’s what makes it art, the fact that it means something to someone, no matter what or why….

i think i’m done with this. told you – just random thoughts…..

right now i’m away for a little over two weeks, so bear with me if the updating here gets a bit messed up. if everything goes as planned, you won’t even notice. lots of work ahead, i have to renovate the new appartment – the big move is approaching…..and the new studio as well, yay! there’ll be more teaching too next year – love it. it’s about time for something new i guess, for this place here is quite a wasteland when it comes to music. so i’m closing this entry with a great quote from a Don Henley song:

…sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge…

take care