audiotthoughts on music

every now and then i feel this need to have a look at the basics of playing an instrument – the voice is an instrument as well of course. and in my case this works best when i do something i haven’t done in a while or even something i can’t really do at all, for then i have to focus on what it’s really about. this time i chose the bass guitar. it stood there in the corner for about three months but now i’m looking forward to rehearsals with a band searching for a bass player – so i found it was time again to play some bass. now i’m not a bass wizard – or something near it – but the funny thing is, when i play/record bass guitar it sounds good. over the years i picked up some playing technique and i know the notes on the fingerboard through my guitarplaying – but this shouldn’t be enough to play a good bass guitar, now should it?

thinking about this, my guess would be that i focus on the very basics (because i can’t do anything else anyway) and this makes it sound decent. too easy? think about it, what’s the most common mistake bass players make? not just them of course but let’s stick with this example for now… right, overplaying! and that usually causes them to sound anything BUT tight. now, i understand that playing straight eight notes for 87 measures with no more than four different notes seems boring but nothing ruins a tune like a bassist that dreams about being a not-so-good-but-at-least-getting-through-the-song-somehow-guitarist. i find it quite intriguing that even most bassplayers think the bass is the guitar for beginners or wannabes. it’s not surprising that others think that way because, hey, it looks almost the same. and it usually has less strings so it must be easier than guitar! it still is not common knowledge that a bass is a completely different instrument and needs to be treated as such. and believe it or not – it’s kind of more important than the guitar. do you know why Led Zeppelin worked? it wasn’t Page or Plant. without the foundation Bonham and Jones laid down the band would have gone nowhere. same with AC/DC. certainly, everybody thinks Angus does it all but again, without the foundation he’d have no chance.

well, it’s not really that simple, every band member is equally important – sure. i just wanted to make a point here. now where am i going with this? honestly, i have no idea :-) i just picked up the bass guitar and found that i did what i think every bass player should do on a regular basis. and that is playing the bass. not some melody-crap, tapping-licks or mimicking everything the guitar does. just playing the bass. if that’s out of the question for you because you want to be the star or sticking to the bassline is just way too boring – then, and i’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, you picked the wrong instrument…

hehehe, once again an addition to the mario-brothers-theme-played-in-weird-ways-series. i wonder how much time they spent on setting up those bottles…

yay, here it is! the legendary meatbucket-song! listen to it here.

this was not only the first song i did for the album and the one that took most of the time but also the song that i had the most fun with – and the worst croakiness… well, it is of course inspired by Tom Waits but you already heard that, right? it honors me that some people said my song would sound like one of his – some even said it would sound worse…and that’s an even bigger honor. thank you!

because this was the first tune for this album i made a mistake with it. the album was supposed to be done in 28 days and i spent about a week on this one song before i noticed, that i never could finish in time if i went on this way. the song is not at all complicated and even the single parts were tracked in no time but i ‘wasted’ lots and lots of time with creating the right instruments and with the automation of the volume- and panorama-levels. take the handclaps for instance: there’s a lot of work in them. i took a handclap sample that sounded real to me, but it was only about two or three pairs of hands clapping – not enough for what i had in mind. just doubling the same sample a few times didn’t sound real anymore, so i created a whole new sample out of dozens of the original one but with as many variations in pitch and pan-position as possible. this is not as easy as it sounds because some pitches just didn’t work – i couldn’t find a logical pattern in this so it was mostly trial-and-error-strategy and took a long time because i really cared about each one of the sample-parts. and the coolest thing was to put a variation to the time the different claps occur. if you listen closely you can hear that all the claps sound more or less unique. sometimes all of them are simultaneously sometimes there are a few too early or too late ones, exactly as it would be in reality – when some morons are not able to stay in time but clap anyway. i love those claps but wonder if i spent too much time on them. i guess nobody notices this detail anyway – it’s just handclaps for god’s sake! hopefully they at least create the vibes i wanted them to. see? i even spend way too much time writing about them!

the next thing i think turned out really interesting, although you probably haven’t noticed as well, is the bassdrum which is the first sound of the song and the last one as well. what happens with this one is that it gets louder, stronger and more intense throughout the whole 8 minutes of the song. but you can only really hear it if you compare the beginning and the end of the tune. in between it just draws no attention to itself. again, hopefully this also creates great vibes.

then there’s a bunch of other instruments that play the same licks over and over again. the bass, that kind of holds it all together, a kalimba-sound, a harp. later there’s some celli and some tremolo-strings to create a little tension when the wife comes down the stairs… i automated the volume levels of all of them so they rise from nothing to a certain degree and then fall down again but all of them in different ways, so it doesn’t sound like some computer did this. sometimes the bass is loudest, sometimes the kalimba etc. – pretty random. and i didn’t play the lick for each instrument just once and then copy-and-pasted it again and again, i played them all for about 5 minutes because that was the duration of the song in the first place. it got longer with the lyrics and the whole automation stuff, so i took a variety of licks (i picked each one of them – not just a sequence!) and pasted them to have the increased length covered. i learned that those details are very important to make it sound real…

that’s about it. oops, how could i forget the vocals :-) hmmm, there’s not much to tell about them. i just tried to sound dirty and went a little over the top with it. dig the breathing and slurping noises…

by the way, the reason why my voice sounds broken and strange on “taking the blame” is that i recorded it directly after the meatbucket. there was just no way to really sing after what i did to my voice before. note to myself: change the order of songs appropriately in the future…

woohoo! i love this event – and not just because it is the biggest of its kind, worldwide. but also because i’m going there every year for about one and a half decade, maybe even more – and in the process met a lot of great people and found some friends as well. so it’s not just about getting to look at new products, it’s more like one huge hang while listening to some of the world’s finest musicians on the side. paying a visit is strongly recommended, if it is possible for you at all – go there!

this year it takes place from the 1st til the 4th of april, each day from 09:00 to 18:00 in frankfurt, germany. the first 3 days are for professionals only, you have to prove that you’re related to the music business somehow. on saturday it’s open to the public…..and no fun at all! it’s usually so damn crowded that you don’t have a chance to really talk to someone or have a close look at whatever you might be interested in. and, the guys at the booths just want to go home – they’re completely worn out on this last day – so almost no chance of making cool new contacts. boo. on the other hand, saturday has the best live acts to check out – but, again, way too crowded to get a good look (or listen).

if you’re (like me) interested in nothing specific, but more like everything, you need at least two days. i even managed once to be there all 4 days from sunrise to sunset and still not seeing it all :-) so i recommend figuring out what to see instead of just stumbling around and missing the gems. and, depending on how you get there and where you stay, it can be a pretty expensive trip…

anyway, i’ll be there for two days again, but this year taking lots of pictures and messing around even worse, so i’ll have something to write about :-) some meetings with cool people have already been arranged and hopefully there’ll be lots of cool new stuff to check out. by the way, if you’re planning to go there and want to grab a beer or something, you know what to do.

now here’s the link to the official website, where you can get all the details, see who plays where and when or order tickets. check it out right here.

…oh, and bring your earplugs.

finally, the bandpages on the rpm-challenge site are up and running. the jukebox is not fully loaded and launched yet, but you can go to my page there and listen to the album. now why should you do that? simply because until now you could only listen to it on 5 different websites, which is pretty lame, right? BUT NOW THERE’S SIX!!!

i command you to check this out!

ok, time for the next episode. the seventh song of the album, which i called “the lover”. this is a really simple song, just two guitars and vocals. one guitar playing the bassnotes and the other one the chords – only three by the way. again, no real instruments, i used guitar samples with a tremolo effect. if i was to do this again, i’d record a real guitar – although it sounds quite real to me… anyway, i wanted to do everything except the vocals with the laptop only as kind of an experiment, so i used samples for everything.

the interesting part were the vocals. i should have mixed it a little different, i realized afterwards, because the words are hard to understand. this is the result of something i never did before, so it was new to me and i improvised. the reason for this was i wanted it to sound as close and soft as possible which brought up a variety of problems. first of all, if it should sound close, you need to turn the microphone up – way up. just having a normal setting and go further away from it might work live but for recording this ain’t good enough. why? because the words are not the only noise you make. there’s breathing for instance, even the air that comes out with the words has a certain sound and then there’s the little sounds that appear when you open or close your mouth. now, the recording can only sound really intimate when those sounds are there. if someone talks softly into your ear, those sounds are there as well – so to keep it real, you need them. cranking up the mic, though, can really freak you out because a large diaphragm tube condenser mic is quite a monster – those things pick up everything! when you’re recording that way you need silence, perfect silence. you might even want to think about the clothes you’re wearing, that’s why i recorded nekkid – and shaved :-) just kiding……or am i……

but turning up the mic wasn’t enough for me, i wanted more. the only possible way was to get even closer to the mic. next problem: usually there’s a pop-killer (i think that’s the right word….) between the mic and your mouth, a round thingy to prevent pop noises that occur when too much air hits the mic hard. light a match and sing a ‘p’-word (not phuck…) into the flame to know what i mean. those airstrikes cause little sound-explosions and can ruin a track in no time. getting closer to the mic meant to get rid of the pop-killer. i virtually touched the mic with my lips which makes it almost impossible to get something useful out of it (not talking about live here!) and the fact that the mic was cranked up made it even impossiblyer…..uhm….more impossible……or…less possible…..or…..uhm……you get the idea.

all that forced me to sing not only more cairful but also softer than i ever did before. there’s a thin line between really soft singing and whispering and to make it sound somehow even is a real challenge. singing out loud is a lot easier than doing it really, really soft. by the way, it’s the same with drums. tell your drummer to play a groove as soft as a whisper (or try it yourself) – it’s freaking hard to groove at such a low volume, when the sticks can only be an inch away from the drum…

in the end i’m not sure if it was worth the trouble, because i still don’t know if it’s even possible to get a decent recording with this. although i was very careful, it still doesn’t sound quite as even as i wanted it too. and it was a lot harder to deal with it in the mix than it is with ‘normal’ vocals. so it sounds like either a bad singer or a bad recording – i guess there is such a thing as ‘too real’. it seems there is kind of a threshold and from that point on ‘more real’ results in ‘less good’… i’m gonna spend some time in the future to figure that one out…

anyway i really love that song for its intimacy, even if it shows what could have been better.

p.s. i should mention that the feeling i wanted to create with this was inspired by Nancy Sinatra‘s “Bang Bang” and the title tune from Twin Peaks.

yep, i know i still owe you descriptions of 7 more songs from the album “corner”, but right now i’m throwing together kind of a demo for the boss of a music school who offered me a job as a jazz-vocal-teacher. i can’t post the tunes because they weren’t written and recorded by me (except the vocals of course). but it still was an interesting experience – the most interesting thing about it was the speed…

after quite a while of studio-abstinence i felt like a hired gun again. go there – do your job – get out. i always loved this kind of work, even if you have no real control over what’s happening or what’s being done with your tracks afterwards. what i like about it is the efficiency, the professionalism – dig it! so i thought of this as a studio gig and approached it that way. i went to my recording room, set up the laptop, the audio interface and a tube-mic – did some gain-staging (i wanted to link this to some nice article that explains gain-staging in an understandable way but couldn’t find one! maybe you’ll have more luck, i’m simply not able to explain technical stuff with my crappy english. in a nutshell, it’s about setting the gain right in every part of your signal chain, so you have a loud and clear signal without noise or clipping in the end…) and had a go!

i then recorded vocals for 12 songs in about 3.5 hours – two takes for each track and one take of backing vocals for one song. that makes 26 takes total (incl. the first one i did as a test) + setting up the gear in less than 4 hours. i don’t know about your experiences but i’d say this is pretty fast – and a whole lotta fun it was. it just feels great to be productive like that, to spend 4 hours and then go home with an usb-stick full of decent material. although i haven’t done such vocal recording sessions in a while, and therefore felt a bit rusty, it turned out very well. i picked 6 of the 12 tunes to be on the demo, but they’re all good enough – it was more about having different things to offer.

so i dare you to go out and speedcord (just made this term up :-) ) something, anything, just like that. instead of sitting around and complaining about that one missing piece of equipment or about whatever it is you’re complaining about. once i was in a band with a guitarplayer who was not able to record anything in over six months! not a single note. we wanted to make an album, did some test-tracks and when it came to the real thing, he took the DAW home to do this (so noone else could do anything…) and that was about it. six months later i dared to ask how it’s going, only to hear that not one single note has been recorded by him – he was still trying to find the right sound! maybe he still is – come to think of it, i’m pretty sure about that. so the only thing that happened quickly with this band was me packing my stuff… nothing worse than time-thieves and the world is full of them!

go speedcord!

found this through a friend in a forum. it’s drummer Marco Minnemann playing to samples of spoken phrases. he’s trying to catch the rhythm of the phrase and play it on the drumkit. i knew this only as a guitar exercise, but i guess it works with every instrument and i bet it takes you to another level of playing. so check it out…

yeah, that’s right. i’m finally starting to give detailed descriptions of evey single song you can find on “corner” (listen + download it right here). i’m cheating a little, though – because i’m gonna be late for a fotoshoot (not as hip as it sounds…) and spent way too much time on pimping the new site-design. so i’m starting with the last song of the album, which is just kind of an outro – only one minute long. this is my chance to keep my word AND be off the hook early enough to keep my appointment, both at the same time. it’s unbelievable how well coordinated i am once again :-)

there’s not that much to say about “rest”, but it is part of the album – so here we go. this melody came to me when i first started working on the album. if i remember correctly it was the second or third idea i had at all. it’s nothing special i suppose but for some reason this melody got to me somehow. being a trekkie, i immediately thought about the episode where Picard lives an imaginary life under the influence of some alien probe and afterwards he has this flute and the melody he remembers. by the way, i really dig that melody…

although the two melodies have nothing really in common, i wondered how it might sound when played with a flute. i was blown away by its simple beauty and wanted to make a whole song out of it. you know, the really hard stuff with string sections coming in and so forth. but it didn’t work out because with everything i tried to ‘epand’ this melody, so the listener would get more out of it, i just failed miserably. i then thought about playing it with a violin and this too sounded very nice, especially because a violin could play it really soft at the beginning but give it a lot more power later. i tried to combine flute and violin and it sucked. i tried to play them one after another and it sucked. i tried to play the violin and in the second round provide kind of a carpet with a cello…..and it sucked. all that got me close to say ‘away with it, i’m doing something else!’

now i’m glad i kept it. with all this experimenting i lost track of what was important (you might find this sentence more often in future entries…), the music. it doesn’t matter if it’s a 43 minute tune involving all instruments one can possibly imagine or if it is a 30-second melody played by one flute. if it’s good, it’s good – easy as that. it’s always about what the song/the moment needs. and if it needs such simplicity – so be it.

hehehe, by the way, i just found a sweet pic of Picard and Riker – embedding…..done!

right now i’m experimenting with a few new page designs, so don’t panic – it’s supposed to look that way……more or less :-)

finding, down- and uploading a theme is quite easy but the customizing is a rather long and hard task for a netnoob like myself, so stay calm and bear with me – i’ll figure it out…really, i will…… i have to say, though, that it would be better if the whole customizing could be done before activating the design. it might be interesting to see the progress of something like that but if you try to switch from a very calm theme to something with more pictures etc. it doesn’t look really professional at first, because there’s all those empty spaces and black holes all over the place…

by the way, i’m thinking about signing up on sellaband. not that i expect to reach the goal – i just think this is one site an artist/band should be on. if you haven’t heard about it, check it out – it’s an interesting idea…

p.s. just switched back to the old design for now. the uncustomized new ones just looked too stupid – let’s see if i can change that. hang in there…