audiot

yeah, this gets kinda boring….

but anyway, because this happens to be my website, i should inform you about any news regarding my stuff – just for completeishnessissimo. i uploaded the album “corner” to bandizmo, so here is the link.

it seems to be a rather new site, where you don’t search by artist but by song or genre. it’s quite easy to use and uploads are really fast. you’ll get a slideshow automatically, even if you don’t upload any pictures – then they fill in pics that should match your genre as well as some ad-pics for themselves. it’s not as cool looking as reverbnation or soundcloud for instance, but it’s simple and seems to work fine. the only problem is: what do you do if you have no idea what genre your music belongs to – like me…

…or decisions if you like. until maybe a year ago, i never really thought about those. when i listened to something i liked, it was always about the ‘how’ – how did the artist do this or that, how did he/she make it sound the way it did. i never really thought about the ‘why’.

now when i started to work on “corner”, i already knew about the importance of choices but never made them myself with this in mind. i usually did what i thought sounded cool and was done with it. i should add though tht there never were that many choices before. what i did in those years was mostly the usual band lineup, sometimes an unplugged duo or trio but switching to doing almost everything with software changed it all. suddenly i had choices, more than i could deal with. instead of just being able to choose exactly where to place the four drummics (because there were only four mics and only one drumset and only one room etc…), now it’s more like which of the dozens of drumkits should i use or should i combine two of them…or more? should i use closed mics? or ambient mics? or both? and how should i mix them? which shape do i want the room to have and how large and so on…. one can easily get lost in the sheer amount of possibilities – very easily.

well, you could just browse, right? you want some drums, so you just go through the drumsound-archive and pick the one you like best. sounds easy enough – and it is……if you’re able and willing to spend the next two weeks 24/7 browsing. and that’s just the drums! and even if you’d go through with this, chances are, it sounds like crap once the other instruments are in place. of course, no poblem, just pick another drumset – AAARRRGH !!!

so with this unbelievable amount of choices comes a certain responsibility. you should know what you’re doing aka where you want to go with it and that’s not as easy as it sounds. at least for me because i mostly do not know what i’m doing….mostly. don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to not know where the journey will lead you, this is the perfect way to be creative BUT the challenge is being able to react to whatever your creativity tells you – and fast. if your little mr hyde wants to hear some wahwah sound at exactly this point, you have to know how to get it – before too much thinking throws you out of the zone (or the flow). and if there’s no wahwah available, how to fake it (or build one yourself if you’re using Reason – sorry ’bout that but i’m kind of a fan…). i guess this is where the term artist comes into play. how do you want it to sound? and why do you want it to sound like that? what kind of reaction do you want to create? these are the kind of questions that begin to matter and not only because answering them will narrow the possibilities down to a manageable amount…

in the end it’s more than just picking a few sounds and throwing them together somehow because it will sound good automatically. yeah, that’s a bummer – i thought it would work that way too :-( but on the other hand: that’s what separates the men from the boys.

well, i wanted to spare you the boring technical stuff, but some of you asked about it – so there you go. it won’t be a long list :-)

what i used to create the album “corner”:

• one of those rather new aluminium Macbooks
• an E-MU Tracker Pre usb 2.0 audio interface
• Cubase LE 4
• Reason 4
• Reason Drumkits 2.0 Refill
• Peff‘s Vintage RDK Combis v1.1 Refill
• a T-Bone SCT800 large diaphragm tube mic
• a CME M-Key usb keyboard
• some cables
• some old headphones & the pa in our rehearsal room for monitoring (yeah, i know…)
• lots and lots of buttercookies, fruitjuice, gummibears
• a really cool looking baseball cap

that’s it.

although the last two points were the top priorities in this – their direct influence on the project can hardly be measured or described. i’ll go with the word: vibes!

the audio interface, the microphone, Cubase and the cables were used to record the vocals only. and the rest did the rest. so apart from tracking the vocals, everything was done with Reason 4 exclusively. in my opinion one hell of a programm and without any doubt one of the best inventions since frozen pizza! here’s to the folks at Propellerhead.

i will upgrade some of my gear in the near future – there will be some nearfield monitors and better midi controllers to streamline the workflow. but for this head-over-heels-project the above mentioned gearlist was absolutely sufficient. and even if there will be some changes, the list won’t get much longer. it’s a lot more fun to make do with what you have (and especially learn to really use the things already there) – MacGyver rocks!!!

yay, here are a few links to where you can find the new album online. just for the heck of it:

• corner on bandcamp
• corner on reverbnation
• corner on soundcloud

i just uploaded the album to the rpm jukebox as well, but they haven’t lanched it yet – the link will follow.

you can listen to the full album in 128 bit mp3 quality at bandcamp and reverbnation. you can listen to five of the eight songs in original cd quality at soundcloud. you can download the full album in 128 bit mp3 quality at bandcamp for free or you can download it in a variety of better qualities for whatever YOU want to pay (min. 90 cents per song or $5 for the whole album – hey, even i need to pay for hookers and booze!) also at bandcamp.

i disabled the cd-quality-download at soundcloud after it was available for over a week, because i think the people who read this blog and are interested in what i do should have the advantage of getting those files for free. if you haven’t downloaded them yet but would like to, drop me a line. you’ll get the chance to download the 3 other songs and complete the album in cd quality for free as soon as soundcloud lets me upload them, might take a few weeks though…

tomorrow i’ll continue unveiling the mysteries surrounding this creation, so stay tuned…

maybe this is the right time to come out of the closet: no instruments were harmed during the creation of this album! oh, except my voice of course :-) but seriously, apart from the vocals, there was not a single real instrument involved. everything you can hear is based on samples. BOOO!

well, it’s not that simple. everyhing was played alright, but on a midi-controller. so even if it consists of samples, it still was actually played by a human being and recorded – including flaws. i didn’t select a pencil tool to just draw event-lines all over the place and then ‘randomize’ them with kind of a human-factor-function (which is no problem with today’s software).

now, why does this make a difference? why draw the line there? lots of musicians think it’s completely off limits to use samples, others believe there are no limits at all and let the software do all the work – if no one knows about it, who cares? again, why does it make a difference? until recently i was one of those guys who thought of samples as cheating, only what was played and recorded the old fashioned way counted. but two things changed this opinion of mine. first, it’s virtually impossible for the independent ‘guerrilla’ musician to get a professional sound out of a – let’s say – drumkit. and by professional i mean Colaiuta-like. because you do not only need a decent drumset, professional mics and a high-end signal chain, you also need a professional room to record it in – not to mention all the know how to deal with funny little things like Pandora’s-phase-orgy-box. it’s not coincidence that sound-engineer is a full-time job, as is drummer. so doing it all alone requires some dirty tricks. period. and i’m not even talking about the ability to play (and proper record) all instruments that are involved – in this case: drums, saxophones, trumpets, french horns, trombones and other plumbing devices, harmonicas, flutes, an orchestral string section, percussions of all kinds, guitars, basses, all sorts of mallet-instruments, synthesizers, organs, accordeons and other things i can’t remember right now. and, by the way, one would need to have all those instruments…….and quite a storage facility as well.

and second, it’s still one hell of a challenge to make those samples sound real. even with the best drumsamples available, the knowledge of how to actually play the drums is as important as it is for the real instrument. you have to know about accents, about which hand/foot is playing what and when and so forth. otherwise it will sound artificial and boring – as it does in countless recordings. yes, software has come a long way towards sounding real, but a program is only a tool. if you don’t know how to use it, you’re gonna hurt yourself – and others.

so no matter how much cheating is involved, there’s still a big difference between an artist and a pencil-tool-pusher. and i guess it will stay that way…

alright, now you can listen to the full album in the correct order over at reverbnation. i’ve uploaded all songs as mp3s, quality should still be ok. it’s also good for people with slower connections.
go and check it out right here.

i’m not sure if it was too much Sin City or too much Tom Waits but the first idea i had for a song was messy, bloody and disgusting. suddenly the title popped up in my head: ‘A Bucket Full Of Meat’ which turned out to become the sixth song of the album. inspired by an episode of 2 Stupid Dogs and one of Coupling i now had a title. yay, a title! i was almost done!

but, as i mentioned, the approach was quite stupid. isn’t that cute? but it’s wrong! (small joke for the insiders, hehehe). Because i just did the usual. instead of just doing it, i started planning – again. don’t get me wrong, there came some cool ideas with the foolishly-trying-to-work-out-all-the-details-phase. one of them was quite tough to get rid off. it was about making a concept album about the butcher who kills people and sells their meat to the public (not really inventive, i know that). and there are actually 5 songs on the album that were related to that idea. first of all, ‘A Bucket Full Of Meat’ of course, then ‘Catching Up’ which is about the butcher on the hunt, killing a guy but missing his girlfriend which led to ‘The Chase’. She runs into a building, enter the song ‘In The Elevator’. But in the end he gets her as well – ‘Rest’. i still think this was a pretty cool idea, but i got caught up in way too many details about making up a decent storyline and appropriate music that i finally abandoned the idea.

so i started working on ‘A Bucket Full Of Meat’ and some of the other tunes on the side as idea-collectors. more than a week later i still hadn’t finished a single song! i was way too busy doing automations and correcting subtle details etc. to get something done. that’s when even i understood that this way i could never finish in time. in a moment like that, my usual thought would have been ‘so what, it’ll take a little longer then.’ case closed. but this time, and i owe the rpm-folks a huge thank you for that, there was no way of just not doing it. i had signed up for the challenge and i wrote about it in lots of emails, on this site here, in forums and on twitter. making this public simply was like shutting the door behind me, the only way out was to go through with it. and only seconds later i hated myself for doing so :-) but now it was done.

so i was in a really uncomfortable position – not only was i forced to create something, i was forced to do it fast and with flaws. UGH! it’s always the fight inside of oneself, right? looking back it was a very smart move to blackmail myself like that because it kind of broke a blockade. now i wasn’t only able to finish this, i also feel the strong urge to make another album, starting in march – as soon as i dealt with some website issues. but i say it again: i will start a new album in march and finish it in april.guaranteed! there! i did it again! ………………. DAMMIT !!!

now with no possible excuses for failing and with no more roadblocks ahead, i could finally get to work…

when i heard about the rpm challenge 09 it was only 4 days away but i thought ‘ah, just for the heck of it…’ blue-eyed one might say, naive maybe, but it turned out really cool in the end.

i have recorded lots of stuff over the years but this was completely different – and new for i’m not really a hotshot when it comes to recording. i like to plan things, figure it all out before pushing the red button, know exactly where this will go……..until now. the big challenge wasn’t to record an album in 28 days, it was to get rid of all the worries and doubts and the whole detail-panic. it was to allow embrace the flaw, welcome it as an essential part of the whole – which it certainly is, as i know now.

i’ve always been good at jumping over my own shadow but this was a tough one because there’s always the ‘what if’. what if it just sucks, what if i’m not one of those creative people who can make something up on the spot which does, well, not suck? what if i just don’t have it in me? ok, this was no question of life and death because i could always return to planning things. but still it kind of nagged…

so, the solution seemed easy: i’d do what i always did – planning, only faster :-) it’s only 35 minutes of material in 4 weeks! come on, you can do that! that’s less than 9 minutes a week, about 1:20 a day – ridiculous! bring it on! then it hit me, i misunderstood the rpm-guide and thought the cd had to arrive there before march, so i’d have one week less – ah! week, schmeek – still no problem! but what about mixing? mastering? artwork? and most of all: what about writing the whole stuff? and what about the busy days, the ones that won’t leave me any time to work on it at all? EEEEEEEEEEK !!!

after a decent panic-attack i still decided i could do this the old-fashioned way. the hell i could!

to be continued…

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