audiotthoughts on music

yeah, finally a real entry again :-)

before i’m starting with this, remember that i’m not a professional sound engineer, technician, producing great or anything related. so the following ain’t written in stone, it’s just what i found out during my creative journey so far. your experience may differ, maybe some of this is plain wrong. so just think of it as ideas or theories and we’ll be fine.

i would like to divide this “cleaning up”-topic into 4 parts. and this entry is, oddly enough, about part 1 :-)

this first one is kind of a no-brainer, at least it should be – so i’ll make it brief. because it really is about cleaning up. cleaning up your studio aka workspace that is. simple as that. you might think ‘what the hell is he talking about?’ but there’s a reason why there’s a huge industry dedicated only to the task of organizing workspaces. there’s a reason for pocket-calendars and filofaxes, flipcharts and magnetic boards, post-it-thingies and different colored markers, lots and lots of software applications helping to keep track of it all.

well, i’m not that much into all those little helpers – i prefer to rely on my brain, even if this sometimes is quite a challenge depending on the number of things to remember and the current state of mind i’m in, but let’s not go there… did you ever see someone freak out in wild panic because he/she lost his ___________________ (fill in name of little helper)?

anyway, this here is just about keeping your studio clean and tidy. and don’t you ever underestimate the importance of this! i’m not writing this for those guys who think they need their creative chaos with pizza-slices (already green and shiny on top) lying around, piles of all sorts of cables on the floor – some working, some not – and so forth. those people might as well make their music on a dump. it doesn’t have to look pretty, it needs to be well-organized and working for you. so take the time to once and for all sort out the cables that don’t work etc. – get a bunch of boxes, draws, whatever to put spareparts, screws, tools, plugs, adapters and so forth in. find a way to organize cables, hang them on the wall for instance. i guess you can see what i’m getting at. you should also wire up the pieces of equipment you use regularly and keep it that way.

for example, i have two modeling devices to record guitar with. so they’re both connected to an audio-interface with the usb/firewire-cable already standing by as well as the guitar cable. and they’re both connected to a midi-interface for faster and easier sound-programming through the computer and this doesn’t change. when i want to track guitar or bass, all i have to do is plug in the instrument and the laptop and that’s it. as soon as the new studio is finished (which might be a while…), the audio interface will be wired at all times to the desktop mac as well. and to continue the guitar-example, the picks, slides, string cleaner, spare strings are at arm’s length as well as the guitar stand with the instrument i use the most. so it’s all right there where i need it, when i need it. including the sounds. i once took the time to program a whole bunch of guitar and bass sounds that i now use almost exclusively. they’re all versatile and can be shaped after the tracking with dynamic effects etc. there’s also a di-box standing by in case i want to do some tracks that can be reamped later. this all might sound a bit complicated, but that’s only my crappy english. in fact, i set this up once and now i’m always ready to record guitar and bass whenever i freaking want to. so you see, this goes hand in hand with the workflow ideas i wrote about in this earlier entry. but it’s not the same. this one here really is about a clean and tidy workspace. so take the vacuum cleaner every once in a while ;-) and get some dustcovers for your equipment. it’s a lot more fun to work on gear that’s clean and looks as if it’s brandnew.

another aspect of this is the way you organize your stuff inside your computer. i strongly recommend you create a template that you can use for any song or projet you’re working on. this takes a few minutes once and will save you hours later. just create a folder that you can name after the song later. inside of it, create other folders for audio samples, instrument tracks, effect patches, backup songfiles….. whatever you need and always save the single files in the right place. you might want to invent your own system of naming files, so you can see at once if a file is really used or just standing by as a donor of pieces if necessary. and of course, have a working system to backup your stuff up and running that you use at all times. after each and every session i save everything at least three times to different locations, so each location has the same status – always.

this part of the work is kind of boring and not as much fun as the actual writing or playing of course. but having a working system that keeps everything cleaned up, organized and perfectly accessible at any time makes this as efficient as it gets and gives you more time for the music.

to be continued…

wow, just found this really cool old piece from ‘73 – when people on stage still played music. check it out, it’s awesome!

hopefully i’ll find the time to get back to regular posting again, it’s just not happening at the moment, for i’m being pulled in 11 different directions all at once. sheesh.

but for now, behold: focus – hocus pocus

by the way, they’re still around! check out their youtube-channel right here, quite a bunch of newer videos there.

i had one of those when i was a child and loved it dearly until i smashed it into 1000 pieces… and then another one, a little larger, where one could fill water in – that made for a pretty cool instrument. i’m not sure if those water-ocarinas even are called like that. maybe i’ll try to find me one of those again because being so completely ocarinaless suddenly kind of disturbs me…
so check out this guy instead. and of course it’s one more addition to the mario-theme-played-by-weird-instruments-series. enjoy

sheesh, it’s been 5 days already since my last post. time’s really running away from me right now. i buried myself so deep in a cool new idea that those days just vanished without me even noticing. so all i can say today is: brace yourself for what i’m coming up with in the near future. i’m working on two songs with this new idea right now but i won’t spoil the surprise. all i can say is, it’ll bring back some cool times and those two songs won’t be on any of the two new albums i’m working on as well. it would be much easier if creativity would just come up with stuff i could use for whatever task i’m working on already instead of throwing new things at me all the time that force me to start something new – pretty confusing.

anyway, this is just to tell you, i’m still here and still working on soundtracks for love, baby…

working on “traitor”, my 2nd album (listen to the 1st one “corner” in the blue player to your right) provoked some thoughts about the future, actually the present as well, of the album as such.

looking at websites or profile pages of independent artists creates the feeling that’s it’s just about single songs instead of albums. songs are uploaded as soon as they’re finished and more often than not, they don’t even seem to be related to some kind of album anymore. now, is this so?

it would make sense, because people listen to music on their mp3-players, create their own playlists and pick single tunes from download-sites. so is this the switch from rug to patchwork-quilt? and if yes, would it be wise for an artist to jump on that train? there’s another point to this, it would be more web2.0-ish if an artist would release each song as soon as it’s done because that would mean more frequent updates to his/her page or profile. one more advantage might be that each song would be noticed and listened to equally (at least at first). with the release of a whole album there’s always songs that draw more attention than others.

but on the other hand, i do like the concept of albums. to me it’s a lot less confusing, especially if someone covers a wide variety of styles with his/her music. so the albums would be like folders on your desktop that keep the songs together that belong together and give you a better view at what the artist did so far, because you see the different phases of his/her work. and the artist has the possibility to group songs together, so the album is more than just the sum of its tunes.

that leads to another thought. is this just triggered by the market? do artists simply react to the new era of consuming music? or do they welcome this and like the idea of thinking in smaller units? as for me, i’m not sure. right now, i’m in the middle of creating what i thought of as my 2nd album. but as a matter of fact, it’s more like 2. one of them very much related to the first one, stylewise. and the other one a straight hardrock record (about 8 songs each at the moment). now, there’s a decision to be made – should i do 2 albums, write more material for both and release 2 full records when they’re done? or should i just mix it together and do one album with those 16 tunes, even if they don’t really fit together? or, should i just go ahead and release every single song once it’s finished and don’t care about albums at all? or do the latter and then group the songs together once all of them are out? but who would be interested in an album if all the songs were already released? or, release some of the songs, so people already know half of the records, but have to wait for the records themselves to hear the other half?

i guess the main question here is: does the rug really tie the room together?

at this point, i have no idea. and instead of helping me to get closer to a decision, writing this confused me even more. damn!

hi there.

just a quick note that this site might not be available some time during the day. my provider does some database-updating-thingy, so i apologize for any inconveniences that might arise. of course, i should have posted this yesterday, because if you can’t open the site, you won’t be able to read this note. but at least the feedpeople should get it………and since they read the content without actually coming here, this is redundancy at its best, i now realize – ok, moving on…

there is also still the issue of the site being way too slow. i haven’t found out why – yet, but i found myself a cool and gifted netguy who’s willing to help me with this, so there’s a new light at the end of the tunnel. let’s hope it’s no upcoming train…

that is something i do all the time, since i wrote my first song – about 18 years ago that is. accidentally i should add.

for some reason, i always write stuff i cannot play or sing – and it sucks. breathing for instance is usually no big deal once you got the basics down. there’s of course – and always will be – songparts that are hard to do, but those are just a few. oddly enough, i managed to write songs, lots of them, that i myself could not breathe at all. how stupid is that?

and although i’m through with this “airless phase”, i still do this with other parts – like drum- or guitarpieces i simply can not play. now, today that shouldn’t be a problem, right? we have computers and such to do this for us. but this is just not how it works, at least for me. even though i do almost everything with the laptop, i still take pride in my music (stop mocking me!) and the things you hear are really played and recorded, not drawn in with some pencil tool. and this is important to give it authenticity, which is one of the most vital things in music – or any art, for that matter. so right now, while working on the second album, i spend a whole lot of time practicing – just to be able to actually play those things i’m making up for myself. it usually is about precision. when i come up with a drumpart, it’s something i am basically able to play – if you can think it, you can play it – so that’s not the problem. same with guitar or bass. the hard part is to play it clean and precisely, to make every hit or stroke count and equally important. to have no fingernoises or rimclicks and so forth. this is the big challenge for me, so it’s writing the stuff and then tracking a really bad version of it, so i can figure it out in detail. and once i know exactly what to play, i practice like crazy to simply not suck too bad on the real track.

and that’s my point. there’s this saying here (no idea if there’s something similar in english…): one grows with his challenges. or as i probably mentioned many times before: practice something you can NOT do, instead of playing something you already own over and over again. so maybe i should feel lucky to have such a freakingly perverted subconscious that throws all those rocks at me during songwriting, because it knows me all too well. but even if this makes me playing better, it still would be nice to come up with something i could do right away every once in a while…

wow, that took a while…
if you wonder what this is about, check out:

1. part I
2. part II
3. part III
4. part IV

last time i promised you a list with music i think is great for practicing. but before i do that, i’d like to give you two links to agility-heaven. you know, drummers have their rudiments, guitarplayers have their scales and so forth. and although those do improve precision, balance etc. they’re also for developing speed. now what can a singer do get faster or maybe doing some showing-off? well, it’s not as simple as doing scales, but it’s a lot more fun. so here’s two links to (drumroll please….): tonguetwisters, YAY !!!

• the tonguetwister database
• 1st international collection of tonguetwisters

go ahead, check them out. do each and every one of them (at least in your language) until you can say them loud and clear without pausing in a normal conversation tempo or faster. the secret is starting slow. as lots of double-bassdrum-wizards say: don’t worry about the speed – the speed will come. so start really, really slow and make it a priority to speak very precisely. and once you got that down, speed it up a little. by the way, those make great warm-up exercises as well – note to myself: there should be a warm-up entry anyway.

just have fun with them and remember to work especially on those you can NOT do :-)

and here’s one of my favorites, it’s maori, the language of the original inhabitants of new zealand, and it’s nothing more than the name of a hill. there you go:

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaunga- horonukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu (it’s one word)