and wondering where it’ll take me. i guess it’s about time for an update on the new audiot projects. as you guys already know, there’s music in the making which was supposed to end up on an album called “traitor”. this became more of a working title and then ideas came up like crazy  – so here’s what’s happening right now:

i’m up to 19 songs so far, 7 of them are awaiting vocals. it seems there won’t be any instrumentals this time, but one never knows. those 19 will have my voice on them. so i’m gonna do some vocal-recording and then 5 of the above mentioned 7 can be mixed and thrown out into the world. the other 2 will need maybe a solo and maybe some fills. i’ll do that after the vocals.

and it seems there will really be two albums, one in the style of “corner” and one with more “regular band stuff”. and once again there’s a lot of experimenting involved, lots of flaws left in there and again it kind of scares me what my mind comes up with. so if for me “corner” was like standing in a forest at sundown, peeking through some trees at a scary little cabin – this next one will be like stepping through the door and have a look at what’s inside. and i really don’t know if i’ll like what’s in there – but at least i’ll find out soon. fortune favors the bold, right?

before the albums are actually released i might put out some sneak peeks to let you know what’s coming. i thought about this a lot but am still not sure how to do this without spoiling the surprise – we’ll see about that. and still no making of video i’m afraid – getting into video-stuff would delay this whole thing even more….

so now you’re up to date and thanx for staying tuned. and even if i don’t know how this new stuff will sound once it’s finished, i can already say: if you liked “corner”, then you’ll love what’s coming. but if you didn’t like it, then you’ll love what’s coming. how’s that for a slogan? :-)

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!

well, of course i have….to a certain degree – why else would i prefer music to a 9 to 5 job? but this idea really makes sense, apart from many others i come up with on a minutely basis. however, i can’t take any credit for this one, it’s out of a book (this one to be precise). although i can’t recommend this book, because i haven’t read it, the idea behind this is really cool. i was told about this and the person who told me had this idea from the book – that’s my story and i’m sticking to it.

now, what’s it about? in a nutshell, it’s about idea-pregnancies. meaning, once you have an idea, you need to let it rest inside of you, it needs to ripen like a fruit until it’s ready to be picked (if those are the correct terms in english…). your subconscious works on it, even if you’re not aware of that, and – as soon as it has something of value to offer – it’ll bubble into your thoughts, seemingly out of thin air. did you ever forget someone’s name and just couldn’t remember it, no matter how hard you tried? but as soon as you thought of something else for a few moments, it suddenly popped up? that’s what this is about…

so once you’re stuck with something, like me right now for instance, just do something else and try not to think about it at all. believe it or not, this will work! as i said, i haven’t read the book, so it might be about becoming rich and famous without doing anything – and that would be bogus of course. but nevertheless, we can use this basic principle to our advantage and become way more creative, productive etc. by just adding pauses. and for a musician, such a pause can be to work on another song for example. it’s like i mentioned before, when i’m stuck with one song, i start another one. but since i’m already up to 15 songs for “traitor”, it’s about time to finish some of them. so i’m taking the rest of the day off, since it’s sunday and sunny outside, and go for a walk. i’m coming out of the closet with this and i don’t care how boring it sounds – i just love to walk. i’m thinking about a 5 hour march through the beautiful hills around here, maybe about 25 kilometers – it’s not about speed, it’s about being pregnant, remember?

anyway, this should take care of beingstuckness and get me home again before sunset. i just hope my back can take this – some of those wombsongs are pretty heavy…

now we’re getting somewhere :-)

i just finished another recording session and am now up to 15 song-construction-sites. and since i’m still in da zone, this will be a really short entry (once again…). sorry for spending so much time making music, but i can’t help it – it’s what i do…

anyhoo, today was all guitars so far and if you’ve ever tried to record electric guitar, here’s the mother of all advice from me to you: less gain! stop mocking me! i know this is no bloody Richard-Friggin’-Feynman-Flash-Of-Genius-Idea but it helped me a lot. set up your sound the way you like it and then turn the gain-knob down by maybe 20% or the sound will suck big time on the recording. i have no idea why, this came out of experience, lots of swings-and-misses and running up and down the street, waving my arms like crazy screaming out “serenity now!” at the top of my lungs. so better take this advice before your neighbors call the lunatic-patrol-guys who will come into your home and kidnap you away from your compu

actually it’s lots of recording. in the last few days i have been working on “traitor” (the working title for my second album) and am now up to 11 songs – or should i say construction sites… well, a few of them are done so far, awaiting the vocals. the others are kind of idea-keepers. whenever i work on something and it’s not going too well – lack of ideas to continue on that song for instance – i start a new one. oddly enough, i can always come up with something new. the problems usually start when i’m about halfway through a song. maybe i should put out an album with just songparts on it, there’s hundreds…

so that’s where my time goes at the moment, all of it, and that’s what’s keeping my from writing more or even eating on a regular basis. i lost weight since i started this album, no kidding. hopefully there’ll be a few pounds left of me when it’s finished…

the music for one song is finished, except for the solo which i will track after i’ve done the vocals. and the music for 4 more songs is written. this takes that much longer than expected, but this whole internet stuff is stealing away lots of time (not talking about writing entries for this place…).

on the other hand, i’ve got one song almost finished (again except vocals) but it won’t be on “traitor” because it’s a completely different style, more bankjob-like. i tried to combine it with already existing traitor-stuff but it sounded…..cough, cough…..not that great. we’ll see where that goes…

babysteps once again – but at least steps. and they’re in the right direction…

no matter if you’re just a player or writing, recording, arranging your own music – even if you don’t have anything to do with music, this is for you. we’re always trying to reinvent the wheel although this is just plain wrong. i thought about this a lot during the last few days, while working on “traitor”, my 2nd album (still having link-troubles, you can find its category in the sidebar to the right). it looked like this would become a pretty straight, down and dirty rock-album but i’m not that sure anymore because there’s an important choice to make. i could either stick to the plan and do a rock-album that’s already been made thousands of times, but not by me. so it would be different as well as the same. now that might not seem very innovative and you’re damn right: it’s not! but that doesn’t mean it can’t be a great album. in my opinion, some of the greatest records of all time lack innovation – so it’s not a necessary ingredient. and if i choose to create a plain and simple rock-album, it would be a bad idea to try and reinvent rock. you know, if the cat happens to be on that very tree, it would be quite stupid to bark up another one (or even plant your own…) – no matter how many dogs are already there. the right thing to do would be trying to perfect the wheel, make it rounder, turn it into a ball – make it mo’ better.

on the other hand, you could always leave the cat alone and do something different, get a bone for instance. in my specific case this would perhaps mean to take those rocksongs but turn them into something else, maybe by using some of the sounds and vibes i used for “corner” (blue player, sidebar, ’nuff said) and doing some combination of the two. not that this was never done before but i’d have no idea how it would turn out. so instead of trying to make a great rock-album by sticking to the tradition it would be more like just going ahead, being creative and see where it goes from there. And again, this wouldn’t be reinventing the wheel. it would be inventing something alright, but not the wheel.

this might sound a little confusing, i guess my point is to not try and REinvent at all. either stick to something that’s already good (there’s nothing wrong with that!) or invent something new.

by the way, there’s two interesting things about this i should mention. first, creating something is NOT letting something completely new appear out of thin air, it’s taking things already there and combining them in a new way. and second: i once read in a book about bionics that we think we’re smarter than nature because we managed to invent the wheel. but the fact is, a wheel is quite useless in nature – that’s why nature invented the leg, which is far superior to the wheel if you really think about it. and do you really believe, if the wheel was such a great and important thing, nature wouldn’t have come up with it aeons ago?

the funny thing about this is, i stopped being a rock-musician years ago. and since then i’m listening to everything with the same amount of interest, i’m playing everything with the same amount of ‘being into it’. but beyond all that there’s some unfinished business i suppose. songs i wrote during my rock-phase for instance, like 15 years ago… i don’t even like those songs anymore, but i still love the feel of some of them or some parts, riffs, licks or whatever. and since that time, whenever i’ve picked up a guitar, some of those old ideas snuck up on me. so now i’m making peace with myself by finally doing a record with all that stuff – hoping those ghosts from the past will leave me alone at last :-)

nah, don’t gimme that “so, now you’re trying to palm off old and rotten stuff on me?” because that’s not what this is. there won’t be a single one of those old songs on the record, as i said before, i don’t like them anymore. i will, though, write new material with some of those riffs, ideas etc. included. what will mostly remain of the old stuff is the feel. suffice it to say i was quite an angry young loon back then. but don’t panic! i’m already thinking about the third album which will be completely different – again. this second one is basically about getting something off my chest and be done with it. on the other hand – recording this dirty stuff was kind of fun……………..

at least i’ll post descriptions during the whole making process as well as after, and i’ll embed some more pictures of how it looks like here in creationland. i’d be happy to shoot some videos as well, but have no idea how to do this by myself. maybe i’m able to figure something out, but no guarantees so far.

at this very moment i have wired up the components for recording some guitars, meaning i have two modeling devices ready to go, connected them to a midi interface (for easier programming through the laptop) as well as an audio interface (to get the actual sound into the laptop), the guitar is connected and tuned and as soon as i finished writing this entry, i’ll open the software sequencer to track those guitar takes. stay tuned for all the details, as this is only meant as kind of an overview. basically i’ll use the same components as i did for “corner” (read about it here), but this time i’ll add recordings of real instruments (besides the vocals of course) – guitar for instance – so it’s not completely sample-based this time.

as for now, there’s a new category called “traitor – the 2nd album”. traitor will be the working title for this one, i’m gonna try to change the name of the corner-category, because the album is not that new anymore – hopefully the links provided so far will still work, i’ll look into it…

so be prepared for some new stuff…