audiot

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? :-)

now here’s what i call a good press. and i have to post this right now before there will be any reviews by the guest judges. so this is about the song i sent to the people’s music awards – which won week 10 as the best off-the-beaten-track-song and therefore is in the next round now.

so here’s what the guys over there wrote about it:

“If Tom Waits fell off the wagon and went on a three month bender before recording his next album it would probably sound like audiot!

Welding the classic rock of Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath and art school sensibilities, audiot has come up with a top notch track that is certainly way off the beaten track!”

how cool is that?

by the way, the guest-judges-round should start soon. i really wonder what they’ll say about it… and after that, if i got it right, the people (that’s you) can vote again.

gosh, i really hope i can finish the new album soon – it’s gonna be even more weird and sick…

woohoo!

this is soooo cool. who’d have ever thought something like this would happen? believe it or not, this is the 300th entry on this site! well, i did fail miserably in my attempt to post once a day – this site went online end of may 2008, but still 300 posts is really cool, don’t you think? thank you all so much for reading, for your interest, your time and your feedback! so here’s to the next 300! yay!

and if that wasn’t enough, the song “bankjob” won the 10th week of the people’s music awards in the category off the beaten track! hooray! and no, i was not the only contestant. check the charts out here and look around a little, cool music up there. this means i’m in the next round where there’s guest judges to decide if it’s any good. now, you and i know that it isn’t, but let’s keep it a secret, ok? anyway, i’m really happy about it and once again, thank you so much to those who voted for me! by the way, you can listen to the song by clicking play on the blue player to the upper right – but you already knew that, right?

that’s it. take care y’all.

audiot signing out.

now, it’s been almost a week since that last part, so you had plenty of time to clean up your studio, take a dustcloth and the vacuum cleaner, organize all those bits and pieces and be ready to work in a clean, tidy and well organized environment from now on.

i told you this series will have four parts, so what else can we clean up you ask. the second thing that needs some tidying is your song. believe it or not, chances are there’s a lot of dirt in there. ok, we’re not talking freejazz here, but everything that’s being listened to is kind of clean in terms of the songwriting. “clean” might be a stupid word to describe this, but i can’t think of a better one. the idea is to have the song (here it is again) cleaned up. that means no unnecessary licks, no notes that don’t really fit in there. the right chord at the right place and not just the standard chord because it’s the only one you can play. go through your song, note by note, and pick the chords that fit in the best – make them up if necessary. think of “sweet home alabama” for instance – quite simple, standard D, C, G chords, right? nope. listen to it very closely. on the one hand, the song is more complex than you might think – lots of important details in there. but on the other it’s even simpler than standard. you can find lots of songs that are really well cleaned up by listening to the eagles – this is of course just one example. good funk music is often exemplary when it comes to cleaning up, good hiphop as well. the thing is to do what’s right for the moment. if the song calls for a guitar solo, so be it – if not, leave it out. do you really need that b-section? correction: does the song really need that b-section? and so forth. it’s not about writing the most complicated song – more like the other way around. i always wanted to write awesome progressive concept albums with 20-minute-songs. today i’m in the process of writing two-part-songs, one part for the verse and one for the chorus. that’s it. and who’s to say which ones are better? i can’t, even if those are my songs. but i can tell you one thing, nowadays i can finish a lot more songs and record them instead of carrying them around in my mind for years without even bringing them to paper. and people like them, the 3 people that actually do listen to my stuff that is :-)

but this is not about my songs, simply because my songs have no hit-potential (i know, “hit” is one of those words today), they’re not for the masses. but they are clean. and if you want to come up with something people would want to hear, then it has to be clean. throw out anything that is not necessary. it’s like packing a backpack for a hiking-trip. you first make a list of all the stuff you’d like to take with you, then lay it all out on the bed, then go buy a mule and you’re ready to go…. the better way is to make a list, lay it all out, throw half of it away and put the other half in the backpack. it will be fine.

i love comics, especially ones that are simple, like those for instance (that’s just the current one, there’s a new one each day…) – because i love the way they simplify everything. their people are made out of a few simple strokes but still you know what it’s about. i really dig the simplify-idea and i think it’s very important in songwriting. a song still can be complex of course, but it has to be clearly shown what it’s about…

damn, i really felt my english sucked in this one and i sincerely hope that you get the idea. good luck with that :-)

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…