audiotthoughts on music

long time, no see…

i know there haven’t been many updates recently and this one is just a quick question to get you thinking. actually this is not just about music but can be applied to virtually anything.

yesterday, i read an entry in some german musicians forum about a guy who wasn’t really sure what to answer when someone asked him what instrument he was playing. he identified himself more with the band than his instrument, that sort of thing – this isn’t exactly what this post is about, but it got me thinking.

what exactly is it that you do? and more important, do you even know it – and know how to phrase it without sounding shy or silly? this is very important because it tells you something about yourself and the path you’ve chosen so far. are you a drummer? or a musician? or an artist? or all of it? or what?

this goes for any other profession as well. what exactly is it that you do? think about this, as will i, and try to put it into words – words that convince not only whoever’s asking, but yourself as well.

to be continued…

wooooooo, check out this guy

yeah, i stole this line from Billy Ward, an awesome drummer and producer – go check him out! his stuff’s unreal!

since i’ve just returned from an off-weekend and am already about to record some vocals, i have little time to write. when inspiration hits, you gotta run, so here’s just a quick tip for you guys.

microphones are NOT ears! sounds like a no-brainer, right? but it isn’t. we tend to believe that what gets in (and therefore out) of a microphone is the same as what our ears would hear. but that’s not the case. and i’m not even talking about the fact that lots of mics color the sound, so what goes in is not necessarily what comes out. mics work a lot different than our ears, so don’t be fooled by the fact that both pick up sound. there is a lot of trial-and-error involved before your mic spits out exactly what your ear would pick up – and to make matters worse, to your ear it might sound very unnatural at that moment. i hope i haven’t lost you – it’s a bit difficult to explain. imagine a gun that’s not perfectly “adjusted” and therefore shoots to the right. you could either set it right or aim to the left to hit your target. now, you can’t tweak a mic until it is an ear – but you can change your “aim” until you hit the right sound. and once you have, you might just think “hey, that’s exactly how it should not work at all” – but it does. like aiming to the left and still hit the middle.

so there is logic involved, but then again there isn’t. messing around might be as good as any other approach, but it surely helps to know a bit about mics and placement alternatives – as long as you keep in mind that mics are just stupid. good luck…

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• song no. 7 (audiot.eu)
• song no. 5 (audiot.eu)

sounds ridiculous, right? i never thought about this before, but a few days ago i went to see a band and that got me thinking…

they should remain anonymous because this is no review about this gig and i don’t want anyone to directly connect them to what i’m gonna say here. so let’s just say there was a live-show that triggered the following thoughts…

as a matter of fact i never heard of them before, when a friend told me they were playing some place near us, so we decided to have a look. first i must say, the place was crowded and the people were in a great mood right from the start. we went in, stood there for a couple of songs, then looked at each other and thought exactly the same thing: why does this work for anybody except us? the audience loved it, they were screaming and singing along…..we were kind of bored. i then asked my friend what he was thinking and he said the very word i would have come up with – slick. no doubt, the performance was flawless – well, pretty much. we detected very few minor mistakes, nothing worth mentioning. it all was really well arranged, really well played and sounded very tidy and, well, slick.

it took a few more songs to find out what was missing (for me/us). there was no edge, no character, no feeling. ok, this is a bit harsh i guess. but it reminded me of my early recording experiences years ago. when i would lay down a performance and then cut off and delete anything that seemed not essential for the part, meaning fingernoise on the guitar or breathing during vocal-takes. so in the end i would have a flawless, tidy take with notes only – nothing else. and it would always sound like shit! why? simply because i deleted everything human in it. what is it with us musicians? we’re building drummachines that play better than any drummer (in terms of timing and precision of course…) and then we’re spending decades trying to add random flaws to it – giving it a human factor, controlled by unbelievably complex algorithms. on the other hand we’re playing something and then try to make it as machine-like as possible, erasing the human factor as good as we can (pitch-correction, quantizing etc.) – what is that? why is that? is this really it? or are we just too stupid?

when it comes to recording, i’m still figuring this out for myself – making this same decision for every bit i’m tracking and it’s very well possible that i would make a different one for the same take on another day. so at least there’s a human factor in deciding if a human factor should be involved :-)

anyhoo, my answer to the question is YES! there is such a thing as a too good performance. it’s just a matter of how one defines ‘good’. wow, this is getting more complicated than i thought – it seems there should be a second part to this, so here’s your chance to think about it yourself :-)

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• great exercise… (audiot.eu)
• song no. 7 (audiot.eu)

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.

who would have thought of that? i wanted to show you some Michael Landau video, because i think he’s not known enough. this guy played on so many records, chances are you even have an album on which he did his thing. but – as is the thing with many studio-cats – nobody knows him. except guitarfreaks of course. anyway, he deserves to be known…

then i found this clip of his trio playing in Karlsruhe/Germany last year – and i was there! this was one awesome show, wow. Gary Novak on drums, whom i had a little chat with afterwards, is such a nice person and such a bada$$ drummer. he got most of my interest that evening, sorry Mike. and Jimmy Johnson on bass, never seen him before. i think i heard or read his name somewhere but that was it – he was another pleasant surprise that day. this is a great band, if they are still out there gigging – don’t miss ‘em… under no circumstances!

by the way, the guitar really was that loud compared to the other instruments – it’s too bad you almost can’t hear anything else in the clip. i stood right at the stage, in front of the drumkit – that made for a balanced sound. i got very few of the pa, almost only stagesound and that was fine. the guy who shot the video though, seemed to have a somewhat worse position, so sorry for the sound. but you should hear that they know what they’re doing ;-)

enjoy

i just wrote an email to a guy who bought some of my drumparts on ebay and once again i experienced this ‘brotherhood of drummers’ that i got used to over the years and that i love very much. i’ve been a guitar player long before i learned to play drums but i never experienced this with other guitarists. and certainly not with singers :-)

there have been a lot of other musicians that i got in touch with just to buy or sell something. and with a guitarist it’s usually saying hello, making the deal, saying goodbye and be done with it. but this never ever happened with a drummer. even in the first email you can feel this togetherness-thing and when it really comes down to seeing each other, it’s more like trying to say hello but he interrupts with something like: ‘hey, there’s something i need to show you’ – then it’s off to geartalkland for hours, switching over to experiences-with-bands-story-talkland and it never ends. sometimes you even are forced to stay for dinner – unbelievable.

but that’s not it. at the first drumclinics i attended, i felt kind of uncomfortable. why? because i only knew guitar-clinics and there always was rivalry in the air. and not just at clinics, i sensed this at music-stores, in bands, rehearsals, even (maybe especially) on stage and at events like the Musikmesse which takes place once a year in Frankfurt/Germany. i have no idea why, but there always seems to be a rivalry between guitarplayers. i even was in a band once where the two guitarplayers actually fought about who gets to play more solo-notes and they were dead-serious. maybe it’s because of the instrument’s character. in a ‘normal’ band, the guitarist is the second ‘star’ next to the singer. singers usually have the lead, they’re in front. but when they’re not, it’s about the guitarist. that is at least one reason why singers are so cocky. and to a certain degree that’s not only understandable but even required. sounds ridiculous? it isn’t. it takes self-confidence and ego to be the singer in a band (remember, i said to a certain degree!) because the audience thinks of you as the lead and wants you in that position. my guess would be: the average audiencer doesn’t know anything about playing an instrument but he/she has a voice, so the singer is as close as it gets and therefore the listeners mainly identify with the singer.

guitarists however, are the ones that play solos and make funny moves :-) so they are sometimes in front getting the most attention. and if the same rule applies, they would need some self-confidence and ego too, to give a convincing performance. i’m no Freud so i won’t speculate about the fear of losing the lead of the one or the inferiority complex because of being the all time second of the other – ida know, maybe there are such things, maybe not. but one thing is for sure: the different musicians in a band are different characters. for instance, the drummer is often the funny one, making jokes, laughing the most – right? that’s at least how i experienced it. while the singer often is a bit of an outsider. and the most amazing thing of all: when i’m playing drums in a band, i’m making jokes and mess around – when i’m the singer, i’m a lot more serious and a lot more about business. how freaky is that?

once again i’m drifting off a bit. i just wanted to share some thoughts about the guitarists’ rivalry (“i’m not showing you my riff!”) and the drummer’s club (“come on in, what’s mine is ours.”) if you haven’t experienced this, go ahead and hang with guitarplayers (if they even get together outside the rehearsal room…) and with drummers. the perfect environment is a clinic or a music fair or the Musikmesse itself. you can go from the drummers’ hall to the guitarplayers’ hall in an instant and feel the different vibes. i’m not kidding, you can actually feel the vibes in the room – crazy…

p.s. i’m not mentioning bassplayers or keyboarders here because i have never been one of those in a band. i have been a singer/guitarist/drummer in many, many bands so i can’t really compare this…

AND of course: there’s exceptions to everything. rumor has it there are drummers out there who really are serious people – never met one of those though. and there are guitarplayers and even singers who are actually very nice persons – i even know a few of them…