audiot

sheesh! I wonder if i can ever get back to a regular blogging routine. but right now there’s at least a bit of good news…..or actually, that depends, i guess. anyway, here’s the new album called “studded for pleasure”. once again it was part of the rpm-challenge and once again, time ran out on me so i had to whip it together really fast in the end. it’s probably not as weird as the last one but still raw, edgy and dirty. enjoy

studded for pleasure by audiot.eu

wow, those were some ridiculously busy days, but before i talk about it, i’m gonna give you a description of the fifth tune from the album corner…just because i can :-)

this song is called “taking the blame” and it sounds like that as well. the interesting thing about this tune is, it was almost completely improvised. the whole thing took about 30 minutes. i tracked a bassline (again played live with a midi-controller using a nice sample-based sound from the reason factory soundbank), then laid down some drums (same method as above, sounds from the reason drumkits 2.0 refill) and some vibraphone (same again). this took about 15 minutes, all first takes – no cutting, copying, pasting or anything like that. then i exported this mixture as an audiofile, imported it in cubase le4 and recorded the vocals to it. for the vocals i wrote down three lines of lyrics, then pressed record and again improvised something. again, this was only one unedited take, which i imported in reason again to apply some dynamics processing, a bit of reverb and do a mixdown. that’s it.

now, my voice sounds quite damaged and…well….weird on this one. the reason for that is quite simple and shows off the perfectly well-coordinated strategy i applied to the whole album: trial and error! long may it live! i did the vocals for song no. 6 right before this one, so there was just no more voice left to do anything even related to singing. but hey, it’s about embracing the flaws, right? so i left it that way. and i’m really glad i did – now. it took a while to get used to it, though :-)

another funny thing about this song is, i tried to do a song similar to one i heard before and it really went wrong. the song i’m talking about is called “18 with a bullet” (at least i think so) and can be found on the soundtrack to “lock, stock & 2 smoking barrels”. i haven’t heard that song in years, so mine turned out completely different – but anyway, that’s were the inspiration came from…

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yay, here it is! the legendary meatbucket-song! listen to it here.

this was not only the first song i did for the album and the one that took most of the time but also the song that i had the most fun with – and the worst croakiness… well, it is of course inspired by Tom Waits but you already heard that, right? it honors me that some people said my song would sound like one of his – some even said it would sound worse…and that’s an even bigger honor. thank you!

because this was the first tune for this album i made a mistake with it. the album was supposed to be done in 28 days and i spent about a week on this one song before i noticed, that i never could finish in time if i went on this way. the song is not at all complicated and even the single parts were tracked in no time but i ‘wasted’ lots and lots of time with creating the right instruments and with the automation of the volume- and panorama-levels. take the handclaps for instance: there’s a lot of work in them. i took a handclap sample that sounded real to me, but it was only about two or three pairs of hands clapping – not enough for what i had in mind. just doubling the same sample a few times didn’t sound real anymore, so i created a whole new sample out of dozens of the original one but with as many variations in pitch and pan-position as possible. this is not as easy as it sounds because some pitches just didn’t work – i couldn’t find a logical pattern in this so it was mostly trial-and-error-strategy and took a long time because i really cared about each one of the sample-parts. and the coolest thing was to put a variation to the time the different claps occur. if you listen closely you can hear that all the claps sound more or less unique. sometimes all of them are simultaneously sometimes there are a few too early or too late ones, exactly as it would be in reality – when some morons are not able to stay in time but clap anyway. i love those claps but wonder if i spent too much time on them. i guess nobody notices this detail anyway – it’s just handclaps for god’s sake! hopefully they at least create the vibes i wanted them to. see? i even spend way too much time writing about them!

the next thing i think turned out really interesting, although you probably haven’t noticed as well, is the bassdrum which is the first sound of the song and the last one as well. what happens with this one is that it gets louder, stronger and more intense throughout the whole 8 minutes of the song. but you can only really hear it if you compare the beginning and the end of the tune. in between it just draws no attention to itself. again, hopefully this also creates great vibes.

then there’s a bunch of other instruments that play the same licks over and over again. the bass, that kind of holds it all together, a kalimba-sound, a harp. later there’s some celli and some tremolo-strings to create a little tension when the wife comes down the stairs… i automated the volume levels of all of them so they rise from nothing to a certain degree and then fall down again but all of them in different ways, so it doesn’t sound like some computer did this. sometimes the bass is loudest, sometimes the kalimba etc. – pretty random. and i didn’t play the lick for each instrument just once and then copy-and-pasted it again and again, i played them all for about 5 minutes because that was the duration of the song in the first place. it got longer with the lyrics and the whole automation stuff, so i took a variety of licks (i picked each one of them – not just a sequence!) and pasted them to have the increased length covered. i learned that those details are very important to make it sound real…

that’s about it. oops, how could i forget the vocals :-) hmmm, there’s not much to tell about them. i just tried to sound dirty and went a little over the top with it. dig the breathing and slurping noises…

by the way, the reason why my voice sounds broken and strange on “taking the blame” is that i recorded it directly after the meatbucket. there was just no way to really sing after what i did to my voice before. note to myself: change the order of songs appropriately in the future…

finally, the bandpages on the rpm-challenge site are up and running. the jukebox is not fully loaded and launched yet, but you can go to my page there and listen to the album. now why should you do that? simply because until now you could only listen to it on 5 different websites, which is pretty lame, right? BUT NOW THERE’S SIX!!!

i command you to check this out!

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…

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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ok, i’m opening a new category for the album “corner” i made as part of the rpm-challenge 09. there will be detailed descriptions of all the songs as well as technical info on how i did this etc., so make sure you check this section out for fresh content.

i’m gonna start tomorrow with an overview of the album, what i planned to do, how i failed with that and what came out in the end…

once again here’s the link to listen and download it or you can check out the freakingly cool player thingy in the entry below…

have fun