Something/Everything

It was five piano notes played at the same time by producer George Martin. This Wired article has the details.

It again shows the power of combining multiple instruments together, to a point where the listeners have wondered about this beginning chord for a long time.

With MIDI information it’s a no-brainer to combine various instruments. Long time ago when synths were expensive I did similar things with the same MIDI track used on multiple tracks with different Roland Jupiter-6 sounds, resulting in very complex soundscapes and chord sounds.

It seems so, anyway. Every day you get more and more interesting video snippets on YouTube and similar places, such as maybe the first footage of Jimi Hendrix playing, on TV, courtesy of AudioTuts. He’s just the background guitar player, but it seems he tries to steal the show from the funky two singers.

Or then something like the BBC documentary story about the story of the guitar.  YouTube is full of interesting musical tidbits, and the selection grows each day.

I would not be surprised if the average Internet user would mostly look at videos a couple of years from now, where the text pages such as blogs and similar things are a minority.  I’ve been looking at what it would take to make more video based blog entries. The biggest problem for me is that it takes editing effort. Personally I don’t like those bird-view single take videos on YouTube, you know those ones where you see a person staring at the video camera from above and talking or playing. Somehow it’s not that exciting, unless the topic is cool.

So any interesting material should be edited; and that takes time, even with iMovie (even if I prefer Final Cut myself.)

I also saw that MTV finally released their archive of videos online, at MTVMusic.  That’s a good idea, even if 99$% of rock videos are cliches. I noticed that after about one year taping the early day MTV satellite channel material, first it was fun but you started to see the same patterns after a couple of months. There are exceptions such as anything done by Peter Gabriel or Beck, but otherwise releasing all the music videos might be fun first, but boring watching after a while. Well, there’s always hope that there’s a next generation music video artists that will think outside the box. It is needed.

So, video rules, that’s for sure.

One of my main reasons I subscribe to eMusic is to find bands and artists that have fallen below my radar screen of many reasons — one  being that there are so many out there nowadays. Dungen is one of those finds, done last night. I downloaded their album named 4 that is their fifth album, hehehe.

Imagine this contemporary Swedish band that sounds like psychedelic bands from the late sixties or early seventies and you get close to the sound: slamming drums, cranky fuzz, swirly lyrics and so forth. Even if one might imagine that this is close to a parody, similar to Spinal Tap, it all works out really well.

In addition, the singing is in Swedish; I’m one of the few that would understand the lyrics. Even the name, Dungen, is strange until you know the translation: the Groove (like a place, similar to a meadow, but like a drop in the landscape.)

For the last three months I’ve had this streak of wanting to put in more psychedelic sounds into my productions, so  this band was indeed fun listening. If they ever show up here on the West Coast I will check them out live, as I suspect that would enhance the experience of this band.

Of some reason I really like the 5 type chords when playing guitar, such as A5. In addition I let the other strings ring so it’s a very open A5 or any other 5 using barre chords.

Why? Hmm, I think open-ended chords, both with piano/keyboards and guitars, make a more dramatic arrangement style than fixed major/minor chords. There’s something mysterious, to be followed by something else, incomplete, close but it takes to another direction. Something like that.

Besides, they are easy to play, just take a normal A major chord and lift up one finger and you are set. They work really well in all kinds of situations, even when you rearrange an existing song.

I think it’s worth exploring the use of different chords than the obvious ones when both composing and arranging, as it takes the song to a very different direction. If nothing else, it pops out from the majority of songs out there based on typical chord arrangements.

One of my favorite plug-ins in Logic is the Tape Delay Plug-in. Here’s a video on YouTube that shows it in action. Here’s another link to a cool way to get the famous Boards of Canada fluttering sound on keyboards such as electronic pianos.

I’m fond of tape delays, this after using a friend’s Roland Space Echo for a very long time as a guitar player. This was my attempt to sound like Edge (from U2.) There’s something organic about the fluttering of tape used in combination with delays, making the delay sound less exact as with digital delays that tend to easily sound very clinical.

There’s one tape effect I’ve been talking to other producers, trying to emulate, and that’s the fast speed tape run that sounds very tape-like, including the sound when the end of the tape starts to flap the rolls. If anyone knows how to get this sound, please let me know, as it would be fun using sparingly, to get a early-seventies experimental sound to the production.

PS: Boss actually has a Space Echo emulation pedal.

Here’s an example of the earlier mentioned usage of UltraBeat for generating fusion rock patterns:

UltraSleep Sample

In addition I used Logic’s Space Designer with an aux bus where I routed the drums, the electrical piano and the guitar (not the bass) to make it sound like a live recording.

I don’t know if this will be a permanent fixture of my compositions, but it was fun just trying to do an improvisational session; first drums, then electric piano, then bass and the guitar part at the end. All done with single-takes, this is a live recording, after all!

If nothing else it will end up on my internet radio playlist, stay tuned when that’s around.

PS: This also shows that I have an overdose of Zappa in my mind just now.

One problem I’ve been struggling with recently is how to generate decent fusion-style rock drumming using drum plug-ins. I’ve tried playing on my keyboard and using various MIDI drum loops, but something was missing about the spontaneous way of fusion drumming with influences from jazz.

Well, I found one way to program this in a nice way, not close,but close enough for my needs. I was working on a quick trio-like track tonight, project name “Zoo”, basically having a drummer and bass play in the background while a guitar track is doing Zappa like improvisations over it all.

What I did with the drums was to actually use Ultrabeat’s drum programming view to set a default pattern, then improvise within this pattern back and forth using cymbals and snare rolls, and so forth. I set the swing factor quite high. Next I just copied the patterns over to Logic’s track view where this Ultrabeat drum plug-in was enabled.

The next thing I started doing was to now and then copy existing small loops I’ve done later in the track. After doing about 30 smaller sections it was OK to drag over older ones here and there, as there was enough variations.

The other nice thing with Ultrabeat is that it’s easy to configure the drums, the layout in the stereo spectrum, the volumes and so forth.

What I will do next is to make sure the swing factor in the Logic track is big enough, as well as add ambient reverb so the sound is more muddled — limiting the robot-like drumming that happens when working with drum pattern systems.

All together, Ultrabeat is a very flexible drum system. If you don’t like Ultrabeat’s sounds, you could still use the pattern system generating drum patterns and use any other drum plug-in for the final sounds.

Something that easily happens for those writing songs is to get stuck in a known formula. One typical example is: intro - 2x verse - bridge - chorus - verse - bridge - 2x chorus - verse - bridge -chorus - end.

There are similar kinds of patterns. The techno/dance world has its own, such as 32 bars of intro with no kick, 16 bars of kick, main section, buildup, teardown.

I must say, in this time and age, it has been done millions of times and it is getting boring, even amongst consumers that sometimes want known and proven.

It was for me a revelation to listen to the song structure of Beatles’ later works — in my case Revolver the album that I’m learning inside out for a future project to be revealed. They broke the songwriting rules here and there. It was fun.

In other words, there’s a simple formula to make your songwriting interesting and fresh. Use different patterns. For example, start with a mini-song section, then the other half of the song is totally different. Sometimes make the bridge longer than expected, or much shorter than you expected (such as in Beatles’ I’m Only Sleeping.) Make two different choruses. There are endless variations. It might make sense to have a lead melody in the song as the consumer needs a hook, but it does not mean that you use something everyone else has used over and over.

The other story is that songs don’t need to be so long, even a song just over two minutes is fine in this age of iTunes song-only downloads. Or then make it 14 minutes, no need to stick to the 3 min 15 second (classical 45rpm) length.

PS: Another interesting issue with the I’m Only Sleeping song structure is that John Lennon used nine measures in verse (not eight), the chorus is  six measures, not to speak of the fragmentary bridge

I got the Line 6 Gearbox Gold yesterday, so I installed the software and started to test out. After about 45 minutes of struggling with the installation. The included CD had a version that only worked with PowerPC Macs, so I had to go and download the latest GearBox version from the Line6 site. After that the additional Gold amp simulations et rest didn’t show up, so I had to do a refresh of the license registration. After that it was all good.

The Line 6 Monkey tool to keep track of registrations, upgrades and so forth is a good idea — but I somewhat suspect that some end users might be confused by all the computer-centric lingo in that specific application.

The UI is OK but not that fun — now I understood why PodFarm will be a really great UI. There’s something about a visual connection between the amps and effects and the configuration. Reading arbitrary names for amps and cab simulations is OK, but somewhat tedious if you don’t have a picture of for example how a Fender amp looks like. So I’m eagerly awaiting for the free upgrade to PodFarm next month.

Otherwise, this was exactly what I wanted, an endless amount of guitar amp simulations (bass, too) as well as lots and lots of guitar effects. It means I could indeed go ahead and do more productions with less synthesizer  tracks and more guitar sounds.

UPS just shipped home my customized musician earplugs, hurrah! I had a set earlier but lost them on my way to the San Francisco airport somewhere three years ago. It took a while for me to get to an AES show where they do free custom moldings of the ears. Meanwhile I used Etymotic ER*20s, or Hearos as they are called over at Guitar Center — $15 dollars each pair. I just need to take care of this second pair of customized musician earplugs really well. This time I heard the company is also storing the molds so I could just contact them and ask to make a new set in case silly me is again losing them somewhere.

As for ear protection. Every time I see in a musician forum a discussion about this, my reaction is to post (and I often do) with a similar story. Just get them, it’ the first purchase a musician or producer should get. Those are far more important than reference monitors, or a new audio interface.

If you lose your hearing, even parts of the high end, that’s it, you can’t work properly as a musician or a producer. It’s like cutting off your hands. Does not compute.

The ugly issue with hearing loss is that it is gradual, seldom sudden. It means that each time your ears are ringing after a loud evening, there’s loss happening. It all builds up. At some point you actually notice it. To some degree we can’t do much about it as we age. At the same time we could prevent serious hearing loss from happening.

For example, if you play bass (as I do) next to a drummer, the cymbal hits is a sure thing to lose your hearing over time — not to even speak if you are a drummer. If you stay in a 120dB or so environment for hours and hours, which easily happens during gigs, it all will add up as hearing loss.

The cool thing with good earplugs such as the Musician earplugs or earlier mentioned Etymotic ER*20s is that you actually start hearing more details — believe it or not — as part of having a more linear hearing curve. Going back to bass playing, instead of hearing that nasty cymbal clash that overrides anything else, you start to hear other parts of the drummer and the band so you could play better.

Any hearing protection is better than none, even if you should try to get such musician-centric protection tools as you want to have this linear dampening. The customized musician earplugs are nice as they take a mold of your ears and make the actual body of the hearing protection fit your ears as closely as possible, so it should feel natural. Not that I don’t mind the Etymotic ER*20s by now, I’m so used to them in my ears. Even when singing (which takes a while to get the hang of, as you have to rely more on the head voice, unless you have good monitoring, something seldom available…)

Last preaching words — get them in case you don’t have those already. Take the car and drive to Guitar Center or a similar place, some Walmarks also carry musician-centric earplugs. Or order online. And here’s the link to H.E.A.R that has programs and links where to get customized musician earplugs.

Let’s show some more demos of fun stuff I’m doing in my studio just now. Another idea I had was to test out EBow use with guitars.

Here’s a quick dump of a song I started tonight, it’s only 30 minutes of work but you get the idea from the sample:

Transporter Bluez

The EBow was played on my oldest Ibanez guitar, via a Line6 PodXT. Then I added both a pitch shifter in Logic with a 12 semitone increase, as well as added a Delay Designer with a fun preset.

In addition I fed the signal with some other instruments to a bus with Space Designer and a large hall Inpulse Response setting.

This is of course work in progress, but it’s kind of cool to hear the idea I had in my mind a day before, i.e. use an EBow to make an symphony-like drone sound filling up the spectrum.

This is by the way one direction I’m going towards just now. No synths, just using guitars with very interesting processed sounds. I call it nu-psychedelic rock. No drugs used, just a clean mind that has fun. As for the transporter name, well I watched Star Trek NG tonight with my son…

I got this idea when I went to bed last night — this is an unknown recording by Robert Johnson, he predicted Internet 80 years ago! I found it in my grandmother’s 78RPM collection.

Googled Blues

Here are the lyrics:

I did a google search baby, a google search on my name 

I only got 42 hits, ain’t that a shame.

If you want to get noticed, baby, you got to have your own  blog

If you ain’t got one, you’re just an Internet slob

Last night, baby, I had an Internet chat

He thought I was a women; and I really liked that. 

One of the most hard things for me now when doing more music related to real instruments, guitar et rest, is that I got so used to precision based music when dealing mostly in the electronic world. With this I mean all the quantization and other tools one could use, arpeggiators et rest, that produce precision timing concerning playing music. Even if I do play the keyboard parts using all my five or ten fingers, it was always so handy to adjust and fix obvious mistakes. With a swing factor it even sounded human.

Not so when dealing with electric guitars and bass guitars. You need to really play well. Now, there are indeed tools to fix that, as well, such as going in and do precision edits inside Logic to move wave sections around. I suspect that’s what most sound engineers in the studio are doing all day long, cheaper than asking a musician to do retakes over and over. Not that really, really good studio musicians could nail down tracks in one take — especially those in Nashville.

But it is also the issue of sounding natural, precision-edited guitars get to a point where they sound artificial, sampled-triggered and so forth. There’s a balance in all this.

The other big factor for me is that I’m so used to hearing precision-based performances from the electronic world, so it means hearing less precise work is tough. I think I should hear more DeerHoof to get rid of that feeling. It’s extremely tough to sound super-precise when recording guitars. Maybe for four beats and you copy this all over, but then it sounds artificial, as well… There’s something neat about playing a track from beginning to end — in one take.

What do you think? Is it Ok to really do extensive edits to make natural instruments fit the pocket 100%? Or is this just another form of cheating, hard to replicate this on stage if the chops are missing? Do the consumers even care anymore?

I finally found the Jan Hammer CD Oh Yeah? on Amazon, for a good price, so I picked it up. This is Jan Hammer’s quartet with him playing like a guitar god using synthesizers with fusion/funk stuff. Later he joined Jeff Beck and the rest is history.

I have a somewhat complicated history with this record. Long time ago, In Finland, I actually ordered the LP to a local record store. When it showed up I didn’t have any money so I could not pick it up. Sometimes I wonder if I have had the money, might have inspired me to get a Mini Moog or something similar and focus more on keyboard playing than guitar playing in my teens….

So I had to atone for my sins and now when I could afford any record I will finally get it into my collection.

There’s another secret reason behind getting it. If I ever end up again on a jam playing keyboards, instead of playing along with yet another typical organ or electronic piano solo, I will try to find a mini-moog like patch on the keyboard and go for it. That might be different from the myriads of keyboard solos at most jams around here… So I need inspiration. And a gentle touch on the pitch wheel, too!

As for the long tail. I really wanted to get the digital version, from iTunes or Amazon MP3. However, it is not available there. This is yet again a good example where I don’t think the long tail really works all the time. There are all kinds of reasons albums don’t show up on iTunes/Amazon MP3/eMusic and so forth. Sometimes there are all kinds of legal issues with the master tapes. Sometimes the record company who has the master tape is no longer around; it might even be that the original masters have disappeared, or are gathering dust in some unknown location. Maybe even the original tapes have just become so bad you can’t do much about it.

So it’s a big problem, the sooner a lot of older material is digitized and saved for the future generations, the better. But it all depends on the artists, the labels, those who control the content and so forth. So the idea of the long tail for consumers is a good one, but just hard to implement in real life.

This is another fun AudioTuts blog posting — unexpected moments of Guitar Awesomeness.

Just some comments of my own. I don’t think Prince is underestimated, unless someone has totally forgotten to check out his playing ever.  Seeing him live doing all the guitar work is even more awesome — if he ever plays nights and especially the ad hoc jam sessions in Las Vegas I will take a night flight there.

While John Mayer, hmm, what could I say. That guy went to the crossroads and sold his soul to the marketing department, that’s for sure.

I hope the realization will sink in for the majority of consumers that guitar playing is more than trying to play as many notes as possible in the shortest time period. It takes a lot of guts to develop a personal style. I could hear immediately if for example Steve Hillage is playing.