Skiing is amazing, serenity, high speed exercise in nature, and gorgeous views…
I finally got some daylight skiing with some amazing weather the other day.
It’s hard to film with a digital camera while skiing, and this doesn’t even come close to capturing what it’s like up there, especially the city at night near the end, but check it out:
[youtube h1r43BRTzL8 Skiing, Cypress, Vancouver]
The video is from the top of this peak on the right.
I don’t usually share random YouTube videos, but this is so cool, amazing and beautiful.
[youtube jwMj3PJDxuo Frozen at Grand Central Station]
More: www.improveverywhere.com
Actually I never dust off my old hardware synthesizers, there’s something about an old electronic thing like that with dust on it that is appealing… It isn’t so good for the hardware thought, the dust gets in the pots and sliders and you get all kind of crackles and noise when you turn the knobs and use it.
What I mean is I am working on a new 80’s inspired pop album for artist Heather Dore. She’s a real sweetie, she even wrote a blog entry about me without even knowing how much I love being appreciated.
The interesting thing about Heather coming along and requesting I rejuvenate her music career by helping her create her favorite kind of music is that I have spent the last decade telling myself “the 80’s are over, things have to sound modern now, 21st century” (which is interesting as a producer in a way, because the production values and attention to detail on a record in the 80’s have never been equalled).
And now that I have finally almost mastered that, I have to go back to my roots that I love and forget discipline from using dated sounds for Heather’s 80’s inspired music. But we will be combining modern elements too, so stay tuned for that, it will be very interesting.
Anyway, it is cool to fire up this old hardware for her music because I have really been into virtual instruments lately in the computer because they save so much time. They aren’t better, they just save time and money. But the old synths have all kinds of crackles and buzzes and stuff that keeps things interesting (and technically challenging from the spoiled computer use). Today one old synth, the Roland MKS-50 that I used (which is a keyless Alpha Juno) started outputting this weird low frequency feedback drone noise which would come and go by itself when I wasn’t using it. Not surprising when using a device that is creating sound using real current generated oscillations. That’s the beauty of old analog hardware, it’s alive.
Now I just have to get these old beasts to behave long enough to capture their essence.
ahhhh, dusty old synths…
Check out the latest and most popular design for electronic composers to perform music, it’s called the Monome:
[youtube F0A8xR8ieek nolink]
What you can’t see in this video is he has it hooked up to a laptop with different instruments, loops and patterns prepared. I understood how it worked after seeing it because i have used step based sequencing, but that’s only one of many uses of this seemingly simple but extremely sophisticated device…
[youtube LuV9Eg6HC34 nolink]
http://monome.org
It never ceases to amaze me exactly how low the importance of children is in our society in terms of the priorities of things in our culture, country, political system etc.
Lately, this painful reminder came during a meeting with our local government adoption agency, who handle children with possible developmental issues that we are considering as we expand our family.
Apparently, due to ‘privacy of information’ the government cannot obtain any medical information about the mother, and therefore know little to be able to help with a child’s health and future development. Considering the lack of care, and often self abuse that goes on in many cases with biological parents of these children, this means very serious consequences for the future of any child that is without a family (in the area I live in alone, there are thousands – all with developmental disorders that can’t be identified until the children are old enough for this to have caused major problems)
You could argue that I am ignorant of how the system works, but I like to think I know injustice when I see it.
Approaching this from a purely materialistic and non-spiritual perspective, as a politician, what could possibly be the incentive for not passing an amendment for the freedom of information act allowing personal privacy to a mother who is a drug addict, on welfare, alcoholic etc. that demands full medical records of that person for the sake of being able to provide the best care to that baby possible? (a mother who uses during pregnancy often causes irreparable damage)
How do special interest groups, corporate incentives, and all the other groups that politicians actually serve besides themselves, actually benefit from protecting the medical records of a mother who cannot take care of her child? Shouldn’t the rights of that child outweigh the rights of it’s mother? What is the incentive for that not to be the case?
I understand the low priority of children in a corrupt, un-spiritual system, but what I cannot fathom is as a politician, focusing on the materialistic and business perspective of this issue, a child is a future taxpayer! If we are going to ignore all good and virtuous motivations, for the sake of future income through the total taxes each of us pay in our lifetime, one would think the government would protect a child like a golden asset, growing to provide future millions of dollars to the government! But even THAT is not enough of an incentive for politicians to put priority on the care and education of our children.
If that doesn’t show absolute and irrepreperable corruption of the ‘modern democracy’ and political system, I don’t know what does. It’s hard to believe anyone is naive enough to have any faith left in this current system. It’s way beyond band aids and solutions, the only thing that can save it now is a total collapse. USA, lead the way!
Well, it’s a new year, the first of the three of them (I celebrate the Gregorian new year in December, Chinese new year in February, and Baha’i New Year in March)
Every year, I commit to making a resolution to listen more, and talk less. Like the good old days when people thought I was on drugs. will this be the year I actually do it? That remains to be seen.
“Do or do not. There is no try” the wise master Yoda says.
This of course includes interrupting less. For those that are a victim of this (ie: most of you that I have ever talked to), it’s only because I don’t trust my own brain enough to remember what I wanted to say by the time you are finished speaking. I do love to talk, I guess you could say I am extremely opinionated. An air hog if you will.
But my other resolution is to be more compassionate to myself so I can be compassionate to others. Given the above I may not be off to a very good start… Oh well, I can try again next month for Chinese New Year.
I was going to post these around a week before the holidays and yesterday I looked at the date and was like “Holy Christmas, it’s Dec 21st!” Here they are anyway:
Under The Mistletoe:
[audio:Under_The_Mistletoe_Emeline.mp3]
The First Noel - Tekno mix:
[audio:The_First_Noel-Emeline.mp3]These songs were composed with the first successful artists I ever worked with, Emeline. We lost Emeline in 2001 after she spent many brave years battling breast cancer.
Rosie Owens is on backup vocals.
DISCLAIMER: These are very old songs. They were done over 16 years ago in 1991, back when I was still learning to compose, produce and engineer. They were commissioned by local radio station Z95.3 FM, who are the time were playing Emeline’s music frequently. You can hear evidence of this from the clips on Emeline’s memorial site. You can get more of her music here.
So these songs are a little embarrassing. But I’m trying to be humble and put them out there anyway. Hope you enjoy them.
Have a great holiday season visiting with family, good food and good friends.
Earlier this week I went skiing for the first time this year, and it was great.
I realized two things:
I have been working so much this year that I have totally neglected physical activity so I was expecting to be in pain after skiing, but not on the second run, that is an all new low in being out of shape. So now I am exercising every day even though I loath it.
Have you ever noticed how quiet it is out when it snows? Especially when it is falling from the sky. This is because snow is an excellent sound absorber. I listen to sound all day every day, often the same thing over and over (I probably end up hearing the average song I am producing over 300 times by the time it is done), so it is nice to get up into the mountains where the snow is everywhere because it is so serene. Aside from the odd swish of a ski, or a chunk of snow falling from a tree, it is truly tranquil. A great break from the noise, which I also love, but you need a break once in a while, you know?
Next blog posting: my original Christmas songs.
I wasn’t sure if after working very hard on a number of musical projects this year I would actually have any new completed CD’s this to speak of. But at least there will be one, as I recently finished Elika Mahony’s new CD, Fire And Gold which I will talk about in a later post when it is released.
(I haven’t linked to her site as it isn’t working yet.)
When I am completing an album, I become somewhat obsessed with making sure it sounds as good as possible within a reasonable time frame, and since I am not only producing, but mixing, engineering and mastering, there is no shortage of things that need to be monitored in that last chance to make final changes.
Many correctly argue that a producer or engineer should never master a CD, but so many projects I have worked on have been ruined by improper mastering, I often end up doing it myself, at the request of artists that trust me more than anyone else, because of how important the music becomes to me after spending so much time composing for, producing and mixing. I am still searching for the right mastering engineer.
There are so many things that can go wrong at the final stages, just mixing so that everything sounds great on ANY stereo system is a challenge on it’s own even when you’ve been doing it for over 17 years.
I’ll leave the technical details to that to keep things from getting boring here… I get into some of the pre mixing issues that can come up in this post.
I start to obsess about little things in the music when it’s my last chance to make changes, in my attempt to make sure everything is perfect. Of course it never is, but the majority of listeners will never know.
It may seem overly revealing for a professional to divulge that, but any producer who says their music is indeed perfect is a liar, because I hear the problems and mistakes in their music that no one else does, and that’s ok. But I do find it shocking that famous producers with 10 times the budget that I have for a production would release music with major oversights like out of tune notes and piercing frequencies. So that makes me feel a little better about any issues that escape me (and I emphasize the word little, as I said, I get obsessed)
Then again, you could argue that if someone is going to listen to the music at one tenth of the resolution as an mp3 with ear bud headphones coming from a mini jack, the worst quality audio connector on the planet, what is the point? But this is a blog not an essay, so we’ll leave it at ‘because otherwise I couldn’t live with it’
Most people have no idea how much is involved in producing music, and that includes the artists and musicians themselves. That’s right, most professional artists don’t really realize what goes on behind the scenes in producing their music. They leave it up to a professional like myself, a producer (if they want it done right).
The idea of sculpting a bass sound on repeat for 4 hours is just beyond their comprehension, but that is the kind of thing that goes on amongst mixing together many competing elements so it all blends perfectly.
Today was an example of that in recording the last of the Cello parts for Elika Mahony’s album which will be completed this month. I’ll tell you more about that 3 year project soon.
It was very cool to hear someone play something I composed on keyboard on the cello, but professional players aren’t fond of working with non professional composers (ie: composers that don’t write out scores for performers to play). Even though I had the parts professionally scored, the timing didn’t match up with the parts I composed because the piano wasn’t played strictly with a metronome. This means that when the parts are scored, it is very difficult to figure out the beats and bars. There are ways around this but they require a lot of work like creating tempo maps which I won’t get into now.
Basically what it comes down to is that since artists don’t know what’s involved with these kinds of production details, it is hard for them to know how to prepare for them. Generally, if you want to add any instrumentation, music needs to be played perfectly to a click when it is first started, if it isn’t, it will require a lot more time and money.
It’s all part of the many intricacies of professional music production. It’s hard to believe how much goes into a song sometimes, even for myself. But when it’s done right, it sure sounds amazing. It can capture the heart and stir your very soul.