| The way it is |
[Nov. 22nd, 2009|07:05 pm] |
As the year 2009 is coming to it's end and with it something being dubbed "The noughties" I am still trying to pull up a vegetable that tells me where I am. This is not a post about my personal life though, I just want to update about my new Don Claude album. Even though I don't tend to blog at all these days with plans on letting this blog stay intact with it's old content while moving towards my own website or perhaps a last.fm profile it still feels nice to come here.
My latest creation have been a pending project for perhaps a year and a half, maybe even longer. This brings expectations, I suppose, which I am both fond and not so fond of. Earlier this weekend, Friday to be more exact, it clicked with me and the drum loops I had made earlier this autumn. It has to do that, I have to like what I've made first before I settle with going on. I've remade a couple of drum loops here and there while considering the entire whole of the album. A few songs are progressive, some are the typical verse-chorus-verse á la Don Claude. I estimate it to clock in at 30 minutes something when it is done. All that needs to be done is to add the instrumentation and vocals, mix it all together and add additional effects only to put it here.
A problem comes up right there with the recording part. My last computer was a piece of junk but these cheap mics I got gave good results, but on this new computer with a "w00zt3rz"-ish sound card (and everything) the recording sound is heck. I have to import the recordings to Sound Forge and normalize it! This makes the recording process less spontaneous but I think I will overcome that too. So, in the end there will be a new Don Claude! It would be bad to miss this out because there are my own drum samples in many tracks, new influences, a different variation compared to the last album, etc, etc.
But more about that another time. As I consider myself a bit too much rooted with Don Claude it is time for a couple of new projects all deeply set in the electronica set. At the moment there isn't much to say about these projects other than: They're solo. First I need to learn program some sort of tracker program and I've found a couple via wikipedia. I also need to get a dictaphone in order to increase my sampleability. My old sampling technology was an mp3-player which shall be replaced. It is the cause for making my last computer crash and nearly did the same with my latest. Pfft, nice to finally know anyways.
And that is what is going on. |
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| Creative destruction with spaghetti on top |
[Sep. 27th, 2009|08:01 pm] |
So, now I've finally started recording the additional instruments and voice tracks for a couple of songs on my new album. Might turn out harder than I thought. This time I've been sampling a couple of sounds (and more to come) from my vast collection of audio recordings made with my sample between spring 05 to winter 07. The plan is to scan them all for sounds that fits good as beats. It's been put aside for now, though, since I want to concentrate on the new album but I got great plans. One is to sample all my instruments, including the presets of the synthesizers, for future use. It's getting a bit boring with the old drum single sounds that's been the backbone of my records since the start. There are sure many beats to squeeze out from them but right now I am more interested in sampling myself.
To come back and record music again after a near one and a half year absence is just... plain hard to tell the truth. Spatsiba Mon Amour had many songs reworked (more than half of the songs got reworked) and since I've been sitting with the new songs this weekend I am starting to feel the same here. I need to revise and redo some stuff, some beats perhaps. But for now I will play around to learn the new features of the newer versions of the program I use. Things have changed for sure, but in the process I've discovered effects that needs to be put in use! I've also managed to find things making certain tasks (such as voice overdubbing) much easier.
I sigh a bit at the thought of reworking the album. only 15% of it is ready, one collage and one part (an intro part) of a song is ready whereas the collage was supposed to be something different in the beginning. It is not that I find it bad to redo the songs over and over again, it is just a bit of a bother to me. Some albums just fell into place with a snap. Sounds a bit crazy but that's how it felt. In the end it will be much more rewarding to work things this way, I need to learn to concentrate for perhaps one hour or two for something in a song each day instead of just a couple of minutes. Everything to develope as an artist. |
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| Melting melodies in zeeh mail |
[Sep. 20th, 2009|08:11 pm] |
Got myself a melodica last week. It will be featured in my upcoming new album. More news on that later though, all I've done yet is a sound collage and some drum loops which have been arranged in the way I want them. I've also ordered new ukulele strings for both my acoustic and my electric uke and as soon they're tuned and ready the initial recording will start.
One of my plans is to make a music video to promote this new album as well as some music videos for older songs. However, I dunno how much posting there will be in this blog until my album is out. Factors that play on this: I try to lessen my time on the internet and put more focus on my projects, I excersize 6 days a week after work in order to not come in two when lifting heavy-weighting stuff, computer related stuff is getting a bit boring, I also want to focus on this album and somewhat be done with the initial recording and mixing by new years so that the album will see the light next year.
Until next time, take care!
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| Not entirely gone |
[Sep. 13th, 2009|09:00 pm] |
I am not entirely out of here. Though I'll post something more worthwhile another time. Right now my most concern is the new Don Claude album. The process is going well with my newfound inspiration, though. |
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| Flans - No Controles |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|10:11 pm] |
This is possibly the best song from the 80's pop world i've heard for a long time. Western 80's music sound so robotic and efficient after this. |
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| Rainy falls error and muddy restarts |
[Jun. 21st, 2009|07:20 pm] |
I happened to be very unlucky with the weather as for my three sisters project. The very day after I planted the fava beans, maize and pumpkins we got struck by really stormy weather. I had put some shelter on in the form of a net and a fibre cloth. I shouldn't have done that since it smashed down on the maize and the pumpkins leaving only the hardy and trusty fava beans standing there all alone. The weather continued this way for a long time, which made me ignore my piece of dirt, which in turn made my parents to rage at me because I hadn't done anything about it. So, today, I planted dill, carrots, beets and kohlrabbi. The fava beans looked so lonely that a couple of clover was planted in order to accompany them in their nitrogen work. Hehe. This entire week ahead seems to have fortunately sunny weather. The quinoa seems to have not made it, but it was expected. I just turned the soil, planted it, and left it there.
Nevermind, I am currently interested in annuals and herbs, especially Angelica, Garden Angelica in particular, which used to be the only herb that Sweden exported far back in the medievals as a remedy for the plague. Some sources state that Angelica was one of the staples among the samis of northern scandinavia. If it allows I will try and grow garden angelica next year, so that I can taste it. I suspect that some angelicas are growing in the garden already though.
In the meantime, enjoy some throat singing without the usual accompany.
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| Done while gone |
[May. 17th, 2009|11:11 pm] |
I've been away for a while. But to be honest, I don't give a so-called damn about it anyway. The fact that LJ have meant less and less to my daily life an my personal wellbeing has been there creeping around in the subconcious. At least for a year or two. The weather outside is superb too!
Maize, pumpkins, cucumbers, fava beans, kohlrabbi, quinoa... Experiments in the garden bon voyage!
Tomorrow I shall visit downtown, eat pretzels and watch art.
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| Three weeks too late in the bloom |
[Apr. 25th, 2009|07:59 pm] |
For how long haven't I made an entry? Possibly far too long. My absence can be explained by two weeks of working in the froze grocery section. It also involved a 12 hour day too. But it was all necessary to do. We have automatic ordering systems, simply called AutoOrder, that haven't been set right, and the guy who worked in the freezer section before me and my co-worker (we're currently two taking care of the freezer section) didn't do a superb job. This means we have about 3 pallets with lamb chops that nearly nobody buys, a pallet with salmonella contained lamb chops that was supposed to be sent back one and a half year ago, a pallet of chicken that's supposed to be sent back (warnings about glass in the chicken!) and one and a half pallet with ice-cream that melted last year. Gosh! And now they want to remove one section located at the entrance of the mall since nothing there sells very good. But considering that it's location is the worsts in the entire mall I am not surprised. People first walk into the fruit section on the left, while that small freezer section is on their right, as they walk out from the fruit section they only see pre-cooked meals in that freezer section while the shrimps and prawns (that people want) is on the other side. The entire freezer section needs to be renovated anyway! Things are in the way!
Nevermind, I got some news about my gardening. I've set some seeds for bell peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers. The bell peppers haven't shown themselves yet, I think, and the cucumbers just popped right through in one go. Now I am waiting for the Sweet corn and pumpkins to get going (they're just getting started!) and then it is time to prepare my patch. I got some fava beans to plant with the corn and pumpkins too in order to do the Three Sisters practice. I also have kholrabi and Quinoa to experiment with. The first one is the cultivar Superschmelz, known to grow monstrously gigantic (about 2 kilos or so) and Quinoa is an important future crop that should be grown by more countries other than the three who are currently doing it. I've thought about dedicating an entry entirely on the future of agriculture and food sometime touching on Tempeh, Oncom, Nixtamalization, Amaranths, Quinoa and hemp's importances. Just need to settle down and type that entry, that's all.
What else? My album is finally getting along. I did some initial recordings for one track but I thought that it all was a complete train-wreck and abandoned it. Gonna concentrate on the songs that I have a finished idea for. So far one track is kind of done, but it is just a collage and I might tend to improve it a bit more to not make it sound like a filler. Then I might take care of two other tracks that I sort of got the ideas finished for. One is the singer/songwriter-acoustic-guitar type of song I seem to include on every album so far. We'll see what that leads to soon enough. Another thing is that this album is a sort of comeback type of album. I'll include lots of new ideas and as well some older tricks might feature too. Since I had no hopes to get on with recording I almost gave up looking for interesting things to spice up my music with. Though, as always, I work hard to not disappoint. Believe me when I say so. I scrapped so many songs on Spatsiba Mon Amour that I had recorded in the beginning only to replace with newer versions. So, I somewhat work differently on this album compared to, say, Failed Design, where I mostly just recorded and everything fell into it's own place. I am convinced that it was a lot of luck.
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