This one was a pure case of pull. I was just heading to my daily activities of the non-musical kind, when the Muse came straight to me and said:
MUSE: hiya, here is the usual song kit for you, today we have a bit of a melody with a bass line behind. You're welcome. Now here's the deal: you can do with this what you've been doing lately, just record the ideas and put them in your huge pile of unfinished stuff, but I was thinking, maybe you can also rearrange your day, and crank out something quick for that weekly thing you've been doing lately? ME: oh shit. I mean, thank you Muse. The song was pieced together in around 3 hours, out of which 40 minutes went to the solo. I had the starting idea for it, opening with a copy of the voice and then moving to something different, and I soon found a second pillar: moving from major scale to pentatonic in the second half increased the "temperature" nicely... The drums again are rudimentary; one of these times when I really miss having a drummer buddy to whom I can send stuff. But well, there is always time in the future I guess. I wanted the song finished better than perfect, because otherwise... Something to ponder upon, which toll is worse on one's mind, the unwritten song or the not-finished-recording song. After the "recording rush" was over, the room looked a bit like a battlefield, but one more time I've found that my systems helped me avoid confussion and keep on moving on and take decissions. After I finished, I could function the rest of the day normally, when only a few years ago, a "burst" of this kind would have left me exhausted, loathing music for a few days, and feeling entitled to all kind of long breaks and dubious treats. Among influences, this time I'd mention out of the bat the Spanish band Siniestro Total (early records, where their songs lasted 1 minute, like this one :) ), and of course all the Fat Wreck Chords bunch. YOU'RE REPULSIVE You're repulsive You're disgusting there's too much people like you you're a coward can't be lower you never bring something new You go to the same supermarket to buy always the same old shit you're so abused but it doesn't matter there's nothing new to see You're repulsive You're disgusting there's too much people like you you're a coward can't be lower you never bring something new You're an adult for porno and driving a child for everything else You're dead inside and ugly on the outside that's not what I want for me not what I want for me
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I wanted to try something different for my new sonic output; adding quick and dirty drums, as one simple stepping up from a simple metronome.
Naturally, things took longer than expected to set up, but I like the sorta pattern that my production is taking lately; along the week, I try to get some time out of the pressures of the day to get something done, using the "radioactive task" technique that I've described (diy music counts as very hard work that really can burn you out; you're making the work of, by my count so far, 4 different people, plus the overhead of moving from one "cap" to the other). This work advances slow and methodically, following the Toyota philosophy of "going slow to go fast". I'm solving problem after problem without skipping any, and making sure that the investment of time pays off, that I no longer solve a problem and then forget that I did. This way of working gets a bit on my nerves sometimes, but what I've found is that it allows me to better let it go when I just want to take some sonic product out quick. There I forget about any kind of premise and just churn out; it's a good practice in itself, too. For example this Antichristmas carol, started with the paraphrasis of the usual holidays wish, and a lot of listening to Metal Messiah Radio I've been doing lately. I felt like growling and venting out, and the lyrics came out very easily: Murder Christmas and fucking drop dead the air is poisoned and so is the Earth the chances of hope are just in your head your flesh is dropping one year of decay Murder christmas Murder christmas Murder christmas This is a Murder christmas Where is the snow the whole planet's gonna blow you wish you had another so you can go waste some more king of creation moron on the rise shame of the universe retarded suicide Murder Christmas and ugly new year life as we know it is about to dissappear Murder Christmas and fucking drop dead the air is poisoned and so is the Earth Let's talk influences, which I always enjoy. Homage due to Brujería, the first song of Down's 'IV', a bit of Mayhem, and a bit of Doors and Queens of the Stone Age in the final solo I guess, although I tried to go more for maniac than for psychodelic-cabaret... Also there was this band called Negativity, with album titles like 'please kill yourself'... I liked that style of "so depressing that is almost funny". :)
An "androginous" Leonard Cohen cover, as I did both the male and female voices -- I wonder what would Leo think about that :p.
As i was looking for the guitar tablature, I stumbled upon a couple of other people's covers of the song that helped me choose the arrangements. For example, at first I was going for a simple strumming (rang-a-ranga-rang-a-ranga-rang...), but then I found this cover by a lady where she used arpegios instead, which is a great way to underline the bass riff that is the foundation of the song. I also disagreed with a couple of her choices: for example, the singing style she chose was soul-like, and she had a great voice, with technique and feeling, but this song to me has a confessional tone, like something you wishper to someone in a private conversation (a vibe common perhaps to the whole "Ten New Songs"), and that's the feeling I went for in my voice. Also, she reinterpreted the chords from the bridge ("For the innermost decissions..."). I like that cadence a lot and to me was essential to stick to it. All of this, of course, is not to say that her version was "wrong" and mine was "right". I just find interesting that, even when you cover other people's stuff, your style and formation come through in your choices, in what you keep and what you take out of the picture. I love the fact that the arpegio arrangement makes the song something that could have been in one of the first Cohen's records... Regarding my flow: there might seem that there is a certain unevenness, as I launched a sonic product only yesterday. "One sonic product a week" is a minimum rate I established for myself, and I "saved the week" by launching yesterday's "quickie". Besides those quick impromptus, there are these other songs that take longer and ship when they are ripe enough. My future plans include removing more and more quickies and adding more and more proper songs in the mix, but let's get to February first. My premise also spoke of "one proper song from here to February". This one does not count as it is a cover; I was rather thinking in "one original song, properly produced at my current quality standards". The production here is limited to solve a couple of quick problems (low pass filter to remove sibilance in voice, compression to smoothen two upsetting volume peaks, and a bit of reverb glue). I'm more focused here in getting in the habit of releasing stuff, and the pure pleasure of being a musician, letting out my human emotions getting out of the way as much as possible. Guitar Hump (in Alonetone)
I just got me a new battery for the Metal Zone, and wanted to do new stuff with the electric guitar. Anybody who owns a MZ will know that the battery is kind of a "weak spot": if you don't take cautions and unplug it after using it, you will find it dead next time you try to use it. This happens even with the cables unplugged, when the led does not switch on and everything would seem to indicate that electricity is not running. But now that I've removed the lid of the pedal, the battery is easy to plug-unplug. In terms of process improvement, the battery adds one factor of comfort (avoiding the need for yet another electricity adaptor). To take it one step futher, in the future I want to connect the pedal out to the audio card with one of those tiny cables that are used to connect one pedal next to another. (I am currently using a full guitar cable, which is a waste: you have to manage that cable, which in the case of audiocables requires additional cautions...). Once with this new improvement, playing electric guitar and having it recorded will be very quick and immediate. As for this impro, like I said in my previous post, I made an effort to try to make some sense, but keeping it light and nimble. I think I'm going to adopt that principle of improvisation theater that says "say yes to anything". Whatever comes (even things like landing on a wrong fret, the fingers sliping out for a moment...), try to incorporate it, add to it. Some mistakes make for great findings, especially in the tough music style that I like, where dissonance is not only accepted but almost recommended.
I think I've solved enough problems already to commit myself to some kind of consistent delivery. I find it's important, as part of my musicianship, to commit to some kind of consistent finishing things, putting stuff at the door... even if more often than not there's nobody at the other side of that door (but Internet distribution makes things fuzzy on that regard; one element that without doubt helped me conform my decission was a couple of comments I read the other day in praise of a song that I had recorded a year ago and completely forgotten.)
My initial premise is: "putting one sonic product out there every week. Out of those sonic products, before February, at least one of them will have to be a full song". (I considering the "week" unit as a container, like I do with this blog's posts, so maybe a better formulation would be "putting out one sonic product IN every week", like boxes to be filled. :) ) Like any goal worth pursuing, this one for me hits the sweet spot between "yeah, I can do that" and making me slightly nervous. Will see how it goes, and PDSA things along the way. For example, the definition of "full song" is something open to broad debate. I guess I mean song-carefully-planned-with-structure-and-production-treatment-as-good-as-I-can-make-it-right-now. But that is conditioned from the get go by the fact, previously discussed here, that my equipment is precarious, audio production is something that bores me to tears, and in the end everything I do is demo-like. What it comes down to, in the end, is this thing I've discovered about myself: any creative task energizes me, makes me feel happy. On the contrary, any grid-like, predefined, gray task, depletes my stamina and deppresses me. Setting a compressor, I don't get a kick of that. Computers give you a lot of possibilities, but also oblige you to fill A LOT of forms every day. Zzzzz. I'd rather be singing my guts out any day. "Putting out there" is also something that can and will be tweaked. I start with what I got: Bandcamp for the full-fledged projects when the time comes, and Alonetone for the little "bubbles" I will be launching in the meantime. Jamendo, which started as such a good idea, has been becoming a more and more disgusting site along the years, and now is braindead. I also checked Soundcloud, but now that they killed the community features I don't see any advantage to it for uploading isolated tracks, and Reverb Nation, sorrily too techy for my Second World computer resources. So here is the first sonic delivery: At first, trying to keep things simple, I thought of my sonic products as some kind of random improvisation with the guitar, maybe toying around with some effect, and giving it some fancy name. I don't discard doing that when the honeymoon effect wears off and some deadly deadline attacks, but I also thought it would be a nice exercise trying to record something that makes sense: defining a few guidelines, giving myself 2-3 minutes, pressing record, and applying all the technique I've learned, all the records I've loved, all the gigs I've played, to play something that makes some kind of sense. Not hoping to write a genius song every time, rather something simple, but always keeping some kind of "bird's view", aiming to some kind of closure. This one "Sure you know what you're doing" came out of that. Another question that opens, regarding the premise, is what to do about the ballance new stuff/frozen. I'd love to ease a bit the burden of my huge inventory of semifinished songs. But on this regard, the rule of thumb, good enough to start, is to just see it from the pov of the "customer"; they don't care how old the music is, they don't care if it took a year or a minute to complete. I'll take it from there and see where it takes me. I've spoken extensively about the kanban board and its benefits for the mental life of any busy person (and who isn't a busy person these days)... I've recently added to my arsenal a second productivity weapon, not so well publicized although it should.
The thing I've found is, the kanban board works as a charm for one-time-projects: you have to do this, then that, then the other, and the project gets done. End. Period. Next one please. Kanban is like a todo list with the second dimension added in (The To-Do is a line, the Kanban a plane that self evolves as you understand your work...) But the thing is, like Benson and others say, when you're not using it for one time projects, but for routine work that you have to do every day, a kanban board can feel a bit stupid sometimes. Taking the same post it from "options" to "done" every day... at some moment you become kind of numb, and there's no added learning nor the nice feeling of accomplishment in reaching the finish line as with the projects. Benson solves the problem by using the Kanban as an "information irradiator"; in addition to the colums, the kanban space gets filled with all kind of stuff relevant to your work day, tables, checkboxes, etc. I have to admit that it looks very "arty", but I prefer (or my all-over-the-place mind requires) a more corralled system even for that routine stuff. The solution I've found comes from another Japanese device, and sorry if it sounds snobbish, but I've honestly tried all kind of systems before and this is the one that works best for me. The Kamishibai board is as simple to explain as its cousin the Kanban. In its simplest representation, the one I use, you use one card per routine task. One side of the card is green and the other is red. One color means pending and the other done. That's it. Again, genious simplicity that doesn't gets its sticky fingers on what you have to do. The workload is too complex to have a complex control system in addition. At a single glance, you get the picture of what you've done and what's still missing, and can get strategic about your day. In each cards you can write particular details about the task, the periodicity you want, etc... And that's it. You can never say that you're settling for ever, but this kanban+kamishibai structure is difficult to beat for me... |
Nacho Jordi
I have a guitar and I'm gonna use it Archives
September 2018
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