Genetic Engines demo by medwardsmusic

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Being a full-time working newly-wed with siblings-in-law and friends who are getting married has taken away from my time recording. Additionally, I do not have ready-access to my recording space as it is a half-hour commute in the opposite direction of my work’s half-hour commute!

In spite of this, I had time to do a little recording about a week ago for a collaborative project. More to come for it, too.

As you can see from the post below, I have enabled a weekly “Tweet summary” post that collects all of my twitter posts (which range far and wide in topics). I apologize as such a collection likely doesn’t interest you, but it provides a nice archive for me and a reflection point on how I used my week.

In any case, how are things for you these days, dear reader? Have you been able to do the things you want to do? What have you done lately in service of such goals?

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YouTube – Sunny Day Real Estate “7″ 9-29-09 Jimmy Fallon Live.

Simply wonderful. Glad to have gotten to see them again. One of my favorite bands.

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A couple of posts ago I posted a song that had stuck with me from a film I saw in Kenya. I made a lo-fi cover of it on banjo. Enjoy!

Signs of Spring cover (Lo-fi) by medwardsmusic

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Buy Snowy EP (2007) from iTunes, Amazon MP3, or eMusic.

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Once upon a time I was a sophomore in high school, living in Nairobi, Kenya. Television in Kenya was, to this American boy, an irrational mix with no rhyme or reason. Sunset Beach, WWF, failed tv shows (Meego?), strange commercials, and obscure movies. It was surreal to see captial-a American television in a foreign context, like eating McDonalds on Mars or something.

One movie that I encountered on Kenyan television was the film The Last Butterfly. The film is about a french stage mime, Antoine Moreau, who is compelled by the Gestapo to put on a show for the children of Terezin, a “model” concentration camp set up to trick Red Cross observers about the true nature of the camps. Antoine gradually becomes wise to the truth of the situation and where the “transports” were really taking the Jews. He then sets out to stage a show to end all shows, in (suicidal/martyring) protest.

It is not as intense of a movie as, say, Schindler’s List or The Pianist, but it is very good. I bring it up because in the movie there is a bittersweet song that caught my ears at the time and I wanted to post the lyrics here. It’s called Signs of Spring.

Come and I’ll teach you to smile up at cloudy skies
Just listen to me and I’ll help you see
Life with lovers’ eyes

Rain just means that sunshine must be on its way
Lovers know the darkest hour comes before the day
Lovers have no fears of what the year ahead will bring
They know the cold of winter is another sign of spring

Even in the dead of winter I hear some bird sing
For cold and snow, as lovers know, are only signs of spring

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I recently started using SoundCloud to host music files, collaborate, and share music. I’m creating this post to test out the SoundCloud widget. Check it out:

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I played the second show of four that I am playing this month. I thought I’d share some thoughts I am having right now about it all.

I’d love to hear others who are musically inclined weigh in with their own experience. (Or if there are parallels to other hobbies/disciplines, I’d love to hear that too). Keep in mind that these shows are small-time deals. 10-20 people there.

On how well my music works as a one man band

This obviously subjective topic is obviously up to the listener to decide. But I’ll just note a few things:

• Pre-recorded backup material is dangerous ground to tread on. It can be boring. It can lead to awkward mistakes live. To try to counteract this boredom, I am trying to stick to drumbeats and bass lines, and to leave any lead instrument to myself. I’m also trying to stick with digital sounds, and not anything that’s supposed to sound realistic. The reasoning being the same reason why MIDI versions of real instruments are usually disappointing. (I once saw a band use midi Trumpets and it was really, really cheesy.)
• I am wary of looping-pedal-fests. I have seen this stuff done really well sometimes (Andrew Bird is a notable example) but I usually do not enjoy one-man-bands in the form of looping parts. It’s kind of like “hang on a minute while I get my song going, dude.”
• It’s hard to translate my full-band songs into interesting one-man versions. I write songs that use drums, electric guitars, multiple keyboard instruments, and multi-vocal lines and harmonies. Shrinking it down can sometimes destroy the soul of the song.
• I tend to default to simple, finger-picking acoustic songs. These are nice, but I think it will be rare that this is all that enrapturing for a listener.

On friends at shows

I’m going to say something that I hate but it’s also something I do and have done. You have my full admission of hypocrisy up front. I hate it when people don’t pay attention and are clearly having full discussions or are incessantly texting during a show. It feels even worse when I watch the video of the show and I can barely hear my performance over the loud chatters of half my friends.

But let me be clear about this reflection:

1. I am thankful for the support of my friends, even if they aren’t interested in my music. Friend-rock, as Sufjan Stevens describes it, is the phenomenon that happens when your friends come to your show and support you, but don’t really care for your music. It happens. I’ve been in that spot. I’ve gone to a friend’s show even though I wasn’t the biggest fan of their music. There’s no reason to feel guilty about this. People like what they like.
2. It is (to some degree) up to me to be interesting enough to be worth giving attention to. It’s not as though I think I can sit on stage and play a dreadfully slow, repetitive, and flat song for 15 minutes and then expect full, enraptured attention by everyone there. This point applies especially to strangers. If I want their attention I have to earn it.
3. I am not a live show nazi. Aside from enjoying the chance to share my work with others, I want shows to be fun. I can’t imagine myself ever saying something on stage to kill the mood or complain to the crowd.
4. For some, a show is nice background music to the real business of enjoying a drink with a friend. Part of going to a bar and seeing a performance is often the fun of taking it in with a friend. Have a beer. Catch up.
5. In any case, this is something that isn’t going to change.

But, none of these facts eliminate the reality that it hurts to perform and to see people not really give it any attention, respect, or much of a chance.

Before anyone grabs their pitchforks to announce my self-righteousness, hypocrisy, or naivete about this, remember that I admit up front that I am guilty of this, that I am aware this will always happen no matter what, and that I realize it’s not worth worrying about.

On singing in a live performance

I don’t have the best voice in the world. No, that’s dressing things up too much. My live singing voice is spotty, depending on the context. Sometimes it’s downright bad. I may hit the pitches most of the time but what is needed is the extra oomph, the gut, the emotion that slides along with whatever song style is happening. I feel like I’m typically just giving a functional performance, but rarely taking it to that magical level.

Recording, though, I can accommodate my mediocre voice with the increased ability to focus on nailing a singing part. I mention this not as some kind of boring (false?) modesty, but because something occurred to me. When recording, I can relax and focus. Live, I am typically “winging it” by having to pick a guitar, play a keyboard, or something else. It’s multitasking.

I think my difficulties with live singing have more to do with my comfort level playing these other instruments, and not so much with my voice itself. The (limited) potential of my vocal talent aside, I think I can sing better than I usually do live. The problem is I need to learn how to be relaxed, smoothly playing everything. The kind of relaxed where you know what you’re doing so well that it’s instinctual and muscle memory — NOT intellectual processing.

Ok, let’s just cut to the chase: I just need to practice. But not just running through songs. I need to practice being in the moment, sunken into the fabric of the song. Ok, enough mumbo jumbo.

On not having a full band to peform my music

It sucks. Anyone want to play music with me?

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I am opening tonight for Balloon Messenger (Marky Dally). This is the second of four nights this month we will be taking the stage at Grumpy Dave’s Pub, above Easy Street Cafe in Bowling Green, OH.

Hope to see you there!

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I haven’t gotten to play with Logic 9 (part of the new Logic Studio) too extensively yet, but here are a few initial reactions:

1. Looks pretty much exactly the same.

2. There is a light/white box around the part of the window that has focus (arrange vs. mixer vs. media/library/bin). Logic 8 lightly shaded the top but now it’s a fully surrounding white rounded-edge box. I guess it’s not that different but it’s perhaps more noticeable.

3. New icon in top right for Notes. I find myself putting lyrics or mixing/recording ideas into TextEdit documents all the time, so to have a dedicated area for “notes” in Logic is long overdue and very welcome. I approve!

Besides, if you collaborate with anyone else and share projects, it makes a lot more sense to attach your comments to the project than to an email or whatever.

Click to enlarge

4. The improvements to Take folders is great. Finally being able to drag audio around without flattening/splitting-up multiple takes is long-overdue. Why didn’t they allow for that in the first place in Logic 8?

5. Creating sampler instruments out of audio regions. In the past year or two I’ve been getting really into sampling sounds for songs. This was always a tedious process of bouncing a sound, importing it, dropping it onto an EXS24 instrument (unless there was an easier way I’m not aware of). Not that hard but time consuming meaning you’re being less creative and doing more grunt-work.

Now you can do all that in one step. This makes me so incredibly happy.

Creating MIDI instruments out of audio regions is easier than ever.

6. Flex-time. AWESOME. I haven’t done anything crazy with it yet, but even just dragging stuff around you can tell that this makes editing the timing of tracks soooooo much easier.

I’ve gotten pretty good at recording drums to metronome over the years, but there are always some hits that are off. The process of chopping, x-fading, and dragging those clips around was so annoying. Now it’s so much easier. Woohoo!

They give you 6 flex-time “modes”:

• Slicing – for drum slicing – preserves speed
• Rhythm – for “non-monophonic sources” like rhythm guitars
• Monophonic – good for vocals, melodies, bass lines
• Polyphonic – most straining on cpu. Complex sounds.
• Tempophone – to do retro tape-warping effects.
• Speed – just flat out changing the speed of the clip. Nothing new here.

7. There is a preference so that if you right-click on the arrange it opens BOTH the tools and options. So I can switch to fade/scissors/flextime tool OR the contextual options for doing stuff to a region. Big win, in my opinion!

Right-click context menu allows for both “Tools” and context-sensitive choices.

Concluding thoughts:

Overall, it’s not a big shiny diamond-coated upgrade, but there are some very solid new features that make me very happy, even if you could argue that some of them should have been part of Logic 8.

If I think of anything else I’ll be sure to update this post. I haven’t gotten to test it much in different situations or workloads so I don’t know if it’s more stable. Supposedly it is.

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