25 Jun 2008
by madeleinein In the Studio, ramblings Tags: harpsichord, music, pizzicato, recording studio, rehearsing, vocals
Another week gone by. It was great visiting friends and family once more even though I have to admit I didn’t get as much done as hoped, but at least as much as expected. Thursday morning I returned to Berlin and spent the next two days rehearsing some more. Unfortunately I had overwritten some files with older versions when I copied them onto my Macbook in a hurry before I left. So I had to redo some preparations. On Saturday I did a somewhat late spring cleaning, cleared out my wardrobe and sifted through most of my things to see what I could sell at the fleamarket on Sunday. I also went to see the German beatbox master with his mates play live at the Fête de la Musique and some guys with their electronic live set. One of them used Ableton Live with a toylike looking selfmade MIDI controller. On Sunday I tried to sell some stuff at the fleamarket, baking ten hours in the sun. To top it all off, the girl I went with told me kinda last minute that she had no space left in the car and I had to haul my stuff there by public transport. Not a nice gesture! Should have cancelled then and there. I felt like being badly hungover on Monday, unable to do anything but trying to get better. Drinking would have been more enjoyable! I still have a stiff neck now and was fighting a persistent headache all day, spending some time on my couch, my neck and shoulders propped up against a hot-water bottle and a wet cloth. I even fell asleep in between and dreamt of how to continue with my song ‘The Tide’.
When I tried out the idea it worked. So it has been a pretty creative day against all odds. I added the vocals for the second verse and refrain and fleshed out the arrangement a bit more. I thought I’d have three verses in this song, the third sung differently, but in my dream it came to me that the little dramatic bridge after the first refrain could be adapted as a c-part. When I sung the only solid lines I have for it everything fell into place. The vocals for the new part are very rhythmical and repetitive over a violin and cello pizzicato run and tribal beats. Once I have the rest of the lyrics I’ll sing them on top in a more drawn-out fashion. The whole part creates a lot of suspense and makes ‘The Tide’ sound even more dramatic. The third and final refrain is pretty quiet with almost only harpsichord and vocals and works neatly as a resolution.
Tomorrow I’ll try to finish the lyrics and refine the arrangement. Hopefully my stiff neck will be gone or at least not giving me a headache anymore. Fingers crossed!
My downstair neighbour just rang at my door. Apparently the music was too loud. Probably because I have the window open. Oops! Sorry. Off to bed then so he doesn’t get permanently pissed off with me. ‘Tis late anyway.
x
17 Jun 2008
by madeleinein accords, In the Studio, ramblings Tags: beats, Berlin, field recording, lyrics, MD recorder, music, music producer, twitter
As promised, here comes the sequel… So what else have I been up to lately…
Last Tuesday was the last hot day for a while and since I hadn’t had much time to enjoy the sun I’d decided to go to a lake to finish the lyrics for ‘The Tide’ there. Found a nice, secluded spot, went swimming – the water was still pretty cold, but lovely and refreshing – and then took out my notebook and pen. I got everything but the last verse. Not sure how to conclude the song, yet. I’ve got a couple of different scenarios and I guess I’m gonna leave that open until I’ve arranged the music. Very happy with what I’ve got so far.
After that I had another appointment with the music producer. I gave him the soul song I wrote for someone else in a rough outlined version so she can sing on top of it. He really liked it. Last time I’d been there he’d given me two songs that needed beats, but I disliked the songs so much that with each listening I felt more like getting sick. Sooo not my cup of tea. This time he’d considered my taste and given me a couple of songs that I really like and that inspired some ideas already during listening for the first time. Also I can try whatever I like. It seems to let me work to my strength means not to put me on a short leash. The music producer agreed that I do the radio edit for ‘Chaos & Order’. I understand that he wants to make the song interesting even to people who have the attention span of a mayfly. That’s fine, but I’d rather do it my way. There are supposed to be two songs on the compilation and I’m gonna write a new song specifically for it.
It’s funny how the music producer treats me now. In the beginning he found my music interesting, but he was slightly reserved. I reckon because he thought it too weird. He seems to play everyone’s music to all kinds of people to see how they react. Well, each time I go there I meet someone new. And the introduction goes like that most of the time: ‘Hi, I’m Madeleine.’ ‘Oh, hi. Love your music!’ This resulted in the music producer calling me his shooting star now, which seems a bit like piling it on too much. But it’s nice realising that you can do your own thing and people aren’t only interested in the same old, same old.
A couple of days ago I sat down and made a plan what’s left to do to finish the album. Time’s running out, it’s coming to a close that I can blissfully make music and nothing else. By the end of July I probably have to seriously start looking for a part time job. The good thing is it appears feasible that I’ll be finished with my 12 songs, preparing all songs for the stage and writing another one for the compilation till then. So the timing is right, but I’ll have to work quite a bit in these weeks. I tried to apply proper time management methods where you calculate how long you think things will take and then multiply that by two for unexpected and unknowable delays. Still I’d love to continue just making music, because the learning curve in the last couple of months has been so steep for me and there are so many more songs left in me. That’s why I only want a part time job. At least then I’ll have quite some time left each week for music. I might even have something already. The music producer asked me if I was interested in doing the event management for the huge gig at the end of the year. If the hourly rate is right, gladly. Well, we’ll see.
Thursday night I took my MD recorder and my new Sony stereo mic and went around Berlin recording all kinds of sounds for my song ‘Euphoria’. I’m really happy with the quality of the recordings I got. The next day I edited all of it and replaced the old sounds with the new ones. The basic rhythm is made of a woman walking in high heels and the clicking noise of a traffic light near where I live. The song starts with an S-Bahn arriving and the amazing thing is when I put the sound in I discovered that the rumbling on the tracks is completely in sync with the tempo of the song. In the refrain there’s gonna be more sounds of the S- and U-Bahn. I still have to refine the sound of the beats and put little details in.
On Saturday I packed up my Mac, my little keyboard and some clothes and went to visit family and friends in my hometown. The first few days I was busy catching up with all of them. I hadn’t seen most of them for months. Especially my brother including his little family. My nephew is very musical and we already played a bit together and we’ll continue this afternoon when he’s coming from kindergarten. It’s a lot of fun seeing him eyes aglow when he tried out playing a keyboard for the first time. And it’s great to get a change of scenery from time to time. I felt like a holiday, but I’ve got no time for it and neither the money – I’m buying the array mbira instead. I feel much more relaxed and ready to keep working and pulling all bits together to get the album finished.
One more thing… lately I’ve worked till early in the morning quite often and ended up being too tired to write the blog. So I thought I’d join twitter, because that way I can keep you posted about what I’m up to in no time. So if you want to know what I’m working on and there’s no update in this blog, you can check here.
Phew, what a writing marathon. Guess I’ve mentioned everything. And now back to rehearsing.
x
17 Jun 2008
by madeleinein gigography Tags: Ableton Live, gig, MIDI controller, music, setup
Really been slacking off with the blog writing business. So this might be a long one.
The gig at Schokoladen went okay. I was pretty nervous, still got a lot of stage fright which will hopefully subside once I’ve played all my new songs more often. The sound engineer was a bit of a twat. After a very quick soundcheck he only twiddled his thumbs while I played, didn’t readjust the volumes one bit even though that would have been a terrific idea. He even forgot to turn up the sound of my looper and then tried to blame it on me, when I asked the audience if they heard anything at all. Seems to me you can tell a bad sound engineer not only from him doing nothing after the soundcheck, but also giving stupid advice to female musicians. Yeah right, women and technology! Since I’m usually the only one turning up without a guitar I always have to play first. I had intended to play 5 songs, but was cut short after No. 4. After the gig a friend of mine came up to me, hugged me and told me how brave I was going on stage on my own. Cute! And lots of strangers told me they liked me best. Yay!
The next two days I took off. I couldn’t remember the last time I had two days off in a row and I felt like I deserved it after all the sleep deprivation and brain fuming. Accordingly spent most of the time sleeping.
I’ve got another gig coming up on July 5 and this time I can play as long as I want. I’d like to play all of my songs. A lot of the new ones have never been tried out live and it’s about time now. I’m even thinking of getting a cellist for this gig if I can find one in time. The last gig preparations proved to be much more time-consuming than I expected so this time I figured I’d start way early. Especially since I’m still in how-to-rearrange-songs-for-gigs mode. This is what I’ve been busy with lately. A lot of the plugins I’m using I only have for Windows so I rebuilt the ‘instruments’ and sounds for almost all new songs and bounced down audio for things that will be just played back or triggered live. Now I’m in the process of relearning the chords and melodies for the songs and trying out what seems to work simultaneously and what doesn’t. Gotta find a good MIDI controller programme for OS X, so I don’t have to assign two buttons or more any longer to get the result I want in Ableton Live. There’s still a lot to learn for me and I feel I’ve only scratched the surface of all the possibilities my setup provides. I’m thinking of buying a foot MIDI controller so that my hands are free for playing the keyboard or the array mbira once I’ve got it and I can still trigger sounds live with my feet. I guess it’s gonna be a work in progress and the more gigs I play the more I’ll know what works best.
Really tired now, even though I’ve got more to report. I’ll write again tomorrow I promise.
x
02 Jun 2008
by madeleinein gigography, ramblings Tags: Ableton Live, array mbira, Berlin, Camille, gig, Schokoladen
Been busy trying to rearrange some of my new songs so I can play them live. I wasn’t expecting it to take soooo long, but it does. Ran into some problems today when I realised that on my Macbook VST instruments don’t appear in the plug-ins folder in Ableton Live even though everything’s set up correctly. I wish I could just throw a fit, but that doesn’t help since I’m running out of time. Found a workaround for now which isn’t perfect. Who cares! For now. I’m getting a bit anxious that I might not be so well prepared after all. So much fine-tuning left and rehearsing all the little bits… gotta be done, so it will be done. I guess it’ll all gonna come together tomorrow.
The heat in Berlin is shocking. I don’t wanna moan. I like summer, especially when I actually have some time that I can spend outside. Preferably by a lake. For now I’m stuck inside my flat at close to 30 degrees Celsius. I’m so looking forward to Thursday. Finally going to a lake and spend an afternoon writing lyrics, swimming and having a picknick. That’s going to be my treat to myself. It’s always good to have something nice to look forward to when you’re slaving away while everyone else seems to be out and about having fun. Oh, and going to the Camille concert tomorrow.
Something great though also happened. My friend in San Diego contacted me to confirm he’s definitely coming in early August and he’s gonna bring my spanking new Array Mbira with him. Yay! Funny, I’d had just dreamt of playing one even though I never have. Gotta make up my mind soon how exactly I want it to be, because they’re custom-made and it takes about 4-6 weeks.
And now a little advertising: all who read this and live in Berlin, please come to the gig on Wednesday at Schokoladen. I’m gonna start playing no later than 10 pm so please come early.
Dinner now (I’m starving), then a huge pile of dishes and then back to rehearsing until my eyes fall shut.
x
