I had the idea last Christmas when I recorded the little message with the SoundCloud app. I love using field recordings, so I thought why not let others take part? SoundCloud makes it possible and very easy. Let me introduce you to…
For each song of the new album I will collect sound contributions from anyone who wants to join in. I like translating the lyrics into the music so I usually use sounds associated with the theme or the words of the song. So for each song I will ask for a specific sound or a sound to a motif. Who knows, maybe even a melody to create an internet choir?
I will play a bit of the song live at tomorrow’s first livestream ‘Notes from the Ivory Tower’. For this song I would like you to record one word. I’m gonna give you a few lines of the lyrics to set the mood:
Your words all mangled and broken
You don’t really make sense
Stop motion sentences that hang in the air
Unvoiced, incomplete
Be creative, continue to story in your mind and think of one word that would fit the mood. Anything goes as long as it’s just one word. You can choose whatever language you want. I will take the sounds of those words and make the beats for ‘Patchwork’ out of them. I’ll be updating you in the upcoming livestreams.
Tomorrow (Friday, July 16) the remix contest for Zero Tolerance will commence. The stems and all the info can be found at FiXT Remix.
I will handpick the winners who will have their remixes released in the FiXT store on a (mini)album. There’s no other prize from FiXT Remix, but I’ll throw in a download of my live album ‘Live at the Watertower’ that will be released on September 3. You can find more info on it here.
The Minutia Remix Project has been pretty quiet lately. Things have taken longer again on my part so the deadline I’ve set for Mingle is void.
The new one is now: September 9… 8 more weeks from today!
I’m still awaiting some back. So if you’re one the people who wanted to do a remix could you please get in touch with me to let me know if you’re still gonna do it? Or if you’d like to give it try, but hadn’t chosen a song yet read the Mingle post and get in touch with me. The more the merrier.
I’m sitting here outside an old mansion outside of Berlin (actually right now I’m at the hospital cafeteria for the free wifi). It’s quiet but for the wind, birds, crickets and the occassional car sound from far away. It’s sunny/cloudy and windy. The perfect summer residence. I still can’t believe my luck. One day I’m melting in the heat in my flat unable to do any work because my brain hot way too slow, the next I’m in a stranger’s huge house at my free disposal. It’s got everything but hot water and who needs that in summer. Guess I’ll stay here for a week and except for the occassional city guest I’ll be on my own writing new songs. Got a mobile recording studio here with me (Hurray for technology!) and a video camera. I’m only here since last night and I’m already feeling inspired.
I started the Minutia Remix Project already in October, that’s over half a year ago (where did the time go?) So I decided it might be time to set a deadline for it. Don’t fret… it’s not tomorrow.
Deadline: July 31, 2010.
That’s 12 weeks from now. It should give you plenty of time to work on the remixes and/or the artwork, methinks. Of course the project is still open until then. So if you’d like to contribute to it with a remix or artwork, you can read up on it and get in touch with me.
I want to give a big shoutout to all the contributors. You’ve done an amazing job. Thank you so so much! You have no idea how often you’ve saved my day when I was feeling down.
The remixes that are finished at this point can be downloaded at bandcamp. The artwork contributions are up on flickr.
Finally there’s time for a day off and an update of all things bloomy.
As planned I recorded some mbira for ‘A Little’. I came up with some really nice melodies, but they made such a huge difference to the whole feel of the song that I ended up having to change the bass line and parts of the vocals. The end part has a new vocal melody and I sampled my voice and played it as chords in the choruses. Very happy with the song now.
I finished the rough mix for the remaining songs: ‘A Little’, ‘Breathing Underwater’, ‘Euphoria’, ‘Hearts First’ and ‘Unspoken’. After that I made rounds at friends’ who are either sound engineers or music producers and had a good listen to the album on proper studio monitors to figure out the weaknesses in the mix. Aaron, a friend of mine, also gave me a quick crash course on how to EQ my songs to make them sound professionally and well balanced. Luckily there’s not that much to do. Just some polishing!
Next up (musically speaking) was a remix of my friend Mr. Bobby Starrr’s house track ‘Loaded Up On Pluto’. My first remix ever, but it was surprisingly easy. You can listen to the longer version on his myspace page. It’s gonna come out on vinyl sometime early next year and he will do a remix of ‘A Little’ for me in return.
As you have probably already read, I took part in the Hobnox Evolution 2 competition. At the moment you can listen to 10 of my new songs in the rough mix there. In the last two weeks I made to no. 2. Close, but no cigar! But there’s still the jury picks so there’s still hope. Thanks to all of you who voted for me, by the way! Anyway, no matter if I make it into the finals or not, taking part has brought about new and exciting prospects. I was asked if I wanted to write a score for a short film, got tons of nice comments and got to know interesting people. It really shows I’m on the right track with my music. And maybe even best of all, I found musicians who will play on my album. Cello, violin and upright bass. Brilliant! I will record them in the next week or so.
Yesterday I played and recorded the grand piano in Kino Babylon, a movie theatre here in Berlin. A friend of mine organised it for me and Aaron did the microphoning and recording. He used 5 mics and it took two and a half hours to properly set up which left just an hour to record all the piano parts. Quite exhausting! Tomorrow I will mix the parts in. Really curious how it’ll sound in the end. I just hope the sound of the U-Bahn passing underneath the theatre won’t be a problem.
I might have found a booking agent. He’ll come to my next gig and check out what I do live. And last but not least, the planning of the booklet design and accompanying photo shoot is making progress, too. More on that soon (erm, really!)
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.
