20 Dec 2011
by madeleinein In the Studio, ramblings Tags: Ableton, Ableton Live, album, array mbira, bass, deadline, ep, glass harp, instruments, kalimba, metallophone, minimoog, new songs, piano, recording, songs, studio recording, uke, ukulele, video, videos, webcast, work in progress
I’m sitting on my couch, listening to the state of the songs I have so far. This is the second attempt at writing a catch up post, but the last was swallowed by WordPress for iOs. Again. Anyway…
As the year nears its end, I feel like it’s time to take stock, look and listen back of where I got this year. I didn’t quite get as far as I wanted, but I love the new songs. Moving into a new place has been part of that, but it’s taken up some time as well. Right now I have 8 songs in various stages: ‘Audacity’, ‘Live & Learn’, ‘Too Soon’, ‘In Time’ and ‘Patchwork’ more or less roughly mixed, ‘Together’ and ‘Afterglow’ as rough demos and last, but not least ‘Aurelia’ somewhere in between. So about halfway there. Not too shabby!
Compared to ‘Minutia’ there are more live instruments on the new songs that give it a sort of live feel. I got more instruments since finishing the last album and my boyfriend, whose studio is next to mine, has even more. Working in tech support at Ableton has me staring at Live without making music. This made me crave the tactile feel of tines, strings, keys and so on. As an act of deviance against all the MIDI, editing and goggling the screen, I guess.
In the last few days I’ve made a list of all the things that need to be done before a release besides the music. I had set a deadline for mid February ages ago, but it’s dawned on me that it has become pretty much impossible or I’d have to rush things too much. So I’ve decided to instead release an EP in mid May and the album in late August or so. This way the wait is not too long. Sound good?
Webcast
If you want to have a listen to the progress on the songs of my sophomore album… I’m doing a fortnightly webcast and the previous videos are available to watch. Wanna hear the songs emerge? Or watch live from now on? The next one is on New Year’s Day at 9 pm CET, then Sunday every other week.
Bass, Minimoog, mbira, glass harp, kalimba, metallophone, tom
06 May 2008
by madeleinein accords, In the Studio Tags: glass harp, kalimba, lyrics, music, music producer, recording studio
Today has been an amazing day. Early on I had to run a few errands and it was such great weather outside. I all of a sudden felt really inspired. Saturday I was in such a strange mood. Everything seemed to go wrong. I got completely stuck with ‘Celeste’. It’s never a good thing too feel defeated creatively so I always make it a point to end the day with a good feeling. I trailed through my song ideas and kinda rediscovered ‘Endless’. Before I thought I had messed up the song, but I figured out pretty quickly what was wrong. And on Sunday and today I’ve been working on this song and trying to get my voice into shape again.
Today I finally sat down and finished the lyrics for it. It’s called ‘Euphoria’ now. The title came to me a couple of days ago when I walked through my quarter and saw the sign for a bar named ‘Euphoria’ and thought what a great title it would make. I already sorta had lyrics for the song formerly called ‘Endless’, but I wasn’t too happy with them overall. Now I am though. The rough idea for verse and refrain are all there, chords, vocals, bass, beats. The main sound is the glass harp. When cut up and made into a loop played as an instrument it makes a nice upbeat skeleton. The kalimba and the bass round the whole thing off. Sounds almost caribbean, especially the refrain. A very happy song (as could be expected from the title). Very fitting to the season.
Yesterday I got a call from a music producer that I met up with about three weeks ago. He’s trying to put together a project of promising Berlin-based musicians. If things go right there’s gonna be one or two compilation CDs and a huge event in autumn… and this might prove to be exactly what I still need. Loads of media coverage and therefore attention from hopefully the right people. When I was contacted I was at first pretty sceptical and didn’t expect much, but it does sound great. Anyway, let’s not get too far ahead. Next week I’m gonna go to his studio and play him my own favourite songs… I’ll keep you posted.
Off to bed now. So excited about continuing work on ‘Euphoria’.
x
03 May 2008
by madeleinein In the Studio Tags: beats, glass harp, microphoning, music, recording studio
Since a friend is staying at my place before he flies back home I have had less time in my studio because it’s also my living and guestroom. So I opted for not writing, but still making music.
I’m on the new song ‘Celeste’. I use it a bit as a playground to have fun. No rules, no restrictions. Who knows how it’s gonna sound once it’s finished. I’m not even sure if it’s going to get any lyrics. On Wednesday I filled different wine glasses with water, tuned them and then played them as a glass harp. The tuning and then proper microphoning took a lot of time. I’ve used the glass harp in a couple of songs already, because the sound is so lovely (For example in ‘Sunshine Smile’). Today I’ve recorded tons of sounds I made with my mouth and some handclaps that I’ve started arranging into beats. I also had fun manipulating and cutting up audio as something like a bass line. The song itself is still pretty rough, but I’m assembling lots of pieces first to see where it leads me.
x
