Song Updates

I revisited some songs tonight and reworked them a little. The more I listened to them the more I found things to tweak on and things to add. They will never be finished, I guess...

Right. I changed a few things about Got It Right by my band Awesome.
I disliked the drums from the very beginning, so I tried getting a little more punch out of them. I'm still not satisfied, not at all, but it sounds a little more the way I want it.
Also I tweaked the volume of some parts here and there, I hope it sounds a bit more fitting overall.
The final thing: I rerecorded the guitar solo (remember: it was a first take to begin with), because there were a few mistakes that stopped the flow of the solo. Now it should sound more thought through, if still a little rough (I actually dig that sound).
There's just one thing I absolutely hate... I just can't get the bass drum to sound through. You might hear a faint bass drum in the distance, but that's it. Meh... I'll work on that later.

The other song I modified is The Grass Is Listening which I just put up recently. While listening to it again I noticed that one major element was missing: The Timpani.
That's right, I actually had a timpani in there to accentuate the timing, and I absolutely love it. When I was composing the song it was one of those things that just flew at me because it sounded so right.
Also I added a single distant guitar that I actually played (no synthesizer here). It adds just about the right amount of depth I wanted.

So what do you guys think? I put both versions of both songs up so if you like the one version better, you may keep it.

Again: Enjoy!

Major Awesome - The Grass Is Listening

Update August 23rd: New version here! The old version is available in the post.

I totally forgot about that little song I made some time ago. It's very different than anything I've made so far, because it's completely done with synthesizers.
When I began using my keyboard again I kinda messed around with Cubase and the instrument database of Hypersonic, which lets you control any instrument with your keyboard. A whole orchestra of strings? No problem. Hip hop drums? Got it. A large sperm whale skating recklessly on ice? Well, that's quite a strange thing to ask for, but they have it.

So this is my (instrumental) song The Grass Is Listening. It's very simple, but I love the relaxed flow of it. Put it on your mp3 player, lay down in a meadow and listen to the song while staring into the clear blue sky. I tried it, and it works perfectly.

Enjoy!

Quick note

I'm currently working on several projects at once, mainly two songs I'm recording right now: One is an acoustic song of mine I've written some days ago, and one is a cover. I planned on recording the acoustic song tonight, but after about an hour of recording and making mistakes, I just gave up. I'm doing this one on film as well, so it has to be a complete take. No cheating and chopping stuff together.
And concerning the cover: I have some ambitious plans for that one. I actually need to learn to play the piano. So this one might take a while too.
Alas, this means no recording this weekend. Instead, enjoy the worst website on the Interwebs.

Cleverbot is a clever bot.

There's many bots you can chat with online, and Cleverbot is one of them.
The more people talk to it, the more it learns. This means, it sort of ponders before responding to consider the context of your conversation, instead of just randomly answering. I think.

Here's the most interesting parts of my conversation with a bot.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE, you rascal!

First Impressions from Holland

I spent the weekend in Holland with Phil and Dominique, just camping and relaxing. We had to search hours for a place to crash (we left on short notice), but in the end it paid off: We had a whole meadow basically for ourselves, it was cheap, and we even had a shower!
We took a whole lot of pictures, but not with my camera - as you will clearly be able to see on the following pictures, there was dirt within the camera and I wasn't able to remove it completely. But Dominiques cam was great for high quality pictures as well, at least that what we were told and what it looked like on the big LCD display.


So here's a collection of photographs we took the first night on our camping site; more images will follow. Enjoy!
CLICK HERE FOR MORE, you rascal!

Awesome - Got It Right

Alright, so here's something:

I finally got around to recording one of the newer songs of my band, Awesome (what else?). I had to do everything myself and it pretty much sounds like it, too... see it as a demo, aight? It is FAR from finished. I was just too excited to keep it to myself.

Update August 23rd: New version here! The old version is available in the post. 
CLICK HERE FOR MORE, you rascal!

Something With Numbers

Wow. Coincidences happen at the most inopportune times, I guess.
I've been looking for this song for ages but I just couldn't remember the name of the band or the song. Now I just casually stumbled upon it.

Damn.

A Day at the Studio

So recently I was in a recording studio with one of my bands, Brilliant Thieves. It's a cover band and we basically wanted to have a demo record for anyone who books us, so they know what they're dealing with.
I was seriously more than impressed with the professionality of the studio. I have never been in a studio as big as this one, so naturally I wanted to take pictures. The only thing I had was my mobile phone, so the quality sucks, but you get a nice impression of the rooms and gear. Also, for everyone interested, I put the demos at the end of the post so have a listen if you like.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE, you rascal!

"Time together is just never quite enough"

You might remember my little experiment with my guitar effect board a while ago, where I arranged Delphics Doubt to play on one guitar with help of a looping device. Sure enough I got hooked on the concept and have been experimenting ever since.

Some of you might know Owl City. There's a few songs I like but this is one of his best as far as I know:



It's really simple too - despite having many layers of different instruments it can mostly be played with the intro riff playing throughout. With that in mind I arranged the song for my guitar and looping device, but I also wanted to add some vocals. Since my original choice of a female singer won't be available for a while I simply made an instrumental out of the song.

Hope you enjoy!