Saber - They Say

The last of the three songs I recently finished:

  They Say by Saber (Major Awesome)

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Saber - Pilgrim Struts

Alright, here's the next one:

  Pilgrim Struts by Saber (Major Awesome)

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Three (3) NEW Songs! - First up: 'The Palette'

I FINALLY got around to finishing three of my latest tracks. It took way too long, but now I am able to present to you a bunch of songs that I began recording last year and mastered this year. It was a long journey, but I feel it was worth it.

I'm going to start with The Palette. Enjoy! Lyrics & more info on the song after the jump.

  The Palette by Saber (Major Awesome)

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Major Awesome on MyIndieLifeTV

I just got a message on Youtube from the guys over at MyIndieLife, notifying me that they featured one of my videos in their latest episode. They presented the bands Everything Everything and Delphic (at about the 4 minute mark), and they have included a very short clip of me playing Doubt on guitar. Check out Ep 39 of MyIndieLife right here:



And here's the link to my cover of Doubt.


... whoo! I'm so psyched right now - just the fact that my video got noticed and picked for some internet television feels extremely awesome. Gotta work on some more stuff, I think...

Work In Progress - My Frequency

Apart from our bands Phil and I have a little project going where we can go crazy with whatever we want to record, called Work In Progress. We experiment a lot with instruments, effects, sounds and styles or genres, and the results are always surprising, to say the least.

I just finished the mixdown of a song we recorded during the last few hours; we titled it My Frequency. It's weird, and I'm assuming you won't listen to the song twice.Oh and if you do listen to the song, I recommend doing it with headphones. In the dark. All by yourself. Yeah, that'll probably work best.

Everything is improvised from the spot. First Phil played guitar while I controlled the drum machine, afterwards I recorded a midi bass guitar and both of us did everything else you might or might not hear. It was so much fun you wouldn't believe it, and we both learned a lot.

Have fun :D

Work In Progress - My Frequency

Lyrics:

???

Major Awesome - When We Shared The Moon

New Song!

UPDATE: I tweaked the overall sound a little; just some minor things that no one will really notice except me. Just click the same link below to download the new version.

Yesterday I finally took the time to write lyrics to this song I made a few days (weeks?) ago. Of course I recorded the vocals instantly and did the final mixing, which kept me out of bed for way too long, but I think it was worth it.
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Major Awesome - The Factory Worker's Blues

I just spontaneously made a new song. I call it: The Factory Worker's Blues.
Despite being completely improvised, it tells a little story. What does it tell you?

Enjoy!



PS: No time and mood for updates lately, it'll change someday.

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.

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!
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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. 
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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.
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"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!

Delphic - Doubt

This is Delphic, a pretty new band (formed in 2009, if I recall correctly), and below you see their third single, Doubt, off their debut album Acolyte.




After watching Subdivisions remade by Jacob Moon a several hundred times now, I felt inspired to experiment a little as well, since my guitar pedal board has a built-in looping device. It's a little clumsy and leaves basically no room configuration, but with some effort you can build yourself small tunes and play along.
What I did was try and remake aforementioned Doubt to play it on a single guitar using only one looping device and several (three) different guitar sounds. This is the result:






Yes, my singing voice kinda sucked. But I swear it was the low quality mic! And I was hoarse as well. Also it was late and I didn't want to annoy the neighbours. And... yeah.

Sunshine Playlist: Part #7

NoFX is an American skate punk band and probably one of my alltime favourites of that genre. Very diverse and skillful in melody but always powerful and driving - listening and playing along to their music is just plain fun.

One of their recent albums (and in my opinion one of their best as well) is War On Errorism. Every song is predestined for the Sunshine Playlist, especially songs like She's Nubs and Franco Un-American.

Another great song is The Seperation Of Church & Skate, you can check out my attempt of it below. Enjoy!

Sunshine Playlist: Part #6

One of the more recent additions to the Playlist is the band Angels & Airwaves, or at least two songs: Lifeline and Everything's Magic. Below is an attempt at playing Everything's Magic on the drums by yours truly.
Enjoy!


This should actually be in 16:9 format, but something went wrong, I guess...

Pre-Spring Excitement

It's March 1st (at least it was when I attempted this post), and the sun outside makes me feel all Spring-y. Nevermind the (once more) dropping temperatures and the still very lifeless looking trees - I want Spring and damn I'm gonna have it!

This is why today I set out to shoot the world.
Camerawise that is - after running some errands for myself downtown I went to one of my favourite spots, the old railroad bridge crossing the river. With the camera at hand and sunny music in my ear (more on that in a later post) I enjoyed the sun and took some pictures of the surroundings, gradually learning more about the cam and increasing my snapshot-skills (at least I felt like I did).

Here are what I deem to be the best shots of my work. Enjoy! (More after the jump.)
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The Beautiful Side Of Winter

Winter can be a time of near-accidents on icey roads, wet feet due to snow slush and frosty temperatures, thus providing plenty of reasons to just stay inside, build a bed fortress with blankets and pillows and consume hot chocolate and cookies.
Still, Winter can be beautiful, as can be seen in Tiny's blog. Also, when I once went through my kitchen, I saw something I immediately needed to take pictures of:

 

  

 

Yeah well... it kinda made me go awww. And it definitely made me appreciate Winter a little more. But it really makes me crave for a comfy bed fortress.








Oh wait - I totally have that!

12 Things I Learned From Learning Instruments

Bear with me, I know this is a long text with no pictures or other visual stimulation. But if you persevere, maybe you can even learn something from it! Now isn't that fun?

I've been learning instruments since I was about 10-ish: first I taught myself how to play the drums, a few years later I wished for an electric guitar for Christmas, the following year I got my first bass guitar. I consider myself a good enough musician to successfully play in bands (I've played in several so far) and on stage, although I can't think of myself as a professional – on rare occasions I do feel like one, but that's only because I have learned a few things over the years that increase my insight into how learning and actually mastering music instruments works. The best part: This is not entirely limited to music at all; most points can be translated into basically everything else, like art, sports, writing, you name it.
Some of them are pretty obvious, and I guess everyone who learns anything will one day or another stumble upon them, or you'll hear them from every teacher. But others are a little more specific and sometimes contrary to what you're trying to achieve (or even conflictive to another point on the list), but they can really help a lot. Here are a few things I learned from learning stuff, in no particular order. (after the jump)
...

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