Archive for the ‘General Thoughts’ Category

I listen to a lot of music.

I try to get my hands on every new electronic, rock or hip hop album that seems interesting. And so it is rare for me to find something that is 100% refreshing or unique in its sound. Eric Berglund’s new project ‘CEO’ is just that.
Not being familiar with his original band The Tough Alliance, the only thing that I knew about this album is that it has a very cool front cover. After hearing the single ‘Come With Me’, I was hooked.
The thing is, every track on the album could be a single. Its a perfect blend of sonically crisp slick production and great songwriting.

Ceo - White Magic

With a serious lack of good albums coming out this year, this is is a breath of fresh air. The songs are very positive and upbeat. It reminds me of some other bands but not any one in particular, more like a blend, and that’s what makes it so strong. The tracks are quite different from one another too. My favorite is the 4th piece, sharing the same name with the album, ‘White Magic’. It’s mostly instrumental, with some vocals thrown in for good measure, and a killer guitar line. Illuminata is another catchy tune, that could easily be a hit if people listened to music that is slightly more artistic than just plain pop.
I’m not too crazy about the video for ‘Come With Me’, and so here’s a high quality YouTube audio track for the song.

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Lost: Answers

LOST: Answers

Somewhere in an alternate universe, Lost actually makes sense. I think most of you will agree that while the process of watching through all the seasons was fascinating, in the end the writers copped out! Most mysteries and mythology elements were left unresolved, unexplained, or worse – not even mentioned. So I don’t know if I can truly recommend the show to anyone, now that I know how it ends. Yes, I did have fun watching it, and I’ll say at least that the characters were well developed and most of them did have satisfying story arcs, but it’s the huge 6-seasons buildup that amounted to nothing in the end. Let’s just say that when you have sex with a girl, the experience is terrific, but if you don’t get to the orgasm in the end… You get my drift.

So I’m writing this as a devoted fan of the show, but also as a disappointed viewer. I’m a musician and so I love all the little details, & I don’t forget any plot points. The show to me was like an epic symphony or a progressive metal track. I’m thinking: should I be blaming the writers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof for fucking up? Surely, it’s not easy to solve all the questions, and even harder to write a whole TV show. Surely you hit a few wrong notes if you play a 40-minute symphony, right? Wrong. You can play it perfectly, and I’ll support this argument by saying – the writers could have EASILY resolved most of the mysteries on the show and completed it properly. Why they screwed up so much is beyond me. This seemed like it was supposed to be a science fiction show. Did you see The Fringe? Sure, it’s not as exciting, and the actors are not as good but at least they explain what happens based on actual science studies, philosophy theories and quantum physics. OK, so maybe Lost isn’t a science fiction show. Maybe it’s just a thriller or a mystery show. Well it failed in that department too. I think around season 4 I started realizing that the writers were full of shit, while my friends still believed until the end that stuff will be explained. You could also argue that maybe some things are better left unresolved. Well, open endings are not the same as THE PLOT NOT MAKING SENSE. My friend had a good point about this – ‘did you ever read Sherlock Holmes?’ he asked me. Those books are successful because Sherlock solves the case! And by the way, if you haven’t figured it out from the title, there could be spoilers.  Read more...

Just got a new Roland sound card, so finally I can properly record music again.
I don’t recommend ever using M-Audio by the way; my Fast Track Pro was causing way too many issues.
Been recording lots of vocals lately and while trying to go through the whole recording process properly, I came up with the following ‘vocal rules’ that I think are essential to follow for the best results.
Thought I’d post that up, in case some of you awesomusicians might find use in it.

Top 10 Vocal Recording Guidelines

1. Always demo a temporary vocal track first, so you can listen back to it, hear all the imperfections, mistakes and unclear parts, and then re-record your vocals again from scratch with that in mind.
2. While recording, remember to sing equally and control your volume by changing your distance from the mic, according to how much you’re projecting. Use a pop filter.
3. Never use default pre-amps. Use Avalon or Universal Audio pre-amps if you can. Tube mics are better than condensers.
4. After recording, compress the recorded vocals manually, as much as you can. That just means turning down vocals that sound too sharp or loud, and turning up unclear quieter parts.
5. Try to sing as in tune as humanly possible. When you do, the clarity of your tone will also improve, because the precision of your singing intensity will improve. Yes I know, with today’s music industry it seems like you don’t have to know how to really sing. Trust me, that’s crap. You MUST know how to sing.
6. Autotune, but just enough to fix harmonies or some slightly off-key notes. NEVER do the T-Pain robot bullshit.
7. Make sure other listeners understand at least 60% of the lyrics you’re singing. If it’s a pop song, go for 80%.
8. Choose a method to make your vocals sound more interesting. Doubling, harmonies, an interesting reverb or an effect could all work.
9. Compress and reverb the final vocal, but not too much. Also EQ the vocals with respect to the rest of the track and use a De-esser.
10. Don’t Suck

Boys and girls

Check out my new ‘Piano-Rock Remix’ of the Matisyahu single ‘ONE DAY’ here
This is an awesome competition on this great new website – IndabaMusic.com and winning would definitely rule.
Cheers!

Ahoy

Here’s a free track by Everyone’s Talking. It’s ‘Dragonflies II‘, a self made electro remix of the track from our debut album. The original rock version ‘Dragonflies‘ was produced by David Bottrill. This one includes mainly just vocals from the original, the rest is produced and mixed by me.

Dragonflies II

This is a recent review of the album in the Carry You Away blog.

And here’s an interview that we did for Promos4awareness.com

Will make the remix package for Dragonflies II available soon! Sick fun!

There’s also T-Shirts here

Join our Facebook page for more music and updates here and our myspace over here

More shit will go down in the near future. Keep in touch.

It’s a little bit late posting this, but I thought I would anyway. Here’s what I think the best creations of the last 10 years are:

10. Dream Theater – Train Of Thought (2003)

There are 2 Dream Theater albums on this list for a reason. The amount of music that this band puts out every year is ridiculous. They release albums, live albums, DVDs, fan club CDs, cover albums, and endless side and solo projects. But it’s not only how many albums they release; its how much music each album contains. Train of Thought is the fiercest, most intense 70 minutes of music you can possibly cram into an album. While considered by many fans to be Dream Theater’s heaviest release, it was also critically acclaimed by most music critics.
It’s hard to say what the best DT album is, and every fan has a different choice, which is also why I have 2 in this list. But I think this one contains the best guitar work I’ve heard from Petrucci. Portnoy’s drumming is always top notch and so is the keyboard work by Rudess, but listen to the guitar solos in ‘As I Am’ or at the end of ‘In The Name Of God’. Nobody plays scales quite like John. He seems to weave them around in a huge net, changing directions, keys and modes once per second. I imagine this must sound like a mess to some listeners who aren’t musicians, but for the ones who know what he’s doing, it’s breathtaking. This was the first album that got me into DT. I’ve heard their music before, but that stuff was the Awake album, which I still think is their weakest. Train of Thought sat me the fuck down and made me understand the possibilities of what one band can accomplish. The only spot in the album that loses its energy is the short quiet song ‘Vacant’. Sure the album needs a break after constant thumping and the constant heavy riffs, but James LaBrie’s vocals just don’t cut it emotionally. Thankfully, he doesn’t sing that much during the other 68 minutes, and in the heavier parts he uses more of his Metallica-style vocals, or rap-like shouting that Portnoy helps him with. Those parts work much better musically. In this album in particular, the parts without vocals work really well and the instrumental ‘Stream of Consciousness’ is a breath of fresh air.  Read more...

I’ve been inspired by Michael Jackson‘s music since I was a little kid. When I had no access to the thousands of mp3s, like I do now, I just had a copy of the “Dangerous” album which I had on repeat until I remembered every lyric.
There’s no entertainer, musician or dancer that gets even close to Michael’s level. Show me one artist right now who has concerts as huge in scope, that makes ridiculously long music videos, that crafts unique dance moves for every song that he has and that has that many great long-lasting hits. What he did was timeless. Michael’s talent is undeniable even to his haters.
And now that he’s dead, it’s just another example of how we never really appreciate anything until it’s gone. For the first time in about 10 years people suddenly focus on listening to MJ’s music, blasting it all day yesterday in their cars. Suddenly nobody’s talking about court cases and scandalous skin operations.
The truth is, there is no proof of MJ ever doing anything evil to anybody. He was weird, unconventional, socially unacceptable, but he never showed any anger or hate towards anyone.
In fact it’s quite the opposite. He had songs released that promoted preserving the environment, helping starving and sick children, and all of us working together as one to change the world. He also created the ‘Heal the World Foundation‘, a charity organization dedicated to helping sick children, which he donated millions of dollars to.
Today, ‘Thriller‘ is #1 selling album on iTunes. Twitter, Google and Wikipedia have reported crashes caused by overloads of MJ related searches. Thriller has 40 million views on YouTube. But in the last years of his life, all that MJ was hearing was mostly hateful comments, accusations, mocking from fellow artists (Eminem, who now complains about not being able to live a normal life as a celebrity), and endless negative press in dirty paparazzi magazines. It’s hard to ignore the fact that these things could have been one of the main reasons for his death. Who can take that much? Sure the negative publicity is his fault, but we are all humans who make mistakes, aren’t we? We just don’t appear on TV 5 minutes after we do something stupid. Michael never had a normal life since he was a child. He was a celebrity since the age of 11. It’s not difficult to lose touch with reality in that position.
My friend Anton said yesterday that we never know what we have until it’s gone and that’s the way it’s gonna be with our planet. Only there will be no one to appreciate it, because we will all be dead.
The video below is of MJ’s ‘Earth Song’, one his most accomplished songs that has a fantastic music video. It is, of course all about preserving the earth and the human impact on nature.
R.I.P. MJ and thank you for the music.

My main man Dimitron showed me this fascinating documentary. It’s called Home, and is a non-for-profit film that was recently released for free online, YouTube included.
I was asking my students if they ever saw it in school and only one said that she did see it.
I really think that every human being on this planet needs to be aware of this.
The film shows a brief history of our planet, and then mostly focuses on how we’re fucking it up.
The main theory that it suggests is that we have 10 years left to change our ways. 10 years until we arrive at the point of no return after which, nothing can be done. Surely people will deny that. Maybe it’s 15 years and maybe more. But I think it’s pretty much inevitable sooner or later.
After watching the film I felt quite depressed of course, but it’s nevertheless a great deed. We are to blame. And I don’t mean humans beings in general, I mean, us, the Americans and Europe, with our fancy cars and long showers and double-stacked burgers.
Would you go back to being farmers? Only if everyone would, right?

Here’s the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqxENMKaeCU