Musician Diaries

This one was a pure case of pull. I was just heading to my daily activities of the non-musical kind, when the Muse came straight to me and said: MUSE: hiya, here is the usual song kit for you, today we have a bit of a melody with a bass line behind. You're welcome. Now here's the deal: you can do with this what you've been doing lately, just record the ideas and put them in your huge pile of unfinished stuff, but I was thinking, maybe you can also rearrange your day, and crank out something quick for that weekly thing you've been doing lately? ME: oh shit. I mean, thank you Muse. The song was pieced together in around 3 hours, out of which 40 minutes went to the solo. I had the starting idea for it, opening with a copy of the voice and then moving to something different, and I soon found a second pillar: moving from major scale to pentatonic in the second half increased the "temperature" nicely... The drums again are rudimentary; on

I wanted to try something different for my new sonic output; adding quick and dirty drums, as one simple stepping up from a simple metronome. Naturally, things took longer than expected to set up, but I like the sorta pattern that my production is taking lately; along the week, I try to get some time out of the pressures of the day to get something done, using the "radioactive task" technique that I've described (diy music counts as very hard work that really can burn you out; you're making the work of, by my count so far, 4 different people, plus the overhead of moving from one "cap" to the other). This work advances slow and methodically, following the Toyota philosophy of "going slow to go fast". I'm solving problem after problem without skipping any, and making sure that the investment of time pays off, that I no longer solve a problem and then forget that I did. This way of working gets a bit on my nerves s

An "androginous" Leonard Cohen cover, as I did both the male and female voices -- I wonder what would Leo think about that :p. As i was looking for the guitar tablature, I stumbled upon a couple of other people's covers of the song that helped me choose the arrangements. For example, at first I was going for a simple strumming (rang-a-ranga-rang-a-ranga-rang...), but then I found this cover by a lady where she used arpegios instead, which is a great way to underline the bass riff that is the foundation of the song. I also disagreed with a couple of her choices: for example, the singing style she chose was soul-like, and she had a great voice, with technique and feeling, but this song to me has a confessional tone, like something you wishper to someone in a private conversation (a vibe common perhaps to the whole "Ten New Songs"), and that's the feeling I went for in my voice. Also, she reinterpreted the chords from the bridge ("For the

Guitar Hump (in Alonetone)   I just got me a new battery for the Metal Zone, and wanted to do new stuff with the electric guitar. Anybody who owns a MZ will know that the battery is kind of a "weak spot": if you don't take cautions and unplug it after using it, you will find it dead next time you try to use it. This happens even with the cables unplugged, when the led does not switch on and everything would seem to indicate that electricity is not running. But now that I've removed the lid of the pedal, the battery is easy to plug-unplug.   In terms of process improvement, the battery adds one factor of comfort (avoiding the need for yet another electricity adaptor). To take it one step futher, in the future I want to connect the pedal out to the audio card with one of those tiny cables that are used to connect one pedal next to another.  (I am currently using a full guitar cable, which is a waste: you have to manage that cable, which in the case of audi

I think I've solved enough problems already to commit myself to some kind of consistent delivery. I find it's important, as part of my musicianship, to commit to some kind of consistent finishing things, putting stuff at the door... even if more often than not there's nobody at the other side of that door (but Internet distribution makes things fuzzy on that regard; one element that without doubt helped me conform my decission was a couple of comments I read the other day in praise of a song that I had recorded a year ago and completely forgotten.) My initial premise is: "putting one sonic product out there every week. Out of those sonic products, before February, at least one of them will have to be a full song". (I considering the "week" unit as a container, like I do with this blog's posts, so maybe a better formulation would be "putting out one sonic product IN every week", like boxes to be filled. :) ) Like any goal wo

I've spoken extensively about the kanban board and its benefits for the mental life of any busy person (and who isn't a busy person these days)... I've recently added to my arsenal a second productivity weapon, not so well publicized although it should. The thing I've found is, the kanban board works as a charm for one-time-projects: you have to do this, then that, then the other, and the project gets done. End. Period. Next one please. Kanban is like a todo list with the second dimension added in (The To-Do is a line, the Kanban a plane that self evolves as you understand your work...) But the thing is, like Benson and others say, when you're not using it for one time projects, but for routine work that you have to do every day, a kanban board can feel a bit stupid sometimes. Taking the same post it from "options" to "done" every day... at some moment you become kind of numb, and there's no added learning nor the nice feelin