Musician Diaries

Waiting for Dumber by Black Sheep Riot Three tumultuous years have gone into the creation of this album, which dabbles in styles like melodic hardcore punk, garage, stoner... All the good stuff. Hope you enjoy it.

This song was written as an entry for the Nexus Challenge contest, whose premise this year was to submit a composition "in the way of..." some known artist. (In this case, I think it's self evident, I chose Bob Zimmerman, aka Bob Dylan). The proximity of the deadline (plus my atrocious work in process queue) imposed minimalism: voice and guitar, recorded in quite hellish circumstances. In fact, there was a moment the day before the deadline, where I told myself "Do I really want to try? What for?". But I forced myself to finish, even with all the stains and imperfections and mud, because 1) the alternative was increasing my pile of half-finished stuff, and 2) I wanted to launch something quick as a way to get an overview of all my processes, by running something through them from beginning to end. The result is this song of which I'm mostly proud of the lyrics (ah, where would I be by now without sense of humor...)

The I Ching book is my favorite fortune-telling resource, I come to it every now and then for guidance, and there is a figure that appears very often, and with a particular intensity: the wanderer. "He who has few friends is the wanderer". "The wanderer has no home, the road is his home". "The wanderer must be careful to only stop around good people"... I'm afraid my destiny has a lot to do with this description, and I wrote this song around that concept, together with Edgar Allan Poe's "All I loved I loved alone": the "roads" I'm speaking of are not noisy crowded highways, but the roads for those who like to walk at their own pace and sightsee. Many of the things I love are not popular anymore, and it saddens me to think that the moment I'm not there to love them, no one else will do. A ternary tempo plus a medieval scale is always an unbeatable combination for an intimate ballad of this kind, as you can see i...

This song was born totally by accident; I was trying to find some kind of online buddy to help me with the mixing and mastering drudgery, so I thought it would be a good idea to put together the simplest of songs, maybe guitar and a couple of voices, so we could start with something simple and my collaborator didn't get scared. Lo and behold, I wrote this song but then I "listened" to that oscillating sound that comes from the bottom in the middle section (I think inspired by an arrangement in Bob Dylan's "Forever young"). And once you "listen" to something, if you're a musician worth your salt, you cannot "unlisten" it. That effect was very difficult to pull off and the process (together with other mistakes and inexperiences of mine), ended the patience of my mixer collaborator. Aw dang... Of course it's hard to establish binds via internet, speaking of music is like dancing architecture, etc... As for the song, I'm...

As I deepen the knowledge of my processes, I stumble upon revelations that the usual "speaking brochures" of YouTube and the like rarely discuss. One has been the different uses you can get out of EQ, depending on the context or intention in which you're using it (I guess this works the same way with all of the tools of the trade). The usual, conventional explanation of EQ would say something like this: it's selective volume. Each knob allows you to turn the volume up or down for a simple "section" of the sound (the most intuitive way to understand it is thinking of those CD players where you can pump up "bass", middle or "treble" independently -simply slice the sound in thinner slices, and that's it-. What the explanation leaves out is the things you can do with this sound sculpting tool. So far I've found 3 different ways to use EQ, which belong in different parts of my process: Shaping EQ : this one is used in the "FX...

More and more lately, I'm in a mood where I enjoy very convoluted music. Music that does not come easy, that feels almost like noise in the first listening (and, therefore, does not demand much of your attention), and you have to "work your way" through it listening after listening until you get to recognize something familiar. Some of the albums I've been listening to, and which satisfy this criteria by very different means, are: *Phil H. Anselmo and The Illegals, "Walk through exits only" *Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, "Trout Mask Replica" *Incantation, "Onward to Golgotha" *The Shaggs, "Philosophy of the World" With more to come. I don't know, it's like, the disjointed and creepy state the world is in (at least the world I live in), needs, asks for a soundtrack equaly disjointed and, yes, often creepy. Anything less than that feels false and a waste of time...

There is a running joke among the continuous improvement community about the sentence "be more careful". A common advice among people who "just do" (as opposed to plan-do-check-act), it's quite a waste of breath and saliva; people is already as "careful" as they can, unless they don't give a rat's ass about the task, in which case, your admonition is not going to have much impact. The problem is that there are a lot of things to be-more-careful about, so why need a system and some kind of learning repository. Repeating "Be more careful" like a parrot, happens after the fact, and doesn't cut it. That's why we need processes to do things. A process usually is composed of those aha moments where you go "here's where I could be careful here". You record it, you try it, and that's how you improve. I've discovered, however, an element that is even below be-more-careful in utility for improvement: cursing. For e...

A combination of cool features in my current DAW (Reaper) has allowed me to create something that looks a lot like the road signs you see while you're driving. It makes for a great experience, and also reduces mistakes and the time it takes to rehearse things. I'm loving it and I hope it lasts and I can build upon it. The features required are: 1) enabling the option that makes the playhead stay at the center of the screen (therefore the waveforms scroll when you play the song). 2) Creating a track for empty items with text. (I've customized this one so I only need a keypress, and each annotation comes with a different, random color). Once I've done that, I play the song and start to rehearse on top the track I want to record (in this first experience, it was a bass track). When I stumble at some point, I stop the playing (I "pull the andon"), and make a note of warning. Just as with traffic signs, to be effective, the note must be put a bit earlier, where I c...

It has saddened me in these days knowing of the passing of Keith Flint, singer of the band Prodigy. He was more or less my age. And he has died by his own hand. Although rock and metal are my go-to styles of preference, I also frequent other genres, and also in my times I even had a brief (but intense) dive into the world of clubbing. I had sympathy for Prodigy in the distance. I got to know them one day when I randomly switched on the TV to find the obscure, creepy video of "Breathe". "What the hell is this?" In any genre, you can do it well or choose the wimpy way. Prodigy have always sounded authentic and edgy to me, a bit of a "punk" faction inside dance music. I don't know (I haven't wanted to know) the particular circumstances of Flint's death. But it always saddens me when these unique musicians pass away (I thought the same with Dolores O'Riordan, although in her case I never really "got" the Cranberries). When people in t...

I wrote this song a long time ago, at a friend's house, the day after surviving a serious attempt of suicide with pills. Besides the song itself, it testifies the state I was in the fact that I recorded it on a tape, and the tape ran out, and I didn't bother to re-record or complete the missing part and just left it at that, until many years later. It's horrible when you're in your 20s, and your inner circle is mostly composed of cretins, and "the outside world" is what you see in the news, and you suffer every day and simply don't think you have the resources to deal with it. Why publishing a song like this? Am I a sadist? Well, as any human being, and perhaps more as an artist, I try to "tune-in", to attend to the needs of the present moment. Suicide is one of the rampant, outrageous epidemics we're suffering right now, and, in addition, it is also kind of a taboo. And I think, by making this anguish manifest, instead of leaving it i...

After giving it some consideration, I've decided to discontinue the podcast (at least by the moment), to focus my efforts on other areas, where they will be more useful. I don't regret having run this "experiment"; it has not only generated a lot of learning about my current situation, my environment and my skills (and lack of thereof) in different areas; it has also fulfilled the purpose of helping me get through the worst part of the winter, which was one of my motivations when I started this side project, so in that regard the experience has been successful (because I'm still here, haha...) Once you get the "knack" of creating standard work processes, a new era of creativity and development opens for you. I've gone through the "valley of tears", I've put down the hours, and I'm now able to create basic stability in a new process quite simply. My big error, perhaps, was underestimating the effort required. Standard work conque...

I like to listen to whole albums -I have radio streaming for when I don't-. I like the way an album works as a unit, as a little "country" full of regions, as a movie with scenes, as a house with rooms, all different but with a connecting feeling of unity. There is also the convenience of knowing you've "solved" what you're going to listen to in the upcoming 40-60 minutes. I like to pick my moods and moments, and with the randomness/algorithms of streaming... well, you never know. It can go right or be "one of those days". Perhaps the best moment when you're listening to an album you enjoy and keep coming back to, is that "sweet spot" where the music is no longer brand new for you, you start to be able to recognize passages or hum parts of melodies, but it still hasn't all sunk in as familiar. Depending on the style and intricacy of the album, it can take 3 or 10 listenings, but when you get there it is usually a very recogniz...

In today's episode: I challenged myself to write a song in 5 hours, and here's what happened... Interview with Neil Young mentioned in the episode Theme song: " Hey " by Juanitos (CC BY-SA)

I once heard in some podcast (and mentioned it in some entry of this blog) of this technique a DIY musician had to differentiate his different "roles" or "personas" when making music; using different caps to signify he was in "musician mode" vs "producer mode"; quite a trick to make physical the difference of mindset, remembering the things to focus upon are different in each case... I'm 99.98% sure that the cap that appears in the background of this Yamaha promotional video means that someone has taken that concept one step further, customizing a cap that you can wear in two very different positions, each with a different color. I'm even willing to bet that the producer/engineer (the one with the focused, singleminded approach) gets the position with the visor, while the willy-nilly musician, son of chance and whims of muses, gets the most informal one... (He is also probably the one who wanted to buy a cap like this in the first place...

Where I discuss the very unique career of Bobby Liebling, and how in a way there is a Bobby inside every musician... "Last days here" documentary Theme song: " Hey " by Juanitos (CC BY-SA)

Change of plans; I'm afraid I'm going to have to reduce my podcast schedule for the moment to a podcast every other week (keeping at it, in compliance with arithmetic, until June instead of March). I apologize for the false start... In the spirit of still providing some kind of sonic product this week, here is "Human life", my first collaboration with Wikiloops (well, the first collaboration of my "second age", returning after ~2 years of being homeless). In everything music related, I've always found that new beginnings tend to have a remarkable, very particular "je ne sais quoi". I've found it to be true in the first concerts of my band after a new member had joined, the first album published by some of my heroes after some inactivity that was feared to be final... It is certainly true for me of this song, too, one of my favorite collaborations with WikiLoops until today. As always with my WikiLoops collabs, I cannot help repeating ...

Podcast out! I've decided to try the podcast format for a while, firstly to try out something different, as a new outlet for expression (much needed as my equipment continues to act funky, limiting my production), and why not, perhaps to put in circulation out there a few ideas that I'd like to see showing up more often. My initial idea is to keep going with weekly chapters until March. Then I will make a recap and decide what I do next... In this first episode I ramble about all kind of stuff, and try to explain to the listeners (and to myself) why am I podcasting... Theme song: " Hey " by Juanitos (CC BY-SA)

Happy new year everybody! Here is another of my collaborations with the WikiLoops crew. I've had them pretty abandoned lately since my processes reached a functional standard (in other words, I don't get so burnt out from my own projects), plus my gear has flunked big time, hopefully a "change of skin" out of which I'll get the equipment requiered to stop having to think about equipment anymore (work in process...) Among other beauties, this piece of music conquered my heart the moment I noticed the verse cadence avoided the trite solution used in millions of songs. I wrote lyrics telling a bit of my personal experience with what I've come to consider our age's main epidemics: the narcissistic personality disorder. People who is profoundly broken and pose and pass as normal, screwing all dimensions of human life and creating an enormous amount of suffering for everybody. Fortunately, there's a growing awareness about this problem, free lunch is over,...