Musician Diaries

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...