Friday, August 31, 2012

Excitement?

Ah, David Gilmour. What a genius you are. A guitarist who's noted to crazily abuse space and melodies.

The Blue is currently playing on my playlist, and .. My word, it's beautiful.

Anyway! My good friends & guitar mentor, Kelvyn Yeang, sent me a message on Facebook while I was reviewing one of my songs (actually, two, but they're two songs merged into 1 - which is about 9mins and 17sec long!) .. They're titled:

Pt. I: Onwards!
Pt. II: Forgotten

Played together, back to back, would be titled as "Onwards, then Forgotten." .. Music's all about putting all sorts of ideas together, and when it comes to this, you're limited by your creativity, and for my case, I'm limited by both creativity and technique.

But back to the whole message on Facebook, he mentioned something about getting 10 songs done - to get some ideas and arrangements done. I remember he once told me something about "not being too precise" in his recordings to make it sound organic. Surprisingly, he's going back to his 2004-2005 roots where he's really on the dot.

And he pointed out that he had a chat with some dudes on his side to understand that playing with live drummers, they'll never be "on the spot". I don't blame them.. And I think live drummers are great to work with! But let's face the fact. If you really want to hit ON the spot, either you have to nudge their recorded hits to a certain time frame on the session - which will be a complete headache to the audio engineer as he has to splice most of the tracks apart, drag everything into place..

.. And if the kit's mics bleed into each other, that's when the cursing and tantrum begins.

.. And you can't cheat the room, overhead and ambient mics in the recording studio.

So, for the drums, I'm required to study the people he has worked with before, which will be interesting (for my drum programming toolbox).

He also suggested that I should study his bassist .. but if it were to be the 4 and 6 stringed instruments we work with, I automatically assumed that he wanted me to record the bass as well.

.. Surprisingly, he wanted me to work around MIDI basses .. And sad to say, I do not have any proper MIDI samples to imitate a rock bassist. The best way (for me) to get a bass guitar that's being played by a bassist IS to record the instrument itself.

Plus, honestly, I dislike MIDI bass patches unless if it's a non-rock track, then I'd actually programme bass lines rather than to record it.

But.. Oh man! This slight project is going to be an interesting one! I hope I have the time for him and his ideas.

And he mentioned something about to "orchestrate".. which I hope he isn't serious, and he accidentally meant "to arrange with extra instruments"..

Sunday, August 26, 2012

A Story to Tell.

Failure;

Something I've always accused myself in. The truth is, I don't think I have failed drastically.

Not yet, at least. And I don't intend to.

Plus, for those who failed, turned out to be the world's greatest leaders in their own industry.








What say you?