I believe that I bought my first copy of Karma Moffett’s “Golden Bowls” album back in 1999. Since then I have picked up additional copies as gifts for friends. It’s so rich and beautiful in it’s composition, performance and production. Wonderful to study (some serious harmonic overtones happening here), meditate to or just have playing in the background. Sets a deep, peaceful and serene vibe. One of my all time favorites.
I used to listen to this live Pink Floyd album while taking day trips through the farm lands and forests outside of Eugene, Oregon. Disc one has some great songs on it but it is disc two that I love. This disc has the band playing “The Dark Side of the Moon” album in it’s entirety. It was then that I became convinced that TDSOTM is one of the greatest rock albums of all time. So many great songs, fantastic sonic textures and production techniques that would become the new state of the art.
First discovered this podcast by Jude Gold and Guitar Player magazine in late 2016 and am so glad that I did. Amazing guitarists jamming and talking about their craft. They can go really deep when compared to a magazine interview, these podcasts can go for 90 minutes or more. Really great to hear these full length conversations.
While there are a ton of fantastic interviews, the ones that really stand out to me are the Ben Lacy, Mike Keneally, Owen Barry, Jeff Kollman and Tommy Emmanuel episodes. Really cool!
Was trying to decide which song to notate for my next “Hearing & Writing” assignment and remembered how much I love the bass line of Chic’s classic hit “Good Times”. First I wrote out the bass part and programmed it into Logic. I then added some drums, guitar and piano. Afterwards I notated all the parts on one sheet of paper and put together this video.
Music Sketch #59 is dedicated to all that we have known and loved.
Had fun trying out the “Transform MIDI > Humanize” functionality in Logic, which I learned about through this really useful video on YouTube (starting at about 8:48).
One of the problems with not being a world class keyboardist is that I tend to rely quite heavily on quantization which is great for making things “perfect” but not so great for emulating real human performances. Essentially this “Humanize” feature randomizes your MIDI data within a defined range (default values being 10 ticks). Parameters that can be modified are “position”, “velocity” and “length”. Worked great!
UPDATE: Be sure to reapply quantization with an adjusted Q-Strength (e.g. 40%) after applying the humanize values a few times. It really helps to make things sound natural yet tight at the same time. Works really great across large ensembles like orchestras.
One of my all time favorite artists is Peter Gabriel and my favorite record from him is his 1989 masterpiece “Passion: Music For The Last Temptation Of Christ”. Musically and sonically it stood out from everything else at the time and still sounds great today.
One of the assignments from the “Hearing & Writing Music” book that I’ve been working through was to “find examples of drums or non-pitched percussion instruments to transcribe”. I could have chosen anything but this album was the first thing I thought of and I picked the beginning section of “A Different Drum”.
At first it was daunting, but I notated a little bit a day over a few days and then played it into Logic using Native Instruments “West Africa” collection. My version is far from being “just like” the original but I like how it turned out.
Photo taken while visiting Kyoto Japan.
I was having trouble getting a recording of my acoustic guitar that fit well in a song that I’ve been working on. Everything I had tried was either too boomy or too thin. The song is really dense with a lot of sonic information in it already, yet I wanted the guitar sound to be full as it is a primary instrument of the arrangement. I did a quick search and found this video on YouTube.
The gist of this method is to place the mic in front of the sound hole but angled towards the 12th fret. That way you capture both the fullness of the body (without the boomy-ness of facing the sound hole directly) and the brightness coming from the fretboard.
While this was good I decided to add a second track, this time using a technique that I used when playing and singing at the same time. This approach involves placing the mic at about the height of and facing your right shoulder, above the guitar but below your mouth. It’s a nice warm and full sound, not too harsh or heavy.
Between the two tracks I was able to get a blend that worked well with the mix.
Remember when you did something purely for the act of doing it? No ulterior motive (e.g. “I’ll do this and maybe this other thing can happen…”). I’m guessing that you, like me, were pretty young when that was your modus operandi in choosing how you spent your free time. For me it was skateboarding, sports and music. I remember being about 12 years old playing the saxophone in my bedroom. I had been practicing a piece over and over for about 2 hours (driving my mom and neighbors batty) and feeling totally alive, free, and fulfilled. At that moment I felt that there was nothing better in the world that I could be doing with my life. It was pure, honest and direct. I still think about that moment when I start to wonder why I do what I do with music and always come back to the same answer: “For the Love”.
MusicSketch of a song idea I came up with during my studies the other day.
Photo taken by my wife Rachel during our honeymoon in Tahiti.