Intro In Situ

Performed at the Intro In Situ in Maastricht last weekend. I didn't make it to the end, but the first 30 minutes were quite alright. The sum total was positive. The more because the audience and the venue were good. A really attentive audience is a blessing for a performer. And afterwards several of them came to ask about the setup. And I sold a few of my releases. What else would I need? Oh, yeah. Afterwards a real nice guy came up to me asking if I would be interested in participating in a performance evening with Kapotte Muziek in October. 

Next gig will be in Cologne, early June. I'll update you beforehand.

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Intermittent activities

There were quite a few things taking place at the same time last week. I have been working on an electronics and guitar works that was challenging but yielded "hurrays" from the original artist. I pulled an interesting trick by sidechaining the reverb on the guitar which worked out quite well. This is of course only possible when the original work is good. Unfortunately I have also encountered commissions where the original material was 'difficult' to say the least....

Next there was some final text work for my release in Kaon's [ Taurion series ]. I haven't heard the piece in more than a year so I am curious. Kaon (Cedric Peyronnet aka Toy Bizarre) is doing a wonderful series about this river and releases the works on a bi-monthly basis.

Please order the complete series!!

Then I received news about my work for [ Brombron ]. After more than three months I got an answer to a series of questions. Unfortunately I now have to dig deep into my memory to understand my own questions :)) So I will have to give this some more time.

There was a request for the mastering of a complete CD. This is quite a challenge as it consists of 10 songs (catchy tunes) which are quite different in sound quality as they have been recorded over a period of more than 3 years..... How am I going to bring it down to something coherent? Or should simple NOT make it into something coherent? Sometimes the answer is to do the opposite of what one aimed at first.

I have been preparing a new concert. Next Saturday I will be in [ Maastricht ] and on June 8 I will perform in Cologne (Koeln), Germany. These sets will be different from the earlier Extrapool concert. They will be twice as long and thus have more room for depth and detail.

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Alive on stage

Well, the crowd went wild as the artist turned the knobs, spun the reels and blasted his insane beats out of the speakers after a (quoth Radboud Mens) "almost Gothic" intro. Seriously, it was fun! I was the headliner (meaning I was the last in the line up, because the others wanted to get drunk asap and I don't drink (much)) and got a lot of shoulder bashing afterwards. So I guess I must have been doing something right.

The set (20 minutes) went well enough for the audience not to notice that in both occasions my connection of Audiomulch with the midi controller Behringer BCR2000 was broken and I had to resort to mouse scratching. What can you do? The show must go on, right? Anyway, the use of a real reel to reel deck was a huge success. The younger guests stared at a dinosaur, whereas the old geezers stood there mesmerized and thinking about the olden days.

Other performers were: Kapotte Muziek, Radboud Mens (really nice setup!), Asmus Tietchens, Howard Stelzer. I'm sure some photo's will pop up in the next few weeks. And: everything has been taped and will be released somehow (edited) in the near future by Korm Plastics.

EDIT: [ here's ] an mp3 of the Extrapool concert

Today it was also made official that I will do a performance in Maastricht at March 20. I will give more info when it arrives.

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A score for Kapotte Muziek 2

Have been tweaking the setup yesterday. As usual I also twoke the score. I was listening to the OST of The Shining (awesome work by Wendy Carlos and others!!) earlier yesterday and heard a little motive that will fit excellently into the score. More still: it fits excellently as a second leitmotiv for the performance.

I rehearsed and was able to add to the whole thing. Also streamlined the controller settings. Had some troubles with that old tape recorder, which at first refused to record......After disconnecting and reconnecting several times the thing did what it was supposed to do. That's one of the charms of working with ancient equipment! :)

Let's see if things go well tomorrow and on Sunday.

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A score for Kapotte Muziek

Working for the live performance (I had a new invite to come and play in the South of the Netherlands late March), it's been a long time ago. And I don't want to be a guy behind a laptop (alone) but also use different material. That's why that old timer of a reel to reel tape deck came in handy. I;ve prepared it for more creative use and started freaking around.

Now I've got several things ready for performance. I've worked on a score. This is basically it. It works around a single composition of 20 minutes that I worked on late 2009. It offers various possibilities for further treatment and additional instrumentation.

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It's been quiet this week. I am finishing up two projects. And I'm preparing the live session. I want it to be a misture of tape manipulation and a presentation of new material. In Nijmegen and Amsterdam the session will be some 20-25 minutes and I am setting up a score for it. What I want to avoid is that the music will just be a blast of noisewith a lot of incidents happening. Just like with my studio work I want to work with a defined structure in a live situation.

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Mixing and mastering ambient

Am currently mastering a work for a client who had two tracks. Both were dreamy, ambient pieces with a definite subaquatic feel. The first track had a lot of bass, which enhanced the total atmosphere but also inhibited a good sensation of the frequencies on top of that. Plus, I didn't really hear anything higher than 4 khz. The client liked what he had done but somehow had the feeling that it wasn't good enough.

I set to work and first cleaned the bass and after that enhanced the sound in the higher frequencies. This opened the sound up without pushing the bass away too much. Actually that was that and then I opened up the stereo field more. It sounds easy but it takes a lot of listening back and forth to get a grip on these things. I also used [ Schwa's Spectro ] to see the sound image. That helps to see where frequencies are excessively present.

The second track is a more difficult one. It is also of the same atmosphere but there is a loud sound at 500hz, a synth with a really round ringing sound. The problem is that it is out of phase. That is the reason that it is so loud and actually not sounding as good as it might. I have, again with the use of Spectro, cut this frequency out of the original track and manually set the phase straight. Now I can place it back and make a new mix that sounds much better.

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