#for example: making music and recording is a lot of setup and needs a certain desk and monitor situation and desk space for devices

[novelistparty]

my ideal number of computers at home is perhaps three one for professional work, one for general life and household things, one for fun projects I'd prefer only two but the demands and timescales of professional work mean it doesn't mix well with the other domains

[aaryan-mwa-blogs]

What Are the Most Common Misconceptions About Buying Professional Audio Gear?

When you’re first starting to build an audio setup, whether it's for your home studio, a live DJ performance, or just to elevate your music-listening experience, it's easy to get lost in the overwhelming amount of information out there. Professional audio gear often comes with hefty price tags, and as a result, a lot of myths and misconceptions tend to float around about what you really need. If you’re someone who’s dipping their toes into the world of audio gear, it’s essential to sort out fact from fiction. So, let’s break down some of the most common misconceptions about buying professional audio gear—and what the truth really is.

1. Expensive Gear is Always Better

This is probably the biggest myth that surrounds professional audio gear. It’s easy to assume that if something costs more, it’s automatically the best choice for you. While it’s true that premium products tend to offer higher quality in certain areas, the price tag isn’t always an indicator of the best gear for your specific needs.

For example, if you’re setting up a home studio to record podcasts or music, you might not need the top-tier, high-end microphones that are used in large, professional studios. A more affordable option might still provide excellent sound quality and suit your needs perfectly. The key here is to understand the type of audio work you’re doing and invest accordingly. Sometimes, paying extra for features you don’t need can actually be a waste of money.

2. You Need to Buy Everything New

There’s this misconception that professional audio gear must always be purchased brand new to guarantee quality and performance. While new gear is often pristine, the reality is that the second-hand market is filled with great deals. Many professional audio products—like microphones, speakers, and headphones—are built to last, and buying used can help you stretch your budget without sacrificing much on quality.

Of course, buying second-hand comes with its risks, especially if you’re not familiar with the product's condition. However, reputable audio shops often offer warranties or return policies on second-hand gear, making it a much safer bet than buying from an unknown seller. If you're looking to save a bit of cash, don't overlook used equipment from trusted sources.

3. You Can Just Plug and Play

Another myth about professional audio gear is that once you buy it, you can simply plug everything in, hit "play," and expect perfect sound right away. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. Professional audio gear often requires proper setup, calibration, and even a bit of learning on your part to get the best performance.

For instance, speakers and studio monitors need to be properly positioned to avoid distortion, microphones may require the right preamp to enhance their sound, and even headphones can sound different depending on their impedance (how much power they need to operate properly). Beyond just the physical setup, you may need to invest time in learning the software and settings that go along with your audio gear. Audio professionals spend years honing their skills for a reason—getting the most out of professional audio gear takes time and effort.

4. All You Need for Great Sound Is Expensive Speakers

While good-quality speakers can certainly make a difference, they aren't the only factor that contributes to great sound. Many people assume that if you buy top-of-the-line speakers, you’ll instantly have the best audio setup. In reality, sound quality is determined by a combination of things, including your room acoustics, audio source, and additional gear like mixers or audio interfaces.

For example, if you're using low-quality cables or have improper speaker placement, even the best speakers won’t give you the sound you expect. Acoustic treatment in your room—like foam panels, bass traps, and diffusers—is another important piece of the puzzle. If you want professional-level sound, you’ll need to consider your entire setup, not just focus on one component.

5. More Channels and Features = Better Mixer

Mixers are often marketed with tons of inputs, knobs, and features, which can be really appealing, especially if you're just starting out. But here's the thing—more channels and features don’t necessarily mean a better mixer. It’s about what works for your specific needs.

If you’re a solo podcaster or a bedroom producer, you probably won’t need a massive mixer with 20 inputs. A smaller, more compact mixer with the features you actually need (like quality preamps and built-in effects) will probably do the job just as well. If you’re DJing in a small venue, a simple two-channel mixer might suffice, while larger events might require something with more inputs. Understanding what you'll actually use your mixer for will help you make a more informed purchase.

6. You Can’t Mix Music Without a Professional Audio Interface

It’s easy to assume that to mix or record music at a professional level, you absolutely need an expensive audio interface. While high-end interfaces can offer more inputs, better preamps, and higher-quality conversion, many mid-range interfaces will still give you great sound for home recording or small-scale projects.

Audio interfaces are crucial because they convert the analog signal from your microphone or instrument into a digital signal that your computer can understand. However, the performance of an interface is often about the quality of its components, not necessarily its price. In fact, many budget audio interfaces can still offer surprisingly good sound quality. What you really need to focus on is compatibility with your computer, the number of inputs you require, and how much you’re willing to spend.

7. More Power Means Better Sound

When it comes to amplifiers and speakers, many people believe that more power automatically equals better sound. While having enough power is important (especially in live sound situations), more power doesn’t always equate to better performance. For instance, if you have a 100-watt amplifier for a small home studio, it will probably overpower your speakers, leading to distortion and poor sound quality.

Power is important, but so is matching the power of your amplifier to your speakers’ wattage rating. Your equipment should be balanced to ensure optimal sound. If you’re using speakers that don’t require a ton of power, a lower-wattage amp can actually provide cleaner, more efficient sound. So, don’t get caught up in the numbers—focus on ensuring your equipment is compatible.

8. Professional Gear Is Only for Professionals

There’s this idea that professional audio gear is exclusively for experts or high-budget projects, but that's not true. While it’s true that some equipment is designed for advanced users, a lot of professional gear can be used by anyone—especially if you’re willing to put in the effort to learn. In fact, many musicians, podcasters, and even hobbyists use pro-level gear in their home studios because of its reliability, durability, and superior sound quality.

Just because something is marketed as "professional" doesn’t mean it’s too complex for beginners. With the right knowledge and a little practice, you can get great results using high-quality equipment, whether you're an experienced pro or just starting to explore the world of audio.

Final Thoughts: The Truth About Professional Audio Gear

When it comes to buying professional audio gear, knowledge is power. There’s a lot of hype and misinformation out there, but the most important thing is to understand your own needs. You don’t need to break the bank to get good-quality gear, and you don’t need to buy everything new or with tons of unnecessary features. Instead, focus on understanding the role of each piece of equipment and how it fits into your overall setup.

The best way to make informed purchasing decisions is to shop from reputable audio stores like VIP PRO AUDIO that can guide you through the process. They’ll help ensure you’re getting equipment that fits your needs and offer professional advice to make sure you're investing in quality gear that will last.

In the end, the right gear is the gear that works for you—not the most expensive or feature-packed equipment.

[bandbarrackshtx]

What to Expect at Your First Music Studio Recording Engineering Session

You’ve poured your heart and soul into creating the perfect song—captivating melodies, lyrics that hit deep, and an overall sound you’re proud of. Now it’s time for the next exciting step: recording it in a professional studio.

While this is an exhilarating moment, it can also feel a bit overwhelming. The studio environment, with its complex equipment and technical jargon, might seem intimidating at first. This guide will help you navigate your first session, ensuring you feel confident and ready to bring your musical vision to life.

Ready to dive in?

Preparation is Everything

The success of your recording studios in Richmond, TX session will depend a lot on how well you prepare. Think of it like gearing up for a big performance—more rehearsal equals a smoother session.

Here’s how you can get ready before you step into the studio:

Master Your Song: It may seem obvious, but it’s essential to be able to play your song flawlessly, know the lyrics inside and out, and fully understand the arrangement. Any uncertainty will eat up your valuable studio time, so practice until you’re completely comfortable—don’t be afraid to over-rehearse.

Define Your Vision: Before booking the studio, have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Are you looking for a raw, live recording or a polished, produced sound? Do you have specific ideas for the mix, such as adding reverb or delay to certain instruments? The more direction you can provide your engineer, the better your results will be.

Select the Right Studio: Research local studios. Read reviews, check out samples of their work, and consider their rates and equipment. For example, our music studios in Houston offer a welcoming environment and experienced engineers to help guide you through the recording process. If you don’t need an engineer, many studios allow you to book the space without one—just make sure you’re comfortable with the setup.

Prepare Your Gear: Gather all your necessary equipment—this includes instruments (in perfect working order!), cables, sheet music (if needed), and any reference or backing tracks you want to use. Having everything organized and ready to go will make the process smoother and help you make the most of your time in the studio.

https://bandbarracks.com/

[kumaonna]

music producer inumaki and gn! vocalist reader headcanons p. 1

part 2

notes: here are some general headcanons for producer toge and a gn! vocalist reader... :) inumaki and reader are mid-20s in this. not sure what universe this is in?? he still has cursed speech but isn’t a sorcerer…? anyway idc how and idc why but here he is. my boy 

tw: mentions of food

okay okay so first of all 

toge being super into music has always been a favorite headcanon of mine that i’ve seen floating around the fandom 

and what does he do with this passion for music? well, he can’t be a vocalist. could probably play an instrument, and does, but not at the level needed to be a touring professional (plus that sounds like a lot of work) 

so… he becomes a producer!! (still a lot of work, but at least he enjoys it) 

100% started out in a basement setup making meme tracks and remixes 

like all those really elaborate ones that take a ton of skill and you’re like?? how much time did someone spend making this????/

yeah, that’s him. and he doesn’t wanna talk about it it took a very long time

but somewhere along the way he transitioned to producing his own tracks, experimenting with different sounds and took a swing at writing lyrics 

and that’s where you come into play! he needed someone to sing for the demos he submitted to labels, and you were a friend of a friend from college that he remembered could sing pretty well 

he was actually quite smitten with you at the time, but you just seemed so far away that he never really bothered to put anything into motion 

so when he pops up out of the blue with a request for you to do some demo work for him, you’re like???? okay?? 

at this point, you are working a full time job, writing songs and doing local open mic nights on the side to try and get a foot in the door with local people in the music industry 

so when toge reaches out a year or two after you both graduated from college, you weren’t in any position to say no

it’s a bit. awkward the first time around

aside from the slight weirdness of being distant kind-of friends from college with little to talk about, the recording setup is also fairly intimate

it’s in his bedroom, actually, with his computer desk pushed up against a wall alongside a pair of monitor speakers. he’s got most of the room decked out with sound-insulating panels on the walls

the microphone is a few feet away in the corner with a lamp, a mic stand and a music stand both at standing level 

so. yeah. it’s not like you’re separated by a beautiful professional recording studio wall, looking at him through glass

you’re like. Right there

and that makes you Nervous 

it also makes him Nervous 

and thus your first session together was… stiff. but workable 

toge has an air about him that can relax those around him and diffuse the pressure of certain situations (if he so desires-- can absolutely wreak chaos if feeling the need) 

and this time was no different! he kind of tried to loosen you up with some conversation beforehand, get you to laugh a little and feel more at ease so you would sound more natural in the recording 

luckily for him, you still understood him even after not being all that close (little did he know put many hours into trying to understand him in your college years, albeit at a distance)

and luckily for you, he likes the sound of your laugh, so it was a win-win

during the actual recording, it actually went fairly smooth???? the biggest hiccup was getting the delivery right on certain words/phrases 

he’d try to coach you between recordings, holding up his fingers to tell you the measure on the sheet music he’s referring to, and putting emphasis on certain parts of words  

“ment-a-a-a-i-ko okaaaaa-ka” 

“but you-u-u-u don’t knooooow that?”

literally ecstatic when you pick up on what’s he’s trying to convey 

he’d also try to get you to say phrases a certain way by stopping and explaining in his own way, or giving you an example (the latter being your favorite of course, if he’s doing it himself) 

either way, you both finish before you thought you would and he invites you out to a nearby shop for boba drinks to celebrate finishing your first song together :’) 

for sure asks if you’d want to do this again with him sometime (you’re not sure if he’s referring to the recording or getting boba tea, but you say yes either way) 

(joke’s on you, he was talking about both >:) )

a few days later, he’ll send you a message with the demo and ask what you think 

he’s literally been agonizing over it for 3 of the 4 days since your session – he just wants it to be perfect, okay? kind of for the label he’s sending it to, but mostly for you 

he just wants you to like him and want to work with him :( 

shouts in excitement when you tell him you love it and he did a great job 

after he sends it off to a label he thought might be interested, he instantly gets to work on another demo 

is it because he loves music? sure, yeah. but is it more so because he can’t wait to have an excuse to see you again? 

most certainly >:)

a/n: this is my first hc on this blog and my first JJK hc?? so. there’s that. lmk what you think! :) 

[captain-of-the-historicfuture]

~hello~ !! For the meta asks!: 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, and 25 :))

Hello!! Thank you for sending these; I was really excited to see that ask game and I was hoping somebody would send some in. It still took me a while to actually answer them though, and for that I apologise. But without further ado! Some meta answers (under the cut because they ended up being fairly long, whoops):

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (Consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway.)

I thought of a few examples, but they could basically be grouped together under a common theme: whumpy/angsty scenes that were self-indulgent as all heck. The whole self-indulgent aspect often required the characters to be just the teeniest, tiniest bit OOC and/or necessitated rather unrealistic plot circumstances. So it was simply easier to keep such scenes as maladaptive daydreams, rather than trying to think of explanations for the character/plot issues…or exposing myself to judgement for them LOL.

Receiving permission to write/share one such scene anyway is an opportunity I can’t let slip by though. It might be because I’m writing this while running on zero (0) hours of sleep—let’s hear it for insomnia, y’all!—but I suddenly couldn’t remember any of my newer ideas under this category. However, I did recall a one-shot I had started writing a couple of months ago that sort of counts? “Sort of” because I could actually be arsed to write it since I was, ya know, writing it. Only got about six hundred words down though.

…should I share those six hundred words…?

………nahhh. I don’t think I’m quite ready for that yet.

But here’s the gist of it: Coulson and May (because of course it’s Philinda) were married for quite some time before the Attack on New York. But then Coulson DiedTM and then got ResurrectedTM. But gasp of horror, he had to lose his memories of his romantic relationship with May because reasons. (I actually did have some ideas for those reasons but sshhhh this is about me yeeting context and setup.)

The first half of S1 still happens as normal (except MayWard doesn’t happen because??? Vows) and it’s now post-E20 “Nothing Personal”. The morning after (or a morning soon after, whatever) the T.A.H.I.T.I. reveal! May’s mom—who doesn’t know about GH.325 and whom May fed a cover story about Coulson divorcing her or something equally as oof, IDK—shows up at the hotel and starts ripping into Coulson for breaking her daughter’s heart, then dragging her back into the field with her ex-husband (him), then accusing her of terrible things and forcing her away again.

Poor guy’s confused as heck, and so is the team, and soon enough so is Lian. The only one who understands what’s going on is May, and she’s freaking dying off to the side like why is this happening to me and eventually everybody’s like! Explain??? (Was thinking about including something from Coulson like, “Are you still keeping things from me?” Just for that extra smidge of angst, yay!)

So yeah then May gives a, like, two-sentence debriefing that elicits more questions than answers. Coulson decides to take May aside and they have a heart-to-heart. Lots of feelings and angst and hurt/comfort and at some point plenty of kissing too. Just! May hiding her feelings for Coulson’s sake but really magnified, plus some actual apologies and consideration of the grief May’s been through on Coulson’s part.

And uhh yeah that’s basically it I dunno hdsjncjshd. I warned y’all it’s OOC, plot-bendy, and very self-indulgent!

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

I don’t think I could name a single character for this. I get different things out of taking on different voices, you know? I guess recently I’ve found myself gravitating towards more taciturn and introspective points of view, like JQ from my original novel Rosewood or M. Yisbon from my…other original novel Temple.

Generally, however, I like tackling stories from an outsider’s perspective. That’s why I so rarely write my more “substantial” (serious? demanding? for lack of better words?) projects from the PoV of my “preferred” character. This usually means writing from their love interest’s perspective, but not always. With shorter fanfic, using a more removed/unconventional/niche PoV can be really fun. Like, I once wrote a canon compliant ficlet purely(-ish) about Philinda from Tony Stark’s perspective. That isn’t always sustainable with stories that demand more character development or closer character studies, however, which is why it’s a good thing I like writing drabbles!

9. Are you more of a drabble or a longfic kind of writer? Pantser or plotter? Do you wish you were the other?

My word counts tend to run long, but I usually only write one-shots for fanfic. If I’m even inspired with a novella- or novel-length story idea for a fandom, you already know I’m in deep with them. And if I actually find the motivation to plan and execute that idea? Dangg. That’s only ever happened…twice, maybe thrice, and I’m in a lot of fandoms.

At times, I wish I could go for more of a middle ground ’cause, like, you know what I love to see? An AO3 dashboard with several completed novellas for my ship/character of choice. I mean yes, I hecking love >90k fics, but sometimes I’m in the mood for quick reads…and what am I supposed to do when I burn through all the drabbles and 2k one-shots? (Besides despair and/or reread my faves desperately.) Novellas are basically always safe for me LOL, and I’d hope to be able to give as much as I take.

Ultimately though, I think I’m okay with where I am with regards to that. I wish I could write more in general, but I’d be okay with “writing more” just meaning “writing more one-shots”, ya know? More than okay, really. I have mad respect for fic writers who have, like, a hundred or more one-shots under their belt for this one ship. The fandom ecosystem would be incomplete without them (as well as every other type of writer, but sshhh that’s the type of writer I’m closest to being right now).

I’m definitely a plotter, and I definitely prefer it that way. It’s cool having such a detailed record of my process. I like feeling like a frazzled genius on the brink of a major discovery with all of my different outlines and colour coding and many drafts and various websites.

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

Not exactly. It might be cool if my original works were recognisable in the world, but I don’t think I’d want to be recognisable. As for fanfic, I’d low-key enjoy gaining a place in that fandom’s community as a fic writer. Like someone who gave and got fic gifts from fic writer friends, who participated in challenges and GCs, who received writing prompts on Tumblr, whose name was known for doing a certain trope/genre a bunch of times… Ya know what I mean?

Unlikely to happen when I’m so hecking hesitant to publicly (i.e., outside of AO3) claim credit for my writing, but fjnskfsjhfjs. A writer can dream, right?

15. Which is harder: titles or summaries (or tags)?

Of those three, tags are the easiest for me, for I have a reliable system for figuring out those.

Next easiest would probably be titles. For fanfiction, I like to use titles that are a quote from the source material. You should have seen all of my old Hamilton fanfic… I was really proud of some of those titles. And I don’t mean, like, whole lines—usually only two to five words. It’s a unique type of wordplay that I just love dabbling in.

And lastly, summaries. Sometimes inspiration strikes me and a snappy and intriguing synopsis just jumps out—one that I’m quietly pleased with—but most of the time I’ll spend way too long trying to think of such a synopsis and eventually just go with whatever I’d come up with so far. And live with my quiet dissatisfaction for the rest of time.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (Plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations...?) Tell us about them!

Typically, no. If I have deleted scenes, I save and publish them separately, but that’s about it. I sometimes think of AUs for my own work and might talk about them in my author’s notes—might even talk about writing them—but I never really do anything with them.

Although…

It’s not uncommon for me to decide a plotline isn’t working for a certain story or to think of an interesting but undoable arc for a certain character, but what I’ll do is make a whole new story for those ideas. Once I’m done developing the original idea and the branched-off one, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell they grew from the same roots. Does that count?

21. What other medium do you think your story would work well as (film, webcomic, animated series, etc.)?

That depends on the story. I’ve actually written stories in other mediums—movie screenplay, musical stageplay, poetry, TV show scripts, play scripts, roleplay—but the novel does tend to be my comfort zone. Sometimes, if I have an idea that I think could work, or would even work better, as another medium, I’ll label it as such in my folder of ideas and decide not to write it as a novel.

Most of the time, my non-book projects are collaborations. I’m working with five different people on six different story ideas: two webcomics, one stage musical, one anime, and two animated TV shows. Little concrete progress has been made in any of those, mind you, but they’re still fun to discuss!

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time?

Absolutely. But I’ve been writing stories since I was five years old, so we would hope so, huh?

I wouldn’t say my writing’s changed completely, though maybe that’s just my insider’s perspective.

25. What part of writing is the most fun?

Oh gosh, I can’t believe you’d make me choose. Writing is just such a wonderful experience for me; I love just about everything to do with it. Admittedly, not all the time, but. Since that barely qualifies as an answer, however, I’ll give you this—

The endings. Not only that intense feeling of rightness when you wrap up that last sentence, but also the moments before. The adrenaline of knowing you’re almost there but you gotta push just a bit more to actually get there. And also the part right after—the real wrap-up, honestly: the revision and the editing. Heavens, I love revising and editing my work.

Which is not to say I don’t like writing it out for the first time, too—there’s nothing quite like seeing your cursor scroll to the next page, like going from a blank expanse to a Oh man, how many more lines are even going to fit on this page?, like watching that page counter tick up another number. However, there’s something cathartic about finally ironing out those problems I had to force myself to stop worrying about earlier because “just finish the first draft dangit”.

I guess that’s not really the end of the writing process, but whatever. Close enough (as fic writers are wont to say).

Another thank-you for these asks, and feel free to come back with more at any time! ;P

Send in fun meta asks for your friendly neighbourhood writer!

[rainbowcolouredstudies]

Mental Health Studying Tips!

So I know that a lot of us are struggling with their mental health and I know from my own experience how hard it can be to study when you are depressed, anxious, have panic attakcs etc. There is not one solution that fits everybody, but there are solutions that help a lot of people and even if they may not help always, they may help sometimes; and that´s why I want to share them with you guys.

Environment

Bevor you start to study, think about your environment and about your needs. You live alone at home or with a family that harms your mental health? You hate being alone in a quiet room? You have very little room at home or many distractions? Then you should probably avoid studying at home. But what can you do instead? Well, there are multiple places you could go, depending on your requirements!

o   Study with friends! If you need to be with people to not drown in your own thoughts or triggers, study in a group or at least with one friend. This is especially great, if you need lots of social contact or distractions from yourself. Explain the topic to each other, practise together, maybe write an excerpt together.

o   Get a baby sitter (for a small calm child or baby) or an cat/dog sitter job! This gives you access to a totally different place. A calm child won´t need that much attention all the time as many children have lots of toys for playing alone. Animals neither need constant attention but they are a great comfort if you are struggling with your mental health. This of course is a bit risky because the child or animal might need lots of attention but it can be worth a try, especially if you can filter out the ones over time, that stress you and only keep the clients that allow you a relaxed study atmosphere.

o   Go to a library! Whether it is a public one or the one of your school/university, there will be lots of seats and often even multiple computer and printer that you can use for a really little amount of money. Of course you have to hope to get a seat there but most cities have some „hidden“ libraries, unknown to most people and therefore less crowed. Adult education centres too have often rooms with tables to which the public has access. And most universities have huge reading halls where you can work in a quiet and calm atmosphere. Make a list of all the places your city offers and find out, where you are most comfortable.

o   In summer, you can study outside: Be it in the park, beside a river order in a forest even. You can either look up such places or just walk around till you find places you like. This is of course not ideal if you have to use a laptop, but if you charge it before leaving your home, it will give you some hours of studying between sunlight and singing birds – which can be very calming and grounding.

o   If you are the type for auditive studying (which does not work for all subjects but for many) you can record yourself explaining the topics and then listen to these records while going for a walk. This is especially good if you tend to have too much energy to sit for a long time.

o   Many people also study in a Café. You are not alone but you also don´t have to communicate. Of course you mostly have to consume a drink so this can be a bit difficult if you have financial problems. Also you should search for a Café that has tables that are big enough for your laptop or books. Look for a Café that´s not too crowed or you might have to consume all the time in order to stay there.

These of course are situations that can be problematic. They are limited to certain times, space limits like empty seats and weather circumstances. That´s why I do recommend these study environments only for those, who have no other choice because either their mental health or their family makes it impossible to study at home. If you are one of these people, then you´ll need a tight time schedule; everything has to be planned and coordinated because you basically have to finish your studying till these places close.  I therefore also ask all the other people, that can study at home, that don´t have problems with studying in their own room, to leave the seats a bit more often to the ones that need them more!

But this is not the only thing that counts as environment. Even if you study at home there are so many factors you have to decide:

-        Do you need to have it cosy? Then you will probably love studying in your bed or, if it is carpeted, on the floor. Yes, studying on the floor can be great because you have lots of space and you can use a notebook or laptop as table on your lap so that you will be able to write properly. When reading it is even more pracitcal!

-        If you have troubles staying awake, definitely choose a normal table. This can be the table at your room but it can also be in the kitchen or the living room if it is quiet enough there. Often the kitchen table is the biggest so that may be great if you have to work with many books!

-        If you have a balcony or garden, this is also a great place to study. But make sure your paper sheets won´t fly away!

Make always sure to study at a place where you feel safe but also not distracted! Your mental stability is one of the most important factors for successful studying.

Okay, so now you know where you want to study. Now you need…

The Setup

The setup basically means what you surround yourself with during your study sessions. Find things that motivate you, that remind you of something beautiful or positive but that don´t distract you too much. This might be cute pastel stationery or maybe a plushie that calms you. Crystals also help for many people. Basically it should be something that makes the study space a safe zone for you. If you study in your own room, this is very easy: print out beautiful calming pictures, buy one or two easy to handle plants, maybe some fairy lights or other decorations. Get sticky notes and highlighter in the colours that calm you the most. If you have a bit more money, buy framed pics in these colours, sheets, carpets, curtains. Anything that helps you relax is great. But attention! You don´t have to find beige and white and black, or pastel colours or glitter or rosegold or succulents relaxing. A wooden skull, black walls, a picture from Dali and an old clock can do the same for you maybe. Or maybe you need some space aesthetics? Maybe science fiction, fantasy, wildlife…anything can be right for you. It does not have to fit the tumblr standards of a perfect studyblr; it has to fit your standards and only yours!

Make sure to keep everything you need at hand. Having to get up and search for study materials can really harm your focus or motivation. So get all the books you will need, the laptop, the charging wires, paper and pencils, water and maybe a snack. Especially when you don´t study at home it is important that you take everything with you – you´ll not want to hurry back. Also make sure to have enough light – best is natural day light but if you cannot have these, a soft yellow light is often better for your mental health than a bright and cold white one. Fresh air is important too. Find music, that helps you relax, no matter what kind of music this is.

The time schedule

Especially when you have issues with your mental health, a well planned time schedule is important so you won´t get stressed. Make a to-do-list for everything you need to get done. Then draw a star beside the things that you have to get done until tomorrow. Do these things thirst. Afterwards, allow yourself a break but don´t stop studying for that day. The further you get, the less stress you will have. Study until you find you are getting tired – often physical tiredness comes short before a mental health issue. Stop as soon as you get too tired, so that you won´t trigger your anxiety or depression (I know for many people it is always there, but it can be stronger or less string. Tiredness makes every mental health issue stronger and this something that you can truly avoid.) Okay, so stop. Just stop. You´ve done as much as you could and you can´t do more now – your mental and physical health is still more important than your grades!

Don´t go to bed immediately. Having no free time is one of the worst things you can do to your mental health! Enjoy something: Go out for a walk or talk to a friend, watch a movie, read a chapter oft he book you wanted to read for ages. Sit back and listen to music, close your eyes and just enjoy it. Write in your mental health journal, and if you don´t have one, go get one now! (I will make a post about that topic soon). Don´t go too much on social media. You will just compare yourself to others and feel less successful. You can and should be proud of your success so please don´t let anyone ruin it!

What to do:

-        Document your success – be it in a journal, a bullet journal, a students planner, just a sheet of paper or a Word document. Write down what you did, even if it was not much.

-        Before you start to work, write down what you have to do. Break it down into smaller bits so you can cross out the bullet points more often.

-        Reward yourself! Be it with small things like allowing yourself to read a chapter of your favorite book in the evening or maybe with bigger things. For example, once you managed to finish that important paper, 25-pages, professionally researched; once you managed that, you go out to the movies our buy yourself some stationery or the new CD you love. Or maybe you just relax for a day and try not to think about studying.

-        Avoid expectations! Don´t tell yourself that you have to get a certain grade. Just do your best and it will be enough.

-        Make sure you don´t plan to much for a day. Otherwise you will feel overwhelmed which again can trigger you. So be pessimistic when making the plan for that day and the plan will turn out realistic. Trust me, it works most of the time.

-        Spend your breaks with things that calm you and where you know that they won´t trigger you.

-        Don´t have a set schedule when you will take breaks and when you will study. Take a break when you need one and don´t be to hard on yourself.

-        Write on top of every page of your excerpts a line from a song or a movie, some kind of quote that will make you smile.

-        Write down these quotes basically everywhere: one on every page of your planner, one in every study book you own, etc.

-        Put cute stickers or printed pics basically everywhere. They will remind you of hope and light and of all the beautiful things in your life.

-        Don´t look at what lies ahead of you but at what you have already accomplished.

-        Eat food that helps your mental health: for example, avocado. Avoid lots of fat: it makes you feel tired and heavy which again can trigger a lot of bad emotions.

-        Avoid too emotional music. Listen to songs that can´t trigger bad memories or thoughts.

-        Don´t even start to study when you literally don´t feel like it. Instead, do something that improves your mental health of that moment: any hobby that helps you, a song, going for a walk, petting you dog or dog, talking to your fish, taking a nap, whatever…Once you are a bit more stable, start with an easy task that you can finish in short time. It will give you a feeling of success and therefore motivate you to get done more. Slowly intensify the difficulty of your tasks.

What not to do:

-        There are people that can get really bad symptoms from caffeine, I know, it keeps you awake and coffee tastes nice and everything. But if you have issues with your mental health, please be careful! It can literally cause you some kinds of short-time hallucinations. Also, and that is a problem for even more of us, it makes you feel more awake then you are; you won´t feel it early enough when your body gets tired to prevent your mind from getting tired. And therefore, it is way harder to avoid triggering your mental illness.

-        Don´t isolate yourself, at least not after you finished for that day. Isolation harms us so badly. Even if it´s no deep talk about your feeling, just talking to your friend about what you achieved today or about your plans for the next holidays can help a lot. Communication and social interaction DO help us, even when we feel sociophobic – but you have to be careful and avoid toxic people.

-        Often times, bright cold white light can give you not only a headache but might trigger negative emotions. We associate cold white light with hospitals, with strict offices, with tough university classes. When we see these lights during our study time, all these associations are triggered – and with them, lots of negative emotions.

-        Never compare yourself with what others get done. Compare yourself with your former self and try to improve. But even if you don´t, remember that you are always doing your best – and that is always enough!

[jq37]

On a scale of 1-10, how difficult is it to make a podcast? I’ve been following ANA since you first announced it (I’m so excited for it) and the other day I came up with an idea that I think would make a good series

Hey, thanks for the message! And thanks for being interested. Absolutely No Adventures has been a lot of fun to put together and it's nice to see that people are looking forward to it.

As for your question I'd say maybe a 6? But that's a really incomplete answer and I did a lot of searching for help on how to get started when I decided to do this so I'll give you  more in depth breakdown of the steps and if you have more questions you can totally message me off of anon.

(1) Write The Thing

So yeah, no getting around it. The first thing you have to do is just write the podcast. For some people, this is the hardest part. For me, it was probably the easiest part because it's the thing I was most familiar with. You already have an idea, which is great. So now you probably want to sit down and figure out things like is this a limited miniseries or will it be on-going with multiple seasons? How long will each episode be?

You also want to make sure you write for the medium. For example, in a book, you can just say, "She hugged him." But if it's audio, you have to make there's some kind of indication for that (ie: Man: Oh, and now we're hugging).

Format doesn't matter too too much as long as it's consistent. I used film script format in Celtx (which is free) but people also use Google Docs. Just pick what's easiest for you and get going.

I also highly recommend you finish a full season of scripts (or the whole set if it's a mini series) before you move on. Some people write as they go and if you want to do that, cool, but it's one less thing to worry about once you're in production and you don't want writer's block to slow you down once you're already going.

(2) Casting

So this is where I left my comfort zone and had to learn to do things I was unfamiliar with. The good news here is, there are a lot of actors available to be a part of projects like this for varying amounts of money or no money at all if it's an interesting enough project. I will advocate for paying people if you can though because I wanna make money off of my art someday so I think it's only fair to reciprocate. If it is unpaid, just be upfront about that. It's common among indie projects so it's not scandalous or anything.  

Anyway, the basic process here is you write up a casting call that says what the project is, what the deadline is for auditioning, and has some audition lines for each characters (called sides). Then you post on Twitter which has a pretty active voice actor community plus some other places like reddit and certain FB groups and auditions will start rolling in. Casting calls tend to spread--people came to me from Discords I'd never heard of. Once you get a bunch you can pick who you like or, if you can't decide, invite back some people for callbacks and then pick.

I think 2 weeks is a good length of time to keep auditions open, longer if you're looking for something really specific.

It's also possible to simplify this step if you happen to know friends who have mics and wanna help or if you want to do a podcast with a very small cast--maybe even just one person who could be you. There are a number of podcasts with that format. I maybe should have mentioned this during writing but I'll mention it here instead. Anything you have to write, you will have to produce, so keep that in mind. Like, when you're writing, it's easy to have a bunch of extras and sound effects and crazy things happening, but remember that you have to bring that all to life later, so maybe a different character can give that exposition so you don't have to cast ANOTHER person as an extra.

(That being said, most actors I've worked with are chill with doing an extra voice or two.)

Oh! Also. Time zones are a thing. Keep that in mind. I do no regret casting an Australian, a Brit, and Americans across the country because they were all fantastic, but it was hell to schedule.

(3) Recording

So there are 3 main ways to record--in person in studio, remotely together, and remotely apart.

Option one is kind of a no-go right now because of Covid so let's talk about the other 2.

Remotely Together means you get all your actors on a Zoom call with you and they're all in their studios and you record as if you're all in the same room. I did this for ANA and I think it's the best way to do it cause people get to react to each other in real time which is great. The only thing is, it means you have to line up everyone's schedules which is a total bear. Still, if you can do it, worth it.

Remotely Apart means you give everyone their scripts and tell them to send in their lines in x weeks. I did this for some episodes of Secret Podcast Number 2 and it works fine. But for the more emotional eps, we still recorded together. This method is good because it gets rid of timing troubles which was necessary since we're doing a December release (which, trust me, is crazy quick for what we’re doing), but there are some things, you want people to be able to adjust their intensity levels for in the moment.

Either way, but especially in scenario 2, I'd suggest you do a table read first where everyone gets on call and reads through everything. It helps everyone get a feel for each other so they're not going in cold.

Wrt directing, it can feel a little weird to tell people how to talk or inflect or how much they should be crying, but, as long as you're polite, just go for it. They're actors. They can take the notes. That's what they do. All of my actors were always super great about it.

(4) Production

Alright so you have lines in from all your actors.

The next question is, how are you going to handle your production? The actual putting together of the lines and cleaning them up and balancing and adding effects and all that?

I specifically wrote ANA to have relatively simply sound design and it was *still* too much for me to handle so I opted to outsource for that and it was for sure where most of a budget went. If you happen to know how to do this or have the time to learn, you'll def save yourself some money. It is still very time consuming though. The one part that I did do--deciding which takes to use from the lines my actors sent (aka: picking takes) and putting them together to send to my sound guy--took super long as is.

If you're going to hire/recruit someone to do this stuff for you, I recommend you do it before you cast because they'll be able to let you know if the actors who want have compatible audio quality.

IDK what standard procedure is here but the way it works with my guy is I send him lines and then he puts stuff together and sends me a draft of the episode. Then I say what I want changed in an excel spreadsheet with time stamps and we go back and forth until it's done.

(5) Ancillary Stuff

Theme music! You probably want that! There are a couple of routes you can go here. You can get something from a music library--either totally free or for a relatively small fee. This is the most cost effective but will probably more generic and likely in use somewhere else if it's fully free.

You can write it yourself if that's a thing you're good at obviously. Or you can pay someone to do it which will probably cost you a couple hundred bucks but will be totally tailored and unique.

Cover Art! Also very important. People do judge things by their covers so I def rec getting a really dope one made. Canva is also your friend for like icons and stuff.

A Website! You'll want at least a basic one for like contact info, transcripts, stuff like that. I just use Carrd. You can get a pretty classic, website-like setup by using sections and you can link to a custom URL for only like 13 bucks a year which is great.

(6) Marketing

OK so, I'm gonna be real with you, this is the step I'm working on now so I'm still figuring it out!

Besides posting on social media and stuff, you also need to make a press kit which is basically a doc with all the info about you and the show. You can see mine on the ANA site.

I also have mood-board-y graphics I made on Canva to drop with each ep (or ahead of them. Haven’t quite decided). 

I will say, I’ve made friends in the community and a lot of them have hyped up my stuff without me even asking. Which isn’t me saying, “Make friends for what they can do for you.” Gross. What I’m saying is that just participating in the community can help.

Anyway, this is getting way too long. I hope this was at least somewhat helpful. Like I said, if you (or anyone else) has more specific questions, hit me up!

[tisthenightofthewitch]

Ghost frontman Tobias Forge on the band’s 5th album, songwriting and what’s to come

In less than a decade, enigmatic rock band Ghost has earned a Grammy, released four albums, two EPs, a live album and its latest double-single, Seven Inches of Satanic Panic, but it has built and continuously expanded upon a deep backstory about the band members themselves — the “Nameless Ghouls.”

Each album cycle welcomes a brand new ringleader/singer, each portrayed by frontman Tobias Forge, who is the founder and sole songwriter of the band. The mythos of Ghost is now massively popular among many of its diehard fans.

Now that the Swedish group has wrapped the final North American leg of its highly extensive Ultimate Tour Named Death tour, they’re gearing up to put out their fifth album — a “heavy” one that Forge promises will be “seminal” in Ghost’s timeline.

So does that mean fans should expect to see a new frontman in the near future? Very likely, but not for a little while. For now, Forge, 38, still portrays Cardinal Copia, a charismatic and theatrical character who adds a tinge of humour to Ghost’s explosive two-hour set.

The Cardinal claimed the throne after the “death” of Forge’s Papa Emeritus III character in 2018. He was the first to break the tradition of Pope singers in the Ghost timeline, and it seems his run will soon come to an end. Or will it? We don’t actually know.

What we do know is that next March, the “Final Gig Named Death” is set to take place in Mexico City. It will wrap the heavy promotional cycle for the band’s latest album, Prequelle (2018) — which kicked off in 2018 with the Pale Tour Named Death.

Prequelle launched the Swedes into mainstream success with its first single, Rats, which spent seven weeks on top of the rock charts. The album also included the unexpected disco-inspired smash-hit, Dance Macabre

Ahead of the band’s show in Hamilton, Ont., on Oct. 17, Forge/Cardinal Copia spoke with Global News about Ghost’s newest singles, their live spectacle, progress on the upcoming fifth album, and why he doesn’t like to record with heavy metal producers.

Global News: You’ve outdone yourself on the Ultimate Tour Named Death with not only the beautiful stage setup, but the extensive setlist and detailed choreography. It’s very humorous too, yet you still want more. Is it even possible for you to top the current show?

Tobias Forge: I’m certain, yeah. [Laughs] But it’s hard to say that without sounding like I’m soiling the one that we’re currently doing. [Laughs] I am fairly certain that a lot of the things that I have in mind right now, I will be orchestrating about a year from now. It will definitely be a vast and advanced version of what we’re already doing. You have to remember that the even though the show we’re doing right now is our most accomplished one so far, it started with us playing in theatres, and now we’re playing arenas… so the stage setup is still in its Frankenstein phase, meaning that we’re still working with the smaller production we had from first year of this tour. Right now, it’s like we’re repairing an old house, whereas next time we can start something fresh.

Similar to the production jump that Iron Maiden took from the World Piece Tour to the World Slavery Tour in the ’80s then? [Earlier on, Forge reminisced on touring with the band, which he called one of his “old heroes.”]

TF: That would be a very good analogy for it actually. [Laughs] I compare it a lot to what bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica have done and continue to do. They’ve always done it right, and so will we. Next time we can start from scratch with a production that is purpose-built for our album and tour, whereas this is more of a mixture between the stuff that we did on the last album cycle, too. It’s just extended, right? We’ll build the set from the ground-up.

Did you always know that Ghost would become such a theatrical band?

TF: I definitely always had a picture of there being a stage show, but 10 years ago, I had no idea it was going to be as [vivid] as it is now.

Are we going to be introduced to Ghost’s new frontman at what you’re calling the “Final Gig Named Death” next March? Will we meet Papa Emeritus IV? Or is it possible that Cardinal Copia might live on?

TF: Well, it’s the last show of this touring cycle, so something will definitely happen. I just can’t tell you anything about it. [Laughs] But this tour has been really incredible, it’s just time for us to do something new. As much as I love being here in Canada, I think we picked a great time (and place) to end this tour. I genuinely love being on the road. I love playing the show, and ultimately, I’m feeling very good about the band this year — who are so extremely fluid.

Overall, everything is working out really well for us, but now it’s like ‘OK, so the restaurant is just running now?’ [Laughs] You start thinking about the next one. It’s just not enough. You go, “I feel like I’ve pretty much done my thing here…” Except of course for coming in and making the infamous carbonara every night; going through the old ancient recipe, you know? [Laughs] My mind is always thinking forward though, and I’m already thinking about the next time we’re coming back here.

You actually paid homage to one of Canada’s greatest songwriters recently, Leonard Cohen. What prompted your decision to cover something as iconic as Avalanche for your latest album, Prequelle?

TF: I think it was the one song that right off the bat just felt most Ghost-like.  It would feel weird to cover Take This Waltz or something like that. It just doesn’t fit our script. It isn’t actually my favourite Leonard Cohen song. Intuitively, I’d probably choose one of his prettier songs, but Avalanche felt very Ghost-like.

What about the future of Ghost? With such a busy schedule have you even had time to think about a plan of attack for the fifth album?

TF: Oh, I think about that a lot. Currently, we’re in the planning stages of it all, which means that I’m hamstering all my material as we figure out scheduling and who’s actually going to be producing it. I’m working very hard on it right now, and as much as I often contest ideas by thinking about what I should and shouldn’t do, I know it’s easier to define that just by looking at your previous experiences.

So for example, our last four records. Having said all of that, overall, I have a fairly good idea of where I’m going with this one. I want to create a record that lives up to my lifelong dream of being able to kick-off a touring cycle in arenas, so by that logic, this album needs to be by a band that starts touring cycles in arenas. You know? You just can’t f**k around with that. You really need to be on your absolute top game.

Is Seven Inches of Satanic Panic a taste of what’s to come for this album?

TF: It’s not a taste of the new record, no. Those songs are like a side note of Ghost — still fitting in the universe, I think — but they’re definitely not close to what I have in mind. [Laughs] The new record will be more in line with the previous four, in the sense that it will feel like part of the whole story. Whereas that of the singles and cover EPs, which are a little bit more tongue-in-cheek. [Laughs] There’s a dichotomy between a lot of the things that we do though, like for example, the records and the live show.The records are like the script, or Bible, they’re not meant to feel humouristic. Whereas in our live show, we present the ideas in a humorous way. Not in a sense where we are mocking our bible or story, but in the same way that a church might go through rituals with children. Where people are giggling a little because they think it’s silly. “A-ha.” Everybody knows it’s a little stupid, but for some reason, it feels purposeful, because your kid is being baptized or whatever. [Laughs] So that’s that’s what I’m shooting for. I don’t want the records to be too fun or silly, I want them to convey a message and have a clear meaning.

Your lyrics contain such unique concepts and qualities too. Do you write Ghost’s albums all by yourself? After all, this band is your project.

TF: Usually. But what I’ve learned and cultivated a liking to do in the last few years, is collaborating with outsiders. I’ve always been accused of — especially in my own bands — not being able to work well in a team. People have said I’m just overall bad at teamwork, and that was the fact for a long time. But when I made Meliora, I did so together with a producer named Klas Åhlund — who is both a producer and a songwriter. And that’s when it dawned on me that I can work really well with people, but I need to choose who I work with. It’s like … I like kissing people, but I just want to choose who I kiss. [Laughs]I’ve been in bands where there’s always someone, or some people, who just f**king crowbar themselves into the process, and that does not work for me at all. That’s unfortunately when I become like a dictator. Whereas if I choose to work with someone, I’m actually quite flexible. Like working with any professional songwriter, you need to establish a little bit of a vibe together. [Laughs] We need to be aiming for a very similar thing. That person needs to have some sort of … hard-on for rock music, or for what we do in Ghost, otherwise, it might be hard if it’s someone who works against that.

Do you find that collaborating helps with the songwriting, then?

TF: Oh yes. You can make incredible progress in your songwriting that way, because all of a sudden you have this person who’s not at all locked into the traps of being in your band; someone who is not the bass player that suddenly wants a bass solo or the drummer who wants to make the album very drummy. If I find those collaborators, it’s like a catalyst for me to write more, write better and ultimately, step up because I want to impress that other person.

In one or two days, I’ll come up with a skeleton of a song and go, “This is my idea, this is the chorus, but I don’t really have a pre-chorus yet. What do you hear? What do you think?” And then once I hear someone else tinkering with it … I become a little bit like a husband who agreed to a wife-swap. In this case, the song would be my partner, and when I see someone else [kissing] her, I’m like, “No! Let me do this.” Then you go and you do it properly, because it wakes you up. [Laughs] It’s really all about just having to impress someone else. If I don’t make the changes right then and there, then the idea is just gonna drift away. It’s a perfect way for me to write, because it really brings me to life.

You produced Opus Eponymous by yourself, and since then you’ve worked with a completely different producer for each of Ghost’s albums, including Dave Grohl. Do you just not want to do the same thing twice, or are you ultimately trying to find the perfect collaborator?

TF: I believe that there are exceptions to all rules of course, and I believe that a good team truly is a good team. But I also believe that it’s very healthy to make sure that you don’t get stuck in your comfort zone, because it can become too comfortable. I’ve had that in the past with at least a couple of my previous producers, where we’re almost too good of friends; we’ve actually hung out so much, that we’re buddies now. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t always allow for further growth, which is exactly what I want to do. In this case, I have to make our fifth record. I want it to be a seminal record for us. That’s why the process right now is to find that perfectly balanced producer that is gonna make sure that we’re making a rock record — it needs to be a heavy record — but it needs to be someone who understands the factor of, “This needs to be relevant, now.”

Ghost is unique for a metal band in the sense that you don’t often work with metal producers. Is there a reason for that?

TF: I’m sure people in the heavy metal sphere might have noticed that too. … And there’s a reason for that: metal producers are very purpose-driven. They do a fantastic job and they know exactly what they’re going for. They’re experts in doing exactly that. And I have nothing against it, but that’s not what I’m trying to do. So I need to be fully aware and completely awake in trying to find the right producer for Ghost in that moment.

Klas was perfect for me. His whole professional life, he has been writing pop music and playing in Teddybears and writing records for Robyn and Ellie Goulding. You have all these different artists and this huge variety, but he started off playing prog music. He was a guitar virtuoso playing Yngwie Malmsteen/Ritchie Blackmore-type stuff. So when I came and talked with him about making a rock record, he was just like, “Yes, I’ve wanted to do that for such a long time.” It was perfect for both of us, because we were able to talk about all the common denominators. We could reference things from Euro Disco all the way to Slayer just to explain a simple idea. Whereas if you end up with the typical metal producer, they might say, “Slayer, of course. But everything else you mentioned is just ‘ordinary music.'”

I’m not saying that every heavy metal producer is like that, I just feel like metal today, as opposed to 1975, is such a defined genre, that people our age and younger have lived their entire lives knowing exactly what heavy metal is. But people who were around when they made Back in Black didn’t really know what that was. There’s so many rules now. It’s too refined. The whole culture breathes a little bit of a puritan-like conservatism. In order to make new records, I think sometimes you need to try not to think too much about all of these rules.

GLOBALNEWS.CA

[riffs-music-notebook]

Recording Class Lecture 1

A recording studio

A room that gives direct & clear audio response.

I’ve never experimented in recording white noise to find the best possible EQ range.

Machine room removes heat and noise from the control room.

A dedicated machine room

A smaller scale machine room

Control room are pretty much sound proofed and isolated for no outside noises. Optimized listening environment.

Industry standard control room, usually fitted with see through windows to speak with musicians via talk back comms. 

Control room does control heat more because of personal comfort than a heat sink so to speak for the electronic equipment. Because massive mixing consoles require heavy power, heat is generally relative to extensive recording sessions. Also they’re expensive as a used 2016 Bentley Mulsanne Speed. Just saying.

Project Studios

Don’t have the best monitors.

The common Rokit monitors. Cymatics loves em. That’s why they’re always giving em away.

Project studios don’t really need any specific sort of equipment. 

A good example of a project studio would be Charlie Puth’s own personal studio.

sort of the same level of project studio I have. As long as you have true neutral monitors, headphones, a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), live instruments, VSTs (Virtual Instruments), Microphone kit, computer or laptop, interface, and lots of external hard drives to back up sessions both on the road and in studio space. 

An example of full on Studio would be none other than the legend himself, Hans Zimmer’s. Orchestra demands a certain pedigree of recording tools at your immediate use. Even more so for orchestra sampling.

Portable studio

no monitors smaller interface

Basically, all the essentials but bare bones.

That is my current setup. Alesis monitors, Steinberg 2 channel interface, HP Envy laptop. Out of frame is my 2 LaCie external hard drives, AKG P420 mic, gooseneck pop filter, Epiphone Les Paul, Squier Stratocaster, Cordoba Classical guitar, Washburn Ukulele, two tambourines, a Spanish Guiro, a Casio CTK-558, Boss GT-5 Effects Processor and Numark Mixtrack Pro-III. Oh and the vast array of VSTs (Spitfire, 8Dio, ProjectSAM, Primeloops, Cinesamples etc.)

Now, let’s address a common misconception. Buying all the equipment you want won’t make you any better of a musician, a recording engineer or a person. It’s taken about 3/4 of my whole life to accumulate these tools and it’s taken 3/4 of my whole life to understand each one’s own importance. Gearhead Syndrome hits when you really want the most expensive gear instead of settling on budget friendly choices.  Take guitar for example, you hand Slash a Strat and he’ll still play like Slash. You hand John Petrucci a Flying V, and he’ll still play like Petrucci. Point is, take the time to master something comfortably and precisely, and you’ll be better off. 

Going slightly off topic from the studio lesson to share this inspirational video from Steve Vai. Steve talks about what it means to succeed at music. And that’s the main focus to stay away from Gearhead Syndrome.

Live on location recording Records performances with no overdubs.

Even live events can be recorded and done so in the same way that a studio recording does. But with more portable equipment. 

Musician’s Institute has an excellent starting point for live band recording featuring Grammy winning engineer Francis Buckley.

Studios for audio in Film and Television. Like I mentioned previously, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman and Junkie XL have studios with the idea of composing scores for film media in mind. 

The people who make it happen.      -The artist(s)      -Studio musicians      -Arranger      -The producer           *pre-production           *rehearsal and recording           *post production                *distribution           *Engineer                *interpreter                *technical aspects           *Interpreter translates the technicality                *into normal human language

         *Assistant Engineer                *does anything the primary engineer does not want to do          *Maintenance Engineer                *keeps equipment in check, does repair if necessary          *Mastering Engineer                *prepares the final mix for distribution           *Studio Management                *Studio Manager                *Booking department                *Secretarial staff

The recording process      *Preparation      *Recording      *Overdubbing      *Mixing      *Mastering Just remember PROMM. Prepare a budget, schedule and manufacturing and what you want to do artistically.

Actual recording deals with purposeful decision making. And you balance out yours and their needs. Always put the artists comfort ahead of your needs.

Overdubbing is the crucial point to be in sync. The metronome/ click track IS ESSENTIAL!!! Punch in/ punch out deals with deleting unwanted things. Like playing a section once through and ease into the recording.  Consolidating is about bringing all tracks of instruments down into one track, but at the very end.

Mixing down is about adjusting levels.

A-B: Take a break when you’re tired. Freshen your mind when you’re stuck.

Dude it’s like when you compare two songs, yours and another like artist’s to get a specific sound, when you’re stuck. 

Mastering is same as mixing.      *adjust volume in dynamics      *Equalization of frequencies Product manufacture      *create master      *Art layout      *produce packaging

Transducer

Changes one form of energy to another. Like a phone or ears.

Microphones are transducers.

[videogametim]

Octopath Traveler: Final Review

It’s been a little over a month since I posted my first impressions for Octopath, and after 69 hours of playtime I have finally completed all chapters for each character. I’ve got a lot of new things I want to say about the game ever since my last post about it, so let’s get to it. I’ll go over some light spoilers but will avoid saying anything too specific about plot details.

After almost 70 hours, I never got over the art style. Even well into the late game, I was still being consistently wowed by the visual details and area designs. Around the map there are 8 distinct “areas” that branch off of the starting towns and follow that respective theme. For example, Tressa’s starting town of Rippletide is a humble fishing village with stone bridges and golden beaches, and the final town in that section of the map is Grandport, which features an elaborate stonework Market area and coliseum, surrounded by water. It’s nice to see the progression of the themes in each area as you get further into the game. A criticism I do have is that especially later on, a lot of the dungeons look very samey. There are tons of identical forests and sewers and ruins which is a real shame. Sometimes it even seems like a wasted opportunity. In one later chapter you have to go to a city that is overrun by enemies that are looking for you. Wouldn’t it be awesome if the dungeon was the city? Instead, you just go down into some cellars that are hardly visually distinct from some sewers I went into earlier. Despite these hiccups, I still have to imagine Octopath will be in my mind for years to come when I think of the most beautifully stylized games. 

As far as the music goes, the soundtrack does the job it needs to do. It has the nice touch of the battle theme evolving when you get into new chapters, as well as new themes for later boss fights. One thing that did disappoint me is that each new town doesn’t have it’s own theme, and so there’s only really eight different ones in the game. It would have been cool if there was a simple variation of the theme for the starting towns, and it had two more variants with more instrumentals as you got into the later towns. 

Octopath Traveler’s stories are a mixed bag. Some characters definitely got more love than others in terms of interesting stories and even just general writing quality (for example, I found that Olberic got far and away the most exciting story while Therion’s fell kind of flat), but ultimately each character is endearing in their own way. The collection of eight different tales is a unique way to handle storytelling because they all cover largely different tones and each story has its own morals. Tressa’s story is about the love of adventure, Ophelia’s story is about coming to terms with mortality, and Primrose’s is an extremely dark tale of revenge. Of course there are also some themes that persist through multiple stories, most notably on finding one’s purpose in life. 

Due to the free nature of the structure of the game, it’s difficult to have meaningful party interactions during story beats because you could have any sort of party composition. Overall I think Octopath does an admirable job despite this. During my playthrough, I got at least 1-2 and sometimes as many as 4-5 party interactions during each chapter which is impressive considering how many possible party compositions would have to be accounted for. Almost always it is the interjecting party member commenting on the situation with their own perspective, or sometimes it’s just Alfyn trying to flirt with Primrose. Without getting too deep into spoilers, I can also confirm that every character’s story is intertwined with the other’s in some meaningful way. It’s also worth pointing out that almost every interactive NPC has a story blurb written and those NPCs likely numbers in the hundreds. They’re usually just little anecdotes, but sometimes there’s a good laugh to be had or an interesting story to be heard. 

The coolest thing about Octopath’s gameplay to me was the job system. Because the bulk of your stats comes from the equipped gear and job, it means that effectively any character can be made to work with any sub job. In the above screenshot you can see I’ve got Ophelia rocking the Hunter secondary job. This is great because every character takes on a different outfit based on what their sub job is, and each one is tailored specifically for that character. For example, Ophelia’s Dancer outfit is extremely different from Cyrus’ Dancer outfit. What’s more, each character even has recorded audio for all the skills that are outside their regular kit. If you make Olberic a thief he’ll have lines about using daggers, if you make Primrose a Scholar she’ll have lines about the elements. 

Each primary and secondary job has “support skills”, which are passives that each character has 4 slots to equip. The cool thing here is that those passives remain equippable even when you change the related sub job. Want all your characters to have halved SP costs thanks to the Merchant’s SP Saver passive? You can do that. In total there are 12 jobs to equip (8 standard, 4 advanced). The standard jobs you can obtain by just visiting shrines in chapter 2, and the advanced jobs are in some chapter 4 areas and require a difficult boss fight to obtain. I only got one of the advanced jobs in my playthrough, but it was more than enough to breeze through the rest of the game. 

Unfortunately, that is the reality of the late game. Once you reach a certain point, you’ll find yourself steam-rolling the boss fights if you have a healthy mix of different elements/weapon types in your team. 12 different jobs means a lot of different potentially overpowered combinations. With the right setup you can be demolishing most random encounters on turn 1. Something the game does not tell you is that you cannot swap out your main character until you have completed their story. My choice was Cyrus and his was one of the last Chapter 4′s I did, so by the end of the game he was level 70 whereas Chapter 4 recommended levels are 45. For this reason you are likely going to run into big level differences in your party at some point since benched members don’t gain any exp. The map is littered with tons of optional dungeons to mitigate this if you need it, but I personally didn’t have trouble just main-lining the required dungeons. Also worth mentioning is that dead party members don’t get exp either, which may sound brutal but it’s also a much needed dose of challenge if you have a weak party member as it prevents you from immediately brute-forcing enemies if you want to catch them up. 

Overall, I think Octopath Traveler is a great game. There’s a lot of content there in the way of optional dungeons, side quests, and even post game content (which I didn’t personally get to). Combat is at it’s peak in the early to mid game until you really get a handle on how to break it, and then it comes down to how much you enjoy doing that without a way to speed up encounters. The stories all have their moments and are full of excellent characters and wonderful tales ranging from wholesome to heartbreaking. It’s definitely one of the best JRPGs on the Switch, and one of the best looking games too. I recommend it to anyone looking for a long game to play on the go. 

[canstudiojb]

Tim Sharp: Radio Presenter & Co-Founder, Botanic Records

BFM.MY, www.botanicrecords.com

Tell us a bit about yourself? I’m originally from New Zealand, grew up mostly in Australia (both countries are ‘home’) and have spent the last five years in Southeast Asia.

Outside of my day job, I’ve presented a weekly new music radio program for the last eight or nine years - including Into the Blue on BFM 89.9 since 2014.

Another current project is Botanic Records: an independent record label I run with Zulamran Hilmi dedicated to championing and cultivating new music from around the region, and which we launched in 2016.

How did you first get into radio? There’s a phenomenal community radio station in Sydney called FBi 94.5. After a couple of unsuccessful applications I started volunteering as a breakfast radio producer and was really just thrilled to be there doing anything at all. Eventually I began hosting the infamous ‘graveyard’ shifts from 1-6am, drank a lot of Red Bull and then one day received a call asking if I’d like to take on The Bridge – FBi’s longstanding Sydney music program - which I then hosted twice a week for the next few years.

FBi is an amazing station with a mandate to play 50% local music and I loved every minute of it. When I moved from Sydney to Kuala Lumpur I was determined to keep a foot in radio and eventually the dial landed on BFM 89.9, which is itself an inspiring current affairs-based station operating in a very different socio-political climate but with strong local ties and a desire to move Malaysia forward. As great radio should.

Independent radio can also be a vital contributor to a city’s cultural pulse and so I pitched an hourly music program focused on putting local talent on the same stage as cutting-edge new music from the rest of the globe. That became Into the Blue and several timeslots later is these days a two-hour weekly show running on Saturday nights. We’ve welcomed some major guests (including the likes of Thundercat, Tycho and Philip Selway of Radiohead) but the end-game is still to support new Malaysian and regional music as much as possible.

Every minute on radio is a responsibility and using these platforms to support independent musicians is one of the most meaningful things an FM station can do. There’s enough Top 40 out there!

What is the purpose of your studio? It’s funny because it’s quite literally a studio apartment. The essential task was to house my record collection and to create a space to record from when I couldn’t get to a radio station in person. The key parts to it are modular; things plug in and out and I can scale the setup right down into a backpack if I need to record an interview or a show on the road.

How does your studio reflect your personality? One of my favourite concepts is the idea of a feedback loop where learnings and experience from one project inform the next and so on until you are able to balance multiple jobs or roles in a relatively natural way. Which I think is something you’d hope to see anywhere you need to work, live and play in the same space.

Because space is a luxury, there are certain layout decisions that create a sort of puzzle where everything does seem to fit together in that feedback loop sort of way. For example; I will often write a report for my day job while auditioning music for the radio show in the background, or try and practice an idea for a DJ set as a sort of study break from the depths of a spreadsheet. I can’t quite make a cup of coffee from the turntables, but it’s pretty tight!

Are there things you don’t allow in your studio/space in order to be more productive? Over time I’d hope to learn to own less ‘things’, which does seem odd when you’re lugging something like a record collection around. But space is at a premium, for sure, and so new additions to the studio do stand out if they don’t have some sort of utility.

What is your favourite music to work to? I’m always reviewing the next week’s radio show and try not to feature individual tracks more than once, so there’s a lot to get through each week to program two hours of new music.

One quirk of the space is that there’s usually music playing, but rarely from the same source. At the moment I’m really loving Mary Lattimore’s new album on cassette tape (‘Hundreds of Days’ via Ghostly International), Jimi Tenor’s new LP on vinyl (‘Order of Nothingness’ via Philophon Recordings) and a long Bandcamp Wishlist streaming through my phone. There’s a Jamaican dub poet Nazamba with a new release on there and I'm also enjoying the new Seven Davis Jr EP. It’s all happening.

What’s your favourite area/item in your studio and why? My turntables: a pair of 1997 (approx) Technics SL-1200MK2 which I bought second hand from a Malaysian wedding DJ who’d had them spray-painted white at a car body shop. Eventually he'd hung up the headphones and parked them in his dad’s basement for what seems to have been a long time. They're being put to good use again now, but recounting the whole process of finding, dusting them off and now the odd DIY repair makes me chuckle everytime.

What’s your view on Malaysia’s creative scene? Malaysia has incredible creative talent across a stack of industries from design to music to film and beyond. I think we can improve on connecting the dots and forming communities instead of waiting for recognition or some sort of taste-making approval to keep pushing boundaries or innovating. Which is a trap we all sometimes seem to fall into.  

All the ingredients are here to set innovative, creative agendas; but it would be such a shame if we don’t connect the dots. Whether you’re making music in a bedroom in PJ, painting out of a garage in Ipoh or shooting photography in JB, there’s literally nothing to lose by sending an email, or reaching out to someone doing something inspiring. Personally, I’m really excited about the next few years of creativity in Malaysia.

What’s next? We have one more release on Botanic Records for 2018, which I’m very excited about. I’m also working on something exciting in radioland. Watch this space!

Hear more from Tim here:

Into the Blue airs Saturday nights 9-11pm on BFM 89.9 Kuala Lumpur or online at BFM.MY. 

Weekly podcasts are available on the BFM website and app.

https://www.bfm.my/podcast.html?qseaid=&pseaid=17778&iseaid=all&dsseaid=&deseaid=&tag=&prg=

[fornaxvoid]

Now that you're working on a new release, I'm curious what your (songwriting or composing or whatever you call it) process looks like. Do you start with an idea or concept and work from there, or do you sit down with your synths and tinker with patches until something favorable shows up? Do you have a particular synth you use for sketching, or some default go-to patches? Do you write down or record the MIDI right away or do you tinker with patches first and do the actual writing later? Thanks!

Heythere, thanks for your interest. It’s hard to give an exact answer tothis question. My workflow was constantly changing in recent years,as I slowly built up the setup I ended up working with now. A lot ofthe tracks I released in recent years were sketches – basically megetting used to newly acquired hard- or software. But I’ll justramble on a bit about things that come to my mind, and maybe there will be something in there for you…

Generallyspeaking, most of the music I make is inspired by topics thatinterest me beyond the intention of creating music. Obviously,Vintage Computing and game soundtracks (Deus Ex, DreamWeb, X-ComApocalypse, Uplink, Crusader: No Remorse etc.), the demo scene,tracker music, vintage CG etc. are themes I draw a lot of inspirationfrom. But topics like astronomy, ancient civilizations / history ingeneral can also be very inspiring to me in close connection to mymusic. To have a kind of a general topic or mood for your project isextremely helpful to be able to reduce / calibrate yourself towardsa certain acoustical aesthetic. For example: having noise or sampleswith low sample rates in my music doesn’t bother me in a negative wayas it fits the themes I’ve chosen for my project. This also extendsto other decision problems, for example: I can play the guitar anda bit of drums, but it most often doesn’t fit in my projectsmicrocosm anyway, so I don’t have to bother about it in a way thatmakes me feel obligated to put a guitar or drums in a track. So, like with all creativework, it makes your life easier to reduce yourself to a certainpalette of tools / aesthetics / colors / sounds etc. but I also don’trecommend creating dogmas from this. If there’d be a moment I wannaput an acoustic guitar in a track, I’d just try to make it happen /fit.

When I start a new track, I usually work very sequential,building things up step by step like a house. For me composing andprocessing / recording go hand in hand. Just recording things anddoing the whole EQ / Compressor stuff later with plugins, isn’t whatI’m into at the moment. I try to have everything sounding as close aspossible to what it should, before I hit the record button on a newelement (also a matter of limited resources). This forces me to makedecisions early on. That way I’m ideally not ending up in frontof a huge mass of unprocessed audio and a muddy sounding mix. I’mtrying to place everything in a precise way, like a brick you can’tmove later on (with the advantage that you of course, can still doall the digital post-processing if needed). A bit like photographingwith an analog camera. But you can of course also emulate this kind of workflow when working exclusively with plugins.

Alsowhile I sometimes tend to put too much crap in my tracks, I try tonever forget that things can work perfectly fine with just two oreven one instrument(s) applied in an interesting way.

Allof this naturally overlaps with the creation of patches as well assometimes the choice and adjustment of presets. There are phases(usually to break up the monotony when working on visual stuff) whenI so nothing musically, but learning how my synths work and creatingpatches. When I’m recording a new track I’m then able to zapthrough a number of acoustical ideas. While recording I might want to create specific new patches / adjust patches or presets (editing filter settings so you haveto EQ / compress less, syncing BPM of LFOs to your project, adjustingADSR etc.) so even when starting from presets, it is very helpful tounderstand the synth so you can edit those to fit your needs.

Thiskind of full-circles into the choice of instruments. The mood I wantto achieve / genre(s) I want to explore have a very defining impact onwhat kind of synths I like. I ended up with the hardware I havebecause it mostly fits the category of 80s/90s menu diver / fm /wavetable / sampler / computer kitsch things that I like a lot. Mostof it is also 2nd hand and relatively inexpensive so thisalso fits my resource limit (some exceptions made).

Insteadof actually working on the album I should work on (the one I often use to talk about on here), I’m currentlyfinishing the last steps on a cassette release with two tracksapprox. 18 minutes each. I made a list of synths / samplers etc. Iused on that release:

AkaiS1000

CasioCZ-5000

CasioDG-20

RolandU-110

RolandJV-2080

RolandD-05 (D-50 reissue)

RolandTR-505

RolandTB-03

WaldorfRocket

OberheimXpander

ArturiaMiniBrute

MOSSID 6581 (C64 via mssiah)

MOSSID 8580 (C64C via mssiah)

RICO2A03 (NES PAL via Wayfar MIDINES)

KorgPoly 800 MKII

KorgWaveStation A/D

KorgM1R

KorgVolca Beats

YamahaPSS-480 (!!!)

YamahaDX21

YamahaReface DX

YamahaReface CS

YamahaRX21L

YamahaDD-11

YamahaPSR-47

YamahaPSR-60

YamahaFB-01

YamahaTG-33

Imade my favorites bold. I’ve also put some links to YouTube demos onthere for the ones I knew demos I like. Such gear lists also can beinspirational sometimes.

Then hereare some links to music that does inspire me or have inspired me in thepast on a compositional level:

I hit the limit of YouTube embeds. But what I basically want to say is, that for most of the time, I try to keep my intake of music related to what my output should be.

So I have this diffuse cloud of a mood / feeling generated by a compilation of things I’m interested in, that builds the base for most of the choices I make. But I also try the keep things fluid so everything still has some room to evolve inside certain boundaries.

I don’t know how much sense any of this makes, and I don’t claim my way of approaching the creative process to be exemplary, but maybe there is something in there for you or somebody else, that can spend some variable amount of inspiration. I had fun, trying to do a sketchy summary of my thoughts on this topic.

Have a nice weekend!

[tisthenightofthewitch]

It’s been an eventful past year, to say the least, for singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Tobias Forge.

Up until recently, his band, Swedish occult-rockers Ghost, had been operating under a shroud of secrecy, with the multiple masked instrumentalists referred to only as Nameless Ghouls, while Forge, as frontman, assumed the role of Papa Emeritus (and Papa II…and Papa III), a sort of anti-Pope.

Over the course of three albums, Ghost rose to become one of metal’s hottest bands, with successful records (2016’s Meliora hit the Top Ten on the Billboard 200) and sold-out tours, multiple awards (including a 2016 Grammy for the Meliora track “Cirice”) and a worldwide fanbase that includes the likes of Dave Grohl, Phil Anselmo and the members of Metallica.

But in early 2017, the anonymity that seemed so vital to their story and music got stripped away when four former Ghouls filed a lawsuit accusing Forge of financial misconduct. As the suit became public knowledge, so did the identities of the parties involved, revealing Forge as the mastermind of the operation.

But rather than harming the band, this public unmasking seems to have only made Forge stronger. In addition to a new Ghost album, the excellent Prequelle, Forge (now in the guise of new frontman Cardinal Copia) and a new group of Ghouls are back out on the road, and the stages and theatrics have only grown bigger. Rather than pulling back, Forge has regrouped and redoubled his efforts.

“That was the point all along,” Forge says, speaking to Guitar World the morning after a show in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Ghost’s U.S. headline tour—their first ever in arenas. “I mean, I am following my plan that I’ve had years before any of those guys were in this. So why would I change? That would be stupid. I swam way too far out. My whole life, my family’s lives, we’re all so invested in this and have sacrificed so much and are depending on this. Why would I sacrifice that for a bunch of fuckups? No way.”

Indeed, one listen to the new Prequelle makes it clear that Forge will not sacrifice his vision for anything or anyone. Not only has he not lost a step, but he’s continuing to push out on the Ghost sound and story. To be sure, there’s still plenty of vintage-hued metal to be found on Prequelle, including the riffy, anthemic first single, “Rats,” and the stomping and shreddy “Faith,” but there’s also swelling, string-laden piano ballads (“Pro Memoria”), poppy, disco-metal confections (“Dance Macabre”) and a pair of incredibly catchy instrumentals, one of which, “Helvetesfönster,” features flute and nylon-string guitar (the latter played by Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt ) and the other, “Miasma,” that builds to an explosive saxophone-solo climax.

And Forge is only getting started. “The agenda has always been very rigorous and there’s always been a lot of ideas and concepts, and I still have not realized half of it,” he says. “I still have a lot to accomplish in the years coming. Believe me, there’s a lot in the pipeline going forward.”

The anonymity of the musicians in Ghost always seemed so important to the overall concept of the band. But now that the veil has been pierced, you seem almost reinvigorated.

Well, this is the thing—it was never like I was just waiting to be unmasked and then I was going to do this as per normal. Never. I don’t want to do Ghost as a normal, unmasked band standing around in, like, denim jackets. That was never the plan, regardless of whether people knew who I was or what size shoe I wear. So it doesn’t matter. For me, it’s the show that’s important. The make-believe part of it.

As far as the “make-believe” side of things, each Ghost album seems to revolve around a theme. When we spoke at the time of the release of Meliora, you said the album was about the “absence of god.” What is Prequelle about?

The return of god. And, for lack of a better way to put it, the day of doom, when god’s hand sort of reaches down upon the people. Like the Black Death. I wanted this album to have a sort of doomsday theme. But then it’s also themed around the idea of mortality and survival through turmoil, where you’re being judged and a doom has been cast upon you. How do you maneuver out of that?

When you’re composing songs, do the lyrics or the music come first?

The music comes first. Final lyrics are usually written very close to recording the vocals. It’s always been like a pulling-teeth situation for me, where some songs are definitely a knife to the throat on the day of singing. Like, “I need a lyric to this…now!”

Was there anything like that this time?

There are things like that every time. It’s endless. Because I always want to change things. But I usually come up with the important bits when I first begin writing. Like with the song “Rats,” I knew that was going to be the title and there was going to be the part that goes [sings riff] “Rrrats!” And from that it went through a lot of different shapes. But I very rarely start a song just with a riff. It’s usually a melody, and then it’s, “Here’s the verse, here’s the chorus.” And once I have that sort of transition, that’s when I have the song. Then I write riffs around that. That way there’s this steady melodic base. I might also write it with some bullshit vocals, and then I have to find my way with the lyrics around that. It’s varying degrees of pain.

You’ve hinted in the past that, even though you’re surrounded by Nameless Ghouls onstage, on the studio albums you play the majority of the instruments.

At some point or another I’ve played everything. But then to give you an example, you have heard the new album—I can’t play saxophone. But I can hum how I want a saxophone solo to be played. And I’m an able drummer, I can play Top 40 rock okay, but I can’t record hard-rock drums in a studio situation. That would be a waste of time. So I had a real drummer come in to do that work, even though I wrote the drum patterns. And that goes for all the records and all the songs. Even the songs that were co-written, I always played all the instruments at one point. So, when you hear Ghost, it’s my drum style. It’s my bass style. It’s my keyboard style. It’s my guitar style.

Are you playing all the guitars on Prequelle?

Yes. I performed all the guitars and all the bass. With one exception—in the song “Helvetesfönster,” there was a nylon-string part. I originally recorded it with electric guitar but it sounded weak. It didn’t sound cool. So I wanted it to be played with a nylon string. Now, I stopped playing nylon string when I was seven years old, so I called a friend of mine, Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth, who is very good at playing nylon string, to do it.

What was your guitar setup on the new album?

We did four rhythm tracks on everything. On one side we had a Les Paul gold top with P-90s that went through an Orange amp, and also a white [Gibson] Explorer from, like, ’82 or something like that—that typical James Hetfield sort of guitar—that went through an old Marshall rack amp from the early Nineties. And then on the other side it was a mid-Seventies Les Paul Black Beauty 20th Anniversary through one of those old Laneys that Tony Iommi used and an early Eighties [Gibson] Flying V that went through another Orange. Then I had a Seventies Strat for a lot of the leads, and I think I did overdubs mostly with the Explorer. So it was quite simple.

There are so many different styles that come through in your playing. Who were your influences as a guitarist?

There’s always a lot of classic rock—the old Sixties behemoths to, I guess, lesser-known stuff. And absolutely the heavy metal giants—Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Judas Priest, that sort of stuff—into the hard rock of the Eighties, the big arena rock. And then also underground death metal and black metal, and punk to a certain degree. I’m really trying my darndest to make this music as timeless as possible, even though it’s, to use an ambitious word, archaeologically going back to earlier music, especially Seventies hi-fi rock.

There is a definite vintage feel to Ghost’s music, but not to the point where it just sounds completely like a nostalgia trip.

Yes. I mean, it sounds different than your average sort of Black Sabbath rip-off sludge band. Because most of those bands that rave about Black Sabbath, the only songs they’re raving about and copying are the heavy songs. It’s never Black Sabbath’s more harmonic and grandiose tracks, like the ones you hear on Sabotage and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, these albums that have ballads and really beautiful, humane thoughts. And that is the sort of Black Sabbath I am tapping into. That’s the sort of Black Sabbath I am inspired by. That sort of mid-Seventies period where they found orchestration.

In addition to the heavy stuff, you also have things like “Dance Macabre,” which has a dancey, pop element to it.

It does, yeah. I had the riff that starts the whole song, that was just a riff that got stuck in my head. I didn’t think of it as a Ghost thing at first. Because I heard the riff in a slightly more “synth-y” sort of way. But I showed it to some songwriting pals of mine and they were like, “That’s a Ghost song!” Oh, okay. I didn’t hear it that way at first. But it then it was, “Let’s make a Ghost song out of it…”

“Faith” has some great lead guitar playing in it. Clearly, you can shred if the part calls for it.

I can do it if I need to. But I guess that’s an ability thing. But one thing that sort of separates my way of learning to play guitar compared to a lot of others is that I sat with my guitar and my amplifier and I played a lot to records, but I usually came up with my own stuff over them. I never learned the actual solos. So in a cock-measuring contest where it’s about playing licks and playing fast techniques of others, I would definitely lose. Because I only know how to play my own shit. My ability maps my own writing. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time biting licks from the really quick masters. That’s why I’m not very good at that sort of super-fast, shreddy sweeping.

So I’ve never considered myself a traditionally good fast-playing guitarist. But I can do it, especially when I’m recording. With “Faith,” the solo called for an intense, aggressive part where I was like, “This needs to be aaargh!” I wanted to have that sort of attack you hear when you listen to something like [Metallica’s] “Hit the Lights,” where after every drum thing there’s this insane, quick, aggressive guitar bit. I wanted a piece like that but that sounded more evil. And I was able to do it.

In the past, did it ever bother you that because the band members were anonymous, you weren’t getting recognized for your writing or playing skills?

Yes and no. At the time I didn’t think of it as a negative. Because since I am the spokesperson for the band I’ve always been the one that had a full-time job with it. I was working all the time, writing, doing every sort of business thing you could imagine. It was very much a full-time occupation for me. Whereas it definitely wasn’t that for the others, who spent a lot of time just, you know, getting paid retainers. So I always felt from a positive point of view that I was given enough attention. I was given enough pats on the back to not bother with taking credit for everything.

However—when a lot of things were said and done and all of a sudden people were trying to rewrite the story of Ghost and sort of waving a flag for having done something they hadn’t done, that’s where I become a little like, “Wait, wait, wait—are you kidding? That was not your guitar. That was not your style. And if that was your style, write a record. Write a record that sounds like Ghost. You can’t.” That’s where I become a little childish. I didn’t bother to spell it out all these years, and I was fine with people basking in it or whatever. It’s fine. But don’t fucking lie about it. Don’t come out and, you know, aggressively claim that it was yours. That makes it a little bit difficult.

Have you ever had the desire to play the instruments onstage? Just grab a guitar and shred for the fans?

Well, over all these years when people have played it wrong, definitely I’ve wanted to be like, “Give me that god-dang…” [laughs] You know, there’s a lot of nuances in the recordings that I feel sometimes over the years have been missed. But, I mean, this is the thing. As I was saying, I am the director of the play. I just happen to play a part in it. But I’m also orchestrating it. So I don’t demand credit for every little smartass move everywhere, because I know where it all comes from.

As far as where it all comes from, what was your original intent with the sound of Ghost?

I wanted it to sound like the most gelled-together, intuitive band ever. And to sound like a band that plays just the right amount of stuff. Because whenever you have a band where you have phenomenal players, they usually overplay and they don’t really leave enough room for someone else. I mean, for a long time I always thought Frank Zappa had these amazing jam musicians. And then, haha, fuck me, little did I know that he wrote everything and that it was all totally scripted. But it sounded like it was, you know, this band just standing there, all flowing with it. So I guess that’s a little bit of my approach as well.

You want Ghost to be a band—even if, behind the scenes, you’re the one responsible for most everything that’s being put out there.

Yes. I’ll gladly give away the applause to someone else. That’s completely fine. I just want everybody onstage to have fun. And I want everybody in the crowd to have fun. And to believe.

[lottegeevenselectionworks]

THE SAND MACHINE

A worldwide search for singing sand by soundartists Lotte Geeven.

text by Jennifer Gersten, senior editor at Guernica New York

The samples of singing sand that the Amsterdam-based artist Lotte Geeven is soliciting from desert residents around the globe for her latest work, four batches have made it to Geeven’s doorstep without incident. The rest are languishing—at Dutch customs and police stations, a bus station in Brussels, another office in the Western Sahara—or lost. “Roaring sand is not just something you can buy,” Geeven tells me. For this project, she is prepared to be patient. Singing sand, a rare variety of sand that emits a thunderous hum as it slides down certain dunes, is a phenomenon exclusive to the planet’s nooks and crannies: spots in Nevada’s Mojave Desert, Chile’s Copiapo, and Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, among others. For The Sand Machine, Geeven, in collaboration with two French acousticians, will assemble twelve machines to amplify the sounds of twelve types of singing sand, allowing these typically distant musics to resound in public for the first time,.

Anyone may send a sample to the address listed on her website by the September deadline; the artist promises to reimburse the costs of shipping. Resembling a helicopter flying overhead, the sand’s voluminous song maintains an uneasy relationship with its granular source, as though the two had barely met. Each machine, a circular drum a meter-long in diameter, will contain a rotating blade that pushes the sand forward, simulating the environment that permits this peculiar acoustic property. Though the sand has been more difficult to come by than Geeven envisioned, she proceeds unfazed. Exhibited internationally and inhabiting no single medium, Geeven’s work is as taken with process as with execution. Just as important as the final product are the narratives that happen upon her path, like coltish figure skaters. In several projects, including The Sand Machine, she enlists technical expertise to prod the extremities of our planet: The Sound of the Earth is a recording from the deepest hole on Earth, an approximately 5.5-mile-deep pit on the border of the Czech Republic, which Geeven located after extensive collaboration with several scientists.

Born to two artists, Geeven, thirty-eight, grew up walking among her parents’ sculptures and paintings, which struck her as “puzzles to solve.” The eclectic preoccupations spanning her work often resemble thoughtful pranks, disrupting unassuming spaces. Her residencies, including stints in Xiamen, Tblisi, and Kythera, are experiments with surveillance, sound, and botany, among others, poking at the seams in her surroundings. 

Guernica: How did you first become interested in art that engages the natural world?

Lotte Geeven: We live in a systematical world where everything is explained and organized. Beneath this man-made system, there are wild, chaotic forces of nature that choreograph our behavior. While we are inclined to control and explain these forces, I try to see how we can relate to them in a different manner. I find that through art, literature, or poetry we get a deeper, non-intellectual understanding of this unstable world and our place in it. Ahmed Salem Dabah with Morocco sand.

Guernica: What prompted your interest in the desert, and singing sand in particular?

Lotte Geeven: For me, the desert is like an empty sky. It’s a blank canvas, a projection field for your imagination. It’s almost abstract art. The acoustic sand I’m interested in is rare sand that generates a deep hum when it is put in motion, whether by the wind or by your hand. This acoustic sand occurs only in a few remote locations around the world: a hill in the desert of Mongolia and an area in the middle of the Namib Desert, to name a few. Sliding these layers of sand over one other generates vibrations that emit a deep, low rumbling pitch. This principle can be compared to a bow striking a cello string. In volume, this concert of sand can be as loud as the sound of a helicopter flying over your head. The singing sand phenomenon has puzzled people for many centuries, and there are various contradicting scientific theories about what exactly makes the sand sing. One thing is for sure: the size, shape, and surface texture of the grains have to be spot on in order for it to generate sound. The sound of this sand is so rare and so strange. So few people have heard this before. Listening, you have almost the same joy that you had when you were a kid, witnessing things around you for the first time. It surrounds you and gets really deep under your skin. When I heard it, I was very moved.   Guernica: Many of your projects involve interacting with earth objects in an unexpected fashion, whether by listening to sand or viewing mercury up close. What sorts of insights become possible as a result of displacing typical sensory relationships with the world?  

Lotte Geeven: My works consist of minimal gestures that allow space for reinterpretation. Many of my works—The River, in which I have a river speak through the mouths of hundreds of poets; The Sound of the Earth, in which you listen to the earth roar; 127109 & 129110, in which the sea choreographs an encounter between two objects—explore the interaction between nature and humanity in simple terms. Such works allow the viewer to perceive the forces of the natural world as something unknown that is nevertheless part of us.

Guernica: How did you become invested in obtaining sonic representations of earth materials?

Lotte Geeven: The surfaces of our everyday lives are flooded with images that don’t enter our deeper consciousness. But sound sometimes can wedge its way deeper into the brain and move you. I have always been fascinated by how a natural sound is able to transport us to an atmospheric mental space disconnected from logic or reason. Whenever such a sound has a debatable or mysterious origin, like those sounds produced by the singing sand, the vivid friction between reason and fiction comes into play. The sounds emitted by the deserts are perfect examples of something that can trigger the process of story making. It is so strange and impressive that everywhere around the world, many stories arise from sand or a hole in the earth; trying to give meaning to the unknown. How we attribute personal and cultural meaning to these natural happenings speaks to the way we relate to the abstract unknown.

Imagine that you and I were standing in the middle of the desert right now, and all of a sudden the wind rose, making the whole desert-scape around us hum like a gigantic brass band. We would be in total awe. We would tell that story, and it would make its way into local culture because of its extraordinary nature. The sand is thus like a myth: it is polished, eroded, and carried from one generation to the other like whispers. What I have noticed from collecting singing sand so far is that acoustic landscapes are often personified. In many local stories they become living characters with morality and souls, in the same way that you would bring a dead person to life by talking about them, which I find super fascinating. The Sound of the Earth, a recording of a roaring sound coming from the deepest open hole in the planet, generated a lot of similar reactions. Some people thought it was the sound of hell; others believed they could hear the planet breathe. The Sand Machine is along those lines.

Guernica: How did you decide on the types of sand you wanted to feature in your project?

Lotte Geeven: I started out by making a series of machines with rotating blades to be filled with acoustic sand from all over the world. Two French scientists designed a lab setup that became a blueprint for The Sand Machine. To fill these machines—or sound instruments, if you wish—I went looking for the sand that creates different tones in different places. Like a detective, I started tracking people down who lived close to the locations using Google Maps. I reached out to them via Twitter, Facebook, email, and phone and asked if they would be willing to send me some sand. To be honest, I felt a bit like a stalker scrolling their Facebook pages and looking for phone numbers. This became an extensive search. Day by day, my artwork became infused with mythical and hilarious stories about the origin of the sounds. At that point the project took a turn, and I decided to also collect the unfolding narratives told to me by the sand collectors. In the end these stories will become part of the work in the form of an additional film. The machines are being named after the people that collected the sand. Guernica: What sorts of sand samples have you received from volunteers thus far? What do you know about their provenance?

Lotte Geeven: A few batches have arrived so far—they sound amazing, like sound portraits of the unknown. Right now there are a few batches on their way, but some are stuck at customs, and one got lost somewhere between Afghanistan and the Netherlands. Trying to get ahold of sand from remote areas actually seems fairly easy on paper, but proves to be extremely complicated in reality. The Dutch police even called me about one batch because they didn’t trust this big bag of sand. Another batch is stuck in a bus office in Brussels. At the moment there are four more people who will collect some of the sand for this project soon. Fingers crossed.  These difficulties are noteworthy because we live in a time where we could easily order a camera from China or a book from Australia, and within a week or two these objects from the other end of the world have been delivered to our doorsteps. But roaring sand is not just something you can buy—it’s proved to be a rare resource that feels like it needs to be negotiated. Making this sand travel to me requires lots of resourcefulness, determination, patience, luck, and, most of all, the kindness and goodwill of others. The people I found online were at first very surprised and even excited that I had contacted them about sending me some sand. Immediately afterwards, they’d start telling me incredible tales about these sounds. Najibullah Sedeqe collecting sand in Afghanistan. One of my favorite stories that I’ve collected is from a man named Najibullah, from Afghanistan. He lived close to a singing sand site, and he agreed to my request to go and look for some. About the mountain where the sand was located, the story goes that if you take something from the mountain, it will be returned to the mountain while you are asleep. That’s exactly what happened. He took a huge bag of sand and sent it through customs, and it got lost. In the end, actually sending the sand has proven to be a step too far for most people, which I can totally understand. About one out of every thirty people has been so incredibly generous and kind to ship the sand to the Netherlands. They include Rizwan, a limousine driver in Oman who likes to smoke his after-work-cigarette in the singing sand dunes, and Melanie, a lady living on the loneliest highway in the world in Nevada, went into the desert and collected sand for my project.

Guernica: Have you collected any sand samples yourself?

Lotte Geeven: I tried collecting acoustic sand too, which resulted in a rather unexpected adventure. I traveled to the Negev desert in Israel after hearing that there was a spot where the sand was supposed to sing. After a long journey, the doors of our bus opened, and I walked out into the desert. I heard a sound, looked to the left, and froze. I was facing a dozen tanks and armed soldiers. The hill of sand was apparently located close to the entrance of a military base, and the guys were completely puzzled by this foreign stranger approaching them with an empty bag and a camera.  At that point a missile exploded one kilometer away from us. This hill was located in the middle of a firing zone close to Gaza, and I was told that the whole mountain was full of unexploded devices and that I wouldn’t be able to get closer. I sat down with the guys and we drank a Coke on the military base. They told me that in the winters, when the wind blows, they can  hear the mountain sing.

Guernica: Your previous project, which entailed recording the sounds of the lowest places on earth, also involved long-term collaborations with physicists, seismologists, and engineers, among other members of the scientific community. What influence has working with science had on how you think about your art?

Lotte Geeven: The way I work is like how scientists work. They set some parameters and make something happen. They drop a ball and then they witness. Similarly, I cannot control the outcome of the artwork—it is choreographed by forces beyond. When I look for answers to simple questions I pursue in my work—like, what is the sound of the earth?—I always stumble upon scientists at some point. Collaborating with them isn’t always easy. Art and science are two different ball games. But in the end these projects are often as interesting for me as an artist as they are for the scientists. In these collaborations there is space for doubt and the unknown. My work is political in the softest sense of the word—I evoke space for doubt, for new thought and interpretation of the world around us. These qualities are very human and essential. Hard science has no place for this. It looks for answers and I don’t. Guernica: Oftentimes your work takes the form of a variety of disruption, in which you induce an event within an unexpected landscape. Who do you perceive to be your audience in these “disruptive” projects? Is it you, observing the results of your manipulations? Or the people engaging with the work?

Lotte Geeven: I have a problem with the word “audience.” It places the artwork on a stage somehow, and creates a huge distance between the art and the people engaged with it. I don’t like my art to be high-end stuff that nobody gets; I want to make things that touch people. The art starts when it begins to engage the other, and we become both audience and curator.