Started to play again

Today, for the first time since quite a while, I stood and sat down with both my upright and also my fretless basses, playing to some template/song from Wikiloops again. And it’s fun. And although I’m not after perfection anymore – the journey is the reward – I’ll have to put in some time again. Can’t wait…

7e7_2275108-fretless-bass-computer-desk
Fretless bass at the computer desk, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

Like always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.

Saying hello to and thanks for the “Blonde Bop”

Glen MacArthur aka GMaq, farmer, musician, and inventor/creator of AVLinux and the AVL drum kits has decided to give us all a new gift, his “Blonde Bop” drum kit. Here’s kind of a “making of” and explanation:

New Free Drumkit! AVL Drumkits Blonde Bop Kits and LV2 Plugin!

So if your DAW can take sfz or sf2 samples or even better, LV2 plugins, go and have a look – and as you can see, you can – at least in Ardour – even spread out Robin Gareus’ nice plugin over separate channels just like a drummer would do in the studio.

Seen/found in Linux Musicians and the Ardour Discourse, and thank you very much Glen – again!

One of my favourites

Olivia (OKO) posted this on Soundcloud a while ago, just found it there. We have so many good bass players on Wikiloops, so I feel quite honoured that she chose the version with me on my upright bass:

Pieces by OKO and frineds, lyrics by Eyeless, also on Wikiloops where it originated

Thanks Olivia and friends, what a pleasure to jam with you all 🙂 <3

Happy New Year 2023

To all our family, friends, and readers of this: have a happy new year 2023 everyone. Be well and safe.

Scene from “Dinner for one” starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden, © NDR, Foto: Annemarie Aldag

Like always, thanks for reading.

The Herring King Band – Second Album

Yesterday the second album from the Herring King Band was released:

I had the great honour and pleasure to play my bass on some of the tracks, but all others are so great – if you like to hear Herbie’s story, please head over to the album page on Wikiloops to hear and/or download it 🙂

Thanks to my friends for inviting me, I’m humbled by all of *your* performances!

And thanks to you for reading, and for listening, or even downloading.

P.S.: the band also asked to send out their Christmas greetings – so here you go:

Merry Christmas, on behalf of the Mermaid, all Herrings, and their King 🙂

Ardour 7.2 was released

About two hours ago, the Ardour team released their latest and greatest version 7.2. I have it already, and it works very nicely, just like it always does. Here are some screenshots:

Ardour 7.2.0 “Wrong Way Up”
Ardour 7.2 on Linux with a song I’ve had in 7.1 previously
Ardour 7.2 and its mixer view. My Sonarworks plugin is on the monitor bus.
Ardour 7.2 playing back the loaded song. Notice the threads on my CPU while playing back two tracks…

Very nice. I’ll start using it, keeping the 6.9 version because of older tracks, and the 6.5 one because it came with the OS. I also have the Windows version just in case Zuleikha would like to use my XLN Audio grand piano which came as a Windows VST plugin only (and yes, I know how to load these into Linux, but won’t do it).

Oh, and in case you want to hear the song I have in my DAW here (minus my tweaks to it), it’s this one. Please give Shi and Tom a thumbs up in case you like it.

In case that maybe you have no idea what Ardour is, it’s one of the best free and open source digital audio workstations available. Please have a look at its homepage in case that sounds interesting for you.

Like always, thanks for reading.

Some two years ago: Pieces – Oliv’s mix, remastered

Just pointed an interested musician to a song which I accompanied in August of 2020. In retrospect, I should have pointed her to Monsieur OliVBee’s remix which sounded much better than mine, and which I later “remastered” for an album like this:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-197039.php
Pieces – Oliv’s mix, remastered

I recorded this some 11 days after buying my used Christopher DB202T upright bass, here’s a photo of it, also from Wikiloops:

At the time when I recorded this, that instrument had Presto Nylonwould Ultralight strings which are very nice Nylon-based strings – they sound great but aren’t the best for bowing, so I later replaced them with Thomastik Spirocore Weich strings.

Time to pick up that big bass fiddle again, and to play some more tunes… 🙂

Like always, thanks for reading, viewing, and/or listening.

Looking at / listening to Ardour 7.1 on Windows

Today I’ve been looking at & listening to the new Ardour 7.1 free and open source software DAW on Windows 11. Looks and sounds awesome:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/52477508304/
Ardour 7.1 on Windows 11, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

The music you see within that program is from Dan and Chris, you can listen to that one on Wikiloops if you’d like to. The program seems to work fine, so next step is to also install it on Linux 🙂

And like always, thanks for viewing, listening, and reading.