Category: fun

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Back from Schlitz

From Thursday to Sunday I was in Schlitz at the LMAH (Landesmusikakademie Hessen), together with Zuleikha and her school plus some alumni and of course, teachers. The main building from its back side (the river side) looks like this:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/48122172908/
Schloss Hallenburg, Schlitz 2019

I took this photo in the early Friday morning with my new zoom lens on Mitchie’s camera, and I used 3 cameras plus my portable Zoom H5 recorder to take photos and videos of the practice days and concert. All in all I produced roundabout 100GB of data which now has to be cut, edited, equalized, compressed, normalized, and presented in a halfway decent or at least acceptable way – so still lots of work to do there.

The school will use that material, and I’ll ask what I can use for my own pages. I think I can show you some more when these files are ready. The photo above is straight out of Mitchie’s Olympus E-M5 Mark 2 camera. The musicians were top class, and we all had lots of fun.

As always, thanks for reading.

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Hear her call

I had this beautiful track from Tom & Devin on my watchlist since quite a while. And today I could finally add a little something to it:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-165528.php

List of musicians, so far:

Thanks to my friends over at Wikiloops for their wonderful music. And thanks to you for listening. Join us to add something.

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A fixed issue, and some recent remixes

Richard fixed the issue with the embedding of the Wikiloops player last night, and he tested it with my post “Blues Knows No Colour” on this blog. Cool; many thanks man!

So now I can try and show/play you the last remix I’ve got plus one that I had made for some friends (with mixing only, no bass needed in that one). So here they are:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-164383.php

Yup; works. And here’s the one I (re-) mixed:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-163710.php

Works as well. Thanks for listening, and if you’re a musician, then join and play with us on Wikiloops!

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Last Peace, by Zuleikha L

Last night, Zuleikha uploaded her newest composition “Last Peace” to Wikiloops. I had helped her a bit with getting the Addictive Keys Studio Grand into Ardour, so she mentioned me as well on her lovely track. And over the night, she got 11 thumb ups, 5 downloads and 1 remix already as you can see here or on her track:

“Last Peace” by Zuleikha L on Wikiloops

I also like her new avatar there which she drew herself:

And as you can see, she also received a first remix already, which were some jazzy drums & guitar played by João (nickname jjdf) from Portugal. Obrigado!

As always, thanks for reading.

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Another great album of the day

Over at Wikiloops, the album of today was again one by my friend, Monsieur OliVBee from Paris, France. And in his ‘Deep Dark Blue‘, he features another great singer which is AnneCozean from the American west coast:

Today’s album of the day at Wikiloops: ‘Deep Dark Blue’ by OliVBee

I listened to this today at work when I needed to blend out discussions and/or telephone calls from colleagues, and again I was blown away by the quality, the taste, and the musicality of all involved musicians. And by Anne’s voice of course. Another outstanding album from Oliv and friends.

And I will definitely listen to his other albums which are yet unknown to me, like ‘MOF on the loops‘ (featuring marmotte), or ‘Instrumentals‘.

This is world-class music, and if you don’t know and/or didn’t hear anything about Wikiloops yet, just listen to one of these to get an idea of what it’s all about. Heartily recommended, and another instant fav and download from me.

As always, thanks for reading, and for listening.

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Work and fun start in your watchlist

At Wikiloops, we have that concept of a ‘watchlist’, and mine got filled quite a lot recently. Each time I sit at work and listen to something where I think I could add something, I add it to this watchlist – so mine currently has over 100 gems inside:

At home, I’ll download all of these when I have the time, and start ‘working’ on them in my DAW (=’Digital Audio Workstation’). Convert MP3s to WAVs with Audacity first, then load them into Ardour. Set the tempo, check with a metronome, eventually make a clicktrack and/or a count-in. See if I can enhance the given audio, and it helps if you have single HD tracks because a drum kit or a guitar might need other treatments than a voice.

Often I also add markers where the chords change or to separate parts of the song so during recording I can see the structure.

And finally I’ll grab my bass and play.

And all of this is great fun. I’m learning so many different things. And I’m so glad that I found Wikiloops…

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A little appreciation: Feels So Good :)

It’s now almost exactly 15 months since I found and joined Wikiloops, this ‘Über-cool‘ platform for jamming with other musicians from all around the globe. It’s even fun to only listen, and to discover new original music each and every day there – we have different “radios” (streams) to cover almost every taste you might have at the moment. So even for ‘consumers’ this is nice, and it’s heaven for musicians. I’m so glad that I’ve found it.

And if you don’t only listen and/or practise to the looping tracks but remix and upload some stuff yourself, you’ll receive a little appreciation from others in form of nice and helpful comments, and “thumb ups” like in other social media platforms.

And today, I received thumb up number 1000 from fblack (from Spain) on my latest contribution to the track “Story…“. Thumb number 999 was from Ms Shi from England, number 1001 from Pexe from Brasil. So my statistics (which you can see on my profile) looked like this an hour ago:

So thanks go out to my friends on that platform for being nice and commenting and giving feedback in form of these thumb ups. As Chuck Mangione would state it: Feels So Good…

Chuck Mangione – Feels So Good

Thanks again my friends, and to those whom I haven’t met in real life yet: I hope that day comes soon 🙂

Thanks to everyone who reads this, for your interest 🙂

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Story…

Played on a nice song from RobM, mpointon, jamlady, and ROBJOL (all Wikiloops usernames) yesterday, and since we’re not done with embedding the new Wikiloops player into WordPress, please consider listening to the song “Story…” at its source. This will also show you the list of musicians who participated so far, and some comments from other Wikiloopers.

Thanks for reading, and for listening.

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Blooming the flowers

I’ve got a really cool remix on my first bass noodling upload on Wikiloops – josepssv took it and turned it into something else.

Just tried, but I think I still cannot embed a Wikiloops track into WordPress, so please go to the official remix to listen to it if you want to.

Thanks.

Edit, from Sunday afternoon: … and I’ve got a remix on that last remix. Listen to it here if you like to.

And again, thanks fro reading, and for listening.

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My album of the month, May 2019

I’m late to the party, I know, and that’s because I’m still relatively new in Wikiloops. But when I listened to a track on an album there lately and started to congratulate all participating musicians for their work, one of them – my friend Monsieur OliVBee from Paris, France, told me that he had the same track on an album of his, and pointed me to it.

And wow, what a discovery that was! First, he has Shi on all of his tracks of that album. Second, he has bass players who are really good – and so are all other musicians as well. I knew some of his tracks because I had used his template(s) (and Shi’s remixes) as well for my own albums, but still, OliVBee’s “Raspberry Charm” album is sooo good. I even like its cover:

Raspberry Charm by OliVBee

So when I asked Oliv about the cover picture, he said that Shi took the photo – and I’m wowed again. Creative with a camera as well…

Some instant favs are tracks with Dick (Richard) on double bass, or with Haddock on his fretless. But listen to all of them, and then consider to download and pay for this to support us a bit. I paid for that download myself, and it’s so totally worth it in my opinion.

Your taste might differ of course, but there are lots of albums on the ‘loops – so browse the collection and see if there’s something you like. I just happen to love this one. Published on Christmas 2015 by OliVBee.

As always, thanks for reading, and for listening.