Ardour 6.8

Just read about it this morning on my mobile phone, but as a supporter of Ardour I had it since yesterday already – and installed it on both Linux and Windows:

Ardour 6.8 on my Debian 10 “Buster” OS

I sat down with the guitar to record a bit with it, but got interrupted after 15 minutes or so – can’t always record with a microphone. But Ardour works as a charm, I’m using it since at least 2017 and couldn’t wish for anything else really.

A download of the binary file costs an amount of your own choice (starting at 1$/1€ I think), but it’s worth it. If you’re on Linux, you might have an older version from your repositories, or even this one from third party offerings like KXStudio and the likes.

Enjoy…

What a nice remix!

Got a remix on a duet of Shi & me yesterday, from Croatian drummer ‘denisk’ who didn’t only play the perfect drums for the track, but also added his first ever guitar recording on our classic (in Jazz) ii-V-I progression. I also really like how he resolved my tritone in the middle, really cool. So what started as a lovely gospel-like a capella in Wales now went through Europe in a \ (backslash) kind of line…

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-221239.php
Don’t touch, on Wikiloops

Thanks again to ‘denisk’ and to Shi – and thanks to you for listening.

Jango Edwards & Friends Roadshow – Springtime

Music of some friends I hung out with when I was younger. Much younger, like 22. And although today’s kids might not know it, but we had bass players before Joe Dart who could play awesome 16th grooves (the one in here is Michi Ritter from Cologne):

Jango Edwards & Friends Roadshow – Springtime

In case you want to hear more, my friend Dominik von Senger – who wrote that piece above together with Jango – has uploaded both sides of that ’79 vinyl record, so here are

JANGO EDWARDS & FRIENDS ROADSHOW A

and

jango edwards & friends roadshow B

Enjoy, and give the guys a thumbs-up on the tube if you liked it 🙂 As always, thanks for listening.

In German / Auf Deutsch: Eine Band die Ihr nicht verdient

Zugegeben, ich bin kein großer Fußball-Fan. War ich noch nie, obwohl unser Vater sich reichlich bemüht hatte. Aber vielleicht war es ja das Vereinsliga-Spiel (ist das richtig?) der Mannschaft seines damaligen Arbeit- und Brötchengebers, mit mir/uns auf den Zuschauerrängen, erste Reihe weil’s eh leer war – und während dieses Spiels bekam ich einmal den Ball voll in die Fresse. Aber so richtig. Ansatzweise Ohnmacht, blaues Auge, Brille kaputt, und das war’s dann auch mit meinem Interesse an Fußball oder generell an Mannschaftssportarten.

In meiner Familie sind’s also eher meine Frau oder mein Bruder die die Fußballfans sind. Und weil grad EM ist läuft sowas auch schon mal im Fernsehen, obwohl ich in meiner Freizeit eigentlich bessere Dinge tun könnte.

Und was seh ich? Eine Sportschau die sogar eine Band hat – war das eben Julia Hofer am Bass während dieses viel zu schnellen Kameraschwenks? – die aber von einem Moderator der eher in Youtube als ins Erste gehört von Anfang an niedergebrüllt wird – hallo? Kinderstube? Anstand? Den Anderen mal ausreden oder zu Ende spielen lassen? Ich erwarte ja hier nicht das Niveau von Arte oder der Tagesschau, aber so ein bißchen Anstand und Respekt…

Also guck ich in der Suchmaschine nach der Band, und was find ich? Dämliche Kommentare wie: “und eine Band, die keiner braucht” (und nein, das verlinke ich hier jetzt nicht obwohl auch der Artikel eher kritisch mit der Berichterstattung verfährt).

Falsch. Die Band macht das was eine Band aus Profis eben so macht: sie spielt. Trotz des unmöglichen Reinredens (oder eher -brüllens) dieses unsäglichen Kommentators, trotz des viel zu schnellen Kameraschwenks, trotz allem. Profis halt, wie auf der Titanic auch. Verdient habt Ihr diese Band nicht einmal ansatzweise, das heißt, ich kann hier natürlich nicht für alle Fußballfans sprechen, aber zumindest die Moderation sollte mal gezügelt werden.

Btw, nur so als Nebenbemerkung: gestern mehr aus Zufall in die letzten Minuten des Spiels Dänemark gegen Rußland geraten, und siehe da, was für eine Freude einmal Millionäre zu sehen die für ihr Geld auch was tun, die nicht zu faul sind dem Ball hinterher zu laufen und die sogar improvisieren und nicht auf irgendwelche Taktierereien ihrer Trainer warten – die *spielen* statt nur zu kassieren (im wörtlichen und im übertragenen Sinn)! Aber das nur so am Rande. Wir haben das übrigens ohne Ton gesehen, und ich war – ansatzweise – begeistert.

Nein, hatte ich’s erwähnt? Fußball mochte ich noch nie. Nicht mal ansatzweise. Fußballfans (jedenfalls die die meinen Sport bedeute vor’m Fernseher zu sitzen und “ihr” Team anzufeuern) noch viel weniger. Am meisten Verachtung hab ich allerdings seit jeher für Sport-Moderatoren übrig – die sind wirklich unerträglich. Ich dachte die seien in den Arenen im alten Rom ausgestorben oder zum Schluß den Löwen vorgeworfen worden. Brot und Spiele, für alle, sogar für die Löwen. Tja.

Und wie immer: danke für’s Lesen.

Got a new bow

Today I got a new French bow which I had ordered for my bass. It’s made of carbon fiber, and looks like this:

I also ordered some other brand of rosin, a darker one from Sweden, and now I’ll have to apply lots of that on this new bow, and then try it on some pieces of music.

In case you want to learn how to hold a French bow on a double (or upright) bass, the British luthier and musician Thomas Martin explains it quite nicely in 5 chapters on Youtube – here is his first one, about how he grasps such a bow:

The Double Bass with Thomas Martin: French Bow Technique Ep 1, The Grasp

Enjoy…

Cold rain

I had this track on my computer since quite a while, and finally sat down to remix it, and to play a very sparse bass onto it as well:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-220312.php

Thanks to Fabricio L and to Shi for their wonderful music, and thanks to you for listening.

Mobile phone as a dashcam

We – the collective “we” – are documenting our lives using mobile phones by now, all around the globe, using them for photos, videos, everything. And lately I saw some videos where people used mobile phones instead of action cams, like on bicycles, motorcycles, and in cars. So I thought “Why not?”, and since we all have these devices already, we might as well use them.

So I bought a car holder, an adapter for power, and tried it today. We were driving from one of the big supermarkets in Germany (Aldi) to another (Rewe), which took about 8 minutes, and I’ve used two recent tracks from Wikiloops on which I’ve played the double bass, “Colours“, and “Going down” for the video:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/wjlonien/782b8f

Got another holder for the bicycle as well – and maybe I’ll try that one tomorrow…

As always, thanks for reading, viewing, and listening. And of course thanks to my friends over at the ‘loops as well 🙂

Didn’t know that I’m on Reverbnation as well…

Just found myself on Tom’s pages there:

Listen to Aaron’s beautiful guitar solo there. So this seems to be my Wikiloops track 146415, together with Haffast’s guitar from #147068 – but without Titus’ keys… and Aaron also had a video of himself playing, also featuring his cat:

Lovely… <3

I’m on more of Tom’s tracks there, here’s one from an album where he featured Shi obviously:

As always, thanks for listening.

Upgraded to Mixbus v7

Yesterday I decided to upgrade my version 6 of Harrison Mixbus to their new version 7 – and just like my purchase of v6 I’ve got it at a discount, so until now I’ve spent 19€ for the first version and also 19€ for the upgrade – still cheap when considering the normal price of 90€ (plus 29€ for the upgrade) if you don’t get the discount. See their homepage, and also the Mixbus manual for more info.

I was quite happy with v6 already, but v7 seems to be even snappier. Like the latest versions of Ardour (6.7 at the time of writing) on which it is built, it has some quite nice features which you won’t find elsewhere, at least not built-in – take the targeted mastering approach for instance:

Mixbus/Ardour with a loudness target ‘Apple Music’ which translates to -16 LUFS and to -1dB true peak. A simple click with your mouse could change that to ‘Youtube’ which would be 2dB “hotter”, or to EBU R128 broadcasting standards (-23 LUFS and -1dBTP)

You can also save the master loudness analysis and the mixer settings automatically with each mixdown in ‘preferences’, so you’ll get something like this with your exported file(s):

Output analysis
Mixer settings

Most of that stuff can be done with Ardour which is a fantastic program of and by itself. It’s open source, but for a readily compiled version for Windows or MacOS you’ll have to spend an amount of your own choice (starting at $1).

The reason for me to also get/purchase Mixbus was first my curiosity about it, but in the end I’ve kept it because of its sound – *and* because the workflow is about the same as in Ardour which I knew and loved since years already, and which I’ll keep using anyway.

My latest mix and export with Mixbus v6 was ‘Colours’:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-218619.php

And people seem to love the sound of my upright in that one…

As always, thanks for reading.