music – Page 28 – Wolfgang Lonien

November 20, 2019

To ground myself

I have all of my own albums (which you can see on the right side of this page) in my car – in fact that is part of the reason that I’ve made these albums – to be able to put some music on a CD, and to listen to it while away from my computer.

And I also “discovered” several new and – as I think – great singers both on Wikiloops and elsewhere (like on Youtube).

But to ground myself, so to speak, to get back a feeling where true North is, and to compare whatever I do with what else is out there, I also have some copies of commercial albums which I own in the car – and from time to time I like to listen to these, especially when it’s music with just a voice and some acoustic instruments for example.

Like Youn Sun Nah. This morning I listened to her “Same Girl” album on my way to work, and it’s so incredibly good. Listen to this as an example, where she’s also with Lars Danielsson, one of my favourite bass players:

Nah Youn Sun – Breakfast In Baghdad

The composition is by Ulf Wakenius, who’s also the guitar player here. Everything here fits, and sounds amazing.

Highly recommended stuff, if you like something like this. I also have her “Voyage” and “Lento” albums, which are equally good.

As always, thanks for reading. Enjoy the music.

November 18, 2019November 18, 2019

Bill Evans Trio – Nardis

Here’s something rare – an interview with Bill Evans. And then they play Miles’ tune Nardis in front of a small private audience in 1970:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObN55DQmFZI

Bill Evans Trio – Nardis.

Enjoy – and see and hear Eddie as a young man (I was 13, he was 26 while he played this).

November 17, 2019

Sunday pre tea time

Uploaded a short bass-only track to the ‘loops:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-176171.php

The same is available without the clicks as a HD track. Harmonies are on Wikiloops (click the track id to go there). As always, thanks for listening.

November 17, 2019

Piano practice on a dull Sunday mid November

I haven’t taken many photographs this month yet (which for me is the month of the kit zoom if you remember that), so when Zuleikha started to play her piano I asked whether I could take a photo of it, switched on a light, and took this in black & white with a simulated orange filter at ISO 6400 with around 1/13th of a second:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/wjlonien/49077936128/

Piano practice on a dull Sunday mid November, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

My lens was set to 17mm, a focal length which I don’t have except with this zoom lens. Ideal for indoor portraits which also show some context, like the piano in this case.

As always, thanks for reading.

November 17, 2019

An evening with Eddie Gomez

This one is for the musicians – and for everyone who loves music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0GC8kh0-2o

An Evening with Eddie Gomez

And for those of you who probably haven’t heard about him before, here are some links to the German and English Wikipedia pages about him, and to his own webpage of course. He’s also one of the bass players in John Goldsby’s ‘The Jazz Bass Book’ (on page 131), and in this video he talks about many others who are, and who came before him. The host for this evening was David Gage, famous amongst bass players for his pickup, and for his service.

Enjoy, as I did.

November 16, 2019

Cheap double basses

My brother Willi had a double bass when we were younger – and we both would love to have one now. I have checked some locally and at Thomann’s (Europe’s biggest music store), and was always kind of put off, either by price (~2.800€ for a solid Romanian bass I loved) or by setup.

But lately I saw a review of a Thomann “Rockabilly” – one of the cheapest Chinese plywood basses they offer. That review is in Italian, but the guy can play, and that bass sounds and looks wonderful (with additional Thomastik Spirocore strings (about 160€) on it):

Thomann Rockabilly Kontrabass Review

Miked (or picked up? Both?) a bit closer, and with a jazz standard, it sounds pretty good:

Blue Bossa Bass Line backing track accompaniment

So this one is from Thomann’s plywood line of basses, and also comes in black or different shades of wood. My brother’s comment was that if that is how plywood sounds, it would be good enough for him…

I agreed (with the remark about the changed set of strings on it), but there’s a slightly more expensive hybrid model available now at Thomann’s, would love to check that out as well:

Stentor 1950 Student Double Bass

It’s the Stentor 1950 Student bass, and it indeed sounds wonderful as well:

The Stentor 1950 Double Bass

I agree about that “melting the audience” remark – at least you could melt me with that one 🙂 Available at Thomann‘s as well, for a real good price in my opinion.

I’ll have to try that one. And maybe take my brother with me, maybe they’ll sell two of these 🙂

As always, thanks for reading.

November 16, 2019

How much CPU power do I need?

I was reading the latest c’t magazine and also just watched an hour long video talk they had about the finest article in it. The topic: once a year they publish suggestions of ideal machines to build for yourself, with low power consumption, which are quiet, run smoothly, give you the best bang for the buck, and so on.

I find these very useful, and all of my self-built PCs – some of which are distributed to the wider family by now – were always at least based upon their suggestions.

While discussing PCs with my brother (his doesn’t start anymore at the moment, after years of service (it also was a very good one)) and after reading that latest article with a remark that multitrack music productions would love to have many CPU cores I decided to check my own one. So I’ve made a short video about it:

resources 2019 11 16 12 24 28, from my own Youtube channel

The music I’ve used for that demonstration & check was my latest collab with Arno from Wikiloops. Merci Arno for your wonderful track!

And yes, for what I’m doing, an old 4th generation Intel Core i5 is more than enough as you can see. So a nice actual 9th generation one is the one I’d take for any new build, these integrated graphics are more important to me than any assumed or measurable advantage of AMD chips…

Thanks for watching, and for reading – as always.

November 13, 2019

She forgets when she dances

There was that lovely folk song from Wikiloops member “Arnosolo” which I downloaded a while ago. And first I worked on noise reduction of the track a bit, made a video about that, and messaged Arno. He allowed me to show that video (and contributed another and maybe even better one) – but before I did that I sat down and played on his track a bit, and uploaded that to the ‘loops. So here’s his lovely song, with me noodling (improvising) on it:

https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-175841.php

Oh, and the videos and the forum article about adaptive noise reduction are here, in case you’re interested.

As always, thanks for reading, and for listening. And if you’re a musician yourself, then please consider joining us at Wikiloops – it’s free, and it’s fun! 🙂

November 7, 2019

The Doctor’s singing…

… a Coldplay cover for charity, and is met by the band. So sweet:

Coldplay surprise Jodie Whittaker as she records Yellow for charity album | BBC Trailers

Here’s the full song. Good that they didn’t use too much autotune on her voice, it’s all done very subtle. Also good that she didn’t lose her accent which we all love (really, we’re watching the originals on ONE (German TV) just because of that):