Category: music

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Alba Armengou: When you’re smiling

While sitting on a bench in front of Hallenburg Castle one evening last week, one of the teachers mentioned Alba Armengou singing “When you’re smiling” – which made me smile as well. The song is very famous, and was sung by many famous artists like Billie Holiday, but Alba, wow, that’s another story.

On his DVD documentation “A film about kids and music”, director Ramon Tort wrote the following:

In 2009, I was filming a live concert by the Sant Andreu Band for a DVD recording. The concert was at the Palau de la Música, in Barcelona, which was packed and had been sold out. When Alba Armengou, who was then 7 years old, finished the final phrase of the chorus When you’re smiling and began playing the trumpet, the Palau stood in awe, the whispers became an ovation and I, with tears in my eyes, stopped filming… at that moment I understood the need to begin this journey… the magical connection of these children with the audience, everything they give, they convey, encourage us to see and find out more in order to try and answer the questions raised when one faces something so mesmerizing.

You can read more about his great film here, and buy it here. Really, you should. It’s that good.

And the DVD ends with that title, featuring the 7 year old Alba. Like “our” teacher Mrs. Nägler said: “too cute!”

Kids and Music – Sant Andreu Jazz Band

I’m so glad that I had a few days with the PDS students and teachers…

More about that later. For now, as always, thanks for reading, watching, and listening.

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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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Scott about Jaco

Remembering is good. Remembering a legend is a must.

Jaco Pastorius – Bass Players You Should Know. Ep3

If you never heard of John Francis Anthony „Jaco“ Pastorius III. before, also read the German or the English Wikipedia pages about him. Or any other language which might be linked there.

As always, thanks for reading / viewing / listening.

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Recording basics, in 7 minutes: what do you need?

Sanjay explains it better and faster than I could so have a look and a listen:

How to build a home studio 2019 – What do you need?

I’m on Linux, with an i5/16GB/2TB desktop instead of his MacBook Pro, and I also use another DAW (Ardour) and a slightly bigger audio interface (but of the same brand, mine is a Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 2nd gen). Instead of his Beyer Dynamic headphones I’m using Sennheiser, and a condenser mike (Røde NT-1A) instead of his dynamic Shure SM7b. My MIDI keyboard is quite old and has 49 full-sized keys, we also use Zuleikha’s Yamaha Arius piano connected to her notebook via USB. Oh, and my studio monitors are the smallest Genelecs, the 8010 (don’t have more space, but they’re awesome!).

But his biggest and best advice comes at the end, in his last or second last sentence: it’s “Record yourself and share it!”. That alone will improve anything you do faster than anything else, so this is a really good advice. And let me add that for the best possible feedback and tips for your progress, you should consider joining us at Wikiloops.

Hope you liked it as much as I did.

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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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Offfocus: Nase vor die Tür

Fell in love with a song with German lyrics today – and I instantly played it another time, then to Zuleikha, then I recommended it to my brother – so I can as well recommend it here.

It’s “Nase vor die Tür” from my friend and fellow Wikiloops musician Patrik aka Offfocus. I have watchlisted it because there ain’t no bass in it yet… 🙂

Enjoy.

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Electronic music, with human touch

Just heard a really nice track on Wikiloops from fellow members timp and Fishinmissio, which they called “Walkin in My Sleep“. And it reminded me of an older one which I haven’t heard since quite a while, but where even the video of it was a piece of art. And yes, I know that I can be hopelessly romantic, but here it is as a reminder of that divine chaos which we call “life”:

ART OF NOISE: MOMENTS IN LOVE (THE ORIGINAL)

And as always, thanks for reading, listening, and watching…