Music. Photography. Thoughts.
Saw that cool video:
And remember, this orchestral sample library is loaded to the free Kontakt player for Windows, but together with Wine and Carla, it obviously works very nice within a free DAW in Linux as well.
Not everything will work tho – forget anything with dongles or other “security” hindrances. In that case, take really free (as in speech) things instead.
See also the German Howto about using Carla here. Thanks Felipe for this wonderful tool!
I’ve made this today:
Done with a nice commercial sample package from XLN audio called “Addictive Keys Studio Grand” – but on Linux (it’s a Windows version, you can also get it for Macs).
And this is how it sounds:
I wanted it to sound like recorded in some cellar hall, but didn’t use fancy stuff like a Klangfalter reverb yet. Just a Limiter on the master bus, and leveled to -23LUFS.
Anyway – I like the piano. It’s a Steinway Grand, recorded somewhere in Sweden.
Thanks for reading (and listening).
Just stumbled over this one. It’s Katharine McPhee, and yes, if you like TV shows, she’s also the actress from “Scorpion”:
Enjoy…
Here’s a complete concert, duration 1:44:48, filmed by an amateur (as he calls himself), but with good enough equipment to make it worthwhile:
Cam 1: Nikon D5300 w/Nikkor 18-300mm Lens
Cam 2: Nikon D5100 w/Sigma 17-50mm Lens
Audio: Rode Stereo VideoMic Pro(on camera) SBD Matrix } Zoom H6 w/X/Y Capsule(on stage) + Studio Projects LSD2(Blumlein on stage)
It’s black & white & so cool:
I also really liked Jamison Ross on drums on this one. Never seen him before, but what a cool cat he is! Oh, and don’t get me started on that Nord Stage piano – definitely the thing to take with you in case there isn’t a real one on stage already…
Enjoy!
Well I have to feature someone else again – and like so many times lately, found her on Youtube. So here’s her channel, her playlists, and her homepage.
Aimee is a mother of four, and most of her videos are pretty much advanced stuff – not your typical beginner lessons. But these are definitely fun, so let me give you a short example here:
You have cool stuff like this, and it goes on for hours. Easy to recommend this, especially if you like jazzy tunes (but she also covers simpler stuff at times, like for instance Adele). I find some of her stuff incredibly inspiring and useful – and I’m not even a pianist.
Enjoy!
I found a really good guitar teacher on Youtube. His name is Bradford Werner, and he is from BC, Canada. Here is for instance his lesson about Tárrega’s “Adelita” which I showed you played by a real master in my last blog post:
This is like lesson 79 of his series, and there are far more important ones for the beginner, so if you’re interested in exploring or learning classical guitar, make sure to look at his complete Classical Guitar Lessons stream.
He also shows useful tips from other guitarists in there, in fact his whole Youtube channel is worth subscribing to, as well as having a look onto his web page.
On his lessons page, he got the order mixed up a bit, in my opinion his lesson 3 should be watched *before* his lesson 2, but otherwise this is very recommendable. What he teaches in a 15 minute video would take a whole 45 minute lesson with a real teacher – still a real teacher makes sense of course in case you are taking this seriously.
But this is fun to watch – Zuleikha laughed about his “crab” hand demonstration for instance. Bradford seems to be a very good teacher, so I recommend watching him.
Enjoy.
It’s just music. So best is to close your eyes while listening to “Adelita” by Francisco de Asís Tárrega y Eixea, played by Julian Bream:
Simple and stunning. The best interpretation I’ve heard so far.
Enjoy…
A wonderful piece of his, this Danzas Españolas Op. 37 – No. II Oriental:
The artists are Duo Françaix – Isabella Selder and Eliška Lenhartová, more about the composer on the English and German Wikipedia pages about him. You can also find free scores for 2 guitars and the original one for piano. Oh, and the video was recorded at Siccas Guitars, Karlsruhe, Germany. They also have nice tutorials on Youtube, like the ones with Matthew McAllister for instance.
Enjoy…
P.S.: here is the original piano version, played by the composer himself – and recorded on a piano roll:
A sad story with him. Returning from a visit to the US (they were invited by the president), a German submarine shot the channel ferry between England and France. He was on the safe half of the boat, but his wife wasn’t. So he tried to save her – and they both drowned. What a tragic loss. I love this piece.
Yesterday we were at the biggest local music store for a while. Zuleikha played some electric and acoustic pianos and bought some scores. And I took some hands-on first impressions of some instruments. What I found nice was:
Yamaha CG192S Classical Guitar
Ibanez SRH500F Fretless Bass
This one is awesome. Listen to it here, in 4- and 5-string versions:
In the studio department, we saw both my microphone and also my interface for it – but there, the most impressive experience for me was to listen to some active nearfield monitors:
Yamaha HS8 Powered Studio Monitor
Interesting – all Japanese products. Oh, and the Kawai and Yamaha acoustic (upright) pianos were also very nice.
As always, thanks for reading.
Yesterday evening I played around a bit with Qtractor, and with ZynAddSubFX (and with a free sample of a drumkit called the “Black Pearl“).
Why did I do this? Simple: as much as I like Ardour, the free Pro Tools like DAW (digital audio workstation) software, it has the one disadvantage which bugged me a bit: it’s a bit too much “audio”-centric, with MIDI seemingly being an afterthought. So from Ardour you can’t export MIDI tracks like with other software like MusE, or Rosegarden, or Qtractor. And exporting MIDI is nice if you want to have other programs like MuseScore converting them more or less automagically into sheet music, like this:
So what does Qtractor look like? Look here:
On the upper left you see its editing (and “composition”) window, on the lower right its mixer window – and in between my file system. You see that I’ve made two tracks actually, the first using the “Echo Rhodes” preset from ZynAddSubFX, the second with just a single kick drum sound from the “Black Pearl” drumkit sample.
How does it sound? Awesome. I exported it as an audio file as well, and converted that .wav file to an .mp3 one with Audacity:
So in case you want to hear my breathtaking composition, here it is:
(Don’t send flowers, or ask where to get the CD yet – I’m still working on it) 😉
And as always, thanks for reading.