The Music Thread
- Thread starter Matthew
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So, in all seriousness, what's everyone listening to, these days?
This Christmas, I got some Amazon gift cards, and I decided to finally upgrade my headphones to these:
Amazon product ASIN B00004SY4H
These are so freaking awesome. If you are into any high fidelity listening, I highly recommend these, along with a headphone preamp. It's a cliche, but it's like rediscovering my music collection, again. And who doesn't love a great set of cans, am I right?
This Christmas, I got some Amazon gift cards, and I decided to finally upgrade my headphones to these:
Amazon product ASIN B00004SY4H
These are so freaking awesome. If you are into any high fidelity listening, I highly recommend these, along with a headphone preamp. It's a cliche, but it's like rediscovering my music collection, again. And who doesn't love a great set of cans, am I right?
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One artist I got into heavily a couple of years ago, and have loved her ever since, is Fiona Apple. It's a strange one for me, because I usually associated her with the Alanis Morissette/Tori Amos, "I'm the bitter ex from hell and all men are awful" type of music from the 1990s; let's just say, not exactly my cup of tea. And, well, lyrically, there is a bit of that, but Apple is really, really sharp musically and she has a voice that makes her one of my favorite female vocalists. A bit jazzy, a bit of a lot of things, really. My favorite album from her is "When the Pawn…", but here's a sampling of some of my favorite songs of her's:
Norm
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I'm really not familiar with Fiona Apple, but I have been enjoying that song she sings during the opening of Showtime's The Affair, for the past few years. It's a catchy tune. "Sink back into the ocean"
monsooner
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At the risk of being a bit vulnerable, I'm gonna share a song I wrote and recorded (on the garage band app - so be nice) last month. I'm actually on "sabbatical" for 10 weeks (started in late November). Never had one in my 22 years of full time ministry - the rest and refreshment are much needed at this time in my life. Wish everyone could do it!
Anyway, give it a listen when you have a chance:
The Dance of My Soul
Anyway, give it a listen when you have a chance:
The Dance of My Soul
grabarkewitz
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Not a massive fan of Fiona Apple, but I will give her a listen. Been mostly listening to stuff from the 80's (both English and Japanese) and finding some fun stuff. Got the UFO thing going on, thanks to the Pointy-Headed One. One of the things I got for Christmas was a massive collection of Motown LP's. The youngsters didn't know what to think over vinyl spinning on a turntable. Listened to the Supremes all Christmas Day long. It was glorious.
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You know, I have to be honest. Whenever people want to share songs with me, my instinctive thoughts tend to be: "all right, what compliments am I going to have to force out, to be nice?" I suppose it makes me a hypocrite, since I've often been on the other side, but it's hard not to have a sense of dread.
But you know what? I enjoyed this. This is a legitimately well-written song and it's definitely obvious that you've been doing this for a while. Nice chord progression, good lyrics (very easy to get into Michael Bolton, 1980s, cheesy territory with songs like this, but you avoided it), and a clever arrangement. I'm impressed that you turned this sort of mix out of GarageBand. What was your set up, recording wise? Either way, well done, Pastor.
ItTakesFaith
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monsooner
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Thanks, Matthew. I'm totally with you on the "what compliments am I gonna have to give" mindset. As a life-long worship leader and wanna-be rock star in my 20's, I had a lot of folks sharing songs with me. Painful most of the time. I don't think it's hypocritical to look for the good to encourage folks who might not have ever been told they can't sing or play, as long as some honesty is paired with it. Some of the hardest conversations I've had in the church were with people who wanted to sing on the worship team, but couldn't carry a tune to save their life. They'd never been told they can't sing, because, well, it's the church, and nobody wants to be "mean". I had a 50+ year-old guy call me an A-hole, storm out of my office, and ultimately leave the church (and took his tithing with him, which wasn't very popular with my senior pastor, cuz apparently the guy was kinda rich) when I gently suggested he practice singing alongside others before he join the worship team many years ago. He was absolutely monotone. And the entire church knew it. But nobody dared say anything. Except, well, me.
My current setup is literally Garageband on my iPhone (I don't own a Mac), a standard midi keyboard (I have 2: an Akai 49-key; and a very basic weighted 88-key Yamaha), an iRig for the keyboards and an iRig for an SM58 mic that connects directly to the iPhone. However, for Dance of My Soul, I didn't have a mic yet - just sang directly into the phone.
I was extremely surprised at the depth in Garageband. I wrote a song called "I Miss You" (get out the tissue - it's a tribute to 2 friends of mine who have recently lost their spouse way too young), and I literally have 18 vocal tracks on it! I'm still learning the ins and outs. My much-more-talented-than-me son Jake has a brand new Mac, so when I finish all the songs on this Sabbatical I'm gonna send them to him for some fine tuning. Hopefully I'll actually get in the studio with them one of these days. Anybody got a $10,000 they wanna invest?
GolferGirl
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Hi Kyle. I liked your song. Please share some more. I know Chris has a bunch of songs he did when he had his studio on St. Thomas and I thought they were pretty good but when he shared one with a friend in the music business, he was not as nice. He said that Chris's voice is okay but he needs to learn how to mix stuff better. I will keep on him about sharing one or two. My favorite is a song he did with Katja that sounds really, really good. It is an English translation of a Japanese song called Love Beyond Reach and I love it. I play it when I am riding my Pelaton because it gets me fired up. There are two very nice guitar solos that Chris killed and Katja is really good on the drums. The rest of insturments are like taped or canned, I do not know what the right word is. His big dream is get the Boy, Paula and his brother to play so he can do it live. He says there are some nice spots for a keyboard solo he would love to do.
Let's see, what am I listening to. Well, today, me and Sam listened to the Supremes today on Chris's record player and I know why he loves them. They are really, really good. Both of us are too young to remember them, but we found some youtube videos and wow. The other day, I got to listen to Procul Harem, is that right? They are another group I have never heard of and I wish I had. Chris is right now into the 60's and the other morning, he played some Yardbirds and Blind Faith for me. Wow, was every band in the 60's so good. I know about the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Moody Blues, but the stuff Chris pulls out are all fantastic. Okay, time to go. I promised to watch Star Trek Voyager or something like that with Chris, so I better get my spot cuddling with him. He has a fire going, a huge bowl of popcorn and he said he made me hot tea, so I am going to have a good night even though I am not a big fan of Star Trek.
monsooner
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Hi Mary! Thank you - I will indeed share some more. I've recorded 11 original songs on my sabbatical so far, which is over next week. I'm working on a Noisetrade.com site to share the music, and am frantically trying to get the mixes done well enough to my liking before I finalize the album. Should be just a couple weeks, and I'll send the link! It'll be by donation - I'm hoping to make it all free if people want.
GolferGirl
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Please do that, Kyle. I would be happy to pay for some new music. Wow, we are slugs. We just woke up about ten minutes ago and blew off Mass. That is what happens when you watch tv until 4 in the morning. Chris is making me breakfast - an egg white omelet with asparagus and swiss cheese and some homemade sourdough bread toast. He is too good to me. He knows I am trying to stay at this weight, so he is making stuff that is good for me but does not have a ton of calories. Like last night, he made broiled chicken and brown rice in roasted tomatoes. It was so good. Okay, breakfast is served and I am hungry.
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Thanks, Matthew. I'm totally with you on the "what compliments am I gonna have to give" mindset. As a life-long worship leader and wanna-be rock star in my 20's, I had a lot of folks sharing songs with me. Painful most of the time. I don't think it's hypocritical to look for the good to encourage folks who might not have ever been told they can't sing or play, as long as some honesty is paired with it. Some of the hardest conversations I've had in the church were with people who wanted to sing on the worship team, but couldn't carry a tune to save their life. They'd never been told they can't sing, because, well, it's the church, and nobody wants to be "mean". I had a 50+ year-old guy call me an A-hole, storm out of my office, and ultimately leave the church (and took his tithing with him, which wasn't very popular with my senior pastor, cuz apparently the guy was kinda rich) when I gently suggested he practice singing alongside others before he join the worship team many years ago. He was absolutely monotone. And the entire church knew it. But nobody dared say anything. Except, well, me.
My current setup is literally Garageband on my iPhone (I don't own a Mac), a standard midi keyboard (I have 2: an Akai 49-key; and a very basic weighted 88-key Yamaha), an iRig for the keyboards and an iRig for an SM58 mic that connects directly to the iPhone. However, for Dance of My Soul, I didn't have a mic yet - just sang directly into the phone.
I was extremely surprised at the depth in Garageband. I wrote a song called "I Miss You" (get out the tissue - it's a tribute to 2 friends of mine who have recently lost their spouse way too young), and I literally have 18 vocal tracks on it! I'm still learning the ins and outs. My much-more-talented-than-me son Jake has a brand new Mac, so when I finish all the songs on this Sabbatical I'm gonna send them to him for some fine tuning. Hopefully I'll actually get in the studio with them one of these days. Anybody got a $10,000 they wanna invest?
God Bless You, Pastor. It's actually a brave thing to be able to tell someone that they're not up to snuff for the church choir and I think most in your position aren't willing to say it. My church is a great example. The person who leads the music herself is extremely talented, and quite trained (even if her style veers a bit too much "You Light Up My Life"), but she seems to have this attitude that if anyone wants to be in there, go for it. And, quite frankly, it's become incredibly distracting. Throwing in an acoustic guitar player who stumbles through every song like he's playing it for the first time, the over the hill opera singer whose voice has now morphed into Mrs. Miller, and so on and so forth. It's painful and, as someone whose ear is particularly sensitive to this stuff, it really detracts from the service. And that's not even counting that most of the songs themselves are absolutely horrible…
And if I had the $10,000 to invest, I would, but funny enough, I'm actually getting ready to piss away my money, err, "invest" heavily in upgrading my home studio. My MacBook is from 2008 and my iMac is from 2006, and they're still fine for very basic internet usage, but they're basically the Julio Franco of computing at this point. So I'm starting over again, and am waiting to bite on a new iMac whenever Apple announces them, and I want to upgrade my software to the latest version of Logic, upgrade my interface to the new Apogee Element, and want to get a high end microphone (looking at some Neumanns). I want to start fresh, get more professional, and I really want to get serious about all this, for once, and finish my album this year. I've been doing the home recording thing since the 1990s, but it was fairly primitive at the time in what you could do. The early-mid 2000s offered more, but my mixing skills were fairly bad, but, now, I think the timing is right. So hopefully it works out.
And if you liked the depth of GarageBand when you wrote that post, you should absolutely love it, now. Huge update to it this week, which I think will really help you out.
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Very cool, Pastor. Bandcamp, and Soundcloud, are other sites for that sort of thing and, if you want your stuff up on iTunes/Amazon/Google, etc., there's the TuneCores and CDBaby's of the world (the latter actually will make CDs for you, as well).
Also, I'm always looking to practice my mixing skills, so I would be more than happy to take a stab at mixing any stuff you (or Chris) have, if you ever want to, just for the hell of it. I can't do it until I get my new set up in place in about 2-3 months, but I always like doing these sorts of things, so feel free to send any stuff, if you want to.
GolferGirl
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I told Chris and he said he would think about it but he is hoping to get better on his own. We have this extra bedroom here, well more like four extra bedrooms and he wants to set up his mixing board and soundproof it some, but there is not enough room for all of his keyboards and Katja's drum set. So, as a birthday gift for his brother, he is having a studio built on his property and he will beg, plead and what else it takes for Mikki to do some drum things for him and send them to him. He says he likes live takes over canned or synth music. I think I typed that right. See, he has like five guitars and two of Paula's bass's stacked on a bed in one room and boxes of his music stuff in another. It was funny, he was talking to the Boy last week about this same thing and the Boy thinks Domi can sing but Chris says she is a shower singer only. He did not tell him that but like he says if he had pick someone to sing for him it would be Katja first, Paula, himself, me and then Domi. That is pretty funny because I cannot sing at all.
I wish I could learn to play something. Chris tried to teach me the piano but I cannot do two things at once and then he tried to teach me the guitar but my hands are really small so I could not touch all of the strings all of the time. Like last XMas, they all got together and started playing and me and Thierry just got to watch. I wanted to cry because I want to be part of the music stuff. I wish I had kept on playing the clarinet back when I was in 4th grade but I was a brat and would not practice. It would be something. I wonder if it is too late to learn the clarinet or something like that. Maybe the saxophone. That would be cool. Okay, I have my plan. I am going to ask Chris if he can get someone to teach me how to play the saxophone. This is my late New Year's resolution.
monsooner
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I'll be right over!
monsooner
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Way to go, Matthew - get 'er done! That's exciting, and I hope you'll keep us posted.
Your church sounds a lot like the one I grew up in. You Light Up My life - LOL!
The GaragBand upgrade has actually slowed me down, for now. It's got a glitch with uploading, which I'm sure they'll address right quick. But yes, I'm anxious to play with the new stuff.
monsooner
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Finished my album! It's a free download, so as promised, here's the link. I'd be honored if you let me know what you think.