#love | MidiMike

Posts Tagged ‘#love’

Reels of Tape Lyrics

Posted: June 19, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: #12string, #acoustic, #audio, #band, #cdbaby, #create, #creative, #creativity, #demo, #dreams, #guitar, #harmony, #inspiration, #inspire, #itunes, #journey, #life, #love, #lyrics, #microphone, #midimike, #motivation, #music, #musician, #observation, #performance, #performer, #performers, #personal, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #retro, #runningsound, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #Soundengineer, #stage, #story, #studio, #studioengineer, #vocalist, #vocals, #writer

Reels of tape feel no pain

Watch the movie over again.

Life pours past the flags unfurled

Crack the crystal paralyzed world.

CHORUS: I’ve been told if you live in the future,

You’ll be who you wanna be.

But I ain’t moving to San Francisco

‘Til it drops into the sea.

Careful surgeons with knives of rust

Open wounds of crimson lust.

Forget today and tomorrow.

Leave this song behind, and all it’s sorrow.

CHORUS: I’ve been told if you live in the future,

You’ll be who you wanna be.

But I ain’t moving to San Francisco

‘Til it drops into the sea.

First things first, but think about it twice.

Follow those who take their own advice.

Wasn’t trying any other time.

I’d walk away mumbling a Few Shattered Lines.

CHORUS: I’ve been told if you live in the future,

You’ll be who you wanna be.

But I ain’t moving to San Francisco

‘Til it drops into the sea.

Reels of tape feel no pain

Watch the movie over again.

Life pours past the flags unfurled

Crack the crystal paralyzed world.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/dark-energy/id962943592

This is one of the original acoustic tunes that’s featured on my new album “Dark Energy.” You can find it on ITunes or CD Baby under Michael S. Kennedy.

Reels of Tape – A Few Shattered Lines

Posted: June 17, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: #12string, #acoustic, #atari, #audio, #band, #cdbaby, #create, #creative, #creativity, #demo, #dreams, #guitar, #harmony, #inspiration, #inspire, #itunes, #journey, #life, #love, #lyrics, #microphone, #midimike, #motivation, #music, #musicequiptment, #musician, #observation, #performance, #performer, #performers, #personal, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #Reel, #retro, #reverb, #runningsound, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #Soundengineer, #soundman, #speakers, #story, #studio, #studioengineer, #vocalist, #vocals, #writer

As I continue to dig into past songs it is easy to see one problem I have; I am not good at naming my songs. Sometimes I go for the punch line, but the punch line is not even a line in the song! Sometimes I try to highlight one phrase, but ignoring conventional songwriting wisdom, I do not use a phrase over and over in the chorus and call that the title. So here is another example where the names have changed over the years. Originally the title was “A Few Shattered Lines“. I was reading a letter from a friend of mine at college and I pulled some of his phrases into the lyrics. Below are the results.

Reels of Tape has a deep meaning for me. I spent a lot of years recording on reel to reel tape decks. I still have my original 4 track TEAC machine. The lyrics are more abstract than other songs I have written and for some reason I can still slip back to those times when I hear this song. I am using my Ovation Balladeer 12 string guitar as my standard writing/recording instrument over the years, and I just love the tone and the progression of the chords. The twelve strings just sound so full, and when using open tuning, it can make the chords sparkle. The other quick observation: I don’t get rid of equipment I buy…… I keep it forever!

The lyrics seem to create images that expand beyond the words. Familiar topics can do that sometimes when looked at with a different point of view or even a change in mood. I love – Life pours past the flags unfurled, Crack the crystal paralyzed world – and other parts, but I could not really tell you why. Another phrase that sticks with me is – Forget today and tomorrow, leave this song behind, and all it’s sorrow. a lot of my lyrics have a rather dark perspective. But behind them all is a sense of hope and a promise that things will get better and improve. I am one of the most optimistic people I know!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/dark-energy/id962943592

Recording as an acoustic tune, I use one track for the vocals (unless there is a harmony track) and I use another track for the ‘line out’ from the acoustic/electric guitar, and then I use another track for a microphone placed in front of the 12 string (even here, it is important to place the microphone at the ‘sweet spot’ to get the best tone. Placing a microphone in front of anything without testing will more often disappoint rather than delight. As in other posts, I have had better success if I literally stick my head up to the instrument and move back and forth until I get the best sound. Doing this while playing the instrument is not practical, so I place the microphone, record, listen and compare it to other tracks that use a different microphone position. Once you have the best of the best, you can be pretty safe using it again. Live situations with full bands and instrumentation is a challenge and I still try to stick my face in there to get an idea what that instrument sounds like but also if it is close to other instruments, speakers, or unwanted noise makers. Most vocalists will stand in front of the microphone, but even in this case if they lean or tilt one way or the other it can dramatically affect the final tone or sound. Much of this is tied to the proximity effect and we will get into that later. For the most part I will pan the 12 string guitar line out to hard Left and the microphone for the 12 string hard Right. Vocals go in the center, unless you have more than one vocalist or lead singer. I use very few processors like compressors, gates, limiters, and the like. As long as you start with a solid tone a bit of EQ if needed, bring in some light reverb or delay and the mix is done.

The Human Voice is an Amazing Instrument!

Posted: June 15, 2015 in Opinions and Observations
Tags: #12string, #audio, #band, #create, #creative, #creativity, #guitar, #harmonies, #harmony, #inspiration, #inspire, #Instrument, #life, #love, #lyrics, #melody, #midimike, #motivation, #music, #musician, #observation, #performance, #performer, #performers, #performing arts, #personal, #piano, #recording, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #soundman, #stage, #story, #vocalist, #vocals, #voice, #writer

When I was listening to music in my early years, it seemed very natural for me to sing along with the songs I like or new tunes I heard. I did not realize until years later that what I was doing was harmonizing with the melody, rather than duplicating it. This was probably my first gateway into music creation. I seemed to have a knack for developing harmonies. Rhythms and timing also came to me without me understanding what I was doing. Some people play sports, some are good at math, and some are builders. I just seemed to feel comfortable with music. My mother was in theater, radio and music and I have already blamed her for a lot of exposure to performing arts while I was growing up, so I will continue to do so!

The human voice is an amazing instrument. There is nothing like it. I know that I am not a powerful vocalist – I simply do not have the pipes it must take, but fortunately that did not stop my love for singing. As I sang along more and more, I got better at finding the notes that would enhance or decorate the melody line. I never tried to over power them, but to add to them. Sometimes a song only needs a phrase or two highlighted by harmonies or echoing the melody. Other tunes seemed to inspire harmonies throughout the song. Eventually I would hear the melody in my head and sing along creating harmonies. I could not begin to tell you how to create each note while singing… there are no manuals for this. There are lessons to be learned and great teachers or vocal instructors, but the basics are not easily put into words.

When it comes to instruments, there is a certain amount of knowledge and practice involved in understanding where the right notes are and hitting them at the right time. Just knowing the right ones to play are not enough as you have to know when and when not to play them. I bring this up because a lot of musicians talk about jam sessions or getting together and without a lot of details, start playing new themes and using ideas from other musicians to create and have fun. My point here is that I was never that comfortable simply bringing my instrument and jamming with others. I do feel comfortable with harmonies and if asked to add percussion or drums, I could fit in. But for me playing guitar, keys, bass, flute, sax, etc. without practicing and knowing what I was doing ahead of time is difficult. Many of the musicians I worked with were absolutely great at this. They were great at bouncing musical ideas off other players and coming up with gorgeous textures, themes and tonal landscapes. I have a few early examples of jams and creative sessions I would like to offer here from time to time.

LOVE/HATE Challenge – Getting to Know You

Posted: June 11, 2015 in Opinions and Observations
Tags: #12string, #artists, #audio, #band, #biking, #books, #challenge, #creative, #creativity, #daughter, #education, #family, #friend, #friendship, #guitar, #hate, #inspiration, #inspire, #life, #love, #midimike, #motivation, #music, #musician, #nature, #observation, #performance, #performer, #performers, #personal, #photography, #piano, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #runningsound, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #Soundengineer, #soundman, #stories, #story, #studio, #truth, #writer

LOVE/HATE Challenge

I’ve been nominated to complete this challenge by several of you and after some convincing from my daughter, I’ve decided to give it a go. Instead of nominating 10 more bloggers, I would like to ask you all to post your favorite things in the comments so I can get to know you better.

I want to take this moment to thank all of you again for your very kind and encouraging comments. I have truly enjoyed reading your blogs and getting to know you better. Thank you for being a part of my journey.

Here it goes…

Love:

Writing and recording music
Biking
Photography
Nature – in all it’s glory and mystery
Family and friends
Reading great books, poetry, stories
Creative music – artists and performers
Teaching and helping others
Science, education, discovery and truth
Finding solutions to difficult problems.

Hate:

Wasting natural resources
Thinking that money makes you special
Personal and corporate greed
Things that should, but do not work
Violence
Thieves, scammers and swindlers
Demanding people
Bigots
Liars
Corporate and government politics

Instead of mourning death, celebrate life

Posted: June 1, 2015 in Opinions and Observations
Tags: #blog, #daughter, #death, #dreams, #family, #friends, #goodbye, #grandmother, #grieving, #letting go, #life, #loss, #love, #memorial, #memorial day, #midimike, #mourning, #musician, #personal

I have been busy lately and responses have been a little slow lately. Work and projects are always taking up too much time, but it’s always the unexpected that throws you out of whack. While we had history, the recent reports of my mother-in-law’s health continued to decline recently. She was 93, so we knew there would not be a lot of time left. The death of family member or loved one is never easy. As we get older, we travel this path more and more as those we grew up with grew old too. There are very few friends and same generation family left if you live past 90. Those alive probably no longer travel easily.

Her request was to have her ashes spread in the river in the same location her late husband’s ashes were released.

My daughter, Alisa, takes care of this blog for me and she lost her grandmother. All the kids called my mother-in-law Nannan. Shortly after midnight on Memorial Day 2015, Nannan did not hold on any longer. This Memorial Day was for her.

Quiet Night Lyrics

Posted: May 24, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: #12string, #acoustic, #audio, #creative, #dreams, #family, #guitar, #inspiration, #inspire, #itunes, #journey, #life, #love, #lucky, #lyrics, #midimike, #motivation, #music, #musician, #observation, #performance, #performer, #personal, #poetry, #recording, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #story, #vocalist, #vocals

INTRO: Quiet Nights, I sit without lights,

Then what I play, accompanies me.

Accompanies me.

I’m a man of refined habits,

But not refined too much.

I’m searching for the spirit

While I find the touch.

Locked inside no prison

But can not call your name.

Outside your rock tree garden

Where silent lovers came.

Mourning come and shed no tears

For those they should have saved

While rocks beneath the water

Become tombstones for the grave.

INTRO: Quiet Nights, I sit without lights,

Then what I play, accompanies me.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/dark-energy/id962943592

Quiet Nights – Reflect and Create

Posted: May 22, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: #12string, #acoustic, #audio, #band, #cdbaby, #create, #creative, #daughter, #demo, #dreams, #family, #guitar, #inspiration, #inspire, #itunes, #journey, #life, #love, #lucky, #lyrics, #Midi, #midimike, #motivation, #music, #musician, #observation, #performance, #performer, #personal, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #retro, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #Soundengineer, #soundman, #stage, #story, #studio, #truth, #vocalist, #vocals, #writer

Much of my early years I had tons of energy. Like most people my age, I got up early and stayed up through the evening. Unlike most, I got a bit extreme with this and as I started working I seemed to be able to handle the after hour and evening shifts quite well. Staying awake for 24 to 48 hours at a time was almost normal. I obviously was not! As most of the household was quiet and recharging their internal batteries, I would pull out my 12 string guitar. In the very late and dark hours, I would reflect on the day(s) past and go over experiences I or friends had. The fullness of the 12 strings (when I could afford to replace the old strings with new ones…) for me is just an amazingly soothing and inspiring environment. The guitar noodling started to reflect a mood and the experiences would turn into words, phrases or thoughts that I would repeat and refine until they started to gel into lyrics.

I would use this method over and over. Alone at night, lights out and everyone quiet or sleeping. Even now, decades later, this is still my favorite time to reflect and create. If you can, find your own time and environment that you can settle into quickly. If you cannot find the time – MAKE it. It does not have to be hours at a time. Rarely do we write a masterpiece or complete a painting or poem in an hour or so. The important thing is to set aside time – even little bits – and noodle, sketch, sing, or even think. Build your stage for creativity and perform there as often as you can. The masterpieces will create themselves…

Quiet Nights – An original tune I wrote based on this idea.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/dark-energy/id962943592

Rule #1: Always Play with Musicians that are Better Than you!

Posted: May 20, 2015 in Opinions and Observations
Tags: #audio, #band, #bass, #creative, #dreams, #drummer, #drums, #guitar, #inspiration, #journey, #keyboard, #life, #Liveband, #love, #lucky, #lyrics, #microphone, #Midi, #midimike, #motivation, #music, #musician, #observation, #performance, #performer, #personal, #piano, #recording, #recordingstudio, #runningsound, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #Soundengineer, #soundman, #speakers, #stage, #story, #studio, #studioengineer, #truth, #vocalist, #vocals

I have been very fortunate over the years in a number of ways. As I look back on my history and the events I have been involved in, this rule became obvious to me. I have always performed or created music with people that are much better than I am. I did not do this by design, it just seemed to happen over and over. One of my favorite bands I have been involved with for many years is Euphoria. Think of all the adjectives you know to describe excellence and you can use them all for the members of the band. They invited me to run sound for them and that is how I got the nerve to be a sound guy. As they played out and I ran sound and helped with musical toys as a music store manager, we became great friends and shared a real passion for great music. When the keyboard player decided to work on other projects, they found out I played keyboards and asked me if I wanted to take his place. I cannot tell you how much courage it took to say yes. I had never really played out before and we were into progressive rock and really complicated songs – many you heard clips from the studio demo posted earlier.

I knew I was not ready for prime time, but I got my keyboard gear together – practiced on my own every spare minute I had and forced myself to show up for practice. I had big shoes to fill. To their credit each of the band members were extremely patient! The knew it would take me some time to get to their level. Some songs on our set list were replaced with songs that had less emphasis on the keyboard until I could get my chops up to speed. Some we had to drop altogether. But they all worked with me and did not make me feel like I was slowing them down or not up to par. Had it not been for their great attitude and flexibility, I may have thrown in the towel and called it quits before it got started.

The only better piece of advice in this area I think is just as important is to always play with great people! Band life can be hard work, physically challenging and demanding and at the same time can be disastrous

Oceans of Oil – Mother Earth is on Her Knees

Posted: May 15, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: #American, #atari, #audio, #band, #cdbaby, #creative, #demo, #digital, #environmental, #family, #guitar, #itunes, #keyboard, #life, #love, #lyrics, #Midi, #midimike, #mother earth, #music, #musician, #nature, #observation, #performance, #performer, #personal, #piano, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #retro, #singer, #songwriter, #sound, #Soundengineer, #soundman, #stage, #story, #studio, #studioengineer, #truth, #vocalist, #vocals

As someone who truly loves the outdoors and nature (for a city guy!) I sometimes think there is no end to the way we have devastated the natural resources we were blessed with. Environmental tragedy after another, corporate greed and individual apathy seem to be everywhere at once. This is a disturbing and dark look (from my perspective) at what we are doing to our planet.

The music is rich with textures and soundscapes. One of the tricks I used was on the sound of the ‘toms’ as they repeat, the tuning changes and gets lower and lower. This is a simple MIDI trick. there are ways of doing this that can take a bit of time and planning, but what I did was very simple. As in the past, I use the keyboard to trigger the drum sounds when recording drum tracks. I recorded the simple beat with the tom sound. Then when I played it back, I started recording on the same track and used the keyboard ‘pitch bend’ stick to slowly lower the pitch as it played. That took about two seconds and once that was done during playback the drum toms would sound like they were being de-tuned in real time. Depending on how quickly the stick was moved, you could change the rate of pitch change.

My wife sings the melody and I add some vocal phrases and back up. To get her vocals to punch through the mix even though her vocals are smooth, I took a direct out (really it was an insert cable and we will get into that later) and fed her vocals into one channel of a stereo compressor/limiter to compress or ‘squash’ the levels, then I took the out put and ran it into the other (stereo side) side and used the limiter function. This allowed me to get a good signal by lowering the hot portions of the vocal track, and then pump it up to the point that the limiter would stop extreme levels from getting past a threshold point I set. I got a very clean vocal signal and smoothed out the peaks and valleys of the volume levels, allowing me to turn up the over all volume in the mix without distortion.

The Personal Touch does “The Pleasure Tax” – Rare Release

Posted: May 11, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: # mixer, #12string, #atari, #audio, #band, #bass, #cdbaby, #creative, #demo, #digital, #dreams, #drummer, #drums, #guitar, #itunes, #keyboard, #life, #Liveband, #love, #lyrics, #microphone, #motivation, #music, #musician, #performance, #performer, #personal, #poetry, #recording, #retro, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #Soundengineer, #soundman, #speakers, #stage, #story, #studio, #studioengineer, #touch, #vocalist, #vocals

Recently I was asked in comments (The Observer) if a song I posted was recorded at home or in a studio. I replied but thought I might expand on that a bit and also introduce another version of “The Pleasure Tax”. As my brother and I got older we kept writing poems that were now almost always designed to be lyrics. We got better. Instead of playing the bongos, I played the toy organ I mentioned and everything else from there. Here is where I get to also blame my parents again. For Christmas we all got cool toys, but many of mine seemed to be music makers; recorders, tiny piano ‘tinkley’ toys, little ukuleles and eventually guitars with plastic strings and a drum set that was made for a three year old, but you get the point. So we got better and we played instruments and my brother started playing guitar as well. We had more toys to create music so when we wanted to record them (I was probably fourteen or fifteen by the time recording was a possibility) we wanted to add the various instruments and record them all together.

Through the years, we met other musicians and became great friend – or as I seem to recall – we met great friends that were also musicians. Eventually there was a central core of serious song writers. Sometimes there would be around eight or ten core writing members. It would seem there was a competition going (and there always was!) to write the coolest or most clever or the most groovy song. And we would have friends that would stop by and jam once in a while or would write lyrics and were willing to turn them over to a group of people that would fit them , with force if necessary, with a musical arrangement, melody line and harmonies.

The rambling link to all this is when we often played a collection of each other’s songs, we more than likely played with different performers supporting a few core members. Those were exciting days! One time you would sing the song and the lead vocalist was not there. So you let an ‘orbiting member’ do the vocal melody and you sing the harmony part. Most of us played instruments and sang – especially if we wrote the song as you can guess – so if the lead vocalist also played guitar, we filled in as a ‘core member’. On one visit or jam session you performed and sang your song all by yourself to the group. In other visits you were surrounded by full instrumentation and a choir of vocalists! So here is an example of all that tied into a version of this song by a full band I toured with. You heard us play live to an audience in Texas when we played the original song “Our Bodies Move” posted earlier. We also played other original songs and snuck them into our sets. One of them was “The Pleasure Tax”. We called ourselves The Personal Touch. Ric and I were a duo and when we decided to add a female vocalist as recommended by a booking agency they decided to sign us up for out of state gigs. We got some studio time when signing up and we performed some original tunes and some cover stuff…. done The Personal Touch way. “TPT” by TPT!

So this is rare original song of mine that was recorded in an actual studio. We are a trio and there was a studio drummer. Everything else is The Personal Touch with a very new vocalist.

MidiMike

Available on iTunes and CD Baby

Social Media

MSK original Songs

Posts Tagged ‘#love’

Reels of Tape Lyrics

Reels of Tape – A Few Shattered Lines

The Human Voice is an Amazing Instrument!

LOVE/HATE Challenge – Getting to Know You

Instead of mourning death, celebrate life

Quiet Night Lyrics

Quiet Nights – Reflect and Create

Rule #1: Always Play with Musicians that are Better Than you!

Oceans of Oil – Mother Earth is on Her Knees

The Personal Touch does “The Pleasure Tax” – Rare Release

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Available on iTunes and CD Baby

Social Media

MSK original Songs

Posts Tagged ‘#love’

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