#story | MidiMike

Posts Tagged ‘#story’

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 Lyrics

Posted: May 15, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: #atari, #audio, #cdbaby, #creative, #demo, #digital, #family, #guitar, #itunes, #keyboard, #life, #lyrics, #Midi, #midimike, #mother earth, #motivation, #music, #musician, #nature, #observation, #performance, #performer, #personal, #piano, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #retro, #reverb, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #story, #studioengineer, #vocalist, #vocals

“Oceans of Oil” (@) MSK 1989

You go through life,

And I don’t complain.

Good things die

The rest stays the same.

Politics and money

Garbage is king.

The Liberty Bell

Doesn’t even ring.

Oceans of Oil, tinsel stars

Clouds are dark – the air is sick.

Swarms of people like killer bees

Mother Earth is on her knees.

You believe what you feel is right

And now you are going to make a fight.

You have no idea what we’re going through

If it’s your choice, nothing else will do.

Oceans of Oil, tinsel stars

Clouds are dark – the air is thick.

Swirling with pain and lost emotion

Mother Earth may soon need that abortion.

You believe that what you feel is right.

Clouds are dark.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/retrograde/id962542260

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.

Pleasure Tax – Sell Us Water, Sell Us Air!

Posted: May 7, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: #12string, #acoustic, #audio, #band, #cdbaby, #creative, #demo, #family, #guitar, #itunes, #life, #lyrics, #midimike, #music, #musician, #observation, #performance, #performer, #personal, #poetry, #recording, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #story, #truth, #vocalist, #vocals

Having written songs with my older brother from the beginning, I often bounce ideas at him to see what comes back. I remember (and take all of this with a grain of salt as I am not the best at chronology or details!) going up to him and saying something like… “I have this idea for a song and not sure where it goes, but I keep thinking get out of here leave me alone take it away, and that they want to charge us for anything. Soon they will sell us air and water”. Below is the result. I called it The Pleasure Tax, and it is more relative today. And yes, they do sell us air and water now!

I am very picky about tuning and tones used. Putting new strings on your guitar was sometimes a luxury. When I finally did it is like turning on a light bulb in a dim room. Yes, you could see before but now you can even read! Music can be like that. Things are not inspiring or do not sound very good and you change the strings (or reed, drum head, pads) and BAM! You want to go out and play it hard!

The tax is still out there, so be careful when you want to relax.?

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

Music by Michael S Kennedy Lyrics by Michael S and Charles D Kennedy

Intro:

Take it away………… The Pleasure Tax 4x

Verse 1

Take it out, or take it home.

Take it back, it hasn’t grown

Take it away or leave it alone.

Say what you want, or hang up the phone.

Chorus

Put new strings on your damn guitar.

Make it simple, but play it hard.

He says he likes it I don’t know why.

We don’t understand but we’ll give it a try.

Verse 2

Hit the road or face the facts.

There’s something that your system lacks.

The very next time you go to relax,

You’ll go down from the Pleasure Tax

Getting to the Next Level

Posted: May 5, 2015 in Opinions and Observations
Tags: # mixer, #audio, #band, #dreams, #drums, #fan, #fans, #Irish, #itunes, #keyboard, #life, #Liveband, #lucky, #microphone, #Midi, #midimike, #mixingboard, #monitors, #motivation, #music, #musician, #performance, #performer, #personal, #piano, #runningsound, #singer, #sound, #Soundengineer, #soundman, #speakers, #stage, #story, #synthesizer

We all try to rationalize situations we are not sure of. We attempt to explain why things happen – or things that happen to us. We try to understand the world around us. When I worked at the instrument music store, I rationalized that I got the job because I was a previous customer and that I could program and understand the new digital MIDI keyboards hitting the market. Very quickly (months, I believe) I was given my own satellite store to manage. I opened three more chain stores in a few short years. In reality, I probably bought more in equipment than I got paid to work there! Almost kidding, but I understood a lot of the toys and had played with a bunch of them, but to get a room full of toys all day long and then get paid to learn all I could about them, well, I won’t get into religion here but that was heaven on Earth. I would have done it for free. And do you know how I rationalized being a SALES MAN? (I am pretty anti-establishment from way back………..) I tried to listen to where the customer was coming from and what they needed. From there I would teach them what I knew about gear that would help get them to the next level. Everyone needs to get to the next level. That is what I am doing today. It is what you are doing right now.

And sometimes we need to explain to ourselves why. Why do I need to buy that new toy? Why do they like me? Why does the sun always shine where I am? Why aren’t things working as I planned. Why don’t they understand me? What did I do right or wrong? This has bugged me all my life and I hope it does not get to you. Working in the music store(s) I sold gear to a lot of bands. Some people were regulars. Always something needed, some new gear. One of the bands told me that their sound man was on vacation and they needed someone to run sound for them. It SEEEEEEMED logical to ask me, I knew about the mixing boards and PA systems. But I had never run sound before ( truth in advertising alert – – – I did run sound for one other band prior to this but that is a funny story I wanted to share with you later. So I did it once before ….. technically …….) What would you do? These are good customers and by now good friends too. If I run sound and really suck, the friendship and the work relationships are out the window. I let them know I do not have a lot of experience but if they don’t have anyone else I would be glad to help. They decide to go with me for the vacation gigs. I run through the checklist a thousand times in my head. I set the stage and house equipment up methodically, I run through the gain staging like riding a bike, I get the monitors working and run CD audio through the mains to test them. Time to start. Big crowd. Lots of people and friends. As you can imagine I am rapidly cycling through excitement, concern, confusion, fear, panic, and jazzed up one after the other. The band starts playing and they are soooooo good I just relax. I think even I can make these guys sound good! I was lucky. From what I remember the event was fine.

Their sound man decided to move onto other things and when he came back from vacation I was asked to take his place. Again I had to rationalize; well, they only like me cause I can get them a deal at the store. Well, they like me because I can set up the equipment pretty fast. Well, it went over well because they are really tight and have great equipment. You have probably done that a bunch of times as well. It was hard for me to accept all the way down to the point of knowing that they noticed and appreciated the mix. Their fans did too but most importantly, so did the band wives! Never forget the power of the spouse! So now for the first time, I am involved with a real band. I am the regular sound guy. The Band understands the power of the PA, and they determine that the sound guy gets equal cut…… as if he is as important to the overall sound as the individual band members were. Amazing concept and it worked so well over the years. I could not rationalize my way out of deserving that one; we worked as a team and the band always sounded great.

All this from knowing how to program a digital keyboard.

Late Potato – Simple Beauty

Posted: April 29, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: #12string, #acoustic, #audio, #band, #cdbaby, #creative, #demo, #guitar, #itunes, #life, #lyrics, #microphone, #midimike, #music, #musician, #observation, #performance, #performer, #personal, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #retro, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #story, #studio, #studioengineer, #vocalist, #vocals

In another acoustic song of mine, you can tell that I was clearly influenced by my surroundings. In another career a long time ago in a galaxy….. never mind, but it was a long time ago I was working for a company that had a huge manufacturing plant in the middle of absolutely nowhere. I am teasing a little, but there was nothing around for miles that stayed up later than the cows in the fields all around. I was not used to that and I was going a little crazy in a bored sort of way, as I rented a place to stay until I got settled in the new job and town.

I have heard people talk about watching the grass grow but I had no idea they meant it literally. So there are fields and corn. More fields and soy. Other fields with potatoes. Cows and other live stock and then more corn. I was interested to find out that some farmers hedge their bets a little and not plant everything right away. Farmers in the next field over were planting late potatoes. I couldn’t resist. It sounded so ‘like me’. I often feel like a late potato. (Sagittarius – figured that one out already did you?) Can’t keep up. Everyone is ahead of you. Get knocked down but you still help those in need. Excited by the simple beauty of life all around. You might feel like a Late Potato too.

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

Couldn’t keep up when the rest of the world was running,

Couldn’t sit down until the fireworks were over.

Now, I have no need.

For things that take great speed.

CHORUS: They call me Late Potato

Late Potato

Late Potato.

Tried not to scream when the Earth spent all it’s money,

Tried not to laugh while the ax was getting sharpened.

Now, I have no need.

For things that take great speed.

CHORUS: They call me Late Potato

Late Potato

Late Potato.

Takes no time to lose, when I think that I am losing,

Gave my last dime when I was begging on the street.

Now, I have no need.

For things that take great speed.

CHORUS: They call me Late Potato

Late Potato

Late Potato.

The Truth is Somewhere in Between

Posted: April 17, 2015 in Opinions and Observations
Tags: #audio, #digital, #midimike, #musician, #observation, #personal, #sales, #salesperson, #story, #tips, #truth

I try to look at disagreements with the following rule;

There are three sides to every story.

There is Yours

There is Mine

…… and The Truth is somewhere in-between.

Today again I heard a phrase on the news about someone wanting to start a conversation or dialog about a particular subject. If it is a political topic, what this really means is they want the opportunity to shove their thoughts in your face. Other bloggers have picked up on similar topics, so this is not unique to my personal experiences. I will not start a conversation like that but I have observations to share. With that in mind think about that new toy you want to buy. You have an idea what it does but not quite sure how it works. It is not cheap, so you want to get a good deal. Doesn’t everybody? It is understood that sales or deals happen from time to time and you can expect some companies to offer quantity discounts. Sales people expect and even appreciate this. They do not expect you to even ASK them for a discount on a single small-ticket item. Most companies will give you a discount on the printer for example, but you pay full price from there on to get the ink cartridges……

So you talk to the sales person for a while and they answer your multitude of questions to your satisfaction. You say, ‘thanks’ and go home and buy the same thing on-line to save sales tax or to get more money off.
When it doesn’t work as easily as expected or not what they thought some people actually go back to the original sales person (who by the way may have lost the opportunity to make a sale or help another customer while you asked 20 questions and he did not make a dime from your visit… just saying) and ask for help. When the ‘did you buy it here?’ question comes up, the sales / customer service person will rightfully no longer assist. I want to ask again does everyone want a good deal?

I am old enough to know what the term tips in the food service industry came from. It means To Insure Prompt Service. You want your food hot, you don’t want to wait, tip the waiter/waitress. I am more than willing to pay a sales person for their time and expertise. As a sales person I EARNED the difference in price other stores might offer.

Some people may still want to have their cake and eat it too. To some, I have to admit, they believe they get a ‘good deal’ by shopping for the best price and getting pre and post sales help for free. That is just not how I roll. That is my side of the story as a sales person.

“The Touch” – Understanding Humans

Posted: April 15, 2015 in MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: # mixer, #atari, #audio, #band, #bass, #demo, #digital, #drummer, #drums, #guitar, #keyboard, #life, #Liveband, #love, #lyrics, #Midi, #music, #musician, #performance, #piano, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #retro, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #Soundengineer, #soundman, #story, #studio, #studioengineer, #synthesizer, #vocalist, #vocals

Ideas from songs can and should come from all sorts of things. I try to observe experiences from other people. Too many writers base their material on their own personal experience. This is powerful but has serious drawbacks. One has to experience nirvana or tragedy in order to write about it. This can be limiting unless you have a very tumultuous life. Not good for health and well being of the artist. So I try to empathize, sympathize and understand the thoughts, mood and feelings of others as they experience life changing events.

I had been a musician with limited access to toys for most of the early years. Lots of time and not much cash or resources available. That did not stop me from observing others, and in fact probably offered me the time to observe. Anyway, a friend of mine and I were walking around and I noticed a person in a wheel chair. There was another person behind pushing the chair, but something seemed a little unusual for some reason and I kept watching the pair. IWE naturally thought the person pushing was there to help the person in the wheel chair. They went up to one of those bank ATM’s and much to my surprise, the person in the wheel chair moved out of the way and the walking person went up to the ATM display. What moved me to write this song was the fact that I had originally assumed the person walking was assisting the person in the wheel chair. The person standing started to use the ATM and they searched by hand for the braille instructions! The person walking was blind, and being assisted by the person in the wheel chair! We can touch others in so many different ways. That lead me to the lyrics and a better understanding of human beings. Not just their ability to assist others in ways we might not think of, but also how we (I) perceived something and came up with the wrong conclusion. I use a phrase that describes that effect; Many people have the correct observation but come to incorrect conclusions. This song, the lyrics and the music, mean a lot to me personally. I truly hope you find something here you can relate to.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/perigee

What I Do At Night – The Driving Song

Posted: April 8, 2015 in family, MUSIC, My Tunes
Tags: # mixer, #atari, #audio, #band, #bass, #daughter, #demo, #digital, #dreams, #driving, #drummer, #drums, #family, #guitar, #keyboard, #life, #Liveband, #love, #lyrics, #Midi, #mixingboard, #motivation, #music, #musician, #performance, #piano, #poetry, #recording, #recordingstudio, #retro, #runningsound, #singer, #song, #songwriter, #sound, #Soundengineer, #soundman, #speakers, #stage, #story, #studio, #studioengineer, #synthesizer, #tech, #vocalist, #vocals, #Yamaha

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/perigee

**This is MidiMike’s daughter. I help my dad out with his blog. I wanted to tell all of you that this is, by far, my favorite song that my dad has ever written. If you stop to listen to any of the original tunes, I would highly recommend this one!! Thanks.**

And now a message from my dad:

On most of my tunes, I play all the instruments and sequence the drums and other sound effects. I usually sing lead or I have my wife take the vocal lead. Once I started working in music stores selling instruments and sound equipment, I asked friends (and customers at the time!) to come over and lay down guitar solos or I might have a guest vocalist. What I do at Night was one that we did ourselves. I play all guitar parts and the back up vocals. I think at this time I had graduated from a Yamaha MT4X (I think they were called and this was a 4 Track double speed cassette recorder) to the Alesis ADAT. So now I had an amazing 8 tracks to record on! Actually I needed one track to record the SMPTE time code so the Alesis ADAT would sync up to the computer (now I actually have a PC and put the Atari in deep storage). I can go into this details on this system for a later post when I am feeling nostalgic, but it allowed unlimited MIDI tracks on the PC or Atari and connect to the playback of the ADAT.

The song itself reflects my thoughts on a number of topics. I really like to drive. I don’t have a fast or luxury car. I just like to drive. When I have some free time or just want to think, I often find myself cruising the local country side. I would listen to music while driving and that sometimes adds to the frustration. Most of the music you hear on commercial radio is garbage or re-packaged songs and ideas I have heard for the last few decades. Like a lot of us struggling artists and performers, we see a bunch of bands with lots of air-play and they are just so-so. OK music, but nothing special. As a songwriter, I get so tired of the same theme or idea in every song on the radio and they seem to get played non-stop.

One line reflects this fairly well…. ” so I turn the radio over to the right, playing the same songs as the other night”. Originally titled – “Rainy Day”, What I do at Night has become one of my favorite driving songs. Enjoy.

MidiMike

Available on iTunes and CD Baby

Social Media

MSK original Songs

Posts Tagged ‘#story’

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

Oceans of Oil Lyrics

Oceans of Oil – Mother Earth is on Her Knees

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

Pleasure Tax – Sell Us Water, Sell Us Air!

Getting to the Next Level

Late Potato – Simple Beauty

The Truth is Somewhere in Between

“The Touch” – Understanding Humans

What I Do At Night – The Driving Song

Archives

Available on iTunes and CD Baby

Social Media

MSK original Songs

Posts Tagged ‘#story’

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