Skating Dog Productions – - – - ||| – - – - Media, Music, Gear, Concepts

I just had the opportunity to mix and master the 3rd CD release of german Drum’n'Bass/ Electro/ Goth/ Spoken Word Outfit Oberer Totpunkt. The CD “Stiller Zoo” will be released at this year’s WGT Leipzig, The Wave and Gothic meeting.

For the first time we used the combination Reason/ Record for the entire production. Usually OT’s Michael Krueger (no relation to Freddy, though) programs the entire music content in Reason and then adds Drums from BFD played via his Staccato/ Roland Drum Kit in Ableton Live. These Drumstracks and the Vocal Tracks of writer and speaker Bettina Bormann then had to be manually aligned in the Mixing Program being rewired to Reason.

Now with the prospect to have everything in the same project looked compelling to me and i could persuade Michael to start using Record. Oh, I just didn’t know.

He went totally over the top with it. But great. He used truck loads of Combinator devices, layering sounds over sounds over sounds, added Drums out the wazoo AND came up with a gazillion of Vocal tracks, not only Bettina’s, but guest singers and almost in each and every track the mighty Tim, who created an entire choir on his own by singing bass, bariton and tenor plus falsetto on at least 16 tracks – always.

My brandnew PC was near choking when I tried to play the projects back and I was pretty devastated not knowing how to handle the incredibly huge amount of tracks. Sort of clueless sitting in front of the screen staring at the mixer of Record.

Panicking! We were on a deadline. Was it a wise decision to use Record? During the process I realised, yes, definitely. Because I found out that sometimes it is great to be thrown out of your habits. And to be forced to create your own processing devices and really start to create and not just “activate”.

In the near future I will add some practical tips and insights into various aspects of the entire production, including mastering, into this thread. But for you to get an idea about Oberer Totpunkt, here is the video.
The song is called “Vogelhochzeit” (birds wedding) and is based on a traditional german folk song.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Oberer Totpunkt!!!

And for you to compare, here is the link to the original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBeIzHnd8xM&feature=related

  We spoke with Propellerhead co-founder and CEO Ernst Nathorst Böös about the future of music. He has a lot of good food for thought for us. Enjoy!

The following is not politically correct, I just can’t believe it:

 USFO – Our Star for Oslo, the Norwegian City where the next Eurosvision Songcontest will take place.  The history of this event has seen very few great moments for the representatives of my home country. We had reserved the last position quite often for us. That resulted in very weird activities from NDR, the northern german public broadcaster, responsible  of the organization of the local aspects of this contest as there are finding the singers, the songs and organize the preselection shows.

After the very unsuccessful last years, they stopped trusting the taste of the public and “nominated” three singers that could be voted into the final contest. The selection of nominees was “eyebrow raising ” already. Has beens, comedians, wannabes – equipped with songs from the wastepaper baskets of composers – they were that bad, indeed were chosen to represent the country of  Poets and Thinkers in the field of lyrics and music: Songs. Unf……believable.

After disaster struck several times the TV stations partnered with successful producer and TV host Stefan Raab who successfully took the piss out of the german contributions in the late nineties with Guildo Horn, himself and Max Mutzke. They decided to casting show a bunch of new, young talent together and then … yeah … then a song should show up as well and send the package to Oslo to represent german song culture.

Two finalists were chosen by the german public. Two 18 year old girls – who are amazing. Jennifer Braun is a great singer, Lena Meyer-Landrut a real character. The public went for character though, to be honest, Lena always entertained with her weird performance and special way to sing, but hitting the right notes is not her first ability.  Enter the songs: Lena will sing Satellite, Jennifer would have sung I care for you. And they are both VERY mediocre songs. Well arranged and played by the incredible Heavytones, yes. However, the songs, I do not get it. They are more like Soul Tracks, but without a real hook. Sorry, I don’t hear a single. And even on the production which went to iTunes the day after the german final Lena is not really cutting it to make listening to it a pleasure.

Why, why were the songs selected like this? Who selected them? The public just has to choose from what they’ve been presented to. And that looks to me like the emperor’s new clothes. The quality is just not there. Where are all the great song writers? Where are all the great german lyricists? I wish Jennifer and Lena a good start into the music business, but for Lena, I am afraid there is only a position in the lower ranks of the song contest. But, let’s wait what the other countries do have for us. And maybe I am totally wrong any ways.

The first Video for IMSTA, the international music software trade association! It shows a situation where a guy does not want his song to be “just” taken as his studio is taken from “somewhere”!

Watch out for the full interviews on www.celemony.com!!