Tuesday, 23 December 2003

Donations Hey Ottmar- every now and then it occurs to me, on the spur of the moment, to burn a copy of one of your albums for friends of mine. For example, last night my landlords had a nice Winter Solstice party at their house, and I thought they might dig Santa Fe Sessions. But I wanted to hand it to them when I walked in the door at the party... So ordering a copy from SSIR.biz each time I want to share your music with someone doesn't make much sense... So my idea is, how about a tip jar on your web site somewhere? That way, we (your fans) can 'roll our own' copies of albums for friends, and then we can immediately compensate you. You could even provide a list of 'suggested donations' for each album- $15 for one, $20 for another, etc. You might even make more $ this way than selling cds... I stayed at a wicked hostel in New Zealand on the West Coast (South Island - pictures here), and the owner's $ policy was strictly donation-based. He said, "Only pay if you enjoy your experience here, and appreciate the atmosphere I've created." He suggested $20NZ/night, and people ended up giving more, simply because they place was so amazing and their stay so fun... Just a thought! I think that is a great idea. I would actually say that a $7 donation would be fine with me. I am tempted to post templates of the SSRI covers for people who donate money so that they can print their own cover...I wonder what my attorney would say to that.... Let me think this through...right now we have each SSRI album as well as the trilogy for sale...we could have a separate item for the shopping cart that reads: Donation for Copying a CD with the amount to be determined by the shopper...and after we receive the order we could then email the buyer a link that takes him/her to a template of the cover of the CD s/he copied. How does that sound? Opinions? 10:00:20 PM    comment []; Christmas Card I received a Christmas card from Luthier Eric Sahlin today. He tells me he drove cross-country recently and listened to all of my 20 CDs in chronological order. Wow, that's quite a feat! He writes: I was quite moved by your artistic development over the years and by the sheer volume of your creative efforts. I've been at this (building guitars - OL) almost 30 years now and am more than a little dismayed at seeing the guitar being run into the ground by people playing the same old stuff over and over and over again. Well, thank you Eric. That is very nice of you. I appreciate that very much. 10:00:01 PM    comment []; Dilemma Regarding my recent post on loud CDs getting even louder... Ahem, Nouveau Flamenco was possibly the loudest CD of its time...some radio DJs still remember that they actually had to turn Barcelona Nights down...and it poses an interesting dilemma. Many people still tell me how great that record sounds, how wonderful the treble and how incredible the bass... Well, let me tell you a secret: I have never liked the sound of that album and the compression, the treble and bass have always sounded very artificial to me. William Aura of Higher Octave mastered the album together with the engineer at FDS Labs in 1990. On the other hand, how can one argue with the popularity of that music, when the album has sold about 2 million copies! The question I have asked myself many times, at least every time I mastered an album, is do I master my music like "Nouveau Flamenco" since that was the big success or do I master it so I myself think it is the best sound possible.... I think that ten years later there are still many people imitating the sound of NF and there is no need for me to copy that sound, which I feel was really a combination of a bad recording and an extreme mastering job... In case you are wondering, I am very happy with the sound of the three SSRI CDs. I think in part that is due to the rapidly improving technology of course..... 9:59:46 PM    comment []; New York pardons late Lenny Bruce US comedian Lenny Bruce is pardoned by the state of New York 40 years after he was convicted of obscenity. [BBC News] I am sure he rests easier now..... 9:59:13 PM    comment []; Why CDs keep getting louder... ...and sound worse... What's better than loud music? Louder music. And it's not just the headbangers who think so. An analysis of pop recordings proves that for the past decade, record labels have quietly been producing the most earsplitting CDs possible. The labels' assumption is that what you hear, you buy - and deafening tunes are hard to ignore. So how do you make a CD louder when it holds only 16 bits of audio? Engineers use compressors and limiters to reduce the distance between a song's peaks and valleys and then raise the average signal level..... You can push a photo until there is no more contrast - it is merely shades of white...you can do the same thing with music, push it until it is only peak and there is not a single instance of a valley...our brain determines volume by taking the average of the information coming from the ears and the less contrast the brain detects the louder the music is deemed. Now, I happen to think that contrast is one of the most important elements in any art-form and by removing any contrast you create a flat aural image... It is interesting to note that the nylon stringed guitar is probably the instrument that suffers the most from "over compression". There is something fragile about the sound of the guitar that gets ruined by compression - the guitar solo I played on the song Call the Man by Celine Dion is a good example of what I am talking about. And as long as it sells mega I don't see this trend changing.... 5:46:46 PM    comment []; Chinese Garden 4:56:08 PM    comment []; new moblog I realize that I am going to take a lot of pics with my phone and set up a Moblog at the above address. You can get there also by clicking on the Moblog link on the right side under the calendar and above the Ottmar Liebert Web Site link..... 12:30:39 PM    comment []; Mr. Picassohead Oh, and here we have - Mr. Picassohead! Design your own Picasso using this cool flash-based tool. Excellent. [Critical Section] You know I had to try this one right away and here is my Picassohead. 9:52:32 AM    comment []; Entering CasualSpace... Joi and I were typing at each other over the Net using Apple's iChat AV. I've never liked Internet chat. I don't like having to type that fast. So, at a certain point, I asked him whether he'd used the audio capacities that are built into iChat AV. I hadn't. A moment later we were conversing by voice through our computers. Despite the fact that Joi is presently in his country house outside of Tokyo and I'm at my condo in Salt Lake, it sounded like he was in the room with me. There was no discernible latency or loss of fidelity......... For a long time, it was as though we were working in the same room, each of us alone with his endeavors and yet... together. Though half a world away. [BarlowFriendz] I did this with a friend in London a couple of weeks ago. Even though we did not have a great connection since he uses dial-up, it was amazing being able to hear each others' space because we left the connection after we stopped talking. I would love to get this set up with my dad, who lives in Austria now. Someday we'll have the bandwidth to set up permanent audio and/or video connections with our friends...like a permanent hole dug through the planet to another location...ya can't crawl through it, but ya can see and hear what's happening there.... 9:37:53 AM    comment [];

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