Archive for August, 2008

In every issue of Remix, I write the “Editor’s Note,” sometimes regarding my personal experiences as a touring musician. In the August issue, I wrote about preparing for unexpected events onstage. Check it out here:

http://remixmag.com/performance/band_tips_techniques/editor-note-preparing-unexpected/index.html

If you’re like me, you’re constantly buying new gear to 1) replace the live gear that keeps breaking and 2) to improve your stage setup. There’s always a cord or power adapter that dies at inopportune times. And sometimes you have to bite the bullet and buy something that you know (or at least hope) will improve your live show by at least five percent. To that end, I recently bought some Shure PSM 200 in-ear monitor systems for me and my band’s drummer. I’m nervous to step up to the plate but also excited. I’ll report back about that once we’ve had a chance to test that out. All I know is that my band is playing at the Treasure Island Festival coming up, so we need to be more prepared than for any other show we’ve ever played in the last seven years. But hey, no pressure…. Heh.

If you read my “Editor’s Note” column about the sudden screw-ups that inevitably happen onstage (particularly with a complicated setup), you know about our keyboardist’s “spaceship.” That dude had so many cables running from keyboards to laptop to mixer to the drum module to his brain…it was ridiculous. We played a show not long ago where we had a minute-long meltdown with his system. We couldn’t hear the audio from his laptop, which was running Ableton Live sessions with some samples from our latest album. We love Live, but our keyboardist (Ryan is his name), made the decision to simplify his setup to avoid future mishaps. He went back to his old Roland Fantom keyboard and used Redmatica’s awesome AutoSampler (http://www.redmatica.com) to trigger the samples live with the Fantom. So far, it’s been great. It goes to show you should never be afraid to change things up and streamline your live show. I’ll report back after we get the in-ears going. And now it’s time to buy ATA cases for when we fly to Minneapolis for our Oct. tour. Can’t wait to sleep in an RV and eat fast food for two weeks!

Bravo to Björk for recently posting this correction on her Website (see below). There aren’t as many female engineers, producers and string arrangers out there as there are men, but damn it, it certainly doesn’t help our cause when the press is crediting men for the work done by a woman. As long as Björk is writing, producing, arranging strings, editing vocals, getting jiggy with Pro Tools and asking her manager for a Dr. Pepper in that adorable Icelandic accent while she’s on the phone with us, we will put her on the cover of Remix. We always learn from Björk, and not just because she’s an incredibly talented vocalist and songwriter. The girl can engineer and produce with the best of the dudes. See her post below, and then check out one of these two cover stories from Remix.

http://remixmag.com/artists/electronic/gypsy_queen_bjork_volta

http://remixmag.com/artists/remix_breath_control/index.html

Björk’s post from http://www.bjork.com:

i saw in the last issue of iceland’s newspaper in english : “grapevine” , that valgeir sigurðsson was credited for having written all the instrumentals for my album vespertine. could i please offer a correction :

i have noticed last 7 years that mr. sigurðsson has often been credited for either writing or producing that album . i´d like to say that he didn´t write it or produce . he was a computer programmer for a third of it and a recording engineer for a third . The other two thirds were done by other engineers and programmers .

here is the creditlist to show you the correct crediting of vespertine .

i don´t understand where that misunderstanding has come from

could be one of four options :

1 :the pop critics of this world have not totally yet worked out the difference between engineering , programming , writing and producing electronic music . visually this appears very similar . a man/woman sitting in front of a computer . not as different as for example a drummer , a brass arranger and an engineer . but these are 3 completely different jobs which journalists must start to see the difference

2: it could be that this is some degree of sexism . m.i.a. had to deal with this with the respected website pitchfork.com where they assumed that diplo had produced all of her kala album without reading any credit list or nothing , it just had to be , it couldn´t have been m.i.a. herself ! it feel like still today after all these years people cannot imagine that woman can write , arrange or produce electronic music . i have had this experience many many times that the work i do on the computer gets credited to whatever male was in 10 meter radius during the job . people seem to accept that women can sing and play whatever instrument they are seen playing .but they cannot program , arrange , produce , edit or write electronic music .

3 : i´ll admit that one thing could confuse things : people have to use their ears and actually read the creditlist to get this information . all the music i have made : like for example string arrangements , synthbasslines or programming of electronic patterns , i never play myself live because i want to give 100% of myself into the singing i either ask the computers to play it or i get other musicians to play it . this could confuse things .

4: one thing that could have kept this misunderstanding alive is that neither me nor valgeir sigurðsson have bothered to correct it

but i am doing it now

i hope this correction will be a positive input into more discussion about this

warmth

björk.