Repenting For Neglect

Jan

Repenting For Neglect

Let me just start of by apologizing:

I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not having posted anything substantial in I don’t know how many months. I know there are a few folks that subscribe to this… at least I do now. It’s an intention of mine as I’ve been speaking with Dan Lynch of Linux Outlaws about what makes a good music blog. He gave me a few pointers, a few things he’d like to see discussed and I intend to do that here, now… At 2:57 am on this nervous Friday night.

I suppose I’ll break it up by subject… this might be a lengthy post.

School

My second semester at Columbia as a music major was incredibly rewarding and productive. My grades were the best they’ve ever been. I got straight A’s EXCEPT for Composition in which I got a B. Hilarious… I got a B in music composition. I had to compose a piece for Cello and Flute that was at least 5 minutes long. Below is a link to the PDF of the sheet music for the piece. I’ll upload the audio file of it from the day it was performed… whenever I get it. I have to order a CD from school still, but I’ll post it when I get it ASAP. We were lucky enough to have our pieces performed by two professional musicians and have it recorded. It was delightful.

Michael Else – Can Anybody Hear Me? (Full Score)

Live Shows

As I’m sure you’ve seen on YouTube, I played a couple live shows with a full band: Braydon, Mr. Thick on the tables, guitar and APC, Whitney on drums and my buddy Devin on bass. It was interesting to look at and sounded pretty decent, just as long as you couldn’t hear me… or the rest of the band. It got to a point where it was me vs. them as far as the sound was concerned and at no fault of anyone’s. It was getting to a point where practicing was radically inconvenient and nearly impossible to fit into a school schedule, not to mention the fact that I was programming the set in arrangement view in Ableton… I was quickly losing any sense of musicianship, independence or spontaneity on stage. So I had to switch to doing it solo… it wasn’t easy, as they’re all my friends… but I needed to simplify, not only as far as having other musicians with me, but the amount of equipment I was using. I had a decent setup – 3-tier keyboard stand with laptop at the top, APC40 in the middle and Axiom 61 at the bottom.

I just played a show last night using only the APC40… there are times that I want to play keys and loop riffs and work it into builds or just compose stuff on the fly. I’ll incorporate that again, I just want to develop my skills the best I can on the APC40 so I’m comfortable enough as to not concentrate so much on it so I can devote more attention to the keyboard.

Attached to the post is a 30-minute live set of me on the APC40 using Ableton… it’s my set without the band, so it’s only a month old or so but it grows almost every day as I add more to it and reconfigure it. Ever since I’ve been doing it on my own I’ve developed a much more intuitive system… and by that I mean I just… learned how to use Ableton the way it was meant to be used… but even still.

I did the whole thing live and then did a little mastering after the fact just to bring the levels up, but it’s pretty raw… so I hope you can forgive me for the little mistakes. I’m pretty pleased with it for now… and there’s more to come, that’s only about a third of my set at the moment.

Professor Kliq – Live Set Pt. 1

Here’s the tracklist if you’re curious:

Intro – My Advice
Bust This Bust That
Sema
Street Wisdom
1. (Sonic 2 – Chemical Plant)
Moth Returns
All Control
Yello – Oh Yeah (Kliq Mash-up)
1. Featuring:
  1. SebastiAn – Ross Ross Ross
  2. Justice – DVNO
  3. Justice – Waters of Nazareth
  4. Mark Rae – Medicine (Kraak en Smaak Remix)

Movements EP

I’ve been working here and there on some new stuff that I plan to release on February 12^th (I’m quickly running out of time). I’ve been listening to a lot of French house/electro as well as some… minimal techno. That’s right – I’ve succumb to the temptations of Ed Banger. It’s fine though – I feel like that DJ culture and those standards of dance music are much more acceptable than the trance garbage that’s been crammed down my throat.

Sorry. I’m jaded.

My friend Sam is in the process of drawing the cover art.

It’ll be available here on the site, Jamendo (forever) as well as Rec72.net.

As far as describing what I’ve been up to lately, I’ve been using Ableton to make tracks which is entirely new to me. It’s an amazing DAW… the plugins that are included and the ease of using ReWire and VST’s (which I’m JUST now getting into) is amazing. If anyone’s looking for a new DAW to use for making electronic music, Ableton Live is a fantastic centerpiece and has answered a lot of prayers I thought would never come true. The stuff I’ve been working on is pretty heavy, pretty hard – even harder than Guns Blazin’.

I hope this has been informative enough. I’ll come with another segment of the live set in a week or two for you folks to digest. I also would like to work on a mixtape once the EP is finished. I’m looking at 70 minutes of heavy stuff I’ve been digesting lately, not to mention some older obscure stuff that my webmaster Adam (www.no-refuge.com) got me into over the years.

Whoof… it’s getting late.

There’s talk of me attending the Cologne Commons Festival in the summer. I’ve got a little donate button up for anyone who’s willing to throw a few shillings or quid my way if only for food while in Cologne. Anything is appreciated. I’ve received a few small donations from some folks in Germany and to them I say THANK YOU!!!

Thank you so much for reading and I’ll keep you folks updated as time goes on, as well as another edition of the live set…

Cheers from Chicago,

Mike

Professor Kliq

3 Comments

3 Comments »

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I love you.

Comment by Michael — February 1, 2010 #
New EP rules! Sewage is amazing!

Comment by Andy — February 13, 2010 #
I second that. Sewage is my fav. too.
Nicely done!

Comment by sven — February 18, 2010 #

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