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Don’t Say You Will Unless You Will: The State of the Union

November 4, 2009 in Editor's Notes | No comments

Hi there. Hope you all enjoyed Halloween; I did.

So here’s the thing: I’ve been really busy. There’s a lot going on in my world right now, much more than I would ever have expected when I quit my job last winter. Perhaps most notably, I’ve been a hired gun for WNYC, New York’s awesome public radio station, producing segments for the music talk show Soundcheck — like this one. And more importantly to me, I’ve been working on an album — the very first full-length studio release by my project Art Sorority for Girls, after seven years of performing under that name. It’s taken over a year, and it’s still got a ways to go… but I think it’s pretty good so far, and I can’t think of another time I’ve felt so passionately committed to getting something done. Mind you, it hasn’t all been fun; in fact, bouts of intense, crippling doubt and despair have become quite common. But the good days? They’re really good.

In any case, between days at the radio station, days in the studio, and the in-between time that I’ve spent scrambling for freelance work to finance this quasi-bohemian life, I admit I’ve had very little time for you, my faithful readers. Hell, I’ve barely had time for my friends. And when that reality hit me, I panicked and considered shutting my young blog down, if only to save myself the embarrassment of more time in public limbo. But two things have happened in the past week that kept me from jumping ship. The first was that people asked why I had stopped writing; granted, they were all friends of mine, but it was proof that someone out there cared whether this thing lived or died. The other was that I saw This Is It, the Michael Jackson documentary. Apart from being inspired by Jackson’s work ethic, I found that during the rendition of “Thriller,” all I could think about was what the bass line had in common with this one really great Kings of Leon song. That, in itself, seemed proof enough that the well wasn’t dry; I was still thinking the kinds of thoughts that made me start this damned silly thing in the first place.

So I’m giving it another shot. I promise you there will be more dry spells; I’ve got my fingers in so many pots right now that it’s just inevitable. But I’ve been exposed to so much new music this year and it’s given me so much to think about; if you’ll just stay with me, I’ll do my best to deliver the goods whenever I can. Thanks for your support so far.

With love,
Daoud

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I, Robot: Two Auto-Tuned Soliloquies

February 6, 2009 in Features | 2 comments

Bon Iver, “Woods” (Blood Bank, 2009)

Imogen Heap, “Hide and Seek” (Speak For Yourself, 2003)

Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon is the very model of a modern Indie Mountain Man. If you’ve read any press about Bon Iver at all, you know the backstory behind last year’s For Emma, Forever Ago, wherein Vernon fled the wreckage of a broken band and a dissolved relationship and decided to cut people out of his life altogether for a while. Over three months in his father’s hunting cabin in Vermont, he wiled away the hours recording his own warbly falsetto over and over and stacking the copies on top of each other, emerging with one of the most talked-about albums of 2008. That’s great press, but it certainly raises expectations; what do you do when it’s time for a sophomore effort and you’ve got no backstory? Will people still like your music when, God forbid, you record it in a studio?

There’s no second album yet, so the jury’s still out. However, we do have January’s Blood Bank EP, which isn’t spectacular, but is a good sign Vernon (a) still has some fight in him, and (b) can be weird even in a studio setting. On the closing track, “Woods,” he employs that very quintessence of studio effects, auto-tune (I guess those weird “Be Kanye” posters from last year had an effect after all). But unlike ‘Ye, T-Pain, Cher, or any of pop music’s other resident robots, Vernon sounds as fragile as ever with the effect on. As before, he layers vocal tracks into a thick sound sandwich, only his timing and intonation are obviously off the mark, to a twitchy, spasmodic effect. “Woods” may not be the kind of thing you want to listen to more than twice, but props for turning the tables on everyone’s favorite new fad.

For contrast, I’m including the key track from Imogen Heap’s Speak for Yourself, a song I adore despite its association with The O.C. and, well, Imogen Heap. There’s no “right” way to use auto-tune, but if there were, this would probably be it.

UPDATE — Seems I spoke too soon about Heap; this insight came courtesy of my buddy Casey Holford:

“Hey man, just wanted to say, i’m not 100 percent sure about this, but I don’t think the vocal effects you hear on “Hide and Seek” were created with the program autotune. Actually I believe it’s layers of vocoder primarily, which is basically vocals processed through a synthesizer where notes are played to create pitch inside the articulation of an existing voice- this explains the chordal effect you hear there and the very keyboard-centric way that the notes move. I don’t know exactly how she does this stuff but I do know she can approximate a solo performance of this song live, I believe there is tape of it somewhere.”

Thanks for keeping me in line, Casey. Let this be a lesson to all of you not to let smarty-pants bloggers tell you what to think.

Download Blood Bank: Amazon MP3
Download Speak for Yourself: Amazon MP3

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