Category: news

  • We had a (secret) launch gig!

    Just now I did my very first and rather exclusive live gig. It was both a try-out and a show-case of something I’ve been preparing for a while: headphone gigs at any location with a very small audience (maximum of 4 people). I’ll be giving more details about how it works in a week or so and if you’re interested how you can get me to come play for you.

    In attendance for the gig at my home were three very special friends who serve as consultants for the project. This was my way of saying thanks to them for their ideas, some of which were generated even after this gig. Donja, Elouise and Jeroen: thank you.

    I also have a few potential gigs lined, but since this is still in negotiation & planning stage, can’t say more about that just yet. I’ll keep you posted!

  • +1

    For all the early-adopters like me who have a Google+ account, b-sting.com now has a +1 option for every blogpost and pages. You’re welcome.

    Also, I’m experimenting with cross-posting to Twitter. Just so you know.

  • A live practice run

    I just did a practice run for a live gig. It lasted 45 minutes and as to be expect it did not so go as well as I hoped. But hey it was a first run. I took notes and now have something to work on.

    So does this mean I have a live gig lined up? Not yet! But I do have plans. I’ll be submerged in my headphones the next few months and see if I can start doing some live gigs maybe after the summer. We’ll see. Gotta get better first.

    Meanwhile, you may remember this entry I did which included SL2? Richard Russell of XL Recordings mentioned the whosampled.com entry I made following that post on Twitter. Sweet.

  • Perfect (2)

    Well it took me long enough, but my new track Perfect is now up on Bandcamp. I talked about it a month ago. The lyric writing was hard as usual and I’m still not satisfied. Not with the singing either. But I guess that’s where the title of the song comes in as a bit of irony. It’s never perfect.

    Also, B-sting.com will be a year old tomorrow, so I guess this is a way to celebrate it. No really, it launched on April 1st. Just like Gmail did years ago. It keeps people guessing whether you’re serious and that’s just the way I like it.

  • Perfect (1)

    Hiya! I got an odd request 8 days ago and interestingly it made has led to a surge of creativity. Yay! At my work, my ‘day job’, I’m following a management course. Apart from the usual home work assignments, my mentor came up with an odd request: write a piece of music based on the causes of my self-undermining mechanisms. You know, the things you know you should do, but somehow you don’t.

    As luck has it, I ran into this (link = private livejournal entry, you’ll have to be on my flist to read it :P) a day after his request. And I was just installing Cubase 5 and toying around with the new VST instruments. I creatively puzzled the assignment and the blog post together and figured: I’m going to write a love song that’s some 10 to 15 years overdue. Better late then never, right?

    The song title is ‘Perfect‘ and it focusses on not wanting to disappoint people, but also the desire to compensate for the shortcomings of others. And contrary to the song title, the song is far from perfect. Both in the sense that it’s not done yet (still need to write some extra lyrics), but also that musically that the song erodes into noise towards the end of the song, leaving just the bare theme. It’s like all symbolic ‘n shit y’all. ;p

    The way things are now, the song should be completely done in just under 2 weeks from when I got the assignment. That should be a new record.  I should work by request more often, hehe. If anyone wants to request me to make a song, let me know. I should probably post a teaser or something, but um nervous, perfectionist artist and all.  o.O I’m such a tease, myeah.

  • If all else fails, play the blues

    I usually say “if all else fails, you can always play in a blues cover band“. The thing is that blues isn’t very hard to play, even if you can barely hold and instrument. There are challenging, not-so-easy-to-play blues songs out there, but most of the time, for most songs, it’s pretty straight-forward. If you look up musician wanted ads on various websites, you’ll find the bulk are either rock/metal or blues cover bands. Most of these bands have no professional ambitions other than playing the local pub on Friday nights for fun. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

    While I have no plan on giving up on my electronic work and the ambitions I have for it, I ironically found myself with an invitation to go play in a blues cover band for this Friday. Some people at my employer wanted something different for their weekly pub evening. And since there are plenty of guitarists working there, they figured they’d give their inner-Hendrix a platform to play on.

    I figured what the hell and accepted. I’ll be alternately singing and playing the bass on a few songs. It’ll be a break from the usual and it’ll be good fun without pretensions. And without band practice. We’ll see how that works out.

  • EP is out: If You Want Some Thing Done

    B-sting - If You Want Some Thing DoneThe EP If You Want Some Thing Done is out, get it here:

    music.b-sting.com

    You can determine the price for it yourself. Yes, that means you can get it for free, but contributions are welcome.

    If you like it, tell me! Or better yet, tell your friends. Review it, blog about it, drop the link on Facebook or Twitter, talk about it.

    Many thanks to Divadrummer for providing the opening track. If you would like to contribute something to the next release (opening track, remix, cover art, etc.) Let me know!

  • EP01 progress (3)

    The EP is done. The music is done. The artwork is done. The download page is done. Scheduled released date: this Saturday 31st of July 2010. People who subscribed for the free digital EP will be notified Saturday. The rest will just have to keep a close eye on B-sting.com .

  • EP01 progress (2)

    It’s still not too late to sign up for a free digital EP. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.

    Meanwhile, in the past few days, I’ve been doing two things. First, I’ve been doing some composing on track 000009. It’s a comfy 4+ minutes now, I put the finishing touches on the lyrics and a few hours ago I recorded them. A few days earlier I also re-recorded some organ bits, because I had a few new ideas for that. Sorta gave it a good mix and voilá, track 000009 is done. It’s even got a title now.

    Secondly, I’m working on a design for the cover. I wanted to get some help in for that one, but decided the first EP needs to be all mine from front to back. I have an idea for it, but figured my photography skills aren’t exactly up to scratch. So what I did, I set up a complex shot (thanks Ragedaisy, for helping on that one), snapped some pictures and photoshopped those together as best as I could. But! I will rework it into a vector drawing by hand. Those who have been following my private blog might remember the ones I did for Rosana and Judy. Something like that. ;)

    Plans for the coming week: make the artwork, check the combined mix on all tracks, see if there is time to squeeze in track 000002.

  • EP01 progress (1)

    A week ago I posted about making an EP. As promised, I’m going to keep updates on the progress. First of all, thanks to the people who have sent a mail so far. I love you guys. Spread the word. Secondly, I decided to make this update after I got some progress done, instead of blogging and then complaining I have no time to make music. ;)

    So what am I doing for this EP? Basically I’ve been writing songs the last months, which are in various states of completion. Some are just a few sketchy loops & ideas, others are fully written out and even recorded already. I keep track of the progress and assigned all the tracks a number as working title based on the chronological order. Three tracks, code-named 000001, 000004 and 000005 are already done and recorded.I just need to check them for minor flaws before publishing.

    I really want to put a half-recorded song 000009 on the EP also. So my effort right now is in completing that. Mainly it’s figuring out where all the parts go and stretching up to something a bit longer than the 2 minutes it is now.Today I managed to stretch it up to 3 minutes, but it sounds rudely bashed together. So I might be able to stretch it up a bit further if I smooth out the transitions and give it a head and tail. Plus I need to re-record some keyboard and vocal tracks. That’s doable in the next week or so.

    One other thing is that 000004 might not fit too well between the rest. There is still a song 000002 (no, not a Blur cover) lying about which can replace it, but basically needs a lot of lyric writing and some love & attention. So depending on how long I’m busy with 000009 will determine if I can finish up 000002 in time or just need to go with 000004 and leave 000002 for a later release.

    Once all that is out of the way, there’s the artwork. The EP itself needs artwork and the nifty bit is that each track can get artwork too. I think the best choice is to make the EP artwork the ‘parent’ and the track artworks the obvious ‘children’. I plan on making it myself, but if anyone with sufficient graphical skills and time to kill before the end of July wants to throw themselves at it, you can send me a mail or leave a reply. My primary motto on this is “If you want something done, do it yourself”, but help is always appreciated.

    Last but not least is obviously the uploading and basically publishing and promoting the EP. But that’s still in a few weeks. Let’s make some music first. :)