Tag: EP01

  • Toontje Lager – Zoveel te doen

    In honour of the EP-release, this week a real simple Origin of Samples-post. The track So Much To Do uses samples from the band Toontje Lager. They were active in the early Eighties and score a few hits in The Netherlands. After they split up, their lead-singer went solo for a while, but eventually disappeared from public view. Apparently according to the Dutch wiki, he’s a music teacher now.

    The bits from one of their hits Zoveel te doen (which literally means So Much To Do) I used are a fairly small part of the song, but are locked into the Dutch collective memory for another reasons. The exact same bit was used a Dutch television program about cars in the Eighties: De Heilige Koe (The Holy Cow, aka: cars).

    Here’s the original Zoveel te Doen by Toontje Lager that reached #19 in the Dutch charts in 1983:

  • 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 (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. :)