Tag: news

  • Site moved to new server

    I moved the site to a new server! B-sting.com has been kindly hosted by Jocelyn of Sugarcube.net for a few years, but since I got my own server at Pretty Hate Machine (not-related to the NIN album), I moved all my sites there. This one has been last to move, because migrating WordPress was a new challenge to me.

    Yesterday the booking form for a gig couldn’t be filled in and e-mail sent to any address on the domain wouldn’t arrive for a few hours. Woops! But that’s fixed now.

    Now that that’s out of the way, maybe I should get back to what I was planning to do, namely get EP02 out that I promised in my New Years post? About that: three tracks are pretty much done and might need a bit of tinkering before I’m completely satisfied. Then there’s also the issue of track 4. Every EP needs at last 4 tracks.

    So right now the main obstacle is to create track 4. Granted I have plenty of half-assed ideas and experiments lying about, but stomping an actual track out of it is easier said than done. Wish me luck!

  • 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.

  • 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. :)

  • Want a free EP?

    I need your help. I’m, considering putting extra time into making a digital download EP with a few of my songs to be released this month. But if I’m going to do that, I’d like to know I’m doing it for someone besides myself. Please send me a mail at b-sting at b-sting dot com and put in the subject “I’m waiting” to let me know you’re waiting for the EP. I’ll put you on the B-sting mailing list and let you know when it is done.

    As thanks, when it does come out, I’ll also send you a download code that will let you download it in the highest quality for free. Oh and about the mailing list, don’t worry, I won’t spam you daily or weekly with useless crap, promise. And obviously you’ll be able to unsubscribe at any time.

    I’ll keep the blog posted about the progress. Oh and Ineke, you were right. I need to make more time to make music. But I still love blogging, so I’m gonna keep doing that as well. I just a goal and deadlines for my music. And this, this is a deadline.

  • B-sting.com is launched!

    B-sting.com is launched! I’m back after 6 months, up and rawking once more! My new website to talk about me making music, others making music, interesting ideas about music & technology and in general to share stuff. Whatever comes up. It’s not a replacement of my private livejournal blog and website, rather an addition to them, since it feeds directly into it. You can add the rss-feed of this blog or add me on LJ depending what you want to keep updated about.

    As you can see, the place is still beta, which basically means over the weeks and months to follow I’ll probably be adding stuff. Right now it’s just an exo-skeleton. I won’t make any bold or vague promises like some people, just the honest truth: when something is done or when there is something to report, I’ll let you know. So stay posted.

    Rawk on!