Großes Kino: Stefan Niggemeier dekonstruiert Dieter Gorny. Und den Rest der Branche. Das krasse ist ja, da ändert sich nix, weil sich da nix ändern muß, solange diejenigen, auf die die Lobbyarbeit zielt, keinen blassen Schimmer von der Ökonomie des geistigen Eigentums in einer vernetzten Welt haben, und die, die die Lobbyarbeit betreiben, immer noch glauben, daß sie deswegen das Netz doch noch zu “Music On Demand” (anyone remember?) umbauen können.
Schlagwort-Archive: music
Santa’s Fantasy. 2008.
Merry Christmas everyone. It’s been a while since I last presented a song here. I wrote the original version of “Santa’s Fantasy” in Sydney, Australia, in December 2007 as “theme song” for the christmas party I attended. It was thus first performed live about 365 ago depending on your time zone…
Almost one year on I decided to partially rewrite the song as a little Christmas present for my Australian friends. What you can listen to here is the result of the effort. I’m quite happy with it.
Many thanks to my sister, who sang the backing vocals and Sebastian Linke, who’s, as so often, the mastermind behind the drum arrangement. As usual, it’s a mostly VST based demo in 160kbps mp3 format. Enjoy!
“Santa’s Fantasy”
(c) 2007-2008 Tobias SchwarzWhen Santa was a little boy
He was a problem child
His parents were quite worried
‘Cos he was way to wild
When he grew up and went to school
And learned the family trade
It took a few nights on the booze
When he found out his fateTo put on weight grow facial hair
stay celibate to his despair
And fake smile for all his lifeHe hates his job he tried to quit
He hates the reindeers but loves the whip
And every year he’s gotta spread joy
But Santa’s just a dirty old boy
He’s bringing joy not to the nice
But the naughty in disguise
The game is on under the tree
If you are Santa’s fantasy.Year after year he sits and sulks
And keeps on watching porn
He tried his best to like job
But in the end he’s torn
He wants to go out on the town
Meet girls and have some fun
But he will only see the world
For his (special) delivery runsHe’s stuffing socks and quite a heap
but has to work while others sleep
so no one can see Santa weep.Chorus
But he still has a fantasy
A naughty girl who likes
A big guy wearing Santa clothes
Without a change, for life.Chorus x2
So art can still be subversive…
This is probably the coolest copyright non-infringement performance anyone has come up with yet. Disabling bureaucracies by DOS-style, yet form-based requests is probably not entirely new as a concept, but putting together a 33 second-long piece of music using 70,200 samples, just to demonstrate some of the fundamental problems of today’s copyright and licensing schemes, as artist Johannes Kreidler is planning to do, is quite an achievement. There’s more if you click on the link, but it’s in German.
And here’s a video by the artist himself. Also in German.
hat tip: nerdcore
Suzanne Vega, measure for measure
I simply love Suzanne Vega’s writing about song writing. I think it’s amazing how she can lay out the complex creative process leading up to a lyrically and musically finished and polished song. In her latest entry in the NYT’s measure for measure blog, she writes about being comfortable with being a two hit wonder and about the creative development and production of her 80s hit “Luka”.
“Fight For You” written for U. & N.’s wedding
It’s been a little while since my last post. But, gentle readers, do not despair, you’re in for a treat today. A good friend of mine married last Saturday, and I decided to honor the occasion with a song. It’s called “Fight for you”, and Sebastian Linke is partly responsible for the drums – the good part, of course… Well, enjoy!
“Pilù – das andere Leben” – Drehnotizen mit Claude Monet
Im Sommer 2006 drehte mein Freund Sebastian Linke seinen Diplomfilm “Pilù – das andere Leben”. Ein Projekt, zu dessen Gelingen ich ein wenig Musik und jede Menge Ton beisteuern konnte. Jetzt hat er das Geschehen vor, dabei und nach dem Dreh auf seiner Webseite s-bust-show.de in einem lesenswerten Text zusammengefaßt. Sicher spannend für jeden, der sich für Filme – und vor allem deren Realisierung ohne oder nur mit sehr kleinen Budgets interessiert. Meine Songs zum Film inklusive Video finden sich hier auf almostadiary.de unter der Kategorie “Songs” oder aber auf der Webseite des Films unter “Sehen und Hören“.
Suzanne Vega writes about songwriting
I just discovered that the NY Times has a songwriter blog called “Measure for Measure“. In one of the last entries, Suzanne Vega explains how her writing style and method have changed with time and that she has a non-standard relationship with melodies.
“I would start to write a song sometime late Saturday afternoon. Then, after dinner, when everyone in my family was doing other Saturday-night things, I would go into my room by myself and fool around with the guitar for several hours, usually managing to hammer out some kind of idea. In those days the chords came first, and they depended on what I was singing about. Then the melody, and lastly the lyrics.
Each chord told a piece of a story, and by putting the chords together in a certain way you had a musical narrative. Major chords = happy. Minor chords = sad. Sevenths were sort of sexy and bluesy. Augmented and diminished chords were spooky and spiritual, so I had a lot of those.
Most of the time I didn’t know the names of the chords or what kinds of chords they were; I learned that later when I worked with a band and producers. But in the beginning I worked from a book called ”Pop Songs of the Sixties” that had little pictures of the fretboard and showed where to put your fingers. (Actually, I have never learned to read music and still don’t to this day. I have always depended on the
kindness of arrangers! Hahaha.)”
Australia will be next – ‘Tokio Hotel’ in New York.
When I had a drink with friends in Sydney’s Darling Harbour quarter, no one native to the red continent understood why I had to chuckle when I read the bar’s name – Tokio Hotel. Well, they may soon, as Kelefa Sanneh, writing in the NY Times about Tokio Hotel’s first concert in New York City (‘A wild welcome to German teen-pop band’), believes that the number of teenage girls screaming the name of the East German teen band’s singer will rise dramatically following the band’s US album release in April.
“If this concert was oddly delightful from start to finish, thank Bill Kaulitz, who should, with any luck, be thrilling and perplexing young Americans for the rest of the year.”
If the French experience is worth anything (links in German), I suppose the German foreign ministry is already busy allocating additional funds to pay for more German teachers at the Goethe Institute in New York. It seems, German is indeed getting sexy again. Even if not popularized by the likes of Grass or Jelinek, but by
“that gender-bending singer, who answers to the disappointingly unglamorous name of Bill Kaulitz.”
The New York Post’s Danica Lo even sat down with the band and, lovingly, but still true to the paper’s style, asked what their plans for world domination are. Have a look at her video report, it also features some interesting fangirl statements…
Not on MTV (yet…) – “Still Changed” Videoclip
As a bonus feature for the “Pilù – the other life” DVD Sebastian Linke shot a videoclip of me performing the song I wrote for his film. For those of you, my gentle readers, who don’t want to wait until the release of the DVD, have a look at this youtube-based preview. Enjoy!
New Song: “Sometimes I can’t believe”
It’s been a while since I’ve uploaded a new song here.
This one is called “Sometimes I can’t believe”, and it’s about those moments when we feel that love is nothing but a strange illusion we cling to despite knowing it better, because we instictively feel that this denial is what makes our lives bearable. But in the end, it’s a realization that isn’t depressing as much as it is enlightening. As is the song – I hope. Enjoy.
As usual, it’s a VST based demo, 160kbit mp3, vocals by myself.