Tutorial: Revive your skanky dead pop filter thingamajig!

I dusted ye olde mic stand and decided it was time it took a stand (har har) to be used by humans who need to record things with a microphone.

Unfortunately for me, the pop filter was in bad shape. And I mean baaaaaaaaaaad shape. 

Look at her.

Skanky.

First step in rehabilitating a skank: Strip the dirt off!

Find some classy tights lying around your house (I used my Burberry ones but you can totally use whatever brand you fancy).

Tie a tight knot on one end so she looks like this. Like, you know, happy. 

^_^

Then stretch the classy tights over and tie another tight knot. 

Snip ends off like so and you'll end up with a cute little pigtailed girl.

"Hanuuu."

Anddd you're done!

Pop it back into your pop filter like any sane human would do.

Isn't she such a refined woman right now... 

Sing on, darling, sing on...

Btw, just kidding about the Burberry tights. I don't own anything Burberry. Everything of mine is Prada, including my toothpicks.

Summer song

It's always "summer" here in Malaysia, but lately it's been raining a lot.

I'm not a big fan of the sun, but this song was written while thinking of the roadtrip my husband and I went on to Melaka. Somehow this is what it felt like sitting in the passenger seat on a long journey while the person you love is driving the car... having snacks, getting the sun on your shoulders, laughing, feeling sleepy, keeping each other awake, stretching your legs, singing to songs on the radio.

Hope you'll like it!

Sing another song by chiiiiing

Whore House Analogy on Falling in Love

You walked into a whore house and mamasan presented you this really gorgeous whore. You spent a night with her, and that night was orgasmic. After leaving the whore house, memories of that night kept playing back in your head. You could remember every single detail because of her. You were really in love with her. She was amazing.

A few days later you returned to the whore house and asked for a new whore. Mamasan asked if you would like the previous whore that you so loved, you said no, I want to try something new, yet something that would make me feel the same way before. Mamasan then brought you a new whore.

So you spent a night with this new whore, she was good, but not as great as the previous whore that you had fell in love with earlier. What was wrong, you asked the new whore, why can't you be like the previous whore so that I can fall in love with you too and feel the same way as I did with her?? Would you please wear the robes of the previous whore so you would look more like her when she undress, would you please speak in a higher tone so your voice would sound like hers when she whispered, would you please cut off your locks so your silhouette would mirror hers when she moved??

The moral of the story: If you've heard a song a million times and fell in love with it, of course the song is memorable, of course nothing else would stand up to being as memorable as that track.

p/s: Whore house analogy was something I learnt from my good friend SJ. He has all sorts of whore house analogies for whatever situations you can think of LOL.

Tutorial: Recording your own vocals on GarageBand with the built-in mic


I wrote this for Jodi because she wanted to record her own vocals on GarageBand. She's a really awesome singer and I always love her performances! She is gonna be a megastar one day :D

This tutorial is a very simple one, using the built-in microphone on your Macbook. If you have a USB mic, it would be better, but the point of this tutorial is to show you that you can achieve pretty decent quality with the built-in mic by taking control of a few settings. Here is one song that I recorded with the built-in mic:

KSD by chiiiiing

On to the tute......... take it away, tute!

Setting up your recording area

1. Try to record in a small room so that there’s not so much echo
   (Note: Apparently one of Kelly Clarkson’s songs, “Irvine”, that was on her album was recorded by herself with her macbook in her closet. The vocals were so emotionally charged that the producers decided to use it instead of trying to replicate it at the studio.)
2. Thick curtains and carpets are good because they help dampen some high frequency waves and also reduce echoes. (If you record in a bathroom, there will be a lot of echoes because the sound waves will be bouncing crazily against the bathroom tiles :D)
3. You can also try covering yourself and your laptop with a thick blanket/quilt but it might be a bit hot hehe
4. Turn off any electronics that might be adding noise to your environment (ie ceiling fans, CPU fans, mobile phone vibrating, etc)
5. Close any windows to reduce sounds of car honking noises, cats fighting, etc
6. Adjust your distance from the laptop microphone, ie if your song requires you to throw your voice loudly, place yourself further away from the mic. If your song requires a more personal and intimate delivery of the vocals, go nearer to the mic so that it’ll pick up the emotional nuances in your voice.
   (Note: The built-in mic on the macbook is usually located behind the keyboard, under the left speaker grille)
7. Stand up if you feel it works better for your vocals; you can also sit down. Whatever works best for you :D

Setting up your macbook’s System Preferences

1. Click on the Apple icon on the top left of your computer
2. System Preferences > Sound > Input
3. See image below:

Setting up your garageband’s Sound Settings to record vocals

1. See image below:
2. You may then proceed to record your vocals

Enhancing your vocal recording on garageband

1. After recording your vocals, you can add filters to enhance the quality.
   See image below:

That's about it for now. If this tute helped you, let me know. Have fun!!

Whitest King Alive

Spotted Adrian high up on the VIP balcony area at The Whitest Boy Alive's gig and the next morning I finally got to ask him the burning question that bugged me all night.

You can be sweet, sweet, sweet



Last week my bff Jean had her pre-wedding photoshoot, and Lobak was the photographer! So excited because he's also shooting them on film... can't wait to see the photos :D I took some shots for fun on my iphone... trying to learn how to do video composition and editing. Originally I had a cute song by My Little Airport on it, but then upon consultation with Jo and Lobak separately, it turned out that song was about teenage heartbreak (Lobak said it was very badly written too hahahah), so erm, not suitable. So I ended up writing a song for the video.

Jean and Tung are like a TVB couple, and I find them cute in an unexpected way (they never show affection in public). I absolutely love them hehehehhehee :D

Coco & Stravinsky sitting on a tree......!?!?!

Dayumm. I never know Coco Chanel and Stravinsky had a thing together. Thanks to Suzie Bubble (and thanks to the great fashion guru Evevon who recommended that blog), now I know. I've watched both the Coco movies (thanks to Jess-- hmm this is starting to sound like an award acceptance speech), and yes I would want to watch Coco & Igor too.

I had to study composers like Igor Stravinsky when I was doing music theory (I really hated it-- I kinda hate studying in general heh heh). There were four main periods of music; Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th Century.

Basically Baroque pieces make your left hand and right hand work out really crazily on the piano, kinda like making both hands run a race to see who can go fastest and has the highest stamina. It was insane.

Classical pieces are a bit easier, where your left hand is mostly playing accompaniment and not fighting with your right hand to be the g-kwok. Maybe people learned to relax a bit more then.

Romantic pieces are... hou romance loh. HAHA. They'd have a lot of emotive chords and make you feel a lot of warm emotions and also make you feel like you want to do lyrical dance in So You Think You Can Dance. Hmm.

20th Century pieces are a nightmare to play (for me). Not only do the composers come up with their own unknown chords that make you go o_O, their piano notations are written for people with 13 fingers instead of 10. Pure torture. And they'll change tempo and keys every 2 seconds just for fun. Stravinsky was one of them.

But now when I listen back to those pieces especially from the 20th Century era, I appreciate them so much more for their avant garde psychotrocity. Those composers were doing what artists like The Knife is doing today-- making music a form of art and sometimes, telling a story and taking you on a journey without even saying a word.

Here's one of Stravinsky's famous pieces. It's MAD.

I would like to study music again one day (by studying I mean reading Wiki hahahha). Learn all those songs I learned before in theory classes last time and understand them again.

Anyhoots, here's the trailer of Coco & Igor. Kinda NSFW.

This year in music: Fembots!

Everyone's paying some kinda sci-fi homage in their music. I love Janelle Monae's and Kelis' albums. Unfortunately I can't say the same for Christina Aguilera's robotic mishap :-S

A star is a star and you'll shine regardless





Exile you are my hero.

This rocks even harder than the OK Go video

Sonic accidents

Old article, but still an interesting read on the production for M.I.A's Kala album. Sometimes we get so caught up in glossy, perfect audio production that we forget accidents may be the best thing that ever happened!

"Taylor stayed especially alert for sonic accidents ..... we got interesting results, even finding accidental loops when someone dropped their drumstick. It’s having an open mind”."