Yes, you read it right: In 24 hours I am no longer the most sought after "bachelor" bass player, but the most sought after married bass player. Wow.

I would like to take this opportunity to express the huge gratitude me and my soon-to-be wife feel towards the Kompoz kommunity. We are both amazed at the love expressed to us from all Kompozarians in different forms and shapes. Some have sent their personal messages of wishing us luck, and some have written music. We appreciate them all very much and are deeply moved by this.The songs kompozed for our wedding will of course be played at the wedding party and I will try to arrange for it to be filmed. I may not be entirely sober at that point though. For the participants in the not-very-secret "wedding project", I have posted my personal thanks in the "discussion" section of that project, just so you know :).

Thank you! so much, my Kompozational friends!

I quote myself: "This is fan-fornicating-tastic!"

I quote Mike: "It's all or nothing"

I quote Lonnie: "I love this place"

I quote Brannon: "Have you seen my weener, dog?"

I quote Rab: "I am afraid the whole wedding has to be retracked in 96KHz 32-bit floating point"

I quote Nate: three-double-two-four-six...etc

I quote Raf: "Java is the coolest, ooops Kompoz just crashed"

I can go on forever... so let me end with a quote from my Swedish brother Sven-Martin which sums up a lot : "The trick is to sub-divide the rhythm in atomic particles". Now that's what I aim to do!

I am not Making Sense, Brannon and Dean do that for me.  I don't need to put the Pedal to the metal, Scott and Sid do that for me. I am told by Steve, Kevin and Jessica that It will get better every day. If I feel mischevious,Spin is the man to see for some Double Trouble. For my honeymoon, Lonnie, Jay and Sven-Martin cook up a Manila Meltdown  and I am assisted by Karl to Knock It Back. Nate and Jason stops me from getting too normal and recommends me to Don't drink the water. If I am in a gambling mood, Tracy has the licks for El Jugador. Meanwhile, Billy is all over the place with a goat and assorted cows in tow. I can borrow the White Hat from Davidote. Dez and Karl remind me that there is Time, but actually Mike says it's Getting Closer. This list is not comprehensive; it is missing Stuart, Pascal, Eric, Enrico, Peter Vourd, THP, Bill On Guitar, Alan, Rick, Dave Syracause, Derek, Ilkka, Ben, Anders, LittleLisa, Ron, Mark M, Alberto, Vegasbilly... etc. You know who you are. I love you all.

Thank you Raf, for kreating this home away from home!

Rock On, with love

B and C

In my continuing efforts to kreate alternative kontests, I have come up with something really good. I have shuffled three pictures with lightning speed in front of an official controller (to guarantee there will be no cheating) and I now submit this question to you:

Which one is Raf?

A. Raf?                 B. Raf?               C. Raf?

I know, it is close to impossible to tell the difference.

The winner will get a free bass line to a project of his/her choice.

This was dug up by Nate and forwarded to me by Jason.

Sony's new product

needless to say, I am getting one as soon as they are released in Sweden. Get yours today!

I have been travelling to Norway (beautiful country) this weekend, and just by happenstance, I passed by the city in Sweden where Dez lives. She happened to have way too much coffee in her place and I felt compelled to help her reduce the stock.

I had a great time and would like to hereby extend a huge thank you to Dez for the hospitality shown to a tired traveller and his entourage. We also had a very enlightening discussion on vocal techniques, starting with the simple stuff like major scales and minor scales, then moving on to blue notes and after this warming-up we moved on to my own very special singing style.

Dez learned a lot from me about both green notes, yellow notes and - something of my speciality if I may say so - red notes. She was very grateful to get this singing lesson, and I had to refuse to take money for it.

It continues to amaze me how easy it is to meet a kompozer in person, with whom you have until then only PMed and possibly chatted via some IM program. It feels like we have known each other for years and at least I had a great time (but too short since we had to rush off to get home to Stockholm). Behind that incredible voice and talent that you have heard on Kompoz is a wonderful person with a wicked sense of humor and a distinctive dislike for dansbandsmusik :) (dansbandsmusik is a very Swedish and incredibly boring koncept which does not even deserve an explanation)

We are this good-looking, and yes, Dez is taller than I am (which makes her about 5km tall)

So a BIG HUG to Dez (and thanks to the boyfriend and cat too of course) for making a long journey much brigther!

Rock On

B

This will be short. I write too much :).

I have been blessed with the participation of Enrico (violin), Lonnie (contrabass), Rich(cello) and Heidi(viola-olin) on my project "Schizophrenia". These great musicians have created a real, live string section. Now, I cannot be the only one on Kompoz who - out of laziness or inability to play an instrument such as violin - use "canned" strings in the form of Edirol or some other "orchestra" whenever I need a string section. Some wizards can make also that sound very good, but I am completely blown away by the sound of REAL strings. I hereby recommend all my fellow Kompozarians to - when you need strings - investigate what players we have on Kompoz. It is so much better with the real thing! I have also earlier had some very very good violin from Stevo. There are many others, these are just the ones I have worked with. Check them out.

Rock On / B

I have during my time on Kompoz a couple of times written songs that have some kind of "pseudo-classical" feel, and have always resorted to the simple solution; use a good set of samples and MIDI to present the song. On some occassions, I have been greatly helped by geniuses like Sven-Martin, LittleLisa and others to make the songs more "alive" than just notes in a very even succession.

I recently posted a project called "Schizophrenia" (which was actually written on bass, can you believe it?) in this style and was not really planning to do much else than to let it develop similar to previous projects. Now, Lonnie (an incredible musician who pretends to be "just" a bass player) listened to the piece and came to the conclusion that I needed a proverbial kick in the ass to produce a score for it so that it could be performed by real, live, string instrument players. I ran the MIDI track through some "MIDI-to-score" program and ended up with something that I suspect you need 13 fingers on each hand to play.

Lonnie then took the time to transcribe this to a string quartet arrangement score which can actually be played by real musicians with as few as 5 fingers per hand. I posted a cry for help to the string section group, and was almost immediately rewarded with both a slight refinement of the score and two excellent violin tracks from Enrico (plus a healthy dose of musical education by following the discussion between him and Lonnie about the arrangement). Lonnie then added a contrabass (I love this, it is always called "upright bass", "doghouse" and such. In this context, "contrabass" seems very appropriate) track. In addition to this, Brannon (Legendary Texan) kept things on a normal level of insanity by adding some very inspired lyrics and vocal ideas.

This is a huge adventure for me, to see a little piece develop into a very "classical" arrangement with real instruments. I, myself, will definitely not be playing anything on it :)

So, now to the point, I would love to get a real live Cello and/or Viola for this tune. It is hard to find a cello player using the Kompoz search, since many of our very talented kompozarians who list cello as a talent, actually mean they do MIDI cello. Now, I have absolutely nothing against MIDI strings (or any other instrument),but for this particular project, the point is to use real, live instruments.

So, cello players please, make yourselves heard :)

Thank you.

Rock On

B

Hello. I have been on Kompoz for quite some time now and it has been absolutely magical for me, bot musically and personally. I have evolved as a musician, as a person and have made many new friends from all over the world.

Since I understand it can be hard for a newcomer to get into Kompoz as a "society" as well as musically, I would hereby like to offer my help in terms of advice and replies to questions for anyone who wishes to know anything about this place. If you have any question about how this place works, which is not answered in the forums or which you maybe feel embarrassed to ask publicly, feel free to PM me. I will answer to the best of my ability, and if I can't, chances are I will know someone who can. There are NO stupid questions, all questions are valid.

I have posted more projects than I care to count and have contributed to almost as many. It is time to give something back and to help newcomers feel welcome, get into contributing and to learn their way around this place that most of us call home (when our wives are not listening). There are many Kompozers who can do the same thing, and will happily do so, this is just an attempt to catch the eye of the frustrated beginner who is wondering how to get into it. 

So, feel free to contact me about anything that has to do with Kompoz. I will NOT think you are stupid because you don't know how it works, and I will answer to the best of my ability.

Rock On

B 

Today, I have experienced something which I found very interesting, have never seen before and would like to share. When visiting our friends Josie and Lito in their house to discuss a concert in Europe with the Philippine group Aegis, I got a tour around the place from Lito, and he explained to me what he does for a living. He is basically a private music teacher, but he does not teach one student at a time, he teaches a complete band.

This particular day, I had the pleasure of hearing the very talented ladies in the picture below perform some very well executed "top 40" songs and some latin stuff. They are very good (unfortunately I was not able to record anything) and they have an incredible level of professionalism and musical maturity. These ladies spend every single afternoon rehearsing under Lito's supervision/direction and later on he helps them to get gigs and produce records.

Now, I thought what you are probably thinking; a music factory, a band farm, that is not art!

I stand corrected, what I saw was talented musicians perfecting their skills and having fun under a very professional supervision. Lito plays just about every instrument known to man (like some Kompozers I know...) and sat in on drums for one song to illustrate to the drummer how to play. Man, I wish my band had had such a teacher when we were struggling in the beginning. Now, the Philippines general taste in music is perhaps a little to "mainstream" for me, but I take my hat of to the dedication to their art and the pure joy I saw when they got an audience of one (me).

I knew beforehand that the Philippines have a lot of music all over their culture and daily life, but this was - at least to me - something new. Please note, this is more "music lessons" than a "record company employed band", which is why I found it simply brilliant.

It would be interesting to hear if anyone else has any similar experience.

Also, Lito, the bastard, has a 1962 Fender Jazz Bass in that exact beat-up condition that all bass players love, hanging on the wall. WHAT is it doing on the wall??? He refused to sell it to me :)

Rock On

For Kompoz, in Manila

B

... and now back to you, Raf

It ain't completely done yet, but it has looked the same way the past 2 hours, so: 

Congratulations to:

Carlos, Steve et consortes and Alberto et consortes for places #1, #2 and #3 in the Rudy Kontest!

Very good work from all of you (and your ko-kontestants) and I hope Alberto or Sid gets the Ampeg :). Alberto lives closer to me, but Sid has already cleared out a space for the Ampeg and for me to stand next to it and rock his house to the foundation. I don't know Carlos yet, but your tune kicks ass :)

Also a big THANK YOU (again) to Lonnie, Sven-Martin and Billy for creating finalist #10 :)  with me.

Now, can we get back to making music please?

Rock On

B