El Soter project newsletter #001 Good... whichever part of the day you're reading this. It's afternoon here. My name is Blaz Erzetic and I bid you welcome to newsletter of this audio-visual brainchild of mine named El Soter. I will talk to you no more than twice a month, giving you updates about this project, talking about songs, discuss some things that I am surrounded with and share tips that were useful to me, whether this is about making music or music marketing. 1. News 2. Appletree of Discord 3. Vocals recording ............................ 1. News The full length album Appletree of Discord has been finally released last week. It is a pack of CD + DVD with 8 page booklet, containing eleven tracks. The release was actually planned for the autumn 2007, but the 3D video that I wanted to be part of this album took me longer to complete than I thought. Anyway, it's out now and and everything sounds (and looks) all right. The promo CD was sent out to about 300 addresses including radios, TVs, magazines, etc. Oh, by the way. If you are into reviewing music, contact me with few words about yourself and magazine you are writing for (or webzine, TV, radio). 2. Appletree of Discord -- An apple of discord is a reference to the Golden Apple of Discord which, according to Greek mythology, the goddess Eris said would go "to the prettiest" at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, sparking a vanity-fueled dispute between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite that eventually led to the Trojan War. Thus, "apple of discord" became an euphemism for the core, kernel, or crux of an argument, or for a small matter that could lead to a bigger dispute. Because of this, the Roman goddess corresponding to the Greek Eris was named "Discordia". -- (Taken from Wikipedia) The main conceptual drive of the album was the lack of reference points in the human society. The lack of a guiding star and someone that might enlighten us with showing us the way to follow (that's where El Soter name for the project comes from). Our unstable nature leads us to paradoxes, intolerance and many extreme behaviors including hate. Talking about extreme behaviors and incredible insensitivity is a recent discussion about "art" of certain "artist" named Guillermo Vargas Habacuc who exposed a dog in the art gallery, starving him to death. It would be releasing to know that this is a single case of extreme stupidity, but they want to remake the installation in 2008. http://elperritovive.blogspot.com/ The art must be shocking, but first of all IT MUST BE HARMLESS! 3. Musicians corner: Vocals recording There was a (female) singer with me at my first project Amateur God (www.amateurgod.com). This project still runs, thou. Anyway, I was mainly working with others' vocals before turning into mine. Well, I wanted to make something completely different with El Soter: recording my voice. I didn't do that much. I mean recording my voice. When I first did that it sounded disgusting to me from two reasons: - I wasn't used to my voice being heard recorded, - I didn't record it correctly. After a couple of bottles of wine (Slovene medicine for despair) I started thinking on how to fix that. After a while the best thing I've found out that worked for me was double recording. I put then my voice on two channels, both of them separated for 20% from the center (don't push it too far from the center), one to the left, the other to the right. This thickens the sound of the vocals for good. What you wanna add to make it blend with the song is of course some reverb. I've found out that for my case it works way better a delay with 1/4 beat frequency. Note: if you hear the effect on your vocals (whether this is a reverb, hall, delay, …) in the song, you've added too much of it. What might create some problem here is that when you record the double voice the mistakes in singing will amplify. Don't rely on first recording. Try more of them and use auto tuning system. We are talking about recording, not stage performance, so don't be afraid of using the best of your equipment. A cheap auto tuning software that I use is Celemony Melodyne Uno (www.celemony.com) that works perfectly for this case. This is my way. Try yours. Be creative and talk to you in 14 days. All the best, Blaz Erzetic P.S. Should you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me. Might this newsletter be of interest to someone you know? Tell him/her about it. ----------------- Official El Soter's page: www.neversun.net/elsoter Neversun Records' page: www.neversun.net/label You can buy album here: www.neversun.net/shop MySpace: www.myspace.com/elsoter