Gigs gigs gigs

I’ll be playing quite a few concerts in the next months. Make sure to drop by some time. You might miss out of something pretty good, you know.

 

Here are the dates:

May 5     Intersoap (former new Intersoup, corner Schliemann/Stargarder), Berlin

May 15   Aufsturz, Berlin (with Katriana)

May 26   Intersoup

 

More dates to be added soon.

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Let the show begin

Gig on Valentine’s Day

I’ll be playing a gig tomorrow night at the Astrobar at Simon-Dach-Straße in Friedrichshain, Berlin. Show starts at 9 p.m. It’d be nice to see you there. I’ll even bring my array mbira and play you some tunes on it. So do come!

Hobnox Finals

Surprise, surprise! The jury deemed me worthy and put me through to the finals in the Hobnox Evolution 2 competition. So please, give me your daily vote starting today until December 14:

http://www.hobnox.com/contest/evo2/Madeleine-Bloom

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Bloomy news

Finally there’s time for a day off and an update of all things bloomy.

As planned I recorded some mbira for ‘A Little’. I came up with some really nice melodies, but they made such a huge difference to the whole feel of the song that I ended up having to change the bass line and parts of the vocals. The end part has a new vocal melody and I sampled my voice and played it as chords in the choruses. Very happy with the song now.

I finished the rough mix for the remaining songs: ‘A Little’, ‘Breathing Underwater’, ‘Euphoria’, ‘Hearts First’ and ‘Unspoken’. After that I made rounds at friends’ who are either sound engineers or music producers and had a good listen to the album on proper studio monitors to figure out the weaknesses in the mix. Aaron, a friend of mine, also gave me a quick crash course on how to EQ my songs to make them sound professionally and well balanced. Luckily there’s not that much to do. Just some polishing!

Next up (musically speaking) was a remix of my friend Mr. Bobby Starrr’s house track ‘Loaded Up On Pluto’. My first remix ever, but it was surprisingly easy. You can listen to the longer version on his myspace page. It’s gonna come out on vinyl sometime early next year and he will do a remix of ‘A Little’ for me in return.

As you have probably already read, I took part in the Hobnox Evolution 2 competition. At the moment you can listen to 10 of my new songs in the rough mix there. In the last two weeks I made to no. 2. Close, but no cigar! But there’s still the jury picks so there’s still hope. Thanks to all of you who voted for me, by the way! Anyway, no matter if I make it into the finals or not, taking part has brought about new and exciting prospects. I was asked if I wanted to write a score for a short film, got tons of nice comments and got to know interesting people. It really shows I’m on the right track with my music. And maybe even best of all, I found musicians who will play on my album. Cello, violin and upright bass. Brilliant! I will record them in the next week or so.

Yesterday I played and recorded the grand piano in Kino Babylon, a movie theatre here in Berlin. A friend of mine organised it for me and Aaron did the microphoning and recording. He used 5 mics and it took two and a half hours to properly set up which left just an hour to record all the piano parts. Quite exhausting! Tomorrow I will mix the parts in. Really curious how it’ll sound in the end. I just hope the sound of the U-Bahn passing underneath the theatre won’t be a problem.

I might have found a booking agent. He’ll come to my next gig and check out what I do live. And last but not least, the planning of the booklet design and accompanying photo shoot is making progress, too. More on that soon (erm, really!)

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It’s a tie

Alright, it’s been a long time since I’ve written a real update. There’s just so much else to do… but I promise to squeeze it in sometime this week.

The Hobnox Competition is in its last week and I’m alternating between 1st and 2nd place. So please keep on voting for me here: http://www.hobnox.com/contest/evo2/Madeleine-Bloom

It would mean a lot to me. I came in 2nd last week and it would be great if this time I wouldn’t be the runner-up who came sooooo close.

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Vote for me on Hobnox

I’m taking part in the Hobnox Competition where you can win 30.000$. The weekly winners automatically make it into the final round. So here’s my request:

If you like the 5 new songs you can listen to there then please vote every day for me in the week from October 20 to 26!

You’d have to quickly register for free here:
http://www.hobnox.com/index.905.de.html

And then, after you’ve ticked the box “stay logged in”, you can give me your daily vote with one click here:
http://www.hobnox.com/contest/evo2/Madeleine-Bloom

If you can think of anyone who might like to vote for as well, don’t hesitate to forward this e-mail.
Thanks in advance. I greatly appreciate your support.

Take care,
Madeleine.

Deadlines & Lifelines

I’m here at my parents and since there’s nothing much to do here tonight I thought I’d finally catch you up on what I’ve been up to. I don’t want to apologise for not writing for so long… I’ve been busy finishing the album and living my life. If you want to know what I’ve done you can check my Twitter page that I’ve updated regularly.

I’d completely underestimated the amount of time it takes to finish 12 songs. I don’t use a compressor nor a de-esser for the vocals because I can’t afford good ones for now so I have to adjust the levels manually. Neither do I have a DAW controller so I can  only use my mouse for the mix instead of faders. Not having those things admittedly slows down my recording and mixing process. I was stressing myself to get everything done quickly until I got to a point where I didn’t enjoy anymore what I was doing. I made stupid mistakes, my vocals sounded strained. And  then I thought: What am I doing? I’m supposed to savour this experience. This is what I’ve always wanted to do. And how am I supposed make the songs sound great if I don’t enjoy working on them? So I took it down a notch, started calling friends before they forgot I existed and just lived a little. That really helped. Now there’s seven finished songs and I reckon I’ll be able to finish the other five within the next week. Finished are ‘The Tide’, ‘Chaos & Order’, ‘Zero Tolerance’, ‘Paperheart’, ‘In Unison’, ‘Scaredy Cat’s Lullaby’ and ‘Webs’. I’m really happy with these songs now.

Once I’m done with all the songs I’ll go and visit some friends, play them the album on their stereos and takes notes of possible weak spots in the mixes. Actually I’ve already started doing that. It’s a good thing to do because everyone’s stereo sounds different and you want to make sure the mix sounds as good as possible on anything from an expensive home system to a car stereo to a cheap boombox. Also two friends of mine are sound engineers and they’ve both happily agreed to listen to my songs and pinpoint me to how I could perfect the sound.

I’ve also found a photographer who’s gonna take the pictures for the album artwork and some press photos. He’s a friend of mine. I’d never seen his pictures until I asked him round to my place, cooked a lovely dinner for the two of us and looked at his portfolio. I’d suspected I’d love his photos by the conversations we had about photography and art. And I really do. I won’t have to pay for the pictures either, but design him a new logo instead. He asked me what I had in mind for the artwork and I realised I hadn’t really thought about that yet. After mulling it over for a couple of days I’ve still only got a fuzzy idea, but I’ve got a few ideas about the clothes I want to wear. I’m gonna design and sew them myself. At least partly. More on that once I’ve got a better concept.

Also I’ve got my lovely array mbira for over a month now and I love it. I guess it’s my favourite instrument. I can already accompany a couple of my songs, but I’ve yet to learn how to play fast intricate patterns and melodies. I’ve decided to add some mbira in ‘A Little’ next week.

I’ll try and add some snippets of the songs over the next few days and also a picture of the mbira. That’s it for now. More soon. Hopefully!

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M.I.A.

Yep, missing in action. The action being the finishing touches for the album. Sorry for being such a slacker. It’s for the greater good

Drum roll: 6 songs finished. That’s half of the album.

That’s the good news. The bad is… still no time. I’m going for a 3 day weekend trip to Nürnberg. 3 blissful days without a computer. I’ve earned it. 

Proper update coming on Tuesday. Cross my heart and hope to die.

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Warblings

Been a busy bee singing singing singing. Then listening back and editing. I’m starting to get sick and tired of hearing my voice all the time. One day I love what I’ve recorded, the next I don’t like my voice. Major mood swings. For the next album I have to remember not to record all vocals in one big chunk. Anyway. Still love the end results.

Edited the vocals I’d recorded for ‘Hearts First’ and ‘A Little’. Recorded tons of vocals for ‘In Unison’ which took me two days including editing. Some parts had been pretty sketchy before what the vocals should be like. I changed the backing choir melody which now consists of four different layers. Makes the song sound sorta sacred with a twist. Added a brand new ending, too.

Also got the warblings for ‘Paperheart’, ‘The Tide’, ‘Chaos & Order’ and almost all for ‘Zero Tolerance’ done. Screamed on top of my lungs for the latter for some effects. I’m surprised that no neighbour came knocking. That leaves ‘Euphoria’, ‘Unspoken’ and ‘Webs’ and some missing bits in a few other songs.

One more thing. Last night I got a message that my friend Taylor is gonna pick up my spanking new mbira today and he’s gonna be here with it by the weekend. Maybe even Thursday. I was so excited I found it hard to fall asleep. At the same time I can’t imagine it’s really happening after dreaming about getting one for years now. Taylor’s gonna stay at my place. That’ll make it harder to just work so I better hop to it now and get as much finished till he arrives.

Off to the microphone.

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