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April 13, 2008

Oli Brown Band & XtremeMac MicroMemo Reviews

As expected, Oli Brown and the band were great.



The power trio played a double set of original material with the occasional cover thrown in for good measure (including a storming "Black Betty" by Ram Jam - good to hear that one live again!)

I'll be buying their debut album when it comes out later this month. I'll let you all know how it stacks up against their live performances.

In other news, the XtremeMac Micromemo for iPod arrived on Saturday. I'm actually pleasantly surprised by the quality of the recording. The mic it comes with is slightly hissy, but hey, you can fix that with a filter. The digital recording itself is flawless and it's really easy to use through the iPod menu and iTunes.

As a demo, I learnt, recorded and mixed the following version of Matt Nathanson's "Angel" in literally an hour or so, exclusively using the iPod recorder. Please forgive the vocals (I told you I can't sing)...







3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey there, just heard about your blog from IG Blog. It seems you and I are on similar quests.

I like that you still sing despite having little faith in your abilities. I used to feel the same way, but revised "I can't sing" to "I can't sing well." Everyone with a voice can sing. So I decided to work on mine a bit so I'd be able to sing background/harmony parts if someone ever asked me to. Having good singing pitch really helps your ears too.

Best of luck to you, I'll be keeping tabs.

Ken Skinner said...

Hey Joe (you have no idea how long I've wanted to say that!), nice of you to stop by!

My issue with singing is that if I try to go low it sounds like I'm making a dirty phone call, but if I go high I sound like a (nearly) 40 year old schoolboy. Neither are particularly what I'm shooting for. I do think you're right, though, that it's worth putting in the effort to improve things. After all, the voice is an instrument you can take with you everywhere!

Checked out your site... holy cow... 8-10 hours practice a day!?!? I'd be glad to get that in a week. Way back when, I took 7 months off work. If only I'd thought about it then I'd have done what you're doing!!! Instead I got really good at drinking beer and playing pool.

Anonymous said...

> I got really good at drinking beer and playing pool.

One shouldn't underestimate these skills either.