New Monday #91
Happy Monday -
We start lighthearted, then things get all educational.
Oooooo! The temperature is dropping in the North East. But, we can warm things up with these guys:
Kolektivo
This stuff makes me want to hang out at the swim-up bar, sipping an unctuous Portuguese white and entertaining bathing beauties with my profound audio knowledge: “Oh Luke," she laughs, "I love how you pronounce ‘impedance.’ So sexy.”
Sigh... He wakes from his daydream with a start, in front of his Mac Mini, the music of Kolektivo playing through the iLouds.
Kolektivo. Who are they? Good question. They are a loose group of musicians and composers, predominantly based in Latin America. There's a big dose of Bossa Nova, so that’s Brazilian, but then songs are also in French (I think the claps are samples—you listen and let me know what you think) and then some of them are closer to dance music or Compas. And then there’s the Ramón Stagnaro question.
Ramón was a Peruvian guitarist and producer who died a few years ago. He worked with Ricky Martin, Gino Vannelli, Diana Ross, Céline Dion... and he played live with Yanni!
That’s right. We’ve gone from Grand Funk Railroad to Yanni...
Skipping forward on the video, we come to darkly handsome men smiling at the camera, playing what looks like a recorder, followed by Ramón going off on a classical guitar. Monster player—it’s worth it to wade through the 15 seconds of recorder to get to the guitar solo à la Ramón, but feel free to stop after once the keyboard solo starts.
Yanni uses Korneff Audio hair care products.
And perhaps he drinks Chocolate Milk.
Speaking of Chocolate Milk, here’s a video by Dan demonstrating Chocolate Milk on a few different sound sources. You don’t often get to watch a master work. Dan always has ideas and tricks and he explains things clearly. Watch. Impress people at the pool.
Back to Kolektivo. Adding to the difficulty of who these people are is that the word means “Collective,” and that describes a lot of different possibilities of people. Google Kolektivo and you might get Drono Kolektivo and their album Leningrad Layers. Droney, strange, electronic music. This isn’t warm sunny Bossa Nova. Heck, the album title sounds like something one would wear in 1941 whilst repelling the Panzer divisions spearheading Operation Barbarossa.
Then there’s Caro Pierotto, a bossa nova singer currently working out of LA, also part of Kolektivo. And here she is doing a Bossa Nova cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams. She appears to be like 14' tall in this video.
Now... somehow I wound up with Caro Emerald, who is not part of Kolektivo, as far as we know, but here she is performing with Metropole Orkest. Sexy stuff. It caught my eye because we saw Metropole Orkest last week with Louis Cole.
Oh no! Louis Cole! Here he is with his group, Knower, and a bunch of friends playing in his house. He’s drumming in the bathroom. With magnificent slippers. Hot bunch of players. Pianist at the end is amazing. Hot music warms ya up.
TIME TO LEARN
Campers, enough fun and games. Time to get serious.
In the next few weeks, I’m writing about equalizers in a technical way that is also completely comprehensible. So, what is happening in the circuit with the electrons and such, but written so you can see it in your head and understand it easily. We’ll start with passive EQs, then move to Active and then to digital emulations. You’ll learn the terminology and concepts you need to get better at audio engineering. To really know what is going on is power.
We start here, talking about Capacitors and Inductors.
Warm regards and see you at the swim-up bar of my dreams,
Luke
PS - let me know if the capacitors and inductors article is helpful to you.