OK, not THAT Cuba, but a local club here that was recently open.

Last night we were invited by the house band to play there as guests. I can tell you we had a great time, i really felt good and the fact that there was another band there that was used to the environment lightened up the atmosphere quite fast.

I can tell you that quite fast everything turned into a gear discussion, look, I have this new guitar, I use this new amp.. Ok! My Variax guitar was a bit different and it was for a short while the subject of discussion.

We played, as expected, mostly covers since we were in a club, people there enjoyed every song, we had a great time, people actually sang along and this is always nice.

Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures from the show, I didn’t bring my camera and also none of my band mates did so you just need to trust me on this, we’ve been there. We’ve been in Cuba!

PS: For me the evening ended a bit earlier since I got a call from my wife who didn’t join us yesterday evening. 2 days ago a neighbor next door died. She phoned to ask me to come home because she is really afraid to stay alone…

Women…

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I was telling you a couple of days ago about the fact that we (the band) intend to record a few songs to put them together on an album. I have already been to a recording studio in Bucharest to speak to the guy there, who’s the keyboard player of a quite popular band here in Romania, Spin where a buddy of mine plays the guitar. He actually pointed us to this studio, they also record there. Of course, when it is your studio it would be strange to go to the neighbor…

Me and the guys spoke about recording this album and finding a record company to produce it/publish it and here our ideas went apart…Me and the other guitar player wanted to contact a producer to put his/her mark on the record since a bit more experience never hurts while the lead singer doesn’t want to hear about it. And I really know why: we had 4 such experiences with producers over the years and everybody wanted a different thing, in the end doing nothing but making us lose our direction and this is bad… You actually need a direction, one of your own and stick to it.

So we got to the idea to build a website (doh!) and publish what we record there, on YouTube and other similar sites and forget everything about recording companies. Original, huh? I guess nobody did it before, right?!!

I guess making yourself known is what really matters after all, if you sign with a record label that does nothing but keep you in a closet, doesn’t help you too much, right? Better to make yourself known to the public using other media channels such as the internet. And if you manage to come up with a few good songs you could be spotted and signed by somebody.

The fact is that we really want to do this since at a moment we took kind of a break, then re-united with new forces, new gear and started to make music again.

We decided to cover also a few good songs that we like and this is not something that we used to do, I can tell you in the past we only covered 1 or 2 songs, it was all about our songs.

When we reunited we decided to cover a bunch of songs to glue together again and I can’t say it hurt. By the way, Costin, the lead singer just sent me an SMS, he is an club where a buddy plays and he says the atmosphere is great and tries to arrange a show for next week. Now, in a club you definitively need covers…

Also, since we decided to record something, I came up with 2 new songs that are not bad at all, seems I didn’t lose it completely

So, I just wanted to post that here so you know I didn’t completely vanished…

I just have things to do but I need to get in shape soon!

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Yesterday evening we were part of a cultural event: my buddy and band mate Costin released his 3rd poetry book!

It’s a very interesting side of culture, I am a musician and I am also a keen amateur photographer but poetry is something a bit outside my regular interest area so being part of such an event is always great since it opens new worlds to me and makes me aware there’s something more around us! Plus that I know the artist, I took the pictures and I designed the poster and the invitations. So I was also involved in this, in a way.

I don’t know much about poetry to I won’t dare say anything about the book itself, there were 2 critics there that did their jobs when presenting the book.

And of course, because the poet is also a musician we also had good guitar music to create the mood. The guitar player in the pictures below is an old friend, a very interesting and complex guitar player, I always liked to joke asking him if he still uses all of the available chords in every single song he composes

He always answers me he does…

By the way, the guitar here brings back some nice memories since he lent it to me when recording one of our songs that is very dear to us.  He promised to give it to me again when recording since the guitar has a lovely, clear sound. The guitar is a Cort, I would recommend it to anyone.

That’s about it, guys! I go to bed now since it is late and I think I got a cold since my back muscles hurt when I move and my eyes too…

See you tomorrow!

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Seems I haven’t updated my blog since a good while, haven’t I? Well, I feel I owe you, my readers a few words about it.

Here it goes:

Last week the company I used to work for just died. Period. The administrators decided that given the difficult economic period we are all facing, the best thing to do is close the company or at least freeze it for the time being. This being said, here’s the unemployment notification and off you go!

Well, honestly I have been expecting this since a while since the new management didn’t show many signs they can put the company where it should have been. I mean, beside Everything is going to be OK and we have trust in the team and we are going to bring contracts, not much happened.

Just for the record, we used to be a team of .NET developers that had a quite high technical specialization, developing over the years programs that were quite complex. Personally I have worked in this company since 2002 and for 6 years I have been part of a research project that was very interesting and complex.

Now, everything is down and dust sets over the whole thing.

As I was saying, I can’t say I was too upset since I was expecting this since a while. I don’t know, you just see it and feel it coming.

The period is not good also, we are right before winter holidays, it is a difficult time to find work, no matter you are looking for a job or for a contract on your own. Which, by the way, it is what I have decided to do.

I have decided to not look for work anymore, the whole thing pissed me off, the company kind of took every bit of energy I had, the whole process of closing the company was a mess and a pitiful thing to do. Not because of the situation itself but for the people involved in the process. Whatever.

So, I have decided to work for myself, to find jobs and to live the dream, my friends!! I have decided to go on my own way, as an entrepreneur and do my own things.

I will keep you posted on this one, I don’t wanna talk much about it for the moment.

From another point of view, my baby girl who just turned 7 months old yesterday suffered a pneumonia (I still wonder why that happened) and I had to put her in the hospital, Ani, my wife stayed with her there and myself too for 2 full days, then I started to also leave for short periods since I had things to do, but generally speaking, 5 days were just lost from all points of view, trying to put our wonderful baby girl on her feet. Hypotetically speaking since she doesn’t yet stand.

So, those being said, not much reasons to blog, is it? But I plan to come back to bloging since I have another reason to do it: we plan to record a few good songs and put them together as an album. There.

We have already spoken to the studio, I will speak again with the guys there on Monday, we are trying to go in the studio somewhere in December to start recording. Most of the songs will be old songs that we will try to record in a trully professional way but we also have some new material.

I will keepp you posted on this one also.

Meanwhile whish me luck and I will keep you posted.

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Today, Costin told me about a video of our band on YouTube, a video that Mihai put up from a concert and the recorded song, and uploaded on YouTube.

I didn’t know about it, but it’s nice to see it.

So, even if you have heard the song before, see it on YouTube again, this time with video, not only audio: the song is Nu-mi pasa (I don’t care). At the moment we played this, Mihai was not with us, he was video recording this. See the whole band here.

So, enjoy listening and comment!

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Well, my dear friends, let me tell you that on 26th April, 5 days ago a new “artist-to be” was born into this world: my little daughter, Alesia Maria.

My wife gave birth to a beautiful little baby girl that is going to be a great artist and a great person when she’ll grow up. Says me.

I only posted about it today since this period was really crazy for me, my wife was in the hospital in Bucharest for a few days and I was driving between cities, leaving the very first thing in the morning and coming home late at night, only having the time and mood to take a shower and fall asleep…

But now, when everything settled down a bit, I can tell you I have a wonderful baby girl, named, as I was already told you, Alesia Maria Oprescu, very cute and most of all…very quiet! I can actually sleep, you know!!

I can tell you I am very proud of my little baby girl, she only cries once in a while, she usually stays and looks at me, she has a lot of hair, which is more than I can say about me and she is also a great music critic, you know, she actually falls asleep while I sing to her. I must be really good at this…

So, here she is, Alesia Maria Oprescu, born on 26th April 2009, great artist-to be, daughter of a very proud father!

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I will start by describing an old tradition in Romania that you, if not familiar with it, you may find it less pleasant and why not, a bit barbarian.OK, I’ll take my chance. So…

Each year, on one of the days around Christmas, people in country side, kill/cut/sacrifice a pig that is grown usually in their own backyard farm. This is something that goes back a very long time, I guess, and I am not able to tell you the origin of this tradition. Romania is a Christian country. Well, this tradition I bet it’s not Christian, but pre-Christian. The fact is that it blended so well with Christmas that it became part of it, without anybody asking about the origin anymore.

Coming back to the point, this usually goes like this: the family gets together in the country side, kill/cut/sacrifice the pig, then prepare it on top of a fire, then slice it and prepare it for storage for the months to come. Because it happens on Christmas, usually a cold period, with snow, local Romanian drinks are also part of a tradition (think Whiskey or Vodka as more famous alternatives). Actually, if you want, you can look at this as a big barbecue, because actually a barbecue is always part of the process.

I was part of this tradition a week ago, at my parents in law. OK, I came in a bit later, to skip the part where they actually kill the pig, because I don’t like it…

OK, why am I telling you this? You may ask yourself where’s the relationship with playing the guitar?

Well, two days ago, Costin, the lead singer in my band invited us to …play at such an event. What?! Yeah, it’ll be fun, he says, you’ll see! Some friends of my brother invited us, yadda, yadda, yadda…

Aaaah…yeah, I guess…we’ll see…

OK, the fact is that we all spoke about it, but only 3 of us were available for that day, the other 2 were away for the holidays. So I packed up the guitar, took my gig bag thinking this might be like the strangest place I’ve ever played…

The fact is that I didn’t know where this will take place, Costin only told me the general coordinates, so I had a bit of trouble finding the location. I called the guy: do you have the cars outside? Will I see your car at the gates? Well, he says, there’s actually no gate, how to put it, it’s a large property near a lake, a small hotel…

OK, after a bit of search, there I was. A nice hotel and restaurant near a private lake…And I was expecting a backyard of some guy in the country side…

I entered the restaurant where everything took place and I was a bit overwhelmed at first. There were about 50-60 people there, a stage, drums, amplifiers, some guys already playing on stage, and a few familiar faces.

OK, but where’s the pig? I was expecting something different, you know…The fact is that this friend wanted to throw a party for his friends, so bought a pig, already sacrificed by the owner, brought it to the restaurant(that his uncle owns), then gave it to the chef to prepare it for everybody. Drinks and the meals were on the house. OK then, a real party!

I can say that we came in for 2 hours and we stayed there for about 6 hours, canceling other things we had planned for that evening, because we’ve felt very well there. The fact is that after all, from the band, only me and Costin, the lead singer, managed to get there, but hey, after all, we’ve been to a few parties together and can play a few good songs with only a guitar and voice.

As I was saying, there were a few guys there that could play a bit, a drummer that said he didn’t play drums in the last 12 years and that the one that taught him to play drums is our current drummer. What do you know?! My wife told me this, I didn’t know about it, she talked to the guy for a while, interesting story, too bad Coco, our drummer was not there to meet him. My wife told me he was explaining to her how he and his band of 12 years ago were opening for Kapela back then. Well, imagine when my wife told him that me and Costin used to play in Kapela…

The fact is I can say I was impressed how things went along when we’ve got together on that small stage, we started to play songs after only one minute of preparation for each of them, I knew the song and I was telling them the chords as we played. But in the end, everything went well. At one moment we also played a few “acoustic” songs, just me and Costin, the way we used to play at parties.

My Variax guitar proved to be the star of the evening, I can only say it was great and that if I would have a rack of guitars to chose from, for a cover songs party, between a Gibson Les Paul, a Strat and a Tele, I would pick a Variax anytime since I had there everything I wanted, just a knob away!

We played blues on my “Tele”, solos on my “Gibson” and balads on my “acoustic guitar”, and I can say it rocked the house!

I think that you couldn’t spend Christmas better than this, partying with friends playing the guitar!

Christmas rock parties rock, don’t you think?!

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Since I have purchased that TonePort recording interface I can tell you I have no time anymore. No time to do anything…but record!! I learn with every day and every second and I love it! I record various pieces, not necessarily complete tracks, but I feel every moment spent this way like a big step forward. You know, I feel like a sponge in a bucket of water, first time after a few good years when I have this feeling.

You know, every new thing I learn on guitar, helps me, I am eager to learn new things, but guitar playing is not a secret anymore, it is something that I do since a while and I don’t have that feeling anymore, but with this home recording, I really feel every second, every note…

While in studio, you learn things just watching the engineer there and I consider I have learned a few things while recording various songs during these past years but really nothing compares to these days in front of my home computer, spending quality time with my blue guitar…

No, really, before making fun, let me tell you that I have just finished a raw version of a cover song that we play since a few years and I was more than happy about the result so far. Of course, there is a raw version and I have so much to add to it, like proper drums(at this moment it only has a “control” track), I need to call my colleagues to record their takes (I recorded everything myself so far but hey, I am not a one man band, you know?)

Spending time recording opened my eyes regarding the guitar possibilities. For the moment, so far I had the impression that the Fender Stratocaster emulation on my Variax guitar doesn’t have personality. Well, I was so wrong, for this song I can tell you that I couldn’t find a better match than the Strat, of course, through a particular setup.

At this moment I can not upload the song here anything since I speak about a cover, a song from a professional touring band here so until I am sure about the copyrights I won’t risk, but I will contact the band since my drummer of 8-9 years ago is with them at the moment, as a keyboard player. If I can only find his phone number…

Here’s the band, not the song, cause I only have one unplugged version of the original song, it hasn’t been released on anything else, as far as I know. By the way the guy I speak about is the keyboard player in the first video.

Enjoy!

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After receiving my new toy, the USB recording interface, I can tell you that I spent a good deal of time playing with it, searching for the right tone, also playing with Ableton Live software and I am quite happy with the result so far.

My intention is to record at home my musical ideas in the best possible way, without spending too much money on gear and I think that this little toy is the best solution I have come up with, so far.

The fact is that when learning how to use the software, I have tried to record a few tracks that are familiar to me, pieces from one of our own songs, that we (aka Tentatii, the band) recorded about 6-7(?) years ago here in a local studio in Pitesti so today I just felt the desire to listen that song again and I said to share it with you here.

I remember there was a period where we were looking for our own style, we came after a period when we tried to follow the trend with summer songs (well, don’t blame me, OK? We tried…). We had 2 songs with very crowded drums at that moment, and when this song came to being, I remember we practically constrained the drummer to keep a steady beat, without any moment of “creation”, if you know what I mean. He complained about this a lot but in the end we did it like this, even if he kept complaining about this for the whole recording session. He still reminded us once in a while about this song for a few years after that day…

So, the song is called Poate ca maine (Maybe tomorrow) and because it is in Romanian, I will give you a translation, as close as I can, even if it may not sound too “English”. It goes like this:

1) You’ve never even told me that you intend to leave
I didn’t know I will be alone during too cold nights 

You left and never even looked back for a moment
You left me all alone, me and my sadness 

2) Sometimes I stare to nothing/emptiness, I dream of blue nights with you
 We used to walk hand in hand, we used to have a single meaning (direction?)

I wish we could be in the past and maybe we could change something
Sad moments to smiles, but maybe it is better this way

Chorus: Maybe tomorrow, something will change
Maybe tomorrow,  I’ll belong to someone else
Maybe tomorrow I won’t regret a thing,
But today I’m lall alone, me and my sadness 

The fact that we decided to simplify things reflected on my guitar playing as well: no solo! Period! So instead of a solo, there are a couple of notes that are more part of the rhythmic section than of a solo section, but in my opinion they work well with the song.

I remember how this song came to being, the bass player came with it as a ballad, on piano and sounded lovely, …too lovely, if I may say so. I think the whole “catch” belongs to the drummer who instead of playing it as a ballad, played a fast rhythm. Then the lead singer came with a different chorus that the original one and voila!

Poate ca maine
Asculta mai multe audio Muzica »

I think I will start a new page on this site, called My music, or something similar, since this is the 3rd song I upload here already.

What do you think?

PS: That’s a song just made for Fender, I wish I had a Strat at the moment we recorded the song, but I didn’t. By the way, the picture is taken at one of our gigs in a local pub, but I’m not in it. Also, even today, this is the “opening song” on our gigs, since it has a good rhythm and gives you a good start, and people can actually sing it.

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Note: What I am going to write here should not be considered a review. It is not since you need more time in order to write a review. These are just my practical observations on playing MY new Line 6 Variax 600 guitar. I don’t want to say that all Variax guitars behave the same, because frankly I don’t believe so. This is not a review of how it feels, I will not say here if the sound of Gibson models is close to the real Gibson model or anything like this, this is not the reason for this post. I started as a fan of Variax possibilities, I truly believe this is the way to go in the future and I do support this as much as possible. Read on…

Later edit: please read until the end because of a last moment phone call.

So, yesterday evening I have received my new guitar, a beautiful Variax 600, blue. I can tell you I have waited almost 3 weeks for this guitar to come here from UK so I didn’t have the chance to test it, I saw this particular guitar for the first time when I opened the box.

I opened it, took the guitar out, I am sorry I didn’t make a movie out of it, it should have been interesting, but I had no camera and no patience to wait anymore. The guitar is nice, I love the finish on the neck, natural wood color, I had no problems with the quality of details, playability, or general feeling of “cheap” as I have seen some people saying on the internet. Nothing in this direction, but hey, I get excited pretty fast and a new guitar can blind you in the first days from that point of view, right?

So, let’s test it to the rehearsal room!!

I plugged everything together, as you probably know if you are familiar with Variax guitars, you need 2 input lines in the PA, a guitar input, as usual, and a voice input, for the acoustic guitars. There is a foot switch that makes the…switch between the two lines. Done! Let’s see the baby in action!

First, a jazzbox model, because it was set there. I started to pick a few notes…surprise! I was picking a straight D major chord and the notes were…well, how to put it, not right! The notes on the G string sounded like having some kind of flanger or rotary effect, like in a wave, coming to me and then disappearing back! WTF?! I switched to an other model, then to an other one, then to an other one…

General result?

The Spank models, meaning the Stratocaster emulations, on all positions had big issues with G string from 2 points of view:

• volume: the volume of the G string was lower than the volume of the B and D strings. Picking the notes in a chord gave me the impression that one string was not present there. Playing the same pattern on the 3 strings gave me the impression that somebody was having fun with the volume knob while on G string.
• sensitivity: when picking B string or D string from as smooth as I could to hitting them hard, they sounded as they should, low in the first case and loud in the second case. Well, not the same situation with G string. When picking notes on G string easily, you can barely hear the notes, while when increasing the force applied on picking the same notes, the volume suddenly jumped, it was like having only 2 levels of volume on G string.

Gibson models gave me a beautiful sound for distortion, I was quite happy with how my guitar sounded on Gibson models through my BOSS processor…except at one moment when I had the sudden impression that I was tuned to some radio station, since my guitar suddenly started to make a hum-buzz-radio-like sound that scared me since the volume was high on the PA.

At one moment I had the surprise to see that a string just disappeared from the mix…it was not there anymore, WTF?!! As I have understood from somebody from the internet having similar problems, switch to an other guitar and then back to it. OK, I did and the string was there. That sounded too much like a reset on a computer. I know this guitar is a computer but come on…

On a 12 string guitar, the low G note on low E string was way too powerful, IMO, produced a strange resonance. Now, I can not be sure if this was real or just an impression caused by the particular room conditions, because the 12 string is produced by kind of an octaver or something. Now, this low G note may have been resonating with somebody else in the room, like the speaker or drums, or who knows, I can not tell for sure but the impression was that playing a F, G, A sequence, the G was louder and that was not good.

I had the impression of a strange behind-the-note effect in some cases, again on G string mostly, like picking the G string, hearing the clean G note and then behind it a long distorted but very low volume tail, like a low volume distortion. Strange. I can not tell you on what guitar because I have stopped looking at the models and focused more on how the particular notes sounded. Like I have never done with any other guitar, I have started to take every single fret and play it in order to see if sounds strange on some notes…

I also experience a strange noise on an acoustic model that was set on custom bank, so I just switched to custom bank and started to hear a noise like when the cable is broken and you move it around to have the two pieces in contact.

At that moment I was already mad with the fact that the guitar was not what I expected but what happened after this really put an end to it: I tried to save a model on the cutom bank following their procedure described in the book and that was the end of it, after this I wasn’t able to start the guitar anymore, nothing made any noise anymore, the guitar was dead!

I unplugged everything and called the guys at the company that sold me the guitar decided to ask my money back since I needed a reliable guitar, not a toy, but there was nobody there at that moment.

I called Silviu, my friend who owns one and told him about my experience with it and he somehow convinced me to give it another chance and have it fixed or replaced by the company instead of asking the money back. Also, I experienced a loud noise when pressing the foot switch and I was also mad at it because it can not be used on stage like this, imagine hearing a shot amplified as loud as possible every time you switch your guitar from acoustic to electric. He explained me, however, that this is normal and not a bug, you just need to turn of Phantom power on your mic line. Well, good to know…

I am going to call again the guys from the company to see how I can fix this and keep you posted.I expect a good feedback from the guys who sold me the guitar, I hope for the best and I hope to end up with a good, reliable guitar that can be played on stage.

By the way, I have also attached a few pictures with the guitar and yours truly!

Later edit: I have managed to get the guys on the phone and they told me to cool down cause there is no problem, the guitar is actually a computer (of course) and needs a bit of “tuning” using their Workbench software so I should get back to them with the guitar, they will connect it to their computer and “re-tune” it, kind of how they do it with your car computer, when something goes wrong. Strange, very strange, but efficient, if it works. So, I am happy with this solution and probably tomorrow I will take a day off to go to Bucharest to tune my guitar. Damn!

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