公告
- New album _Inland Territory_ available now!
http://www.scarabcart.com/cgi-bin/viennateng/item.cgi?id=172
Check out the new video for Gravity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8nypWKa_aU&fmt=18
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here, I’ll send you elsewhere
2008-04-12 3:38AM / 標準BLOG / 會員可以看
Things are brewing nicely around here. The leaves of album #4 have dropped into the water. It’s ambitious, this record, on pretty much every front; at times I already feel I’m in over my head but in that exhilarating way, like falling in love with someone way out of your league.
More on all that later. For now, if it would please you to check out the following:
Ari Hest’s 52. He’s recording and releasing one new song a week for all of 2008; you can subscribe to the series or get one song at a time. Ari could easily coast on the strength of his voice alone, but the man has a real songwriter’s knack for melody, and you’d be hard pressed to believe he’s producing these beautiful tracks alone in his living room. Did I mention that he doesn’t have any formal music training, and that he’s learning how to engineer and mix as he goes? The Ivy League’s got nothing on the community of overachievers I find myself in these days.
The New York Times has launched a group blog about the songwriting process. Current contributors include Suzanne Vega, Roseanne Cash and Andrew Bird—another one of those okay-either-I-quit-music-or-I-learn-how-to-be-like-THAT artists, for me.
…I’ve come to believe that recording and playing live are two completely different animals. Live shows are adrenaline-fueled and spontaneous: if you want to capture that then you should put out a live show recording. But the kind of record you want to listen to over and over again in your bedroom or car is something else—a carefully carved piece of sound…
The only thing that separates a mess of seemingly disparate observations and a song is a moment of excessive confidence. As time goes on words and ideas begin to catch and gather around the original suspiciously arbitrary seeds of inspiration.
- Andrew Bird, “Natural History”
Project Vote Smart shows the Congressional voting records of all U.S. presidential candidates.
Open Secrets chronicles their campaign financing.
Saw amazing live shows recently: Kaki King circled home on her world tour to play at Bowery Ballroom, her set veering from crackly (locomotive fingerpicking, German metal) to cloudy (looped lap steel) and back again with ease, her band somehow locked-in and loose at the same time. Noe Venable played a gorgeous CD release concert at the Zipper Factory, with almost of all the musicians on The Summer Storm Journals on stage together: trumpet, violin, contrabass, marimba. Noe feels like a songwriter of another age, whether past or future I can’t tell—her lyrics have the weight of myth, and the music sounds like folk songs from an undiscovered country.
I have worn steep heels
and a dress too tight
I have pressed my life
against sharpened things
and bled sentences
and shed innocence
like unwanted skin
in the woods part of when- Noe Venable, “Woods Part of When”
Though at first I declared that it was about the silliest thing I’d ever seen, right up there with those SuperPoke! and Which Ninja Turtle Are You? apps on Facebook, I confess: I am now on Twitter. You can follow me if you like.
Finally, here’s the first seed of a new song. Well, “new” in the sense that I’ve never played it in public; this loop has been sitting on my computer since last June. It’s since grown into a five-minute dissertation, which will appear in all its overwrought glory on the next album.
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intake
2010-03-09 10:45AM
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Slow Q&A 2009: The Kaoru Questionnaire
2009-10-15 7:57PM
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compass
2009-09-26 2:39AM (1 個評論)
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archive of Twitter Q&A, 15 Aug 2009
2009-09-03 2:00PM
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Slow Q&A 2009: The What Is That? Edition, pt. 2
2009-08-31 3:21PM
统计信息
- Q: Who are your influences? ...Q: Who are your influences?
A: My parents' record collection: Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, Mozart and Beethoven, 60s Mandarin pop. That's what I started with and it'll never leave me. Later on, pianist-songwriters: Elton John, Billy Joel, Tori Amos. These days I'm influenced by whoever intimidates me. I hear them, I'm astounded by them, I think daily about quitting music because I'll never be able to do it as well as they do. Then I try to steal from them without imitating. A tricky thing.
Q: How would you characterize your music?
A: Oh man, I don't know. I've taken to saying "chamber folk" or "singer-songwriter" to some people. "Somewhere between folk and pop, with a bit of classical and jazz," if they look confused after that. It's frustrating that I have no succinct phrase to offer; at the same time, I think it also means I'm doing something right.
Q: How long have you been playing piano?
A: Since I was five.
Q: Did you study at a conservatory?
A: No, just one-on-one piano lessons until I was 17. Changed my life, though.
Q: How did you learn to sing?
A: In the shower, and in school choirs. I took some voice lessons here and there, which amounted to paying $40-150 a week to be told that I was doing it all wrong. I don't think we fixed anything. So maybe I haven't learned to sing, actually.
Q: When did you start writing songs?
A: I think I was six when I decided I could cobble my own piano piece together. As for songs that I still play in public, the earliest ones are from high school.
Q: How long does it take for you to write songs?
A: A long time. Sometimes months. Occasionally over a year. I don't revise all that much; it just takes that long for all the pieces to form and assemble.
Q: Who arranges the songs for live performance?
A: It's a collaborative process. My bandmates generally compose their own parts as we work through a song in rehearsal—sometimes they're based on the studio recordings, oftentimes not. Sometimes they have cool ideas for my parts, too.
Q: How old are you?
Q: Is Vienna the name your parents gave you?
Q: How do you write your name in Chinese?
A: Wikipedia knows all. And is reasonably accurate, though I don't know why it has photos of me wearing a knit hat and playing guitar onstage, two things I almost never do.
Q: Is it true that you used to be a software engineer?
A: Yes. I got my bachelor's in Computer Science at Stanford University, and went to work for Cisco Systems for two years. These days I remember exactly enough to crash whatever computer I'm working on.
Q: Is it true that you went to/dropped out of medical school?
A: No. Can't imagine paying off med school loans and funding an album...
Q: What was it like being on Letterman?
A: Surreal. Pretty much like how it'd be for you if you got called to play on the Late Show. I still think I dreamt the whole thing. Except the studio was very, very cold, and my dreams aren't often cold.
Q: Which of your albums is the best one, in your opinion?
A: Like anyone, I'd hope that the most recent is always the strongest. I think I'm getting better as I go...
Q: Does constantly talking about yourself ever make you feel like an egomaniac?
A: Yes, yes it does. Makes me wish I were in a band sometimes.
Q: Are you going to release a live album?
A: We do have a live DVD out now. For sound-only recordings, there's always the Internet Audio Archive.
Q: Do you ever reply to emails?
A: No, and I apologize. It's not a policy or anything; I'm just not good at staying on top of it. I promise that I do read everything, and that I'm grateful. - 職業: 樂手 , 歌手 , 作曲家
- 性別: 女
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