January 22, 2007
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Good morning everybody! I’m taking a short break from intense dialogue for a little interlude.
A song from Singapore… for a friend in Singapore
About a year ago, I made a resolution to start doing things that I knew I was capable of, but was afraid to do because I was afraid of failure. One of those things was to sing in public. I grew up knee deep in music, but since college, I have done very little. I had always kept high standards for myself, so hearing myself perform now has been disappointing to say the least. However, I believed that music is a powerful tool and an incredible form of communication. Even when it isn’t done well, it still says something. So I broke the ice and recorded a song. Then I published it on the internet. Thankfully, it went mostly unnoticed.
A few months later, this conversation transpired:
Friend: I heard your song on the internet! It’s quite good.
Me: What? what are you talking about?
Friend: I heard a recording of you singing “He knows my name,” on your website.
Me: Oh my gosh… how did you find that?
Friend: My friend from England emailed it to me.
Me: England?! Are you serious?
Friend: Yup.
Me (doing my best Keanu impression): …Whoa… I’ve gone platinum…
Since then, I haven’t done much recording or any guitar playing for that matter. Well, not until now, anyways.
I started picking up the guitar again last week after a long hiatus. I wanted to do something better with my “settling down time” at the end of the day before going to bed, and I decided that spending time focusing on God was better than reading xanga. (Sorry folks. I’ll read your stuff when I’m at work. –j/k boss)
Anyways, I read a xanga post from a friend in Singapore which reminded me of a song I learned while in Australia from a friend who came from Singapore. Got all that?
I had just started to learn the guitar while in Australia and I wanted to learn some songs to take home to play and practice. On the last night I was in Australia, my friend and I stayed up till the early hours of the morning singing and recording songs to tape. This was one of my favorite songs from the night. It’s called “No Eye has seen.” I do not know who wrote it. I have yet to meet another person who has even heard of this song.
Since xanga has this nifty audio feature now, I decided to make use of it and share this song with you.
This song is a conversation between a person and God. S/he questions Him about his/her purpose in life… and wonders what is going on. Here are the lyrics:
No eye has seen
by unknown
Person:
No eye has seen, no ear has heard
the goodness the Lord
has prepared for those
who wait on Him to hear His voice
“I am the potter and You are the clay.”
Jesus take me in Your hand
and make me
all that you want me to be.
Jesus help me understand
my purpose and what
you can do through me,
fulfilling my destiny.
God:
No eye has seen, no ear has heard
the goodness that
I have prepared for you
who wait on me, to hear my voice
I am the potter and
you are the clay.
Let me take you in my hand
and make you
all that I want you to be.
I will help you understand
your purpose and what
you will do in me,
fulfilling your destiny.
I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did when I first heard it. Feel free to leave any comments to encourage or educate. Thanks.
Musical notes, for those who are interested:
I am still quite new at guitar playing, which limits me in the types of sound I can produce. Essentially, I have two abilities: picking chords and strumming chords. I can’t really do much beyond that. Since I decided that the song was too short to sing through just once, I decided to use finger picking for the first iteration and strumming for the second time around. This helped to keep the song moving without getting too repetitive.
Lyrically, I had a problem with simply singing the song through twice. Since this is supposed to be a conversation between man and God, why would they say the exact same thing over and over again? I thought about this as I played through a couple of times and I soon began to realise that it is not uncommon for God to have to repeat Himself to us time and time again. We are a stiff-necked and stubborn people, and we surely do not learn things the first time around. By this logic, I could reconcile having the conversation twice, but from two different perspectives.
The first time through, I used the softness of the fingerpicking to show the quiet despair of a person seeking for an answer. I tried to reflect that quiet despair in my voice, but I’m afraid that it came out as a cross between whiny and emo. I’m not sure. To counter the frailty and uncertainty of the man, I tried to portray God’s response as strong and confident. I find that sometimes God counters fear and uncertainty with strength and unwavering support.
The second time through, I was already committed to strumming chords, therefore, I was committed to a stronger sound. I wanted to portray that the second time the conversation was held from a perspective of a person who was more confident in himself, and was asking, almost demanding God for an answer. He is almost saying, “What is my destiny? How will I make a name for myself? When will I finally do great things and find pleasure in my work?” Although these can be just questions when asked with the right motive, I think the sound I achieved was a person who was asking with a bit of pride. He wants to be known.
The God response the second time around is softer. Quieter. I think of the soft whispers in which God sometimes speaks to us. I find that when He speaks in soft whispers, we have to work harder to hear His voice. It is a subtle reminder that it isn’t about us, but rather it is about what God has planned for us. We must be willing to let go of dreams we have if we truly desire to pursue the plans that God has made for us. “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
I recorded this song directly onto my computer using free programs I found on the internet. I used the microphone from a headphone/microphone combo that I used for online gaming. I have no idea what the technical specifications are for it, only that it wasn’t designed for music. I’m almost certain that this has no stereo qualities. I only know how to record on one track. I have no editing equipment, so it had to be done all in one shot. There are plenty of mistakes in this that I wish I could take back, but after many different takes, I found this one to be most representative of the sound I was trying to achieve.
Again, any suggestions and advice are welcome. Thanks for listening.
Comments (15)
Thank you, Alban. That was beautiful.
It’s one of my favourite songs, actually. We sing it quite often in church here in Singapore. God has used this song to minister to me several times before, and today He did it again through you. Thank you.
You inspired me to get out a songbook! I like the way the Xanga player has fake equalizer bars on it that move at random.
shh!!! Jalixx3, you just ruined the magic for me!
I like the soundbars. Alban, thanks for the post, neat stuff. BTW, I was saying on Russo’s site that I am INTJ or INFP, ha, it just gets worse! You can’t get away! The funniest part is, we’re rather rare, too, so you must be trying to find us or something.
Alban. Audio engineering tips: if you can, get a metronome and record only the guitar first. And, if the program allows, record your voice on a 2nd track following the metronome. Engineers usually multiply tracks and layer each over each other. If you can, sing the song over and over again until it is pretty clear, keeping each track you recorded. Then, overlap where necessary. Stereo quality is usually done in the studio by recording two mono tracks and panning. If you can, place the mic on the bottom section of your guitar, below the finger board, for that lower sound. Record again with the mic placed near the neck, above the finger board, for a more ‘crisper’ sound and then overlap and pan for that stereo sound. Experiment mic placement and overlapping to achieve the sound your looking for but be aware the frequency response of your mic sounds like that of a cell phone so unless you really want to get serious into recording then don’t be too picky.
Gummie,
Hey, thanks for the tips. At the moment, I know I can record over a previous track, but I’m not able to hear the previous track while I’m recording the second layer. Either the program I am using is bad (freeware), or I haven’t figured out how to hear something and record at the same time. Like I mentioned in my post, the microphone I’m using is a headset/microphone set that’s used for gaming… not really for recording music. However, if I can get a program that will allow me to record multiple tracks, I wouldn’t have any problem spending money on a real microphone. Do you know of any program that I can get for low cost?
I agree with the metronome. I knew that going into it. Since I couldn’t record different tracks, I couldn’t use a metronome while I was recording. Sucks.
Thanks again for your help. I’ll think about what you said and think about the level of investment I want to make in this. If I can record a better sound for under $100, I’d do it. Anything between $100-$200 requires a serious commitment on my part to record music AND become a better musician. I wouldn’t spend $200+ unless I was going to serve in music ministry.
That was great. I enjoyed it. I can’t wait to hear more….
wow good job man. how you doing?
looking forward to listening at the cafe tonight… still have dial up at home… :sniff sniff:
in the dream, where they wanted to kill you for littering, you sang a song… don’t know what that means.
if you want to get seerious about in-home music production, you need to convert to apple. nuff said.
For a recording using a basic PC mic that’s pretty good. I also like the thought put behind the different singing intonations.
Technical recording stuff… *rubs hands with glee* This is fun stuff. If I’m going too technical or not enough I don’t know, but hopefully some of this will be of some use to you.
Now, a free program that will allow you to do better recordings, and in multitrack, is Audacity (Google it, and it’ll be pretty much the first result you get). Free, cross-platform (so whether you’re running Windows, Mac or Linux you can use it), easy to use. Brilliant!
Little features that will be useful for this type of recording. First off, you can create a Click Track straight in there, which will serve the purpose of a metronome for all intents. You can set the BPM, how many bars you want, what timing (4/4, 3/4, etc).
But before we get that far, we need to set this puppy up properly. Go to Edit Preferences, and in Audio I/O check the tick-box “Play other tracks while recording”. Does what it says on the tin. Now go to Quality and set the Default sample rate to 48000hz (takes up slightly more hard-drive space, but it stops de-synching… trust me, this will save lots of hassle). Then under File Formats, if you want to encode in MP3, you’ll have to point it to your MP3 encoder DLL (there’s one downloadable on the Audacity site, again for free). Though OGG can do just the same and is in-built, but I mention it for compatibility purposes.
Now, in the top bar of the screen there is a drop-down menu to select your source. I’m guessing you’ll be sourcing from Microphone, but make sure it’s not set to Mixer or Stereo Output as this will cause mayhem…
So, now you just need to set up your click track, record the guitar, and then you can record the vocals separately, do over-dubbing(1) with as many guitar and vocals tracks that you like, mix set the volume levels on them, equalise them… Oh, and an all important Noise Removal!
For Noise Removal to work well, take a section of the recording you have done that is just silence (or the hiss/buzz from the microphone, I should say), and go to Effects, Noise Removal, Get Profile. Then, once it has the profile, select your entire or part of your track, and apply the setting. Sometimes you can only remove so much before the audio quality begins to deteriorate, so you’ll have to experiment.
Silence out any unwanted stuff (like sound of setting up the microphone, or coughs), make sure that the graphic level display doesn’t hit the red line (or it’ll cause clipping most likely), select what you want to save as an MP3/OGG, and go to File, Export Selection (or Export all, but remember to remove your click track… even muted tracks will export). Put in your ID3 Tag info, and let it process. Then play the result on your favourite MP3 player, or share with friends. (/shameless sales pitch voice)
This will hopefully make for some better recordings at a home level and using what equipment you have. If you want to go a step higher, you’re going to be looking into getting a decent microphone and possible a mixing-desk to then output to the computer, but this we’ll be talking about investing $100+… well, over here one would, I’m not sure entirely what prices are like there.
(1) Kurt Cobain probably turned in his grave as I typed that out… So far my record of over-dubs has been on a recent song that required 42 vocal tracks and I think 12-16 guitar tracks (I lost count).
^ Genius!
I’ll see if I can take a look at this sometime this weekend. And thanks for the great instructions. It was easy enough for me to follow.
So….When are you coming to America? =)
When they let me.
Paperwork is such fun… But hopefully soon. Then we can start rocking out! 
Hopefully soon indeed. I have much to learn from you.
wow…Alban is an internationally famous singer
its cool the way you had different dynamics singing the song to represent different people. i enjoyed the song! and all the tech stuff about how to record. i just started learning how to play the piano, maybe one day i’ll follow your footsteps 
in the meantime, please record more!!
Man, wish I had speakers in the comp lab. Where’s my headphones? *rummage*
I clicked here from GreekPhysique’s page and listened to the song. I’ve never heard that one before…very nice