Sometimes making music can be really hard…

Depending on the track it might take you no more than a couple of hours to produce something that sounds decent, or it might take weeks and weeks (sometimes months, years!) of going through countless permutations of the same song, deleting complete arrangements and starting over again and again before you come up with a satisfactory result.

The track we are currently working on unfortunately falls in the latter category…Under the working title “Gentle” the song first came to life in Anders’ home studio, where Anders produced a couple of initial drafts:

Version 1
First draft was based on a simple bouncy drum groove:

Gentle – Version A by subdelay

Version 2
Second version was more ambient with huge strings making up the bulk of the arrangement:

Gentle – Version B by subdelay

Version 3
Third version Anders returned to a more rhythmical groove:

Gentle – Version C by subdelay

…and this was the point where Anders felt he’d…had enough and decided to pass the track on to me. I personally really liked the first two versions and wanted to combine them somehow, but sadly a lot of the original elements where lost due to computer trouble, so I went to work with whatever was left and began adding some new elements.

Version 4
My first draft was a breakbeat driven affair which worked fairly well in the verse but sounded terrible once it got to the chorus:

Gentle – Version D by subdelay

Version 5
My second draft, the current version which…I am still not quite sure how I feel about! :/ It does have a “Sub Delay”-sound to it I guess (to the point of being “samey”??):

Gentle – Version E by subdelay

…Meh. Back to work!

Remember when Anders and I used to do something called “Sub Delay Sessions” where we would take turns DJing, streaming tracks live over the internet? …No? Well, we did. And we’re doing it again.

Without further ado then, feast your eyes (and ears) on my pink-shirted self below, as I work through the 6th installment of Sub Delay Sessions recorded earlier today. I’m particular proud of the part where I manage to stop the track that is mixed in, or the other part where the camera changes and you can’t hear any sound for a while!

Sub Delay Sessions 6 on Ustream.tv

As always, we went through a couple of versions before settling on the final cover for the Low Ground album. Thought it might be fun to share them so you can see what the album could have looked like!

Version 1 – Airplane

The first version we experimented with was a picture taken by a colleague who is an avid amateur photographer in her spare time. The picture had a dark mood to it that I liked, but in the end we couldn’t find a version of the picture in high enough resolution to be printed, and also we weren’t entirely sure it suited the concept of the album so eventually we starting looking elsewhere.

Version 2 – People in the night

Anders mentioned that when listening to the album he got the mental image of a city with blurred silhouettes of people. Don’t ask. I didn’t. Instead I went on a hunt across Flickr and came up with the picture above, which I believe is taken somewhere in Germany? (I am sorry, I seem to have lost the username of the photographer…If any knows, write a comment!)

However, we didn’t feel completely comfortable using something that wasn’t more….”ours”, and so another couple of days passed as I began rummaging through my old photo archives.

Version 3 – Final

We finally settled on using a photograph taken by me on a trip to Kyoto in Japan, showing a view of the city, famously surrounded by mountains, right after sunset. The photo was taken from “Kiyomizudera”, a more than 1000-year old buddhist temple which itself is set on top of a mountain.

The temple is well known for having a large stage protruding out from the mountainside. It was traditionally believed that if you could survive the 13 meter jump from here, you would be granted a wish. The practice is now (obviously) prohibited, but in the Edo period more than 230 jumps where registered, of which about 85% actually survived the fall!

Anyway, we thought the atmosphere of the picture suited the music well, and were happy with the fact that it was something entirely of our own making, thus it ended up being the one we stuck with. Listen to the album here and judge for yourself whether we made the right choice!

Messing around in Traktor while trying out ustream:

Sub Delay – DJ Live (Test Run) on Ustream.tv

Taking advantage of a rare opportunity to actually be in the same room, Anders and I cooked up this little dub-like track during my visit to Copenhagen last year.

Copenhagen Jam Session by subdelay

Everything was basically improvised live on two computers running in sync (set up in Anders’ living room). Although we started out having lots and lots of parts playing together all at once, after a bit of weeding out we came up with this rather sparsely instrumentated version.

Since this was done on two separate computers, we ended up each taking home “half” of the track (like one of those spy movies where two people hold a master key in order to prevent the accidental launching of a ballistic missile), but recently I finally got a chance to merge everything back together (missiles away!).

Whether this will ever be developed into a full length track is yet uncertain…comments are welcome!

You may have already noticed but last week a couple of new features were added to Mahalo Journal:

• Autogrowing input boxes

  Although Mahalo Journal encourages you to “keep it short and sweet” (255 characters being the maximum for each entry) I still found that there were times when sentences would get long enough that the text would scroll off screen making it hard to see what you were typing. That problem is now a thing of the past as Mahalo Journal automatically scales the size of the input boxes vertically as you type!

  

• “Recently updated” stars

  Reading other people’s entries can be fun and inspiring. However, until last week, figuring out when people were updating their journals could be a bit difficult. Now, if you go to the list of users you will see little stars next to people who have recently updated their journals! Also, if you want to follow someone on a regular basis, RSS feeds are available for all journals by using the “Subscribe” link found at the bottom of each user’s home screen.

  

• Feedback tab

  Hearing from people who actually use the site is a big part of what makes creating it fun! Last week I added a little “Feedback” tab at the bottom right of the site (visible when logged in), where you can write your thoughts or ideas about Mahalo Journal. The posting mechanism is wired directly in to my brain so I promise no comments will go unnoticed! What would you like to see Mahalo Journal do? What do you hate with a passion or think is great about the site? Let me know!

  

As some may have noticed I have been secretly testing out integrating Mahalo Journal with Facebook lately and today I am releasing this new functionality for public use!

Using Mahalo Journal with Facebook Connect allows you to do some cool new things:

• Super easy signup & login

  If you already have a Facebook account all you have to do to sign up for a new Mahalo Journal account is to push the big blue “Login with Facebook”-button and grant permission to connect through Facebook. Your profile picture, name and time zone will all be automagically imported! You only have to verify your username and you’re ready to to start using your new account. Subsequently you no longer have to remember a separate password for Mahalo Journal – as long as you’re logged in to Facebook (and who isn’t constantly logged in to this black hole of a social network…) you can always access your journal by the click of a button!

  

• Posting journal entries to Facebook

  Signing up through Facebook Connect will automatically enable wall posting to Facebook, so that whenever you make an entry in your journal it will also be shown on your Facebook profile page (this can be disabled from the “Settings” screen for people who just want the ease of logging in that Facebook Connect provides).



• I already have a Mahalo Journal, how do I get in on this Facebook goodness?

  Existing Mahalo Journal users wanting to take advantage of the new Facebook Connect functionality can do so now by going to the “Settings” screen and clicking “Connect with Facebook” to switch their accounts to a Facebook Connect account:

  

As usual, any feedback or comments are welcome. Hope you enjoy it!

With the proof copy of Subsidence having just arrived this morning, all Sub Delay albums have finally been transferred to CD and are available for purchase now!

I find it hard to believe that we have actually been able to complete 4 full-length albums and are now working on our 5th! And all this without ever making a dime…:P Well, it’s been a fun ride so far. Who knows, maybe someday we will actually be able to play that concert at Wembley Stadium we have been planning since elementary school.

In the meantime, the CDs look awesome and are a great way to get a cool Sub Delay keepsake and support us at the same time, so head on over to the album section and grab a disc (or four)!

Mahalo Journal is a new web application I’ve been working on the past 2 weeks that allows you to keep a “gratitude journal” online. Today, I think it has reached a point where it is ready to be released for public use (although I am still making tweaks here and there)!

The idea for the site came to me after watching this video, where Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar briefly mentions the concept of keeping a gratitude journal, and how doing so can have a dramatic impact on your overall happiness.

The idea is simple: Each night before bedtime you type in 5 things, small or great, that you are grateful for. Doing this on a consistent basis will get you into the habit of noticing things that make you happy and gradually shift your focus to a more positive outlook.

Having used Mahalo Journal for a while now, “5 items a day” seems to be a good number as there are usually 2-3 obvious things that you think of right away, but filling out the remaining items really forces you to think through your day (and life in general!) and I feel like this process is making me better at finding joy in the small things.

If you’re wondering: “Mahalo” is a Hawaiian word meaning “thanks, gratitude, admiration, praise, esteem, regards, respects” so I thought it would make a good name for the site!

Mahalo Journal is available now in 3 languages at www.mahalojournal.com!

After 7 years of silence (well, disregarding the two side projects “Live at Enyen” and “Zonelet”) we have finally been able to release our desperate grip on 9 new songs and set them loose upon the world. Here is the track list for the new album:

1. Sleep in Secret
2. 100 Thirty Five
3. 67 Times
4. Hotand
5. Smile
6. Kiddo
7. Slide Off The Map
8. Surfing
9. New Skies

7 years is a looong time to work on an album, but I think we finally have the “how to make music while being separated by time and distance”-thing sorted now. Anders being based in Denmark and me (Jens) currently living in Japan, the making of this album involved a lot of digital data traveling back and forth over the internet web tubes and a lot of e-mail and skype-meetings. All vocals were recorded by Anders in Denmark and sent to me for further production, with the result that I haven’t actually ever met any of the vocalists in person! I hope I will have a chance to put a face to the vocals sometime.

On that note, many thanks to all the musicians who participated on this release:

• Jana Oberender
• Marie Raabye
• Anke Struve
• Karen Poulsen
• Joannes Holm
• Christian Meyer

The album is available as a digital download from www.subdelay.com now so go check it out! CDs are currently in production and links will be posted on the site as soon as they become available.

…and on a final note, we promise, PROMISE, that the next album won’t take another 7 years to see the light of day…:P