A New Concert Concept?
January 19th 2012 by Kristoffer
I would like to tell about the LiveMusicStage(LMS) project.
We met the Finnish CEO of LMS: Antti, at last years Popkomm in Berlin by coincidence. Tine and I where browsing around and stumbled over the LMS stand, where we quickly got an insight of the possibilities to do an online concert.
There are many different platforms to do live-streaming of concerts on the web, but LMS had a different angle than most I'd seen. First was the quality of the picture which was beautifully and then there was the professional TV-studio and the team that was filming the concerts. It looked really nice and the whole idea, that it was recorded without an audience and everything was live-streamed, really appealed to the tech-nerd inside of me.
There was some well integrated interaction possibilities for the viewer as well. At first I thought it was a little taggy with the small silhouette waving and clapping in the bottom of the screen and I was scared that the running facebook chat would become really annoying, but after I tried one of the concerts, I could see that it was these small things that made you feel as a small part of the setting and concert environment.
You could compare it to an ordinary concert where each individual audience don't have the possibility to interact directly with the performer, but as a group, the audience can really affect the concert, and be a big part of the atmosphere at the venue.
The same goes for LMS where you can enable the full screen mode and only see the performers or use the little avatar to show three different gestures It doesn't feel like a real live concert and it doesn't feel like a live-stream. It's something in between, a new concert format that you can play around with and that really excites me. A new concert concept where we can test ourselves and our music in a new frame and with a new kind of audience.
After the meeting with Antti from LMS at Popkomm, I knew that we should do such a concert with Postyr Project and I started to figure out a way to bring the concept to Denmark. So far, all the LMS concerts has been filmed in Finland and I needed to find a way to keep our costs down and still be able to do the concert with the professional setup.
Well, first of all we needed a camera team that could produce this kind of event and I got in contact with the Danish production center TV-Basic. It's a small school for TV in our hometown Århus and they immediately jumped onboard the project.
We looked at several venues 
for the two concerts and decided to ask Hummel Fashion that had just opened their new headquarters at the harbour of Århus. After getting in contact with CEO Søren Schriver and the owner Christian Stadil we agreed on using their "showroom" with a beautiful view of the harbour, to shoot the two concert at. They also encourage us to make the concerts free of charge and thereby increasing the publicity value and reaching out to a wider audience.
So together with Tine I gathered small video grettings from around the world and Andreas put them together into a small presentation video.
I made a digital poster/flyer to pass around and hopefully we will have a videoblog from Antti from LMS who will tell something about the technology behind Live Music Stage.
So here we are, 10 days to the concerts and things are starting to fall into place. We have to bring the Finnish Antti from LiveMusicStage to Århus so he can supervise the concerts and make sure that the hardware and uploading is working properly. We have to work in a different way with our sound, since there will be no actual front speakers and the whole sound mix should be fitted for computer and TV speakers. We need to setup the stage, light and scenery so it will reflect our thoughts of a house concert and still make it possible for the cameras to catch the mood and emotions we would like to express. And we need to find a way to make TV-Basics equipment and signal work together with Antti and the LMS hardware.
All this set aside, we are all really excited about these two concerts and naturally a little anxious. What will this new venue feel and look like, can we bring some of the live-feeling to the other side of the screen and will our music and voices carry through the very different sound-setups people will use for seeing the concerts?
There's only one way to find out:
www.LiveMusicStage.com the 29th of January 2012
Time in the rehearsal room
January 8th 2012 by Tine
2012, a whole new year. It's like a blank piece of paper, just waiting to be filled out with new adventures, experiments, and thoughts. I guess, it comes as no surprise, that Postyr Project couldn't keep all that space empty for long. We had our first meeting and rehearsal this week, where we had a chance to talk a lot of things over, make some decisions and work with some new music. Already, there is so much to tell, but today I will focus on the one thing that both Line, Anders, Andreas, Kristoffer and I had on top of our wishing-list for 2012: Time in the rehearsal room.
While most of 2011 was spent in the studio and on the road, we have decided that at least the first half of 2012 should more or less be spent in the rehearsal room. Of course, there will still be time for a few concerts and some studio-sessions, but the main topic, the main focus, will be on the musical process and not the final product.
Rehearsals
We always start our rehearsals with a brief talk, where every one can get a chance to say what ever they have on there mind. Things having been the way the have lately, these brief talks have had a tendency of turning in to long discussions of both important personal and organizational matters. Necessary talks, but with the consequence, that there weren't much time left to actually sing. As of now, we have decided to separate business briefings and rehearsals. We still hold on to the brief personal updates in the beginning of the rehearsal each Wednesday, but leave the business briefings to our new Monday-noon Skype meetings. So from now on our rehearsals are structured like this:
We try to keep our cell-phones and pending emails off, while rehearsing. The rest of the world can wait -at least until there is a break.
Now let me go a bit deeper into the warm up.
Warm ups
At the moment one we focus on two things in our warm ups:
1) Improving our physical posture
The goal is to balance the muscle power and flexibility on the front and back of the body and on the right and left side, so we can:
The goal is to balance the timbres of the five voices even more and to get a deeper understanding of the harmonies we sing, so we can balance the chords better. We do that by:
At some point we will change our focus to other areas like time, emotional expression or performance, and when we think, we are done, we will just start all over again. That's the beauty of it, you can always improve as an individual and as a group.
Runner's High
October 30th 2011 by Tine
Friday evening and I am about to call it day in a couple of hours. When I am in a good work flow, I have a tendency to forget time and everything around me, and I just continue untill the job is done. When I am in that kind of mood, I always get so many ideas and it seems that every task I finish leads me on to new exciting opportunities. Everything is so easy, I just take one step at the time.
At some point, of course, you need to take a break, and then something else happens. What just a while ago looked so easy, suddenly turns into a completely overwhelming spiders web of "to-do's" that are somehow intertwined with one another. The only thing that helps is to jump right back into the whole thing, and try to get on top of the wave again, so I can surf in between the tasks with check-lists and mindmaps as my guidelines.
Just like the sea, the tides also changes from time to time in Postyr Project. There is a time to concentrate on the product –releasing and promoting cd's and singing concerts- and there is a time to focus on the process of creating something new, be it new musical material, new relations and businesspartners or new organisational structures. It just struck me, that we are basically doing both at the moment, no wonder I felt like having a pitstop...
I really like to run, even though it has been a while. I always find the toughest part of the run, is when the goal is near. This month marks Postyr Project 2-year anniversary. We have been running and running and running for 24 months now, and I think we are all very much hooked on the runner's high, we can't stop now.
That aside, there have been both blood, sweat and tears. There have been times, when it was impossible to see which way the wind blew and what was up and down, but now I think that we all can begin to see, where this boat is actually heading. It is such a relief! But we are not there yet, and I know for sure, that there is only one thing to do even though the lactic acid stings in every muscle fiber:
Don't slow down.
Give it all
Enjoy the runner's high.
It's a kick like nothing else every time you pull through.
Further Into The Jungle
August 18th 2011 by Tine
So, the news are finally out. We just signed a contract of representation and bookings with Florian Städtler's SpielPlanVier regarding the territories (as they say in the music business) of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (G/A/S). Already, we have new gigs coming up in both 2011 and 2012 –you will hear more about this on a later notice.
Today I would like to tell you about the next steps on our journey deeper and deeper into the European music industry jungle.
As always, when travelling in unknown land, you need to get an overview of the landscape, the possibilities and the unspoken rules of interaction and social conduct before moving forward. Over the summer, I have been following a few music business blogs to achieve just that. Indepedent Music Advice is one of my favourites.
Also, I have asked all the people I could think of for advice. I started with the people already connected to the project Jesper Mardahl, head of Promus, Anne Jensen, Promus, Gunnar Madsen, SPOT and ROSA and Andreas' father in law, Søren Schriver, CEO at Hummel International. They were all very helpful, and even offered to set up meetings with people in their network.
Jesper suggested that we should join this year's edition of Popkomm in Berlin to introduce ourselves to the German music business and to possibly find a German promotion agency, that could help us increase our presence in G/A/S even more by promoting the concerts and push our songs into the radios' playlists. So we did.
After filling in the application and paying for the tickets, I started my research by surfing the Popkomm-website. Soon I learned that the Danish Arts Council also planned to attend, and they were actually managing some meeting facilities for Danes at Popkomm, here we were welcome to hang out and use as a platform to meet new people.
Also, I was made aware that the Danish Musicians Union were hosting a concert for some other Danish pop/electronic/rock acts on the opening night of Popkomm, and after a talk with chairman Lars Kiehn, it seemed as the perfect event to hook up with well-established contacts and there by put ourselves in a situation, where we could meet new contacts.
Later in the process, I researched all the Popkomm delegates, to check out who could be interesting for us, contacted about 30 companies and people, and set up meetings with about 15 of them.
Most importantly, I once again turned to Jesper, who set up a meeting with Mette Zähringer from Iceberg Records. Her company is very strong on the German market, and Jesper figured, that she might know more about, which German promotion agencies would fit our profile. Mette was really helpful, and we actually succeeded in catching the attention of one of the agencies, she recommended.
In the days before Popkomm, we had our hands full with the preparations, finishing the press-kit, mailing it to the right people, settling the last details about where and when to meet, finding a place to stay, designing and printing a new special made flyer, we could hand out at use as a staring point when introducing ourselves and much more. Fortunately, we made it in time, so we were ready, when we arrived in Berlin Wednesday night, September 7th.
The days passed so fast, going from one meeting to another, listenings to a whole bunch of concerts and talking none-stop about the new possibilities that appeared to us, as we headed deeper and deeper into the music business jungle.
Nothing is settled yet, so far no deals have been closed, and it's hard to tells wheather this is the silence before the storm –or simply just... silence... I guess, time will tell.
The Next 18 Months
August 30th 2011 by Tine
First rehearsals after a long summer break and a bunch of meetings and plans in the making. At the moment, we are working with the latest edition of our tech setup. We bought som new hardware and software –I am sure that Andreas or Kristoffer will tell you more about it later on- and now we are going to explore the new possibilities regarding the arrangements of the both old and new songs, and how they can be performed live.
Today I want to tell you about what has been going on the last couple of weeks. As you may have heard, we have spent a lot of time together lately discussing many different subjects. You wouldn't believe how many things you have to consider running a young independent creative business!
We had planned three full days of meetings. We started out at the over all level:
What are our dreams for Postyr? Where do we hope to be in 18 months artistically, financially and regarding all other aspects of Postyr Project.
After sharing our dreams, we moved on to be a bit more specific about the goals :
How many and what kind of concerts do we want to book during the next 18 months? What about the fees? And what other products do we have and how much income do we expect from those products? And about the income, how much of the income should be reinvested in the further development of the project –new software, marketing and operating costs such as website, rehearsal room rental,stamps and envelopes?
How often can we meet for rehearsals and what should we do during rehearsals? Should we concentrate on improving the old material? Write new material? New recordings? Vocal technique? Blend? Staging and performance? If there were more hours in a day, we could do the whole thing, but for now, we have to do a mix.
And then we got to the really hard part: Who should make sure that all these ideas, dreams and goals are carried out in reality? Who is charge of which areas and how much time can they invest on a weekly basis?
It took us three days, but we actually answered and pretty much agreed on all these and many more questions. Now we have a lot of goals, an organizational chart and a masterplan for the next 18 months to help us reach these goals.
These are truly exciting times. So many opportunitities, and so many decisions to make. I can't wait to see, where this rollercoaster-ride will take us.
Crash-Recover-Return
August 17th 2011 by Line
As many of you know, I was involved in a traffic accident back in June. Tine has already described in details the incident from her point of view. This is my story – about crashing, recovering and returning!
Maybe it's the brain's way of protecting itself, but funnily enough I remember nearly nothing from the accident. However, Tine and my family have told me how I, in the first many hours after the bike crash, had the memory of a goldfish and would reset every five minutes…
What I do remember is waking up surrounded by loving, caring people and being so very relieved that I had not broken any bones or experienced any severe damages – apart from the concussion! Also, it was a surreal experience to piece my life together from scratch – Who am I? What do I do? Who are the people in my life? etc…
All of the details you usually take for granted were revealed to me as if for the first time. Luckily, I was quite satisfied with the life I discovered I had: wonderful family and friends and being a singer doing exactly what I love – not too bad indeed.
While driving home from the hospital the day after the accident, Tine called me to ask how I felt. And mostly I felt so bad about causing Postyr not to enter the competition in Leipzig that we had been preparing for and looking forward to. So when Tine told me that the 4 of them were in a car heading for Leipzig to 'crash and burn in the competition' as they said, I just started laughing – shocked by the unbelievable capacity my wonderful friends and close colleagues possess! I can't begin to express my admiration for the way they handled the entire situation! You guys rock my world!!!!!
Even though I was very much aware of how extremely lucky I had been, it took quite a lot of patience dealing with a concussion which for 2-3 weeks pacified me - no computer, no TV, no books and lots and lots of sleep and rest… Not exactly the life I'm used to lead!
During my recovery I was deeply touched by all of the warm and caring greetings from friends and colleagues all over the world. It really helped me get through the whole thing and I can't thank you enough!
The weeks of total relaxation and quietness have proved themselves very effective. I really feel like I have recovered healthily. I am so grateful that I got off so relatively easily. And now I am indeed ready to return to my old (or maybe new??) life. There will probably be lots of new crashes, recoveries – and hopefully returns!! – and there will most certainly be lots of Postyr!
These Are Hard Times
June 27th 2011 by Tine
As you might know, Line was involved in a traffic accident on Wednesday afternoon. First of all I would like to thank all the wonderful people who has supported the last couple of days.
Thank you for your warm greetings, it really means a lot to all of us.
Here is a look behind the scenes in the events that followed.
WEDNESDAY
13:50 Line is involved in a traffic accident.
14:30 Tine meets Line and the ambulance at the ER. No broken bones or need for stitches, but a severe concussion and a lot of bruises. The most disturbing part is that she canøt really remember anything and starts over and over again every two minutes.
17:00 Line's dad arrives.
20:00 Kristoffer, Andreas and Tine meet up with Søren Schriver CEO at Hummel International to discuss sales strategies.
22:10 Text from Line's dad. She is still hospitalized and can under no circumstances go to Leipzig the following day. Bandmeeting: What should we do? Can we pull through at the competition? We can't get in touch with Anders who is singing a concert somewhere in the outskirts of Denmark. Tine, Kristoffer and Andreas decides to go for it anyway. It should be possible to make some decent rearrangements of the four songs in the competition repertoire, and we really want to reach this last goal before the summer holiday.
00:30 Skype-meeting between Tine, Kristoffer and Andreas. Are we sure? Do we have the stomach for it? What does Anders think? Ok, let's go and crash and burn in Leipzig!
THURSDAY
09:40 Andreas picks up Tine in Århus. Kristoffer leaves his home in Esbjerg, to hook up with the two of them in Flensburg. Anders is still in Aalborg. He has another gig in the evening, and will join the rest of the group the following day.
11:00 After a wrong way turn, Kristoffer is finally picked up at a gas station somewhere in the southern part of Denmark.
12:00 With no GPS in Andreas' old, red car the trio has some trouble finding their way to the car rental in Flensburg.
12:30 Finally arrived at Europcar in Flensburg, just to find out that the car we rented for some reason is gone... lost... rented to somewhere else... NOT THERE! But... As always we don't give up that easily, and after some barganing the whole situation turned out to the better: We entered the city in a Volkwagen vento CL 1.8 l and left in a Renaut Flurence (!) Nice one ☺
13:00 Car-rehearsal and re-arranging.
15:00 Car-composing and Autubahn-jamming on Andreas new Ipad and the voice of the lady in the GPS. Watch the movie of the final mix here.
16:00 Phone call from Anders. HIS PLANE HAS BEEN CANCELLED! #%!?%#
16:05 Band meeting. What can we do? Who can we call? Plan A, B, C, D... Q?
16:15 Yes! Let's call our new tourmanager Kasper Schou! If anyone can find a solution, it's him.
16:20 Phone call with Kasper. He will take it from here.
16:50 Text from Kasper: "Anders and I found a solution that could work, and we are trying to improve it even more. Talk to you soon."
16:52 Yehaaa! Back on track once again!
Here's the plan:
00:00 Kasper picks up Anders at the concert venue in Northern Jutland. They drive to Randers, to sleep for an hour, and then they drive to Aarhus to catch a train to Copenhagen Airport at
4:20 The train reaches it's destination at
7:20, which leaves Anders about 15 minutes to check in for the plain to Berlin. The plane lands in Berlin at
9:45, where Andreas picks him up, so they can arrive in Leipzig at
12:30. 35 minutes before we go on stage as the last act of the competition.
You see, THAT'S why, we have a tour manager! Kasper Schou can make ANYTHING happen.
17:30 Phone call from Line. She is already feeling a little better, and is on her way home to her mother's place at Funen.
18:00 ....STAU...
19:40 Get in at Gewandhaus. Meeting with organizer, Janette Rieback. Finding table and sofa-chairs. Fastest tech set-up EVER!
20:10 Sound check. Daniel McDonald from the vocal group Mundart is there to help and support us the whole time.
20:50 Logistic meeting with our contact Katrin Haase.
21:00 Dinner at Vapiana. In the category "Pasta in Germany" Tine rates it 5 out 5 points. Never happened before. Best pasta dish in Germany EVER!
23:10 Daniel helps us find our hostel and offers to come on long for the drive to pick up Anders in the morning.
FRIDAY
06:30 Daniel and Andreas is off to Berlin Schönefeld Airport
08:30 Kristoffer and Tine is off to the venue to check that everything is all right with the tech set-up.
12:10 Andreas, Daniel and Anders arrives. Anders eats about 300g of sugar and two cups of coffee. He has slept for 45 minutes last night, and is basically a vegetable.
12:30 Dressing-room rehearsal. We manage to sing all the four arrangements through one time. Andreas is the only one who can get through to Anders, so he coaches him through the changes in the songs.
13:05 On stage singing our hearts out. We dedicated the last sing to Line. It was a very special moment, that I think will stay withh all four of us for a long time.
13:25 Off stage. Tine is crying, the guys are also affected by the release of all the pressure and the very emotionl version of "Broken".
14:00 Wrapping up the gear.
14.30 Lunch at Vapiano
16:00 The announcement of the winners: "The Postyr Quartet" amazingly wins the 3rd prize. No 1st prize is given. We feel like we have climped Mount Everest and are very much satisfied with the result. If we can handle a sitution like this, we can handle anything.
17:00 Pictures, networking, feedback from the jury. Anders returns to the hostel to sleep.
20:00 Concert with our friends in Juicebox. Frank Katemann sings a kick ass solo! The official announcement of the prize winners. Andreas returns to the hostel to catch some sleep.
22:00 After party. Tine and Kristoffer go all in on partying and networking after sharing a nice and big bottle of champagne with our friends from Vokal Verkehr and Audiofeels.
02:30 Tine and Kristoffer return to the hostel.
SATURDAY
05:00 Auf wiedersehen, Lepzig.
13:00 Hello, Aarhus.
We made it!
Looping
June 21th 2011 by Kristoffer
For some years now, I have been working with different kinds of looping devices for vocal music. Here is a collection of my thought and ideas about this subject.
Loop Options
There is a lot of different loop options out there. First you should consider if you want a hardware or software setup. Both options have their own strengths and disadvantages.
A hardware setup like a Boss RC-50, DigiTechs JamMan, Kaoss Pad from Korg, TC- Voicelive Touch or other loop machines can be very tricky to incorporate into a sound setup with other devices. It takes a lot of work to sync the midi devices to other devices and to find the right place for the loop machine in the chain of other effects or loop machines. The devices are also limited to the way they were build, which makes it hard for you to expand or develop, when (not if (-:) your setup is growing bigger.
On the plus side, you get a dependable and easy way of doing your loop setup, and you don’t have to speculate about software updates or computer failures.
With a software setup you have tons of options to incorporate your loops into other things. You can find some really cool freeware stuff out there like Mobiüs and SooperLooper. If you are using Ableton Live or Logic’s Mainstage, you can use the build in loop machines there.
A lot of singers and instrumentalists like to have their loop controls at their feet instead of in their hands. So with a software setup you need a foot controller. I would recommend the cheap Behringer or the slightly more expensive, but very complex and extremely more tech-from-the-future-like SoftStep. Both are midi controllers and can therefore be setup to control any parameter you need for doing your loops (or controlling effects or channels or instruments etc.).
Because of the infinite possibilities a software loop setup gives you, it is easy to get lost. It takes some time to master, and it also means that you have to get into some basic programming to bring your loop setup to life. But you wil l end up with a personal setup that are fitted just for your needs and is very easy to expand and morph into new things later. There is a lot of cool tutorials out there for doing your sofware loops, but yet I haven’t found anyone specifically for singers and beatboxers.
My Hardware Setup
Let me dig into to a way of putting up a hardware loop setup.
Get yourself a Boss RC-50! It’s the most reliable and diverse loop station on the market, and it has a lot of connection possibilities. It has three loop channels, and it has the possibility to overdub loops on each channel, so you can make multi layered loops. You can plug in a microphone, and a stereo instrument and you even have an aux input as well. You have plenty of options for triggering samples, creating separated suboutputs and so on. The cool thing about it is that it loops straight out of the box and has some more advanced options built into it as well. The Boss RC-50 is the core in my hardware loop setup. It works as a midi clock master that controls the other machines in my setup. There’s a lot of talented musicians that use the RC-50. You can get started by exploring these videos:
Bernhoft:
and the crazy Rico Loop:
I haven’t used the TC-Voicelive Touch yet, but it seems to work fine even though you have to use your hands to control it… The most basic option is a simple one-loop pedal like the JamMan. You can’t really get it wrong. I know there are even more options. Take for instance the loop setup of Swiss singer Martin O. or some of all the other loop pedals on the market. I would like to know more about them, so if you know more, please drop a comment about it here.
In my setup I work a lot with the Kaoss Pad (KP) that besides giving me the option of using live effects on stage, has a nice intuitive looping option as well. On the KP you have 4 loop channels and the possibility to record two loops into one channel. The great thing about the KP, is that you can add effects to your loops and thereby create soundscapes and more produced grooves and loops.
One huge disadvantage though, is that it has a 16beat maximum and it has to have a tempo preset, which means that you can’t start a loop without first giving a tempo preset. In other words, you have to be in the same tempo as the KP.
This is where the Boss RC-50 and the KP really works great together. Setting up the Boss RC-50 as the midi-clock-master and letting it control the tempo of the KP, makes you able to get around some of the weaknesses of the KP.
You can see a clip with the great master of the Kaoss Pad, Beardy Man, here:
and read more about his setup with 4 Kaoss Pads and a Boss RC-50 here.
Loop Practice
A loop machine is a great way of developing new ideas and working on small compositions and intuitive arranging in your rehearsal room or studio. It is also a cool way to use to your own voice and listening and practicing with change of timbre, pitch and pronunciation.
With Postyr Project I have been working a lot to integrate loops into our live concerts. It takes hard work to get the right timing and to find some “loop-holes” if the live looping for some reason goes wrong. More and more vocal groups experiment with live looping, and I think that there are some great perspectives in this. For me it is all about getting the right sound and putting the right feeling into the music, and I think that I in time can get a beatboxing loop even more integrated in some of the arrangements we do in Postyr Project. A loop always stays the same and it means that the listeners can focus on the melody or lyrics instead of the beat.
The Land Of the Thousand Lakes
June 12th 2011 by Line
Sitting in the bus heading for the airport and watching the beautiful Finnish scenery pass by I'm thinking about all the extraordinary things I've experienced in the last couple of days. It's not just the weather that has been unusually good – 35 degrees and non-stop sunshine in this Nordic country - it has definitely been a week out of the ordinary…
We arrived Tuesday after a luxurious flight on business class followed by a less luxurious 3 hours bus ride. The purpose of the journey was Tampere Vocal Music Festival where Postyr Project had been chosen to take part in the final round of the competition for vocal groups. In Tampere we had rented a place to stay from the lovely Pirjo, and it turned out to be the cutest apartment with a nice garden in front. Already the first night we got acquainted with some of the locals – and they seemed to prefer me in particular. However, the joy of the meeting was not mutual and resulted in the purchase of some anti-mosquito drugs the following day!
Wednesday was the big day – 14 groups from all over the world (Mexico, Namibia, Russia, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Germany, France and Denmark) were going to compete in the competition. We had been checking out some of the other groups in advance, and we were amazed with the variety the groups represented: Folk, almost classical, jazz, pop, comedy – and electronic pop, avant-garde or whatever we should call the stuff Postyr Project is doing.
We were prepared that we only had 15 minutes for soundcheck (we usually need almost 2 hours!), so Kristoffer made sure he had all his gear up and running and ready to plug in the minute we got on stage (a big thank you to the Tampere staff for their patience and help finding a table with wheels for the gear and a sofa – which of course we couldn't perform without!).
We had been rehearsing the same morning and we were so excited to go in there, have a
good time and just kick ass! We were singing Veins (with a new intro featuring Kristoffer on kaoss pad), Go! Don't Stop! and Broken. And in spite of some minor technical problems it went very well! We were extremely happy and relieved. And after our performance we got so many nice comments from people who had heard us and were cheering for us in the competition.
Next step was the announcement of which groups had been chosen to perform in the second round the following day. We were very excited and in the evening we got the message: we had made the cut together with 7 other groups, and we should sing Veins and Go! Don't Stop! again.
Strangely enough we were all very calm about our final performance, and without any anxiety we were just looking forward to doing it again – this time in front of a sold out venue in Tampere Music Hall and broadcasted by Finnish Radio!
Thursday we had the greatest sound check – much better than the day before. And now we were really starting to look forward… Right before we went on stage we had a group hug and each of us got to say one word about what was important to us during this performance. And the headline was that we should simply be in the moment and enjoy ourselves. And that's what we did!
After the performance we jumped and danced around and were so thrilled that we had made a great performance and lived up to our best. And now there was nothing left for us to do but wait for the verdict of the judges…
During the announcement of the winners we just sat there, holding our breath, clutching the armrests of the chairs, looking at each other and waiting with excitement. And when John Potter, chairman of the jury announced Postyr Project as the winners, we all just jumped up screaming and ran to the stage to receive the trophy and the 3.500 Euro, knowing that this was a decisive moment in the history of Postyr Project.
In the days following our victory several festivals throughout Europe have contacted us regarding performances in 2012, and we look very much forward to moving on with the plans for the future. Thank you so much, Eija, Jussi and the rest of the staff behind Tampere Vocal Music Festival for a wonderful festival! We look forward to being back in 2013!
Life In the Fast Lane
May 28th 2011 by Tine
It seems like the month of May have just passed in a couple of seconds.
First of all, let me just say, that we had a wonderful time at the Hannover A Cappella Woche. We had a blast at the workshop and concert with the teeangers from the Helene-Lange-Schule and with Vokal Verkehr, My, Myself & I and Mundart at the a cappella newcomer night the following day.
My personal high light from the weekend, though, was the church concert on Sunday evening. It was so inspiring listening to the other groups, and to me our own music was given a whole new dimension in the beautiful and sacred church room. I hope that this will not be the last time, that we get a chance to perform at venues like that.
Thank you Sven, Sandra and the rest of the Hannover A Cappella Woche-crew for giving us the opportunity to be part of the festival. It was so great to meet you and we hope to be back in Hannover some time in the near future.
Back in Denmark, we had a lot of meetings to attend regarding next year's tour-schedule, the Postyr-economy, the Postyr-sales-strategy, the Postyr-SPOT-press-strategy, the Postyr-SPOT-live show strategy etc. The meetings went very well, and I look very much forward to see what the future brings.
As you can imagine the work load is kind of heavy these days, so we have already started to discuss different opportunities of outsourcing some of the tasks. In relation to that, we have made a big decision: Kasper Schou from Vocal Line has been appointed the official Postyr Project tour manager! We would like you to welcome him to the team, and we all look so much forward to working with him. He is cool, kind and always on top of the things, he is in charge of.
The last couple of days, we have spent performing and mingling at the SPOT festival ini Copenhagen and Aarhus meeting new interesting people and presenting our music to a whole new kind of audience. It has been a great experience, and it seems, that we have succeeded in presenting ourselves as an alternative/pop/electronica group, that can fit into the Danish main stream music culture and the international vocal music scene. In addition to that, we have spent a whole lot of time at the office working on both booking and pr-stuff giving interviews and appearing on a radio-show.
However succesfull, these are also kind of hard times (like Andreas is singing about in "Walking"), because we spent so much time away from home. It is even difficult to find the time for a descent "vocal jog";-) The one thing holding me up is the combination of my mom, ricola-herbal-bonbons, peppermint tea and of course Echinaforce herbal mixture. Thank you, for keeping my immune-defense up to speed and ready for next weeks concert in Marburg.
Loud versus Sophisticated
May 12th 2011 by Kristoffer
Okay, so right now I wanna be more like a band than an a cappella act. I don't want the Vocaldente approach and do everything acoustic and soft. I want the big fat sound of the bass and the beat I know from Dubstep, Drum 'n Bass and Dance. I want the audience to feel the air around them getting pushed and moved. Is that to much to ask for? If Beardyman can do it, so can I! Even though his loops and sounds get a little messy and undefined sometimes, the intensity and energy of the music completely takes the focus. I can do that to! I want the volume peaks of our music to move people so no one can keep their feet from moving.Technic versus Heart
Over the summer I'll be working on a new setup with better separation of the bass, beat and mid tone and move more of the controls down to my feet.
Later today we're going to Hannover to do three concerts. Here I wanna try to videoproject my hands, doing all the effects and loop stuff, up on a screen so the audience can get better view and idea of what's going on. Hope I'll succeed…
I'm constantly thinking about optimizing our setup and getting new ideas to electronic vocal arrangements. I guess I like it a little more trashy and messed up than the others in the band. I really love noise! A couple of years ago I went to The Eurovision Song Contest - Mashup party. 10 electronic musicians where gathered to mash up one song each. It was crazy! and I had to leave after half an hour 'cause my head was spinning from all the noise. That experience was a real epiphany for me and since then I've been trying to but some noise and ugliness in everything that gets to pretty or boring :)
Relieved
May 7th 2011 by Kristoffer
- Time: 06.29, saturday morning
- Place: Hotel Lobby, Århus
- State: Hangover
- Feeling: Relieved
Woke up an hour ago and just couldn't sleep anymore so I decided to write a little on our blog.
So many things fell together last night. Our album arrived, 3 days late and we're so proud of the result. The Postyr Project iTunes store went online and our album is now ready for online sale. We got the postcards, business cards and sheet music we got printed with our new graphic-line. Our new website is finally done and upgraded.
Since I chose to build it up almost from zero, there're tons of things I'm still working on here, but I like the fact that you can go explore what Postyr Project is about. Here on the Blog, the hole Music part, the Shop and the increasingly bigger Bio section.
Yesterday something else just melted together: our music.
We had a really good concert at Ridehuset and I felt so happy being on stage with the rest of Postyr. We did some new stuff we haven't tried before and I was really anxious how the hole technical side was going to come down. We started the concert with Johanne on cello and me on Kaoss Pad and and went straight into Veins. It went really well and I thought it was a good start for the concert. When we arrived to the piece In Vernalis I was working my butt off triggering beats, making slap-delays on solo-microphones, live-looping some of my bass notes and remembering the new arrangement. This is probably the most complex setup we will ever have in Postyr and I'm getting a little dicy when I'm thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong.
I did something else at last nights concert that I haven't done so much before. I kept some of the start noise me and the cello made, on my Kaoss Pad through out the concert and used it for effects and background sound environment. I thought it was real nice and it gave some off our vocal arrangements a little more edge and a more electronic feel.
I like :)
Desk (s)top
April 30th 2011 by Tine
5 days to go before the big day on Friday. Man, am I working around the clock to settle my part of the preparations. My inbox is about to purst and so is my brain. I haven't been able to sleep very well for the last couple of nights, so I am hoping for some rest tonight. The one thing that keeps me from going totally mad with stress, my one consolation, is the "to do"-lists, post-its and endless updates of mindmaps.
On top of my list today is a range of tasks associated with Arhus Vocal Festival. Anders and I are hosting the competitions for vocal groups and choirs on Saturday and Sunday, and I spent a lot of the day researching about the groups and the judges and gathering all the information about the rules and prizes. I am also working on some hand outs in relation to three workshops in vocal technique. Hopefully, they can also be used as a basis to some of the Postyr-workshops and coaching, we will do in the future.
Berlin (open arr.)
Hannover (closed arr.)
A lot of different things are going down in the next couple of days. Hopefully, the cd's will arrive on Tuesday, I can't wait to see how the cover turned out in real life. Kristoffer made a new flyer/postcard the other day, that should arrive on Monday. We are also working on the last details for a musicvideo for the first single and on the layout for the very first editions of the Postyr sheetmusic series. Speaking of videos, I just uploaded a new videopodcast on Youtube featuring Morten Vinther from The Real Group (former Postyr), who helped us A LOT making the album. Stay tuned for part two…
Another big, or at least a bit complicated, thing right now is: Itunes.
Did you know that it can take up to 4 weeks to get your music on Itunes!?
We, more or less, just found out, so I guess I'd better get to it, so it can be checked off my list soon. Gotta get to work again, so my desk can be clean on Friday and my mind can be focused on just enjoying the moment.
BR, Tine.
Heading Home
April 25, 2011 by Tine
WOW! Did we have a good time in Utrecht and Cologne or what!? We are on our way home now and it feels like forever since we left Denmark, because so much has happened in the meantime. I really want to thank both Moving Colours, Karin Mueller, Vokal Verkehr, everyone at Hannover A Cappella Woche, DeKoor and Bonner Jazzchor for their hospitality and support.
It has been so great working with you, spending time with you and of course, singing with you! We will be posting some of the videos from the concert over the summer and soon there will also be a new podcast about the process of making the album. It means so much to us to have been on this first real tour together, and I feel that everyone in Postyr Project and the group as a whole has evolved a lot during the last couple of days; blendwise, performancewise, tech-wise and on a personal level. You know, you really get each other under your skin, when you hang around 24-7 for almost a week and push yourself to the limit of what you are capable of doing musically, personally and fysically. It has been a great kick and now I am just hungry for more!
Like I said the other day, it sometimes feels like someone pushed the fastforward button and forgot to switch it off again and today is no different. I thought that I was just going to have a slow day at the office, but when I opened my inbox, there was a very interesting e-mail from an international licensing-company.
I haven't had the time to check it properly out yet, but from the sound of the e-mail, it could be great opportunity to present our music to a new audience. Could you imagine "Go! Don't Stop!" as background music for your favourite TV-show or in a McDonald's commercial? Well, I guess we will have to see about that.
For now I just look forward to having a couple of days off before the concert in Anders' hometown, Aalborg, on Tuesday. It's the last concert before the release-concert on May 6th, so we have got a lot of practising to do with the new songs, the guest-stars and everything.
Stuck on the Autobahn
April 19, 2011 by Tine
We are on our way to Hannover to meet with Vokal Verkehr, the Hannover A Cappella Woche-team and the German press, but we have been stuck in a traffic-jam for the last 40 min. We just phoned Bastian to let him know that we are late, and he told us that they had just heard on the radio that the “Stau” was caused by some stupid pedestrians walking around on the Autobahn.
We have got to do something to kill time, so right now we are playing one of the classic “Postyr car games”. You can see a sample of it on this old videoclip from our trip to Italy last summer. Feel free to share the game with your co-driver if you ever need to kill off some time.
We are all a bit tired today, because we had a very good time singing, talking and cheering with Vokal Verkehr, Karin Mueller and Sven Salzer last night. The concert at Café Theater Schalotte went very well, and it made me very happy to meet some of the people I have been working with online in person for the first time. I have got a feeling that we will back back at the venue sometime in the fall, so keep an eye on the calendar.
See a clip here:
Press Conference – Hannover
After the press conference we have some time off to relax and hang out. I am going to meet with Anders later in the afternoon to do some planning. We have a workshop coming up in Aalborg (DK) next week and we are hosting the Aarhus Vocal Festival competitions for choirs and vocal groups in two weeks. Tonight we will hook up with the rest of the group to have a rehearsal and go out to dinner.
Berlin, baby
April 17, 2011 by Tine
Second day in Berlin and we are preparing for tonight's concert at Café Theater Schalotte with Vokal Verkehr.
Here is a short video of Anders and the VERY cool sign on the front of the theatre:
The sign
Right now everything is calm. Most of the time I feel like someone hit the fastforward button and forgot to switch it off again, but today we even had time to go for a run and rehearse for two hours earlier today.
Here is a short video from our Rehearsal in Berlin.
In the last couple of weeks we have all been working full time on the project mixing the album, writing the text for the cover, doing the artwork for the cover, making a musicvideo(!), making the new press-kit, filling out contracts and entry forms to the competitions in Tampere and Leipzig, renting cars, booking flight tickets and hotels, updating the homepage with the new artwork from the album, getting an overview of the budget and tax-rules in foreign countries, and last but not least rehearsing the new songs with Kristoffer's technical set up.
Bastian Holze from Vokal Verkehr just checked in. It was so nice to meet him in person, I think that I have about 70 e-mails from him in my mailbox about this concert and the concert and workshops in September. He is a really cool guy, and I think that we are going to have a good time tonight with him and the other guys from Vokal Verkehr. Tomorrow we will go to Hannover to take part in the Hannover A Cappella Woche press-date in reation to the announcement of Vokal Verkehr winning the A-CAPIDEO-contest.
Preparing for the tour
April 15, 2011 by KristofferThis Wednesday we had a long rehearsal at Silkeborg Højskole together with our sound engineer Lars Reker. We where lucky that we had the complete set up including front monitors and subs at this rehearsal since we really needed to brush up on the technical part of our music.
I guess Postyr is all about the technical part for me and I actually have done some improvements and tweaks since our last concert in January. It means that I can now (together with Lars), get the other 4 singers microphone signal into my loop and effect set up.
That really opens up for some cool possibilities and in “Breath” and “All Is Full Of Love” I can really play around with altering the singers voices live – on stage. I love that!
I’m doing all of my sound processing in Mainstage 2 on my MacBookPro. I got two mics, one for singing, one for beat box that goes into my TC-Live-Konnect-Audio-Interface or TCLKAI or just TC
So in an hour or so, I will go through my Mainstage set up and punch in the set list for our first concert in Berlin tomorrow.
I’m working on going from Logic’s Mainstage to Abletons Live ’cause it opens up for some more sampling and live-editing possibilities.
Maybe it’ll be ready for our release concert in May!
Doing vocal processing on stage gives me an enormous sense of control over my sound and machines and integrates some of the things I find really interesting:
Voice & Machine
I do have some problems with latency. I think my setup has around 4-5ms of latency which means that everything I sing into my mics is delayed for 4-5ms. I also have a TC-Voice-Synth-Effect-Pedal on stage. I use that on two songs and here I have a latency of 7-9ms. That means I have to compensate so I don't "fall behind" the others.
I'm actually not sure if there's a solution for this. Maybe I just need to wait for computers to get faster and the prober hardware to get cheaper.
Since our set up is kind of complicated we have estimated that it would take Lars, Andreas and me around and hour to set up all the gear. I'll try to post a video of the process so you can see what's going on…